So having taken down the slimy undead with the High Elves
and the Empire on home turf, I figured it was only polite to check out Ryan's
gaming pad with an expeditionary force. Ryan has given me prior permission to
whine about how "broken" stuff is and how much he cheated and then (successfully)
tried to bribe me with peppermint tea and brownies.
Anywho my list:
Highborn: Ogre Blade, Stone of Rebirth, AoN 240
Lvl4: life, Rhymers Harp, Dispel Scroll 350
BSB: Silvered Steel, Luckstone 140
32 Eternal Guard: FC-MR(1) banner 429
16 Glade Guard: m-SB-flame 220
14 Glade Guard: m 174
5 wardancers 90
5 wardancers 90
5 Wardancers 90
Eagle 50
Treeman 285
5 Way Watchers 120
5 Way Watchers 120
2398
SO a winter themed list for a very, very wintery evening.
The Internetz has told me that wardancers suck and Eternal Guard are a waste of
space...so naturally I decided to try them out. Hopefully you can see from the
list that I was going for a "current meta" style list as described by
Pete on fields of blood the other day: big points sink that is hard to move
(Eternal Guard "death star") with lots of little super hammers worth
nothing (the rest of the stuff). Though I have pre-empted the current meta
change with Mr(1) on the Eternal Guard to give them a 4++ vs direct damage
stuff.
Ryan's list:
Vamp lord: lvl4, earthing rod, sword of anti-heroes, 4++,
Quick blood, red fury
2 wightKings on horse-defensive builds
Vamp lvl1 on foot with 5 attacks (so prop 2hw) and the
book of free vanhels
Necro lvl1: scroll
23 zombies: m, sb
40 something zombies: m, sb
30 something skellies: fc-board and sword
2x10 doggies
10 black knights: fc-banner of the burrows
2x1 spirit hosts
corpse cart
2 varghulfs
A much scarier build than his previous list.
We rolled up blood and glory and deployed. We ended up
looking like this after vanguard:
I went for a defensive position. My flaming gladeguard
are in the complete wrong position-but I was covering the easy approach for
them and deployed before the varghulfs.
Bit of a mistake on my behalf, but not the biggest I made all game. My way
watchers are placed to get within range of knight bus turn 1, but as you will
see, the right unit of way watchers should never have been on that side of the
board when there was an easy banner in the 23 zombies on the other side that 16
Gladeguard + 10 waywatchers could have easily dealt with.
Anyway. I got first turn.
Turn 1:
I started by consolidating my position. With 3 wardancer
units I knew I had to get the charge for them to be effective. But I also knew
that the generous forests on my side (Ryan actively chose other side of the
board) gave me a defensive bonus if I needed to anchor my flank...
My first turn of movement looked like this:
Treeman and Eternal Guard have moved up to present a
solid line. Archers are slightly further forward to get s4 on doggies + give
plenty of flee room. Eagle is behind because it was cold and I wasnt thinking
right-but has re-rolling ld10 for any panic so pretty safe.
The waywatchers on the right found themselves in an
awkward position because I couldnt get them within KB range of the black
knights without being in LOS and awkwardly close to the doggies. Really should
have pre measured that when deploying-but had to deploy before vanguard so
forgot the anticipate that.
Magic resulted in 6 dice vs 5 that were all thrown at
dwellers on the skellies that was dice dispelled (only JUST got 21).
In the shooting I didnt KB a knight-but he rolled two 2's
for armour save.... Glade guard opened up on left doggies
and glade guard + waywatchers opened up on right doggies
So the Vamps get their turn and shuffle up. The left
doggies pull and crazy long charge on the watwatchers (I held being a little
too confident he wouldnt kill enough to pull me out of the forest and lose
stubborn...). The corpse cart charged the right waywatchers as I expected it
to-fled, but forgot to take into account the doggies getting the charge too =
off the board. Silly, silly, silly me.
magic results in a million dice vs not many (bit of a
theme all game tbh). I let him cast invocate and raises all bar 1 doggie back
-though right unit cannot put back rank down due to varghulf being too
close...and 16, yes 16 extra zombies for the massive unit. I then throw all my
dice to stop vanhels and (of course) fail meaning the board looks like this:
In combat he kill enough to pull me out of forest, but I
killed a fair few myself and held without the stubborn HA!)
Turn 2:
SO my turn. First off my left wardancers charged front of
doggies seeing a sweet overrun into uber zombie block. Wardancers next to it
charged into skellie block, wardancers on my right charged flank of doggies as
the reform meant I could swing into forest for stubborn. I then had a massive
choice to make. Stay still and get charged, or charge. I opted for charge the
black knights for a number of reasons:
1) why not
2) meant I determined who the black knights were in
combat with
3) with the alignment of my highborn to his vamp I could
protect the unit by challenging with highborn because I determined the line up
4) I wanted to see what the Eternal Guard block could do
5) was still a little peeved at losing the waywatchers
and botching deployment.
however I didnt need to put the treeman in as well. I was
a little nervous counter charging with the treeman into the skellies and the
Eternal guard into the black knights because if the Eternal Guard failed the
charge = bye bye my entire line. If treeman makes it to black guard and eternal
guard fail = chancew to hold it up.
However looking back at it, the correct answer was to
dump the eagle in front and wait a turn. Instead the eagle moved to sqeeze in
the skellies (poorly I might add).
magic phase was another dud. 6 dice vs 4 I threw 3 dice
at throne-all dice used to stop. Then 3 dice flesh to stone-scrolled grrr. If I
had moved defensively and waited a turn I could have used flesh to stone as a
deterant to force aa bad move-but oh well.
Shooting was another dud. 2 wounds on a Varghulf! the
flame unit had failed swift reform, so did nothing.
In combat. I killed right dogs and reformed to forest.
Killed left doggies for the loss of 1 wardancer-overran and came 1 inch short
of zombie block-so no s4 for me. Completely forgot the KB the vamp (what an off
day) and died to the vamp alone. In the uber combat I quickly realised putting
treeman in was a BAD idea due to sword of anti heroes making vamp lord s8 8
attacks with ASF and get the extra attack thing. 8 attacks didnt take down the
treeman-but the next 5 did. my Highborn clearly a little shaken then hit the
champ in challenge once and failed to wound....and took a wound back as a
result. I did however kill some of the black guard with the BSB and
r&f-even though only had first 2 ranks. Still lost and held.
Vamps:
Well-what to do. Corpse
cart charged the wardancers in forest
and varghulf flanked
the eternal guard
Skellies were a little
stuck because their tail was too long and zombie horde charges wardancers
spirit host waltz's into the
gladeguard.
another stupid big
magic phase and he IFs invoc (only 9 more zombies, all wounds back on varghulf,
all black guard back) and loses rest of dice. small explosion one later kills 2
knights, fails to wound vamp, takes wound off highborn and kills a few Eternal
Guard.
In combat Ryan realised
he forgot to reform end of last phase and the vamp lord is left looking silly
as in B2B with highborn who is in challenge (finally kills champ...). I kill a
few and we DRAW the combat. Musican stops black guard crumble, but his varghulf
suffers yet ANOTHER wound and my muso gets out the vavoozella and drones out
the commentary.
corpse cart does
nothing to wardancers and we draw. wardancers vs zombies. Extra attack dance =
6 attacks on neco (2 hits) and 6 on zombies (1 hit). Kill necro and 1 zombie
and hold out of embarrassment.
Turn 3
What to do? Shooting
kills a number of zombies from the small unit. magic = snake eyes = t5 Eternal
guard. In combat t5 actually helps as only the vamp lord is killing (very
efficiently I might add...). By the by my Eternal guard are killing 2 black
guard/turn which is awesome. Wardancers vs corpse cart is another stalemate and
wardancers vs zombies = 6 dead zombies and 2 more crumble.
Vamps:
More killing of eternal
guard by vamp lord. Highborn celebrates 2nd wound on witeking only to learn
they have 3 wounds...BROKEN.
2nd vargulf decides to
join in the fun the spirit host is having and gets into the glade guard.
turn 4
Not much to report except I fail to get flesh to stone
off and vamp kills everything else-I run and we call it.
End result: very dead woodelves
Wrap Up:
My primary interest going in was to see the durability of
wardancers vs masses of chaff and I was impressed however t3 is a concern and they were killing zombies. They also killed a a
necro-meaning there was a fair points swap of necro for 1 unit of wardancers.
Forgetting to try KB the vamp was a little dumb, but hey I was cold and distracted.
2nd interest was to see how well the Eternal Guard star
would do. s8 8 attack quick blood, red fury vamp aside they did remarkably well
and I see their point holding abilities-especially when t5 with 5+/5++.
If I was to play the game again I would have put the
waywatchers in a position to threaten the 23 zombie unit and swapped the glade
guard units around. I also would have
waited a turn to charge to charge the black knight bus...sit in forest, charged
treeman into the skellies to support there instead (would have most likely
killed the vamp putting much casting pressure on the lvl4).
I also saw potential for attack allocation mayhem. With
the vamp lord where he was, and having only 1 spot he could move to (next one
along). If I had then moved my champ I could have wasted another round of his
attacks. 8 wounds on champ = 1 extra attack as no challenge.
Is this the best woodie list? No
Is it a list that could do well? probably, but need a few
more goes at using it. Not a top 10 list, but a reasonably competitive list
that will cause problems for some armies. Only problem I see is that to play it
well = to play very, very defensively = could get boring. Also dwellers FTW
much? Random deployment could also cause major issues as a lot of the list
strength comes from the treeman anchoring the Eternal Guard flank.
Im not actually sure what I would change other than maybe
playing with the glade guard sizes. They are "easy" points to take.
Might experiment with 3 units of 10 and drop luck stone from BSB to get 3rd
muso. smaller units = less points to give away. Also might try list with beasts. I can see the Curse being very useful to support the Eternal Guard-along with character buffs and wildform (obviously). Wildform could also give the wardancers a bit of punch-though I would probably need to get a unit or two of dryads into the list to best benefit from beasts. Obvious drops are the wardancers-but could also play around with glade guard numbers too.
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