Saturday, 25 August 2012

Guess I should post CTA write up


Call to Arms 2012

So an exciting Call to Arms. It was my first time attending, but Warhammer is Warhammer-venue don't change that!

As per my previous post I thought I would give the High Elves a run around since the woodies had their turn last event and the Empire are sitting on the paint table.

My list was rather unsubtle:

Dragon Prince with re-roll 2+/4++ GW and other trickster's shard
lvl2: high, scroll
BSB: GW, Dragon armour

38 Spears: FC-flame
2x10 Archers: M

26 Whitelions: FC-amulet of light
26 Whitelions: FC

2 Eagles

SO dragon, 52 Whitelions, steadfast spears and chaff (sorry archers).

My Plan going in was to use ASF to my advantage as either a Jarl Axe wall, or get my Berserker mode on and Panzer strike the lines.

GAME ONE: Orcs and Goblins - blood and glory

An interesting list full of monster goodness.
Warboss on foot (general)
warboss on Wyvern
lvl2 orc
lvl2 gobbo

30 something normal boyz board and sword
30ish big uns 2hw-flame
2 gobbo chariots
6 trolls

Giant
Aranknarok
doomdiver

Very excited to come up against this list game 1. For starters I played Nick at the last event and got a very unsatisfying draw (thank you warping lvl4...), but also because he was a laugh to play-so always good to go in with a game I will enjoy.

My plan was to dragon the big spider then pull across to the blocks, spears into trolls, archers shoot off chariots, eagles get doomdiver while whitelions get everything else.....and that is pretty much exactly what happened. Only thing that was different was that his Wyvern decided to come play with the dragon...warboss and wyvern dead in 1 round of combat. Wyvern had taken 1 wound from archers (woot!). Prince finished it off allowing dragon to stomp all over warboss. I lost 1 whitelion block who got caught with an awkward clip on the big uns (to allow other block to have enough spare bodies to also kill giant as well as the boyz). Dragon was 1 turn late saving the day, but oh well, 20-0 to me.


Game two: Warriors of Chaos-random deployment.

Right on to game 2. I had a pretty favourable deployment. I was up against:

usual disc lvl4
BSB with stuff
lvl1
block of Tzench warriors hw/sh (lvl1 here)
block of nurgle warriors halberds (bsb here)
7 knights
2 warshrines
hellcannon

The warriors stole turn 1 and backed up (dwarf like play if I ever saw it!). I rushed forward. Dragon aimed at the knights (dead). Dragon then got hit by hellcannon killing the Prince-though the dragon carried on. Whitelions were a bit more cautious. The tzench warriors presented a tricky target that I had to pull out of position. Dragon bluff meant I got a frontal charge with 1 unit while the dragon jumped after the warshrines. The other whitelion unit wore a couple of gateway wounds (not a good day when stopping treason to let gateway through...) and were mindful of where the nurgle warriors would appear (had hopped into building). I took out the tznch guys over a couple of rounds and then hit the 2nd warshrine (dragon got stuck on 4++), broke it and went straight into hellcannon (dead). The Nurgle combat was a bit more tricky as I didnt rate my Whitelions to win it (re-roll hit on 4's, 2's to kill vs hit on 3's, 2's to kill and more attacks). However I brought my Spear block+ BSB up to give re-roll stubborn...which I failed, ran 4, got run down and exposed the spear flank to the (depleted) Nurgle warriors. Lucky this was LATE game as my spears held until the very last turn to break (killing BSB in process due to new flee rules), but escaped. All he had left was Nurgle, BSB, and lvl4, which was enough (having lost 1 Whitelion unit and BSB + eagles) to pull it back to a 13-7 win to me.

Game 3: Demons of dumb: diagonal deployment.

So Tom and I met again on the field of battle...meaning both our wizards would be dead/lvl0 by end of turn 2 as per usual... his list was:

Billy the blood thirster: KB, 7 attacks (probably usual) 3+, scroll
lvl2 tznch: loremaster light and scroll
2 korn heralds with 3+, flame sword thing (yeah-duplicate gifts were not comped...)
2x29 bloodletters
2x5 furies
2x3 flamers (last hurrah for pre Wdwarf update)
2 blood crushers
2 fiends.

Basically my list without having to pay core tax and a 5++ on everything and more chaff.

I opted for the Jarl Axe wall approach and castled up (deployed first) only 1 eagle failed to arrive. I picked the corner that meant due to a building his force would be split coming at me. My plan was spears and 1 block and 1 eagle handle 1 part, and dragon, whitelions block and Eagle deal with thirster approach. This was a game where I feel I out played Tom, but it didnt pay off. My biggest mistake was not deploying spears 5 wide (instead of my usual 7). Basically I killed all chaff except for 1 blood crusher. Pinned Billy on a unit of whitelions (overrun so combat in his turn), flanked with dragon...prince dies to KB (had to make 4 KB wardsaves....passed 3) and billy takes 2 more rounds to kill the dragon. Meanwhile bloodletter block come up rear of dragon/into whitelion flank and that collapses. On other flank I pinned Bloodletters on spears and used combat reform to get Whitelions for a flank charge....nope. Spears fluff 22 attacks...Bloodletters roll AMAZING and I flee (with BSB out of unit this time!) get run down so whitelions not so safe to charge! In the end I lost 4-16, but a good game none-the-less.




Game four: Bretts-watchtower.

Neil had opted to try not using HKB on a hero and brought the Greenknight. His list was something like:

Greenknight
2 lvl2 (1 on foot)
BSB
2 Paladins (one with charmed shield, the other with dragonbane gem).
unit of 10 knights errant
2x8 Knights of Realm
2 smaller Realm knight units
10 skirmish archers
5 Yeoman
3 Peg knights
Trebuchet

I put 10 archers in the tower to get closer shooting on the treb! Basically this game was defined by
1) dragon hiding from trebuchet...because'
2) it rolled a hit every time it fired (even when misfiring to explode)
3) 2+/5++ is amazing vs s6-I struggled to kill knights
4) 38 spears was a really, really good idea as too many bodies to lose watchtower
5) greenknight is really, really, really annoying
6) at least once a tournament leadership tests have to be failed on mass with a "high leadership" army.

SO yeah-greenknight couldnt kill all the spears (even after wearing a hit from treb), dragon only killed 1 Paladin in a challenge as spent most of game hiding then got trapped on Green knight. Whitelions let me down by failing to kill a single Paladin "speed bump" that resulted in it getting wiped out. Other Whitelion unit failing panic test taking it out of the game for 1 turn = couldn't come to the rescue in time. They eventually got 1 unit of knights, some peg knights, and heroicly saw off a last turn charge. BUT when we added up points I had lost 130 more than Neil, but with Watch Tower it became a 12-8 win to me. MISSION FTW!


Game 5: Lizardmen-battleline.

Going into this game I needed an 18-2 or better victory, and Sam needed to get tabled for me to break into top 3. So I draw Bo's Lizards that looked a little like:

Slann-discard my 6's to cast, gets extra dice when casting, loremaster life, BSB
lv1 skink priest on Engine of the Gods
Scarvet on foot with stuff

38 Saurus hw/sh
2x10 skink cohort with javelins
2x10 skink skirmishers with blowpipes
20 templeguard-banner of discipline
2x5 chemeleons
2 salamanders
1 salamander

So I actually managed to out deploy someone with fewer drops....Basically I deployed Dragon on my left = all the poison goes over there...then swing round to right flank for double whitelion, dragon panzer strike on his lines...while the poison only has archers (and lvl2) to kill. I breezed through the chaff which I felt wasnt used as well as it could have been, but I did have overwhelming force + flying monster, so it was never really going to be an issue. My big "break" was when the Slann (with throne up btw) miscast and killed 15 templeguard = all magic got diverted to keeping them alive instead of dwellering me (ie what I thought was going to happen for 6 turns). I got a massive strike on him that won it for me. Spears into flank of templeguard with dragon in front (did nothing for a round while everything was t8, but then finished it off when that all went away) and whitelion sandwich on the saurus (in front and flank). I was ONE kill short of breaking steadfast on 1st round. Then again I had allocated 8 attacks on to scarvet and 3 onto champ (both died), so didnt really help with that. Engine came crashing in, but died to 10 axes and the saurus got finished off.
Adding up the points I won 18-2...looking across to Sam he got 5 points...


End Result

The results were tallied and I came 4th...Sam beating me by 1.95/100 points! After the event Pete told me that my army came 2nd in the beauty pageant (Sam's Orcs coming first), so a very, very, very good outcome for me. My best ever placing at a 2 day event (not counting Homecon where I also came 4th last year). Hopefully my Empire can do the same come Skitterleap!

Thoughts on list:                                                                                                                         

The list worked as intended. I was a little miffed at it bouncing off the demons, but there was not much else I could have done.  This list (and the event in general) has cemented by belief that reliance on magic is not a game winning proposition. The only game where my mage was very, very, necessary (and ultimately let me down) was vs the Bretts where I needed to kill the trebuchet to free up my dragon-however I worked around that, took the hits and played the scenario to win. Something to hurt Billy was nice, but wouldn't have helped turn the game when it fell to me not bussing the spears and 4KB wounds on Prince.



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