Panzershreck 2014 battle reports

Hey hey hey,

Weekend just been was the annual home town tournament run by the Palmy gaming club (complete with Saturday night BBQ and all).

Last year the comp was Swedish which was lots of fun (double witch hunter FTW!), this year it was ETC complete with ETC terrain and base sizes (though confession - I didn't base my artillery and it was ok). I'm not the biggest fan of the ETC format, but it is still Warhammer and I'm not one to throw my dice out of the cot and not enjoy myself anyway.

My list:

Confession #2 I  literally had not unpacked my Empire army since Horned Rat, so I took the exact same list:

GTM: runefang, Ch shield, Pospeed, DBGem
lvl4: life, steed, stubborn, mr(3)
lvl1: steed, fire, scroll
BSB: Bsteed, 1+ as, lance, white cloak
COTE, Bsteed, 1+as, lance, OTS
13 Inner Circle Knights: FC-banner of discipline
5 Knights: M
5 Knights: M
4 Demis: M
cannon
cannon
Stank
Hurricanum

Or as I call it the "Life Lance".

I was going to take a double prince, double lvl2 High magic, calv MSU High Elf list, but I couldn't get it all finished to a standard I wanted to be comfortable using at an event due to running out of basing materials. My resupply order arrived 3 days before the event so I COULD have taken it if I had known that at list submission deadline. Oh well....

GAME 1: vs Ryan - WoC

Fantastic...I travel all the way to Palmy to play my regular gaming buddy, so I had no tricks up my sleeve and had to rely on good 'ol cannons doing their thing...or not. This happened:

Chaos Lord, BSB on daemonic mount and chariot vs Stank...

and this happened...

But thankfully Ryan forgot about the ability to reform after combat so the warriors got lance in the front and demis in the flank (hiding behind the building having "tactically withdrawn" earlier in the game).

Ryan ran away with all his points...my cannons did nothing of note (other than finishing the chariot my stank failed to grind) and given my chaff all died, picking up his chaff and the warriors brought the game to a draw...We should have slept in and just called it!

Result 10-10 Draw

Game 2: vs Dan WoC

Game 2 and my 2nd WoC list. Dan is NZ's WoC player, so I knew I was up for a cagey game. I knew that to have a chance his chaff had to die. T1 I rock out the lvl1 fire mage, 3 dice IF a 2d6 fireball..only kill 3 marauder horsemen and go down the hole (sad face). The rest of the game looked like this:

No point reforming as the fast calv would just adjust accordingly...I gave him the stank for the trolls to vomit on. This game was a huge cannon failure. I looked at his list and my mental note was "all chariots dead + 1 unit of skull crushers = I should win the game"...instead my cannons did 4 wounds IN TOTAL over the course of the game...1 measly chariot...sigh

Result: 7-13 loss

Game 3: vs Charlie "Hobby Hero" Dark Elves.

Dreadlord on dragon, no BSB, brolocks for magic and 2 manticores = Not the best match up for him. 1 cannon shot killed this:

Black Dragon, Manticore and beastmaster dead to 1 cannon shot

and the Dreadlord only had a unit of Crossbows to hide in = got the lance to the face. Lore of Life really showed its power when t8 Demis not only survived this...

but killed it all (token hurricanum charge may have helped that last little part!)

All in all, the Hobby Hero lived up to his name and took the tabling like a champ. he got my favourite opponent vote.

Result: 20-0 win

Game 4: vs Mal skinks and cowboys

After a hard night Karaoke'ing I awoke to the fact I would be taking on NZ's ETC skink cloud hobby killer.

Being out deployed by chaff doesn't help cannon placement so I was faced with this:

His BSB survived 3 cannons and a Dwellers, his Old Vet survived a cannon, a skink priest failed Dwellers LOS! (ETC rules) and then passed its strength test...if I could go wrong it did. I ALMOST got my Demis to the Slann, but I ran out of turns :(. I kill chaff, Mal kills the stank, hurrricanum, and a unit of knights.

Result: 9-11 loss

Game 5: vs Brian Dark Elves

SO what I thought was the last game of the event vs another awesome list...3 hydras, 4 RBTs, horde of witches with Cauldron and chaff! I cannoned off the peg lvl4 turn1 and then hit the chaff with hydra's looking down on me...

So I pull out my ace up the sleeve tactic and cannon off 1 of the hydras that panics the other 1 off the table (mad skillz)...to add insult I then cannoned off the 3rd hydra. This game contained a classic I "know" the ETC rules, but still play real warhammer...we discussed at length how the terrain worked. I had some ruins in my deployment zone and instead of deploying my cannons in it, I deployed them right behind it...silly me. It cost me a cannon as the RBTs took very careful...unmodified aim.

So once the monsters were dead I worked by way through the RBTs towards the witches. I baited them with the Stank, flanked in the demis and t6 my lance finally got there...

Runefang and OTS captain take out the cauldron and from there it is lots of dead elves leaving only the BSB hag who died defending her banner (or however it is described in the BRB).

Result: 20-0 win

Game 6: vs Pete Furry Dwarfs

My submarine surfaced and I was up against Pete (if this was the internetz I would talk about being on the "Top Table"...I think we were on table #5). Having given him stick all weekend about hiding behind ETC hill rules and refining the minimum sized deployment he can legally do he pulls this one on me:

Now I know the Skaven book has a "life is cheap" rule of something...but this was taking it to extremes!
This is the first game EVER where I have killed a whole unit of slaves (2 units in fact) in a single turn. As I waded my way though the bodies his greyseer did a runner:

After a thorough read of the Skaven FAQ/Errata (vol 1-25 3rd ed) I can confirm there is no rule allowing me to control the bell unit once it reaches my deployment zone.

And the only real excitement was Doomwheel vs Stank (he got the charge grrr) and Doomwheel vs vanilla knights. I made a mistake putting a last remaining knight into the flank of 1 in the hope of breaking it giving away 240pts instead of 120 from the unit that originally engaged it to let my knights and demis past unzapped.
My stank stoically held on with 2 wounds until the lance arrived when it finally gave up the ghost (even I was cheering at that point...I shouldn't have passed so many 4+ as!)

A big win was effectively written off when my lvl4 miscast t2 and lost 2 magic levels. From there I failed to cast Dwellers 3 times...21 is a hard number to roll on 5 dice with only +2 from wizard levels.

In the end we added it all up and I was 92pts up (or "3 slave units" in Skaven language). Fantastic game to end it.

Result: 10-10 draw

Overall Results

Playing out a draw I was reliant on those around me not doing too well. Greg lost his game, Mal and Dan got stuck in ETC purgatory (10-10 is a win right??)  but Mr Sam Whitt obviously paid Mike King handsomely as he catapulted himself into 2nd place with a casual 20-0 game 6 win.

For the first time is AGES I came in top 3 with a 3rd place finish. I've never seen Pete so happy. To my surprise I also picked up Best Sports.

First official use of my new light box!

Big thanks to Jeff for TO'ing (and killing Ryan's Chaos Lord with a Dragon Mage), the Palmy club and all my opponents/people who attended.

Anywho that's me. Now I have a light box (the one advertised on fieldsofblood recently) I hope to be able to do way better painting updates...now to paint stuff to update!