Post by asterion on Apr 29, 2007 7:47:21 GMT
Thought I'd start a thread to see what happened to everyone. I always find that tournaments are such a whirlwind that I never take in what's going on about me.
It was a great day, really. All went smoothly - thanks to Paul for sacrificing playing and running it instead.
So, three games and a pretty poor showing from me. A mixture of an odd unforgivable decisions and consistently below average rolling meant that I was pushing the proverbial uphill all day. Although immensely enjoyable, in tactical terms the games felt like a real slog.
My army - pretty bog standard WE I'm afraid.
Level 4 with 3 scrolls and deepwood sphere (never used due to lack of woods), mounted.
Alter with standard alter-issue kit (HoD and HotH).
Wardancer hero with moonstone (never used due to lack of woods).
BSB with briarsheath armour (forgotten when shot to death by 10 archers at long range).
Treeman
3 treekin
8 dryads
10 glade guard
5 glade riders
7 WR full command and war banner
6 WR
7 wardancers with champ
5 waywatchers
GAME 1. Table 18. No woods.
Dan Bannerman from ELG. Great guy, and when he plonked his army down I thought all my Christmases had come at once.
2 blocks chaos warriors, 1 block marauders, 10 chosen knights, hellcanon. 2 level 2 mages, chaos lord and BSB both in the chosen unit.
No woods apart from my free one.
Task 1 - kill hellcanon crew. HoD turn 1 sorted that out. canon was now rampaging, but unfortunately didn't cause the sort of problems for Dan that I'd expected.
Task 2, kill the mages. Turn 2 I charged my alter into one chaos warrior unit, and as the mage wasn't next to the champ I killed the mage, lost the combat and ran - as expected. Worthwhile sacrifice. Same turn my large unit of wild riders and treekin charged the chos warriors in the flank, and treeman in the front. Destroying them would take out the mage, and the overrun would take me into the flank of the chaos chosen knights with my hardest, fear causing units. All went to plan, chaos warriors destroyed and Ihad the choice of sending 2 of the three units into the flank of the chosen - I sent in the treekin and WR (for the +2 from their banner/war banner). The treeman lurked behind to deal with the oncoming marauders and take a chosen knight overrun should they win.
Now things started to go wrong.
My mage miscast and the magic phase ended. My charging treekin and WR failed to kill a single chaos knight. The chaos lord moved into position and started hacking down my wild riders, treekin, and later treeman, at will. As the chosen won the combat they turned to face me - I no longer had the flank. But then I sent my wardancers with wardancer hero into the chosen's newly created flank. Even something like 15 or 17 killing blow attacks from the wardancers did little.
On the other side of the field my other wild riders charged one flank of the chaos warriors, and drayds into the other flank. No matter. The chaos warriors passed their fear tests, hacked them both down and pursued the wild riders.
Then it was a long slog. My mage continued to miscast with 2 or 3 dice - turn 3, 4, 5 and 6, the first spell in each turn, ending the magic phases, but luckily (!) only took one wound all up.
The chaos lord with no armour save/no ward save S5 killed my treeman in 2 rounds of combat - that's a first! - and carved everything up that came his way. It gave the marauders time to regroup and come in on the flank, adding 3 ranks, standard and outumber to the situation.
Bottom line was I just couldn't get past all that chaos armour.
So that was basically it. I sent all the hardest stuff I had into the weakest bits of his army but couldn't dent it. Ended up about 500pts difference and a MV to me.
To Dan's credit this is exactly what he has planned with this army, designed to take everything and then give double back. Well done Dan!
Game 2 - Iain MacGregor with ... WE. WE vs WE.
Iain's a local Falkirk lad so it was a pleasure to meet him. He had a very similar army to mine, so it was a matter of trying to mismatch our combats in my favour. He had more wardancers and glade guard - that'd be Neil's influence - and I had an extra unit of wild riders than him. Both of us had treekin and treeman. He had 2 level 2's.
This was the only table I played on with a (single) wood - only one so I couldn't use my moonstone. And Iain had 3 treesingings and fury of forest up his sleeve, so I daren't go in the wood.
I've not played WE with my WE, so I tried to make these matches up as we went along. I sent my treeman into some wardancers, stranglerooted them and then took their charge, slapped them for being cheeky and they ran off the board. My treeman then went and dealt with 10 impudent glade guard on a hill, and that was about it for him. I shot up his wild riders then charged them in the flank with my own - only to get flank and rear charged by dryads and both units of WR died. I had reserves though and sent my WD and treekin into his dryad units, broke them and they fled.
On the right I shot up his other wardancer unit with the lord in it (my HoD only provided 4 shots!), and with only 4 guys left charged a sacrificial unit of dryads into them to keep them busy for a bit. My dryads did well, killing them all and putting 2 wounds on the lord, who had to take 3 or 4 break tests on 7 or 8 but passed as expected each time. Finally he broke them and I shot the lord with some roving archery-type blokes.
Iain had meanwhile shot up my glade guard trying to get the BSB in that unit, killing 9 out of 10 GG (his HoD had 17 shots - must find out where he got that from!) , so the BSB promptly went out on his own. He'd also stranglerooted 4 of my 5 waywatchers. I was avoiding his treeman and treeking for the moment.
Iain then had sent his 2 mages out on their own and I was sure I'd have them within 2 turns, so I got a bit bold. My level 4 was also out on her own. Iain had a trick or 2 up his sleeve, and out came "spite of leadership test or take D3 wounds" on my mage. "Nae bother", says me, feeling I had the game in hand. "You can have that one" - despite having 2 scrolls left. This is about the silliest thing I've done in Warhammer. I did some funny little calculation in my head and thought my mage was somehow safe from dying ! How wrong was I. He promptly rolled 11 for his leadership test, and Iain rolled 3 wounds. Dead level 4, 568pt swing from a bound level 3 spell!!!!! Oh dear.
The rest of the game was ok. I killed the 2 mages and alter, then everything but the treeman and one wounded treekin, but Iain's treeman did some strangleroot damage to me, killing off my largest wild rider unit, and another silly decision to leave my alter too close got him killed. In the end I had bits of a few units left with my BSB and wardancer hero, treeman and treekin, but the difference was about 550pts - another MV. I obviously lamented the loss of my general and level 4 mage, as she alone cut my VP's in half and meant I had little (i.e. no beast cowers essentially) to deal with the treeman.
On the bright side, as my mage died turn 2, he only managed 1 miscast!
Kudos to Iain, a good game with a few tricks of his own and a very friendly and fun attitude to the whole thing.
Game 3 Steve the Unwashed, Bretonnians.
Steve turned out to be quite clean and well-groomed, actually, and a really good opponent.
No woods again, and I was worried about where to hide from his army. He had 3 blocks of knights - he takes errants with characters in them so they don't need to take fear tests when they charge. A very good tactic against fear-causers. But he also had enough light stuff to keep me busy a while. Only a single damsel with 2 scrolls. Some fast cav, 2 trebuchets, 20 skirmishing archers with braziers - flaming attacks (look out treeman and treekin!), 10 longbowmen, 20 grail relique and another unit of 20 MAA. Oh, and those damned peg knights.
I'm not really comfortable playing Brets yet - I've played them maybe 6 or 7 times at most, usually at a tournament with my HE rather than WE, and never come up with decent tactics to beat them. I don't have enough shooting to deal with them, and can't get past the armour saves.
This game was a trudge. Turn 2 he was all over me with those big knight units and I was on the back foot the rest of the game. I got rid of his skirmishing flaming longbowmen who were hiding in soft cover - 20 of these guys can really hurt a WE army I thought - and cleared his right flank where the MAA were. Down the middle he came with knights, who cleared out dryads, treekin and wardancers in succession. My BSB was floating around, and I was hoping that at least one of these units would take a charge and hold with the reroll, but none of them lasted more than a single round of combat, rolling high on break tests and low on fleeing distance. My treeman got cornered by several units and he sent his grail relique into him - obviously his intention all along. They actually beat my treeman, and after a couple of rounds and a dead BSB (can't remember how the BSB died - I think it was a failed panic test and ran into impassable terrain! :
the treeman broke. I tried desperately to protect him with glade riders and wild riders until he could rally, but he failed to rally! I forgot I had Oxen stands "rally anything" spell but I miscast and ended the magic phase on the turn I needed it anyway. Sounds familiar.
He ran the treeman into impassable terrain with the peg knights, my last glade rider panicked and ran, my wild riders near the treeman also died ... somehow.
In the middle my archers and mage had been picking away at a unit of knights and got it down to 2 knights, a lord and damsel, but no further. Those waywatchers were great.
My alter did in the rallied skirmishing archers and treb crew, both of whom passed leadership tests on 5 or 6, dying reluctantly, and the larger unit of WR came back after killing the MAA.
I set up a flank charge on a unit of 8 knights and sent the WR in. I figured with fear on the charge, flank, banner and warbanner, and only 3 knights in contact with me, I might beat them. By killing one or 2 I might have been able to autobreak with fear. Not to be. Didn't kill a single knight on the charge, they whacked 3 WR out of their saddles with their S3 attacks. next turn he sent his BSB into the fight to add another pt of combat res. The WR did well this turn, and killed 3 knights, but too little, too late. The knights fled but the BSB held so I couldn't chase them.
Meanwhile Mr Beaver decided he wanted some peg knight action. Charged in and put 2 wounds on 1 killing it, but next round, outnumbered etc. Mr Beaver died heroically as ever.
This was capture scenario, and I was never in the running for the objective. Steve had 5 units of unit strength 18 or more, the best I could field were my 7 WR with unit strength 14, and everything was very fragile. Steve killed about 500pts more than me, but got 400 for the objective. So he won by close to 1000, SV to him.
I had the same problem as game 1, where I just couldn't get through that armour (and ward save). Also I should have targeted the annoying peg knights with the HoD but I was overly worried about the 20 skirmishing longbows with flaming attacks. And my inability to keep the treeman alive probably cost me the game. Steve's troops were pretty stalwart and hardly failed a leadership test.
However Steve played a very solid game, he obviously knows WE well. He knew exactly what to do with every unit I had, what match-ups were in his favour. He outplayed me and the result reflected that. He was also a "goodfella" - friendly, no rules problems, good spirit. SV to him.
So that was it for me. 3 pretty sub-par performances, but 3 opponents who played well and were an absolute pleasure to play.
As for the day itself, thanks to Paul and Gav's coordination it went very well, the food was on time and good, results went up timely despite some straggling gamers (i.e. me!). Trophies looked great and everyone seemed to have a very enjoyable day. Definitely an improvement on last year and we can look to making it even better next.
It was a great day, really. All went smoothly - thanks to Paul for sacrificing playing and running it instead.
So, three games and a pretty poor showing from me. A mixture of an odd unforgivable decisions and consistently below average rolling meant that I was pushing the proverbial uphill all day. Although immensely enjoyable, in tactical terms the games felt like a real slog.
My army - pretty bog standard WE I'm afraid.
Level 4 with 3 scrolls and deepwood sphere (never used due to lack of woods), mounted.
Alter with standard alter-issue kit (HoD and HotH).
Wardancer hero with moonstone (never used due to lack of woods).
BSB with briarsheath armour (forgotten when shot to death by 10 archers at long range).
Treeman
3 treekin
8 dryads
10 glade guard
5 glade riders
7 WR full command and war banner
6 WR
7 wardancers with champ
5 waywatchers
GAME 1. Table 18. No woods.
Dan Bannerman from ELG. Great guy, and when he plonked his army down I thought all my Christmases had come at once.
2 blocks chaos warriors, 1 block marauders, 10 chosen knights, hellcanon. 2 level 2 mages, chaos lord and BSB both in the chosen unit.
No woods apart from my free one.
Task 1 - kill hellcanon crew. HoD turn 1 sorted that out. canon was now rampaging, but unfortunately didn't cause the sort of problems for Dan that I'd expected.
Task 2, kill the mages. Turn 2 I charged my alter into one chaos warrior unit, and as the mage wasn't next to the champ I killed the mage, lost the combat and ran - as expected. Worthwhile sacrifice. Same turn my large unit of wild riders and treekin charged the chos warriors in the flank, and treeman in the front. Destroying them would take out the mage, and the overrun would take me into the flank of the chaos chosen knights with my hardest, fear causing units. All went to plan, chaos warriors destroyed and Ihad the choice of sending 2 of the three units into the flank of the chosen - I sent in the treekin and WR (for the +2 from their banner/war banner). The treeman lurked behind to deal with the oncoming marauders and take a chosen knight overrun should they win.
Now things started to go wrong.
My mage miscast and the magic phase ended. My charging treekin and WR failed to kill a single chaos knight. The chaos lord moved into position and started hacking down my wild riders, treekin, and later treeman, at will. As the chosen won the combat they turned to face me - I no longer had the flank. But then I sent my wardancers with wardancer hero into the chosen's newly created flank. Even something like 15 or 17 killing blow attacks from the wardancers did little.
On the other side of the field my other wild riders charged one flank of the chaos warriors, and drayds into the other flank. No matter. The chaos warriors passed their fear tests, hacked them both down and pursued the wild riders.
Then it was a long slog. My mage continued to miscast with 2 or 3 dice - turn 3, 4, 5 and 6, the first spell in each turn, ending the magic phases, but luckily (!) only took one wound all up.
The chaos lord with no armour save/no ward save S5 killed my treeman in 2 rounds of combat - that's a first! - and carved everything up that came his way. It gave the marauders time to regroup and come in on the flank, adding 3 ranks, standard and outumber to the situation.
Bottom line was I just couldn't get past all that chaos armour.
So that was basically it. I sent all the hardest stuff I had into the weakest bits of his army but couldn't dent it. Ended up about 500pts difference and a MV to me.
To Dan's credit this is exactly what he has planned with this army, designed to take everything and then give double back. Well done Dan!
Game 2 - Iain MacGregor with ... WE. WE vs WE.
Iain's a local Falkirk lad so it was a pleasure to meet him. He had a very similar army to mine, so it was a matter of trying to mismatch our combats in my favour. He had more wardancers and glade guard - that'd be Neil's influence - and I had an extra unit of wild riders than him. Both of us had treekin and treeman. He had 2 level 2's.
This was the only table I played on with a (single) wood - only one so I couldn't use my moonstone. And Iain had 3 treesingings and fury of forest up his sleeve, so I daren't go in the wood.
I've not played WE with my WE, so I tried to make these matches up as we went along. I sent my treeman into some wardancers, stranglerooted them and then took their charge, slapped them for being cheeky and they ran off the board. My treeman then went and dealt with 10 impudent glade guard on a hill, and that was about it for him. I shot up his wild riders then charged them in the flank with my own - only to get flank and rear charged by dryads and both units of WR died. I had reserves though and sent my WD and treekin into his dryad units, broke them and they fled.
On the right I shot up his other wardancer unit with the lord in it (my HoD only provided 4 shots!), and with only 4 guys left charged a sacrificial unit of dryads into them to keep them busy for a bit. My dryads did well, killing them all and putting 2 wounds on the lord, who had to take 3 or 4 break tests on 7 or 8 but passed as expected each time. Finally he broke them and I shot the lord with some roving archery-type blokes.
Iain had meanwhile shot up my glade guard trying to get the BSB in that unit, killing 9 out of 10 GG (his HoD had 17 shots - must find out where he got that from!) , so the BSB promptly went out on his own. He'd also stranglerooted 4 of my 5 waywatchers. I was avoiding his treeman and treeking for the moment.
Iain then had sent his 2 mages out on their own and I was sure I'd have them within 2 turns, so I got a bit bold. My level 4 was also out on her own. Iain had a trick or 2 up his sleeve, and out came "spite of leadership test or take D3 wounds" on my mage. "Nae bother", says me, feeling I had the game in hand. "You can have that one" - despite having 2 scrolls left. This is about the silliest thing I've done in Warhammer. I did some funny little calculation in my head and thought my mage was somehow safe from dying ! How wrong was I. He promptly rolled 11 for his leadership test, and Iain rolled 3 wounds. Dead level 4, 568pt swing from a bound level 3 spell!!!!! Oh dear.
The rest of the game was ok. I killed the 2 mages and alter, then everything but the treeman and one wounded treekin, but Iain's treeman did some strangleroot damage to me, killing off my largest wild rider unit, and another silly decision to leave my alter too close got him killed. In the end I had bits of a few units left with my BSB and wardancer hero, treeman and treekin, but the difference was about 550pts - another MV. I obviously lamented the loss of my general and level 4 mage, as she alone cut my VP's in half and meant I had little (i.e. no beast cowers essentially) to deal with the treeman.
On the bright side, as my mage died turn 2, he only managed 1 miscast!
Kudos to Iain, a good game with a few tricks of his own and a very friendly and fun attitude to the whole thing.
Game 3 Steve the Unwashed, Bretonnians.
Steve turned out to be quite clean and well-groomed, actually, and a really good opponent.
No woods again, and I was worried about where to hide from his army. He had 3 blocks of knights - he takes errants with characters in them so they don't need to take fear tests when they charge. A very good tactic against fear-causers. But he also had enough light stuff to keep me busy a while. Only a single damsel with 2 scrolls. Some fast cav, 2 trebuchets, 20 skirmishing archers with braziers - flaming attacks (look out treeman and treekin!), 10 longbowmen, 20 grail relique and another unit of 20 MAA. Oh, and those damned peg knights.
I'm not really comfortable playing Brets yet - I've played them maybe 6 or 7 times at most, usually at a tournament with my HE rather than WE, and never come up with decent tactics to beat them. I don't have enough shooting to deal with them, and can't get past the armour saves.
This game was a trudge. Turn 2 he was all over me with those big knight units and I was on the back foot the rest of the game. I got rid of his skirmishing flaming longbowmen who were hiding in soft cover - 20 of these guys can really hurt a WE army I thought - and cleared his right flank where the MAA were. Down the middle he came with knights, who cleared out dryads, treekin and wardancers in succession. My BSB was floating around, and I was hoping that at least one of these units would take a charge and hold with the reroll, but none of them lasted more than a single round of combat, rolling high on break tests and low on fleeing distance. My treeman got cornered by several units and he sent his grail relique into him - obviously his intention all along. They actually beat my treeman, and after a couple of rounds and a dead BSB (can't remember how the BSB died - I think it was a failed panic test and ran into impassable terrain! :
the treeman broke. I tried desperately to protect him with glade riders and wild riders until he could rally, but he failed to rally! I forgot I had Oxen stands "rally anything" spell but I miscast and ended the magic phase on the turn I needed it anyway. Sounds familiar.He ran the treeman into impassable terrain with the peg knights, my last glade rider panicked and ran, my wild riders near the treeman also died ... somehow.
In the middle my archers and mage had been picking away at a unit of knights and got it down to 2 knights, a lord and damsel, but no further. Those waywatchers were great.
My alter did in the rallied skirmishing archers and treb crew, both of whom passed leadership tests on 5 or 6, dying reluctantly, and the larger unit of WR came back after killing the MAA.
I set up a flank charge on a unit of 8 knights and sent the WR in. I figured with fear on the charge, flank, banner and warbanner, and only 3 knights in contact with me, I might beat them. By killing one or 2 I might have been able to autobreak with fear. Not to be. Didn't kill a single knight on the charge, they whacked 3 WR out of their saddles with their S3 attacks. next turn he sent his BSB into the fight to add another pt of combat res. The WR did well this turn, and killed 3 knights, but too little, too late. The knights fled but the BSB held so I couldn't chase them.
Meanwhile Mr Beaver decided he wanted some peg knight action. Charged in and put 2 wounds on 1 killing it, but next round, outnumbered etc. Mr Beaver died heroically as ever.
This was capture scenario, and I was never in the running for the objective. Steve had 5 units of unit strength 18 or more, the best I could field were my 7 WR with unit strength 14, and everything was very fragile. Steve killed about 500pts more than me, but got 400 for the objective. So he won by close to 1000, SV to him.
I had the same problem as game 1, where I just couldn't get through that armour (and ward save). Also I should have targeted the annoying peg knights with the HoD but I was overly worried about the 20 skirmishing longbows with flaming attacks. And my inability to keep the treeman alive probably cost me the game. Steve's troops were pretty stalwart and hardly failed a leadership test.
However Steve played a very solid game, he obviously knows WE well. He knew exactly what to do with every unit I had, what match-ups were in his favour. He outplayed me and the result reflected that. He was also a "goodfella" - friendly, no rules problems, good spirit. SV to him.
So that was it for me. 3 pretty sub-par performances, but 3 opponents who played well and were an absolute pleasure to play.
As for the day itself, thanks to Paul and Gav's coordination it went very well, the food was on time and good, results went up timely despite some straggling gamers (i.e. me!). Trophies looked great and everyone seemed to have a very enjoyable day. Definitely an improvement on last year and we can look to making it even better next.
