**EDIT - And the layout got eaten once more... Why do I use that app again? Sigh. Anyway, fixed now, with apologies**
Hello and welcome to Game Night! As usual this is going up a bit later than planned, but who cares? It's all for fun anyway! Also, I totally intend to do a Monday Morning Gamer post tomorrow so there will be plenty to read for you this week!
Right, so what do I have planned for today? Mostly I will be talking about a tournament I went to last Saturday. Also, I will talk about how I'd would do a Necron army if I were to start Necrons (I'm not, but it's fun to dream!). And I'll leave it at that for now. I don't want to use up all my blogging energy before I even start writing MMG!
First things first:
Fantasy Doubles Tournament:
Last Saturday a group of mates and myself went to a Fantasy doubles tournament. Very simple, nothing too big, but a lot of fun! The rules were pretty simple: each team would make 2 seperate 600 pts armies, with at least 1 Character and 1 other non-character unit in each. They would remain completely seperate armies, so characters couldn't join each other's unit, certain spells and psychology didn't affect each other, etc. The only exception was that both Inspiring Presence and Hold Your Ground did affect both armies. You had one overall general and could only have one BSB.
Scenarios were simple. We played three Battleline scenarios, with the only difference between the battles being the shape of the deployment zone.
So, easy and straightforward. 600 pts meant it was very hard to create really powerful units and all the scenarios were simple and didn't really favour any army over any others. We were allowed to use any combination of armies together, so I was looking forward to seeing what devious combinations our opponents had come up with.
Turns out, not so devious...
Here the list my mate and I took:
Skaven
3x Warlock Engineer, level 1
26 Stormvermin, shield, full command
50 Slaves, shield, Musician
Warp Lightning Cannon
Empire Master
Engineer
10 Knights, great weapon
Mortar Cannon
5 Outriders, champion, hochland long rifle
So basically our plan was to shoot them in the magic phase with 3x Warp Lightning and then shoot them some more in the shooting phase with our war machines and Outriders. Anything that reached our line would then have to face our knights and Stormvermin.
Sound plan on paper, no?
Those who regularly follow this blog might recall how I did on my last tournament. Simply abysmal luck meant I finished third from the bottom (hurrah for soft scores) and I was really hoping my luck had turned for this tournament.
Our first battle was vs 2 Daemon armies. Yep, no devious combinations, just basically a 1200 pts Daemon force. Big block of Horrors, Horde of Bloodletters, some Flamers, some Furies, a Khorne BSB and a Tzeentch Loremaster. Pretty fun battle which went pretty even until they managed to finish our war machines in one magic phase. We failed to do any significant damage in our magic phases. So that meant their bloodletters reached our lines pretty much intact and the game was over. We did manage to score half VP for the bloodletters which saved us from being massacred.
Lessons learned: we seriously need to be more thorough in measuring ranges. The knights got charged by the Bloodletters because they were 2 inches closer than we thought and I didn't put two of the Engineers in range until T2. Oh well.
Next battle saw us facing a dwarf army. Actually, two dwarf armies, but yeah... They had something like this: Grudgethrower, Organ gun, 12 quarrelers, thane, runesmith, 20ish longbeards (I think), and 30 Rangers. So apart from the Grudgethrower we pretty much out-ranged the Dwarfs. If we deployed far away from their line, used our outriders to limit where they could place their rangers, and made destroying their Grudgethrower priority number one, we'd have this in the bag. Which is exactly what happened. Perfectly executed plan. Too bad we could't shoot enough to earn a Massacre, but I'll take any win I can get!
Lessons learned: Basically the only VP they got was from dead or wounded Engineers. And I did all those wounds with miscasts and Warp Lightning rolls of 1. Yeah, I killed more of our models with my magic than I did of theirs. Typical skaven, typical me!
Final battle saw us playing vs Bretonnia and.... more Bretonnia! Come on! Half the fun of this tournament for me is seeing weird army combinations like Vampire Counts and Orcs or Skaven and Chaos Dwarves (yep there was a CD army there), but obviously not everyone felt that way. Ah well... They had: 2 units Knights of the Realm, 3 units Archers, 3 Pegasus Knights, a Trebuchet, a BSB, a Damsel, and a Paladin. Again we had a solid plan for dealing with the enemy. Cripple the knights, destroy the Trebuchet and we would be free to deal with the rest of the army at will. They deployed the way we expected them, we killed what we shot at T1 and they moved the way we predicted in their T1. Looking good! And that's when things went pearshaped... Looking at our list you might have noticed we didn't bring a BSB. Couldn't fit him in, decided to take our changes without the Ld rerolls. This is the battle where that bit us in our proverbial ass... They shot and killed 2 Outriders with their 3 units archers. We failed our panic test. The Outriders fled through the Knights. They failed their panic test. Both units ran off the table.
Setback, but we still had all our war machines and their Knights were still at least two turns away from charging, so we were still in it.
Cue lucky streak of Blessing saves and we only managed to kill 2 knights in 2 shooting phases.
Ballgame.
A lucky early hit on the damsel and valiant fighting by my Stormvermin and Slaves gave us just enough VP to avoid being massacred.
Lessons learned: Take a BSB, even if points are tight. Always, always, always!
So, two losses and one win. I don't know if I should be happy or sad that that is progress for me... Still I had a lot of fun. Well run tournament, cool venue and nice opponents. I'll definitely try and make it over next year!
Also, congrats to my mates Balephon and Bra'tac for finishing first overall. Well done, you gits! ;)
NECRONS - What if...
The interwebz is flooded with news and articles on Necrons. I, however, will not be playing them. For one I am not really in a 40k kinda mood currently, secondly I already have a 13K marine army with Dark Eldar as a side project, so I really can't justify getting any more 40K stuff. Also, I'm not that big a fan of the Necron look.
Still, I did get the book and like the new army overall. I always enjoy a nice list building exercise, so I started to fiddle around with the list and came up with the following.
So here it is, Thalenchar's if-I-were-to-do-Necrons-this-is-what-I'd-take 1750 Necron list! (It's a working title, ok?)
Anrakyr the Traveller, Command Barge
4 Crypteks, Tremor Stave
4x5 Immortals, Tesla carbines
C'Tan Shard, Thunderbolt, Writhing Worldscape
C'Tan Shard, Swarm of Spirit Dust, Lord of Fire
C'Tan Shard, Grand Illusion, Pyreshards
1 Wraith, whip
3x Annihilation Barges
Ok, so it's not a tournament winning list. It is based solely around the notion of "sure, you can kill one C'Tan Shard before it reaches your lines, maybe you can even kill two. But try stopping three, b1tch!" And that's not to say you'll auto lose once a Shard does hit your line, but I like the Shards' special abilities and I think it would make for a fun game if I ever tried it.
I included Anrakyr because I love his rule that allows you to mess with enemy vehicles. The annihilation barges are in there because they rock and the crypteks are in there to further mess with the enemies movement. And the immortals are there because I need scoring bodies.
So, sure, not a perfect list. I need more scoring bodies, my anti tank leaves a lot to be desired and what am I really expecting that lone Wraith will do? But how are you going to stop three Shards from hitting your line, b1tch?!
Alright, that's it for now. Fingers crossed blogger app doesn't eat the layout again... **EDIT - yes, well that obviously didn't work**
