BSB Batreps

The Broadside Bash went down this weekend.  I ended up adding a unit champ to a unit to be able to score a point in one scenario, but I otherwise ran the list I posted earlier.  With the sciatic nerve killing me, Bama (the TO) was very gracious and let me set up camp on one table all weekend.  Also my club mates, the Choops, helped my wife and I out all weekend.  So many thanks to them, as well.  Anyhow, here are some basic overviews of what went down:

Game One-  Manual w Empire, messed up random deployment scenario

Manual had a small mix of everything empire had to offer, including some knights, demis, a cannon, a luminark, and a life mage.  The odd deployment (see broadsidebash.BlogSpot.com for scenario details) more or less doomed him and I was able to use my superior archers and movement to remove his shooting and isolate his army.  There was not much tactical about this game, beyond a couple sacrifices I made to pull his grandmaster unit out to where the Wild Riders could flank charge them.  It was basically all over in 3 turns.  Manual was upbeat about it and would net my theme vote for the weekend.

Game Two- Donavan Stoddard w Dark Elves, Dawn Attack

Donavan is likely the most fun person to play in all of warhammer and his armies are extremely well painted.  It was also very tame by DE standards, sporting small witch units, a mix of shooters, a Charybdis, Cold ones, and a centerpiece unit of corsairs with two assasins and his L4 Beast wizard.  Unfortunately for him, my army was tailor made to take this kind of army on and despite losing the wild riders and scouts to early action, I did my normal plan in this matchup.  I retreated in the center to let him move forward, while the dragon and solo characters pounced on the smaller chaff units.  While this goes on, my archers are drilling his shooters, giving me ranged dominance for the game.  The two key moments of the game for me tactically, were the tree woman belting his hero (rolled 6 vs tree whack !) and then flanking his main block.  This let the dragon go to work on just about everything else until it ultimately mopped up that block at the end, leaving one assassin as Donavan's sole survivor.  Another massacre with full bonus for me and I would end up giving Donavan my appearance and sports votes.

Game Three-  Filip w Warriors of Chaos, Modified Blood and Glory

Filip is my clubmate and runs balls hard armies.  He also knows just about all my tricks and tendencies.  His army was pretty unforgiving, with trolls led by a Mounted Tz BSB, Tz Disk Lord of rapage, and flying Tz Metal Wizard of nope.  He bolstered this with a Warshrine, Skullcrushers, dogs, some fast cav, and chariots to control his flanks.  This was going to be uphill for me all the way, but with Swedish Comp, I at least had a 500 point edge going into it.  The game that followed did not disappoint.  Normally Filip and I manage to do 6 turns and have time to spare, but thisgame had so much random dancing around and strategic magic and shooting, that we barely made it to the bottom of five.  The main highlights were his chariots getting ground out by the archers, my unicorn taking down the shrine, and the tree woman.  Filip charged crushers in on the tree expecting to blow through, but the tree held firm and allowed my dragon to rear charge the unit.  This ultimately cost me the dragon, but I netted the crushers and kept his Tz Lord busy for most of the game.  This enabled me to eek out a hard fought draw, which against Filip is a gift, since I cannot fool or overpower him.  IT also meant we likely knocked one another out of contention, but alas 13 point draw is something I gladly accept.  I really wish I had taken a video of this game, because it was easily one of the most tactically complex games I have had in the last two years, rivaled only by my game with Micah two weeks ago.

Day 2-
Game Four-  Xavier w 40k Dwarves, Meeting Engagement.

Four war machines, engineer, two spell eater runes, slayers, long beards, thunderers, three copters, and the 5+ vs shooting banner.  Did I forget to mention Meeting Engagement?  Yeah all my big stuff started in reserve and he just built his little castle in the corner.  Somehow this list, that should have been playing in the other side of the room with the rest of the 40k players, comped out at a 14.  My normal list might have been able to do something, but this fluffy noodle and his hot dice meant I pretty much got shot off the table without killing anything.  In retrospect, when I saw that half my army was going to reserve, I should have just hid and taken a draw.  But Xavier was a bit squirrely, as most dwarf players are, and might have zeroed me out for not agreeing to die to him piecemeal, and 6 points of sports were more than the 4 battle points I might have preserved, so who knows?  I do know that I hate dwarves and the fact that the hardest army in the room capped out the comp just confirms what I always knew about Swedish.  Ah well, I did net three bonus points, so 10 point loss for me.

Game 5- Andrew w Dark Elves, Battle Lines

Finally a game with normal deployment!  And after the last soul crushing game, I was going to take it out on someone else who probably did not deserve it.  That someone was Andrew, a faily nice guy running a very reasonable dark elf list.  He had the usual two Xbow and two Bolt Thrower setup for shooters.  He also had three big infantry blocks (Executioners, Black Guard, and Witches) with their own support characters, along with a single chariot to guard a flank.  For magic, he had a L3 Peg Mounted Shadow caster and a five pack of Warlocks.  This was a good solid army for the comp system, but unfortunately my army was tailor made to destroy it.  What followed was not pretty.  On one flank, my scouts and wild riders hassled his shooters, while the stag and unicorn did the same on the opposing flank.  The dragon and tree woman lit up his executioner unit, leaving them to be ignominiously thunderstomped out of existence.  In the center, I calmly ignored and retreated from the other two blocks.  He had one chance to open the game up, when his chariot charged the dragon, but he rolled average and I managed to kill it in one round.  At the end of three turns, he had the witches, a handful of blackguard and his wizard left.  I had lost nothing (though the Waystalker was about to fall on his sword to get the archers clear) and was setting up all of my final mop up charges.  He politely conceded and I packed up early.

Final tally had me at 83 Battle, max sports and comp, but I fell a little short in each trophy category.  I did take 4th overall, though I never got a chance to play the guys ahead of me due to that round three draw derailing me.  Of note, this is the first event I went two with Woodies where I was not the top scoring wood elf since the new book hit.  Clifford managed to go 4-0 with an all forest spirit army, somehow managing to play only one of the many chaos and daemon players there.  For my part I did well enough, especially given that I faced two of the roughest three possible matchups in the room for me (my wifes mono Nurgle DoC being the third) and I had a great time.  Our club also did exceptionally well, on thw whole, nabbing most of the top ten, though hats off to Brian Brown of Capri for hauling in his first overall win.  Despite being tired as hell from WCGT being two weeks prior, this event was well worth it and Bama did a grat job for his first year running it after Wade stepped down from the job.