West Coast GT basic Batreps

Well, $600 of bar tab and two tired nerdy days later, the event is over.  I think I had more fun this year than the prior two, particularly thanks to the Elks Lodge being such gracious hosts to our raucous community.  I got five excellent games, but I was largely too busy moving models and holding a margarita to take pictures, so here are some basic rundowns of my games.

 

Game 1 vs Victor Herrara (Ogres), Scenario Mad Mickey

 

Victor had one of the other super soft armies in the room, sporting two hunters riding stone horns, two ogre blocks with his BSB and wizard, plus a Thundertusk, and some random chaffy stuff.  With all of the fast moving monsters, I was going to have problems and the Snow Blower and Ironblaster meant that I was going to face immediate pressure.  Most of the bonus points were tied up into killing Mickey, who is murderous against MSU armies, so I decided on a two part strategy.  First, I was going to burn down Mickey as fast as possible, both to get free protection counters (spells against him could not be countered) and to get him out of my path.  Second, I planned on using an all out rush to bottle him in his own deployment zone so that he would not be able to get ogres into my infantry units late in the game.  The downside is that I had to more or less allow the Snowblower and Ironblaster roam free for a while.

 

For my part, I executed the plan pretty well, trading wild riders for one stone horn and the wounded dragon for the other.  The Snow Blower eventually made it to my lines and my unicorn had to eat a ironblaster charge after burning the mouse down, but she held all game until some counter charges ran off the ironblaster.  When the dust settled, I had my wizard, archers, shadowdancer, and BSB left.  Victor had his two Irongut units and two characters remaining.  We ended up with a draw and three bonus points each in what was a crazy dice game.  But, I was glad to take a high draw early and avoid the slaughterhouse lists at the top tables for a while, so it was all good.

 

Game 2 vs Jacob Berry (Woodies), Scenario House Wife

 

Jacob is undoubtedly the most fun guy you will ever play at any event.  His list was the crazy 3 dragon army with one wild rider unit and some archers to back it up.  The downside for him in this was that my larger trueflight block was able to delete his smaller units piece meal, while I slugged it out in the table center and kept his dragons bottled up.  In what would be the epic moment of the tourney for me, I declared a flank charge with Wild Riders against one dragon, where I needed box cars to get in.... and made it, slaying the dragon before it got to swing.  My general ended up hanging in there long enough to gank the Sisters of Twilight and his general, before getting munched, but this allowed the Unicorn girl and BSB to collect two of the riderless dragons at the end of the game.  I ended the game with a major win and all the bonus points.

 

Game 3 vs Jeff Sues (High Elves), Beach Blanket Bingo

 

Jeff had basically a Phoenix Guard deathstar and a Dragon Prince deathstar, with associated bits of chaff scattered around.  Since VP meant nothing in this scenario, I was at somewhat of a disadvantage due to all of my scoring units being small and frail, which would require me to address his shooting and chaff.  For his part, Jeff rammed the Prince bus in my face, where I met it with the dragon and Eternal Guard.  In what took far to long, I was able to murder the entire unit to the man, since Jeff kept holding on 4-5s all the time.  Ultimately, I was kept completely off of the blankets and Jeff held one with his last remaining unit, so major loss with all bonus points.

 

Day 2-

Game 4 vs Jon Milano (Vampire Counts), Feeling Froggy?

 

Jon had a pretty well rounded Vamp list, with the blender lord in the Knight bus, some infantry blocks, and a terrorgeist.  For my part, I planned on using Arcane Unforging to detooth the vamp lord to something my dragon could engage.  Jon had other plans and sucked his general along with half his bus into the warp on the very first spell of the game.  I felt like a jackass winning that way, but it is a tournament and so I engaged in mop up operations.  Full points to me in what was a seal clubbing.

 

Game 5 vs Micah Pierce (High Elves), Center Stage

 

Micah had a star dragon, two knight bus units, some eagles, and some fast cavalry.  While his list was soft, his armor saves presented a challenge and he had a better dragon than I did.  In my mind, the plan was to avoid the dragon and engage everything else.  Without pictures it is impossible to convey the close maneuvers and blood bath that ensued, but short version is that my general sold his life dearly to keep his dragon away from the rest of the battle while I won the chaff war.  When the dust settled, I had my Wizard, BSB, and archers.  Micah had a half dead star dragon with no one riding it.  So, minor win for me with most of the bonus points.

 

Final results-

I came in 5th overall, which with the super soft army I took, I was more than happy with.  There were chances to secure more points if I had rolled better in places, but I also got freebies when I made the huge charge on Jacob and Jon's Vampire decided to take a vacation into the warp with seven of his pals.  I have no complaints and am pretty happy with my score.

 

Unit by unit recap to come..... 

Some Pictures of WCGT Army



 

As can be seen, space is tight on the tray.  Luckily, most of it is resin and plastic as my bad sciatic nerve won't allow me to carry much around.  The three women in the woods piece are meant to represent various objective markers for the weekend scenarios.  The big wing blue girl is my unicorn riding High Weaver.  Last minute touch ups are done.  Hopefully, I am sober enough to take some photos for proper batreps. 

Broadside Bash Musings

As my wife can tell you, I pine over my army relentlessly when trying to select a list.  With the Broadside being two weeks after West Coast, this added several complications to my normally manic list selection process.  These factors are:

 

1) The effective end of 8th-  Broadside is one of the last events before the end of 8th Edition, in all likelihood, so I want to go out playing one of my preferred armies.  This is especially true if it is one that I have not touched in a while.

 

2) Filth Factor-  The Broadside has been, of late, arguably the dirtiest tournament for list design in the area and by all accounts this year is not an exception.  I might go with a soft army, but it needs to have the tools to at least put up a fight with some of the filth out there.

 

3) Dragon-  Wife painted this for me for WCGT and it is criminal not to use it.

4) Scenarios-  Broadside boasts some of the most off the wall scenarios in existence.  This year has some real doozies and mobility/ranged threat is going to be key in most of them.

 

So, I debated Ogres, Daemons, and even Bretts, but I ultimately caved and settled in on using the Dragon again.  But in the interest of executing the scenario objectives as best I can, I knew I needed to make some changes from WCGT, which had different scenario demands.  Both events use Swedish Comp in all its arbitrary glory, but the spread was a bit narrower this time, so I settled in on this list:

Glade Lord, Dragon, Armor of Destiny, Obsidian Blade, Shield, Starfire Arrows
Spell Weaver, L4 high Mage, Talisman of Preservation, Dispel Scroll

Glade Captain, BSB, Great Stag, Enchanted Shield, Talisman of Endurance, Shield, Spear, Starfire Arrows
Waystalker

19 Gladeguard, Banner, Musician, Trueflight
20 Gladeguard, Banner, Musician, Trueflight

6 Wild Riders, Banner
6 Wild Riders, Banner

5 Waywatchers
Treeman, Strangleroots

So, no unit champ which costs me a point from the cheater scenario (unless there is a provision for if the enemy does not have a champ), but I get the scout threat of a small group of Waywatchers who also help in the scenarios requiring getting a unit in certain places.  Again, the BSB is a little under protected, but the wood elf book lacks defensive items and the other big models are more important.  The treeman is a bit of a concession, but I have been finding out that its not too shabby in the current elf meta, plus the Ultraforge Tree Woman model I will use for this is the entire reason I started the wood elf army in the first place.

I am probably going to get curb stomped all weekend, but if I can pull some wins I should place well.  And with the Broadside being what it is, I would rather lose playing the army I want than stinking up the joint with some filth.  In the end, the paint job on my dragon the wife did for me and the Tree Woman sold me on taking the army.  Hopefully, I get the ugly draw in the cheater scenario, so I can eat the entire poop sandwich in one sitting.  With the added shooting, the more elves I face the better off I will actually be.

For now, I need to focus on the WCGT, however.  Once I get trounced at that next weekend, I will put up some batreps and hopefully a couple pictures.
~Q

Settled in for WCGT

After a little playtesting and some serious drunken thought, I did manage to settle in on a list for West Coast GT.  While I feel that the Ogre list and its variants and the Slaanesh DoC armies were more competitive, I decided to put them aside for something unusual.  Having just come off of Masters, with its hypercompetitive atmosphere, I realized that in two years at WCGT I have always brought the softest army to the event.  Even having done this, I have always done pretty well, winning one year with combat night goblins and coming in 13th with no magic woodies under the old book.  I decided I would like to keep the trend going and (more importantly) that the style of play that the Masters format creates is not something I enjoy in the slightest.  So, while I will keep running the tougher stuff at events that traditionally invite it (Broadside, Alamo), I am just going to run what I enjoy and let the chips fall where they may.  On the one hand, it can be frustrating to lose a game simply because you brought a knife to a gunfight, but I have my trophies and I am fine getting drunk and slogging it out with the hobby guys.  To that end, here is what I came up with:

Glade Lord on Forest Dragon, Shield, Obsidian Blade, Armor of Destiny
Spell Weaver on Unicorn, Hex Scroll, Talisman of Preservation, L4 High
Glade Captain on Stag, BSB, Asrai Spear, Starfire Arrows, Enchanted Shield, 5++ Ward, OTS
Shadowdancer, L1 Mage of Shadow, Dispel Scroll
Waystalker

20 Glade Guard, Banner, Musician, Trueflight Arrows, Scarecrow Banner
25 Eternal Guard, Full Command, Gleaming Pendant

6 Wild Riders, Shields, Banner
6 Wild Riders, Shields, Banner

Eagle
Eagle

Ok, so first the cons:  It has a lot of points tied up in some very frail characters.  Without the Sisters units, it is very thin in the monster hunting and magic utility department.  The Wild Rider units are much smaller than I like to run them.  It is a little light on fortitude for this kind of list.  There are no Waywatchers.  The entire army depends on the dragon doing well against hard targets.  The BSB is not as well protected in this army as I would like it to be.  Finally, I have to get a dragon pained up in the next couple weeks, which will be tricky for me as I still have bad nerve damage in my thumb from a cut long ago and I was never that good of a painter to begin with.

Now the pros:  Aside from some of the fast cavalry bits I normally take, it has every toy I like in the army in there in some form.  While smaller than normal, the Wild Rider units have shields and with the way I suicide them every game anyhow, they are a lot more expendable.  I get to use my nice converted Eagle models, though one used to be my BSB I doubt anyone will care about a guy on one of the models.  The shadowdancer has some really neat tricks you can pull with her in conjunction with the Eternal Guard and your free forest.  I never really rolled 4++ wards worth a damn on my BSB before, so the minor defensive downgrade probably won't even be noticed.  I really like dragons and have two awesome models to work on for the one I want to field.  It has both the dispel scroll and froggy scroll in there.  Finally, it comps a whopping 16.2 in the Swedish system that this event plans to use, despite being really not much of a downgrade from my normal list that comps 11.5 in the same system.

So, the Chupacabrahs has a BBQ at Zack's bachelor pad and we did some playtesting.  I chose to try this list to see if I enjoyed it or not, with the idea that if I didn't I would default to the ogre army.  I played four games on the day, two against newer guys running netbuilds and two against GT veterans in the club.  The first two games were against a dragon led Dark Elf army with a witch star and stronger high elf infantry list with abundant shooting.  In both of those games, one unit of trueflight was enough to apply the pain to the enemy shooting and my mobility let me dictate the combats.  I then played against a DoC  double thirster with Horror spam army in one of the WCGT scenarios.  Against that list, I struggled a bit, though I did manage to win through the scenario.  I used my ranged units to target the DoC units that had gateway when I likely should have tried to apply some hits to the monsters.  Finally, I played Zack's nurgle WoC army.  I was so tired and drunk by that point that I just played flat out stupidly and Zack stomped me.  In my drunken haze I did learn some useful things, however.

Lessons learned:
1) Eternal Guard with a Shadow in a Venom Thicket are pretty good.
2) Don't commit the Unicorn or BSB to combats early, ESPECIALLY to large infantry blocks.
3) A lone Waystalker is still pretty god damn annoying to deal with.
4) Monster Mash armies are going to be an issue unless I can position my Wild Riders better.
5) I will have a hard time scoring bonus points in the Mickey Scenario.
6) A dragon lord with Obsidian Blade is an enemy elf player's worst nightmare.
7) Witches do not like Fiery Convocation.
8) Sisters probably cost way too much comp to justify being used in this system.
9) Eagles are still useful if the rest of your army is fast enough to take the heat off of them.
10) One large unit of surgical Trueflight guys and one sniper is all the shooting you really need.

I will put up some pictures later once I get more done on the dragons.  But for now, my list is handed in and I am committed to this army.  Hopefully I can get a little more testing in on it before the GT happens.
~Q

On the Horizon, Paul's Carnival of Chaos

There is a new event coming to the New Orleans area, Paul's CoC run by longtime southern vet Chris Saik.  The wife really wants to go to New Orleans and the Texans (who are great to get drunk with) will be there in force, so off we go to worship Paul's CoC!

They are running a watered down version of end times rules and allowing people to select special characters, but with the stipulation that there can be only one allowed at the tournament and you must submit your army to lay claim to them.  I have been hankering to play Orion for a while, so I figured what the hell.  Here is my list:

Orion
Spellsinger L2 Metal, Moonstone
Glade Captain, BSB, Stag, Armor of Destiny, Asrai Spear, Shield
19 Gladeguard, FC, Trueflight, Standard of Swiftness
6 Glade Riders Manner, Musician, Hagbane Arrows
6 Glade Riders Banner Musician, Hagbane Arrows
10 Wildriders, Banner
10 Wildriders, Banner
5 Sisters of the Thorn, Banner, Musician
5 Sisters of the Thorn, Banner, Musician
Eagle

So, no scroll and no Waystalker, but those were needed sacrifices to the comp in place and I really need metal to handle other super characters and knights.  A lot will also depend on if they rule Orion as denying armor saves in CC (most do, but not all), because without that ability I will be playing the evasion game a lot.   The Glade Riders kind of suck but its a needed unit to claim objectives, as only core units with banners can do this.  While ambush is normally a drawback, in the case of this army it will keep them alive late game to nab distant ones.

Preparing for the West Coast GT

In an apparent effort to be more like the US Masters, this event is adopting parts of the Swedish Comp system this year.  Specifically, your first two rounds of pairings and your actual comp score will be tied solely to this system.  On the one hand, this is good because people have some control over their destiny without worrying about judge or player opinion affecting them in an excessively adverse manner.  On the other hand, Swedish Comp (like any hard comp system) has various holes and exploits that cunning mathematicians can take advantage of.  It frankly made Masters more of a list building exercise and less of an actual tactical showdown, which seems to be the norm for east coast events of late (more on that when I do the Masters Review).  I am hoping that WCGT does not go down this path.

 

Anyhow, with that in mind I have a choice to make with my selection of armies and several options jump out at me:

 

Option 1- Wood Elves with combat emphasis, Comp 12.5ish

Spell Weaver w Unicorn, 4++ Ward, Dispel Scroll, Sword of Antiheroes, L4 High Magic

Glade Captain, BSB, Stag, Armor of Destiny, Asrai Spear, Shield

Waystalker w Bow of Loren

Spellsinger, w Frog Scroll, L1 Lore of Metal

19 Gladeguard w FC and Scarecrow Banner

25 Eternal Guard w FC and Gleaming Pendant

10 Wild Riders w Banner

10 Wild Riders w Banner

5 Sisters of the Thorn w Banner, Musician

5 Sisters of the Thorn w Banner, Musician

7 Waywatchers

Great Eagle

 

The comp on this is actually pretty decent, but its a bit thin on chaff.  All my main combat units are there and I managed to get the frog scroll and a metal wizard into it for some armor killing.  Main knocks against it are that it is lower comp that I would like to be at this event and its made some serious sacrifices in the shooting phase to get to that point.  Of what I would play, it is presently the best painted, with lots of conversions and detail work help from my friend Nathan all over the place.

 

Option 2- Ogre Kingdoms multi purpose army, Comp 13.2

Slaughtermaster, Sword of Antiheroes, 4++ Ward, Dispel Scroll, L4 Lore of Heavens

Bruiser, BSB, Armor of Destiny, Great weapon

Butcher, Frog Scroll, GW, L1 Maw

Hunter, Sword of Might, Charmed Shield, Beastkiller, Harpoon

8 Ironguts w FC

8 Bulls w FC

7 Maneaters w FC, Brace of Pistols, Dragonhide Banner, Poison, Stubborn

Ironblaster

Thundertusk

 

This is the watered down version of the list I wanted to take to masters, specifically with one Ironblaster being replaced by a Hunter and no Sabres in the army.  Downsides are a complete lack of chaff units and light magic weapons.  Upsides are that there are no easily scored points in the army and the Thundertusk makes the Maneaters really hard to take on in combat.  It also will have issues with Purple Sun lists.  The painting here is really very average three color, but it has numerous conversions and I did all of the work on it myself.  I might take this to Broadside if I do not take it to West Coast.

 

Option 3-  Mono Slaanesh, comps 14.6 (LOL)

Keeper, 75/25 L4 Slaanesh

Herald, BSB, Grace Locus, 50

25 Daemonettes w FC and MR1 Banner

25 Daemonettes w FC and Gleaming Pendant

5 Furies of Slaanesh

5 Furies of Slaanesh

5 Seekers of Slaanesh

Soul Grinder of Slaanesh w Claw and Flame Cannon

Soul Grinder of Slaanesh w Claw and Flame Cannon

 

This is the archetypical Slaanesh list that I have been running for the last couple years.  Swann ramped it up with some off god stuff and did very well at the masters and it is what I ended up using to qualify for the masters, so it clearly still works.  Recent tweaks have been adding flame cannons to the grinders and the Lash gift to the herald.  Pros are that it works very well against elves and I know the army better than anything else I play, plus games go very fast with it.  Negatives are that it is very frail to light council and dwarves, plus I am sort of bored with it.  Oh and no frog scroll for funsies. It is the most poorly painted of the options I am considering, but it has several good conversions in it.

 

Option 4- Mono Khorne DoC, comps 13

Bloodthirster 75/25

Bloodthirster 50/25

Herald of Khorne, BSB, Jugg, 50

20 Bloodletters FC w Gleaming Pendant

20 Bloodletters FC

3 Bloodcrushers FC

Soul Grinder of Khorne w Claw, Flamer

Skull Cannon

 

Not a good list, but theme is there and it will be fast and fun to play.  Sadly, the comp is kind of low for how bad this list is, but that's Swedish for you.  Pros include the fun of two flying death machines zooming around the board being a huge pain in the ass for people.  Cons include nothing in the way of chaff and an abundance of cannon bait.  Paint wise this one is close to my wood elves with me having done almost all of the work on it, plus some conversions, but I would need to get my skull cannon and khorne grinder done in order to use this army.  Lack of Frog Scroll is somewhat discouraging, too.  Finally, at least three members of my own club are considering something similar, which would take away from the unique feel it would have.

 

I have three weeks to make up my mind on this crap.  Curse you hobby ADD!

Relaunch!

I sort of gave up on this two years ago, due to time constraints.  But I am now free of managing the league and am scaling back other side activities, so I want to put down some of my thoughts into this blog so I can laugh at my laziness in a few years.

Forthcoming:  Masters Review and West Coast GT previews.