Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

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razorfate
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 1 - Warriors + Daemons

Post by razorfate »

NonnoSte wrote:
Anyway yes, Phil is SpellArcher. In his signature you should find the link to his blog.
It's very insightful and one of the few there which are not too much pretentious (all really useful from a learning perspective, but sometimes the enjoyable aspect is a bit set aside IMO).
I'd advice to anyone to wander a bit there and follow some of the oldest blogs anyway. You can find really precious and interesting advices.
I started from Seredain's Cavalry Prince, which convinced me to start High Elves as well, then I discovered Swordmaster's MSU army which helped more my Asrai playstyle than my Asur one. Then I just looked for anything that cought my eyes. Thetlis, Fenry, Mal, Curu and lots of other users have active blogs and all of them have a lot of info and teachings. Some are more competition oriented and others are more experimental, but I think they're all worth the effort.
Yes, i follow Ulthuan too regularly and link my batreps to their forums too. I also follow swordmaster and Lorien on Ulthuan, which are very enlightning for me. I will definetely follow Phil and the others you mentioned from now on:) Well btw, i am doing pretty well in our meta by following your teachings too, thanks for that again.:)
On the other side, he should have tried to unforge the Blasted Standard First, so that he could have tried to whittle Tzeentch Warriors with bow fire and force some panic test without BSB re-rolls.
what did you mean here by saying "without BSB rerolls" exactly because if i understood it correctlyi the arcane unforging will not cancel the BSB but only the magical effect.
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 2 Asrai + Dwarves

Post by NonnoSte »

You're right.
What I meant is that Warriors can't use Druchii BSB and vice versa. That's Why I tried unsuccesfully to convince my mate to include a BSB of his own.
Actually the situation presented would have been a bit tricky:
Warriors fail Panic and flee with my BSB inside them, but they cant its hold your ground rule. But my BSB could have re rolled his panic test, so he shouldn't be running.
The same stands true for a failed break test of such a combined unit. I guess it's another loophole in GW rules.

Anyway the Blasted Standard was on the units standard bearer and, if unforged, it would have lost just its magical abilities. The unit wouldn't have lost the command model.
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 2 Asrai + Dwarves

Post by NonnoSte »

Tzeentch Warriors + Metal Sorcerer:

This unit was the biggest point investment we made in the army, but it was simply unkillable.
T4 troops with 3+/5++ in combat, 2++ vs spells and the awesome tool the Blasted Standard is.
These stats granted it could grind almost anything in the game and eventually take it down, while the opponents were completely not interested in targeting it from range.

The big advamtage was the option to start games with all the characters inside it to gain protection from cannons and I can see now the mileage WoC can get from it with their Disc Lords or mounted BSB.

The real problem, on the other side, was that we had roughly 800 VP locked in bunker duties or working as launch pad for my Peg Masters and, while they hardly concede any point, they can collect none either.
The first reason is their M4, which means they’re the slowest and least manouverable of our units and then there’s the average Str4, which quite often struggles to kill things.
Our original plan for them was to park this unit somewhat in the centre mid-table to stop enemy advance while our more mobile units harassed the flanks, but they turned out to be too slow to get there in time, so the best use we made of them was to force deployment.
Dropping them early always caused some reaction, which usually allowed us to place the rest of our army in favourable positions. For example, in our first match they drew both enemy blocks and allowed us to deploy our faster Elves to control their weaker flank while they would have stop enemy advance. Too bad it didn’t worked for the best.
In our last match too they forced the enemy combat units. This time away from them, so that we could arrange our MSU force to bog them down and buy time to split their force.

In all, I think they are the part of the army that performed the worst. They could hardly justify their point investment in two games out of three, while in the third (actually the first) they fled the battle in turn 2, putting us 900 VP behind and without L4.

Metal Magic
We chose to go Metal with our Sorcerer (which I’d take everyday over Tzeentch magic) because of the good synergy with a defensive unit like Warriors and the good anti armour ranged support, which is something elven shooting always struggle to put on the table.
The strengths of the lore sit in Searing Doom and Final Transmutation, which are always must-dispel against the right targets. They would have helped to deal with big infantry blocks and 1+ cavalries, except we didnt rolled the latter in the match in which we could have benefit the most and we never had the chance to put at good use the former.
Unfortunately the lore outside those two spells has great utilities but it's somewhat lackluster. Neither Robes, Blades, Plague or Lead Transmutation are real game changers and usually the situations in which they could have really mattered were favourable to us already.
The fact is that with Doombolt and Soulblight from Warlocks in any situation where Searing Doom or Final Trans were not needed, the Druchii spells were much more effective than the Metal ones.


Khorne Chosen and Warshrine:

Good damn Khorne!
Those warriors are real kickass. In the measure they deal tons of damage.
On a 5 models frontage they start with 16 Str 5 attacks. It’s the same of a 10 men unit of Swordmasters, but with the added value of T4 and 4+ AS (improvable ot 3+ against shooting for other 10 pts).
Once the bonus of the Eye of the Gods table are added, things become hilarious. Having those warriors boosted to Str6 or 4 attacks each makes them slaughter-machines, while T5 or 3+ AS can transform a 5 men unit into a reliable roadblocker, through which no one can get unscathed.
Even throwing a unit of them against a combat block can cripple it severely and hold it in place for a turn because they are able to generate a ton of active CR to draw unfavourable combats.
Used as MSU task forces they0re also very performing, since a combo charge with two units of Chosen can take down easilly a dozen of the best combat trooper in the game (17 Irondrakes killed by 8 Chosen in the last game were pretty impressive).
Probably they could be seen the same way a unit of 5 Wild Riders is.
The downside, as per the regular Warriors, is the limited speed and mobility, but at least they are lighter to move around.
Frenzy can be a downside (now that I notice, they’re really similar to our Wild Riders), but actually on a unit that small we benefit more from the ItP rule than what we suffered from the occasional failed frenzy checks and we had plenty of units to flee or double flee charges.

Lastly, the odd chance to get a free Daemon Prince (if I’m not doing the math wrong it should be a bit below 20%) can really turn a whole game upside-down, even if it’s not granted at all. The psychological impact of such a chance is surely scary for any opponent and it could affect a lot of deployment decisions. Again, too bad that it happened in the one game we screwd up.

The Weak link in this combination is the Warshrine, which is mostly useless once the Eye of the God rolls are taken. Luckily it’s a cheap cannon bait which is not even granted to go down easily.
An interesting solution (or at least one I’d like to see in play) could be to place the Sorcerer Lord on top of it and have both the Lord and the Shrine with a 3++ save. Anyway I guess there’s a reason if I never saw anyone running it.
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 2 Asrai + Dwarves

Post by NonnoSte »

Mollesvinet wrote:Bring your army to London and we can have a game :D
You'd be surprised to learn how much I'm intentioned to.
We are planning our future summer holidays. Probably this year we'll be in southern france to my mother-in-law's since our youngest daughter is not even walking, but from next year on we'll have to start showing the ladies something nice in the world.
London is absolutely on top of the list of our future trips.

Could you wait a couple of years? ;)
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 2 Asrai + Dwarves

Post by Mollesvinet »

Yeah no problem. Well, depends if the UK leaves the union and kicks me out as a result but I somehow doubt it will come to all that!
NonnoSte
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 2 Asrai + Dwarves

Post by NonnoSte »

Let's all hope for pacific international policies from both parts. :D

In the meanwhile I should get acquainted to Universal Battle. Isn't that the program to have online matches?
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 2 Asrai + Dwarves

Post by Mollesvinet »

Yeah it is. A friend of mine in Beijing is asking me to play with him like that. Not sure how well it works, but worth a try.
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 2 Asrai + Dwarves

Post by NonnoSte »

Back on the tournament again.

After that second match our mood improved considerably and we found a renewed determination for the last match.
The game was also very short, so we had again plenty of time to wander around and see the other armies actually in play.

I also profited of the time to go washing a bit of smell from me and to abuse of deodorant since by 4 PM both the temperature and the flavour of the room were starting to become unbearable.
Then a good coffe and a quick tour through the tables.

We found our club mates having troubles to deal with a Lizard + High Elves army sporting Tetto’eko and some Terradon Skink Heroes along a BotWD Lionstar lead by a fighty Loremaster and an High Archmage.
They made a bad mistake getting too close early with their BotWD bus and the banner was unforged. Searing Dooms and RBTs whittled the Helms pretty quickly then. In the meanwhile Sisters with Asrai casters were being zoned by Terradon Heroes and a unit of Ripperdactyl (frog token on the Sisters). They ended with a minor loss (13-7 or something like that) and this put them below us in the rankings.
In the meanwhile we also found our first opponents who screwd up their match too against a Lizard + Ogre army. The Ogre contingent was pretty standard: Gutstar, Mournfangs with Dragonhide Banner and Ironblaster. The Lizard one, on the contrary, was something quite unusual. There were a Slann High Loremaster, two 1+/4++ Cowboys, 2 single Salamanders and loads of Skink Clouds (there were 50+ skinks on that table).
We arrived just to se 23 Plaguebearers being sucked into the warp along the Nurgle Herald after a combo charge of Mournfangs and a Cowboy, while the Slaughtermaster was killing the Warrior BSB.
Needless to say, my mate’s khornate soul was rejoicing, tasting every bit of their sorrow.
Such is his demonic nature.

After all the martches ended we were told the new pairings and due to curious results in the second turn, we had jump to table 3 (not that great if you consider there were 8 tables in total, actually).
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by NonnoSte »

Game 3 – Warriors + Orcs and Goblins – Battle Line
(EDIT: I'm sorry, it looks like I left the main title the same of the previous battle. fixed now)

At the table our opponent were already waiting for us (My fault. Sometimes I cannot live without a coffe and a cigarette, even if I have already taken another dozen of them during the day) and in front of our eyes was diplayed what looked like a Troll Feast:

Warriors

Throgg
Everpresent Disc Sorcerer Lord, L4 (Metal) Ogre Blade, Talisman of Preservation, Other Trickster Shard, Third Eye of Tzeentch, Chaos Familiar
10 Chaos Troll
Hellcannon

Orcs and Goblins

Goblin Warboss
on giant wolf, shield, great weapon, Armor of Destiny, Crown of Command
Goblin Big Boss on giant wolf, shield, great weapon, Armor of Fortune, Obsidian Trinket
Night Goblin Shaman L1 (Little Whaaag!), Dispel Scroll
20 Night Goblin, short bows, 3 Fanatics
3 x 5 Wolf Riders, shields, spears, musician, banner
6 Trolls
2 x Doom Divers Catapults
2 x Mangler Squigs


The thing we discussed the most about the last draft of our armies was whether or not we should have taken the Banner of Eternal Flame. My mate insisted we did not.
Good Khaine! This would have surely been bloody.
17 Trolls including Throgg! I had no clue about what we could do to stop this army. The Disc Sorcerer was a common pattern among any Warriors list present at the event bar ours. The King of the Trolls on the other hand was a scary news for us, since it meant all his Trolls could benefit from his Ld8 for Stupidity test even outside the Inspiring presence of the Sorcerer. And he alone packed 5 Str8 attacks and a Breath Weapon at Str5, no armour.
Those two blocks supported by highly mobile and board controlling units such as Mangler Squigs and Wolf Riders plus a powerful shooting phase were to be feared for sure.

Magic

Our Sorcerer: Searing Doom, Enchanted Blades, Scaled Skin, Final Transmutation
Their Sorcerer: Searing Doom, Enchanted Blades, Ghenna Golden Hounds, Transmuaton of Lead, Final Transmutation
Night Shaman Vindicative Glare

Once again the superior spell selection granted by the Chaos Familiar was important, since their caster had all the tools to deal with our Warriors and Peg Masters.
This time tough, our Metal Spells were completely useless. Trolls are immune to Searing Doom and even Final Transmutation can take out maybe one with a lucky roll per turn. Not very reliable.
Lastly, their Shaman added a nasty spell with an annoying lore attribute. Vindicative Glare is a 2D6 Str 3 magic missile, boostable for 3D6, which against elven light troops or RBTs can turn out to be pretty dangerous. The lore attribute substantially steals dispel dice.

Deployment and Vanguard

Image

The match was a normal Battle Line scenario for the last game.
There was an high dangerous cliff with a plateau on top in the left-bottom corner, from which started a river flowing through the table on the left flank and crossed by a bridge. Two big hills in the opposite corners and two smaller ones somewhat central, with two forest in the middle of the table and a big ruin on the right were the other terrains.
We had to pick the side and chose the one with the cliff with the intention to place RBTs up there.
Deployment started with fast cavs from both sides, but before deploying Warlocks we committed the Warriors block on the left, near the cliff baiting RBTs up there.
They then decided to deploy both units of Troll on the opposite side.
At this point we had just Dark Riders on that flank and we clustered anything else on other side, leaving Trolls in front of nothing, bar 4 RBTs awaiting for them marching in the open.
They ended with war machines in the backfield and Mangler Squigs to protect them and we placed Chosen to intercept troll first and Warlocks to run toward their backlines.
Their characters were deployed curiously.
The Wolf Bosses went in a Troll unit Each, Throgg sat between Goblin Trolls (It makes sens, since the Chaos ones are Ld8 already) and just the Night Shaman stayed in the expected unit.
For fear of Doom Divers and lucky Hellcannon blasts we decided to hide Peg Masters in Warriors once again.

We won theroll for Vanguard and my central unit of Warlocks jumped ahead to limit their central Wolf Riders movement, who just shifted to the side. Our other warlocks crossed the River with the Vanguard move to be able to march afterward and he decided not to move any of the other Wolves units. Then I just redeployed all my Dark Riders closer to the main block, leaving a big empty area on all my right flank.

Image

Image

In this last match we didn’t rolled any double 6 on the Eye of the God and all the three units ended with +1 Attack each.
Our opponents had the +1 to start and proceded in rolling a 6, so theirs was the first turn.


Trolls Herd Turn 1

Image

The central Squig (from which I payed attention to stop at 15”) rolled a whoomping 18 for its movement and run through my Doomfire Warlocks, for just one rider killed. The other one, instead, manage to move something like 7”.
The two Trolls block rushed forward towards the centre, followed short behind by Night Goblins.
All the Wolf started to gather behind his main blocks and the Sorcerer Lord decided to go chasing RBTs, but he stopped quite far from them, hiding to avoid 4 free shots on him.
The Vindicative Glare from the Night Goblin resulted in a deadly spell for my Dark Riders, while the Disc Sorcerer couldn’t find any suitable target.
Under enemy shooting a single Warlock remained on the saddle and he was ready to be sacrified for the greater good.
Hellcannon, aiming te Shrine, hit the closest unit of Chosen leaving just the champion standing here too.


Dark Force Turn 1

Image

The lone elf jumped onto the Mangler Squig and died to make it explode, but at least there was one less thing to worry about.
Everithing else started to take position to receive the incomingTrolls, so they started to close up on the left flank, while our light Riders went to delay them with some quick manouver. Even the leftmost Warlocks were called back.
Approaching the Trolls, I placed my Dark Riders 8” from Night Goblins with the forest or his unit between us. The three Fanatics were released on the left, towards the bridge.
Magic once again achieved nothing, bar maybe a +1 to hit on the nearest full strength unit of Dark Riders (I honestly can’t remember and my notes are empty).
Finally the shooting phase came. I focused 30 RXB darts hitting on 5+ and 24 RBT bolts hitting on 3+ all onto the Chaos Troll, for the unbelievable amount of... 1 wound!

Thankfully my mate and I decided that each one of us would have rolled his own dice for his own troops, otherwise this would have been exactly one of those situations in which he starts to curse, throw templates and shout insults in the face of his opponents. This way, all he did after this exceptional exploit of luck on my part was just saying: “Ste, you really suck at dice.”
Thankfully again, it’s something I already know.
In fact I did not expect to decimate the Troll unit, even if a couple of dead bodies were expected. Next time I’ll be sure to have some sort of flaming attacks both for shooting and for close combat.


Trolls Herd Turn 2

Image

Trolls were blocked by the double flee performed by Dark Riders, while their Chaotic cousins redirected the charg from my last unit of Dark Riders to the Chosen nearby.
The Disc Sorcerer Charged the first RBT.
Wolf Riders gathered behind his lines and the Mangler Squig proceeded in his slow advance onto the bridge.
In the magic Phase we stopped Enchanted Blades on Chaos Troll since we wanted to charge them next trun and they got Vindicative Glare on Warlocks, for a single wound.
Here I marked my Dark Riders as dead, but I honestly can’t recall if they fled the table next turn or went down to Doom Divers and Hellcannon. Since I didn’t write down anything else, I guess the latter soultion is the most probable.
Chosen were predictably killed to the last man, but at least they took down two Trolls after the Goblin General refused the challenge.
Disc Lord, instead, fluffed all his attacks and killed a single crew elf, just to remain stuck on the RBT.


Dark Force Turn 2

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Our alliance started to whittle as we turned out to be “suspect” allies.
The leftmost unit of Chosen failed its frenzy check and had to declare a charge against regular Trolls, so we charged with the lone Chosen too. Obviously only the one alone made it (6+ to roll for the unit).
My BSB spot a decent chance and decided to charge the flank of the Choas Troll unit, considering on that flank there was the Goblin General too, forced to remain “outside” the unit because of different base sizes.
The fast cavs, in the meanwile, moved to delay Trolls for another turn.
(It’s possible we advanced with Warriors and Shrine too, because in next turns they look quite too far for the charges we made)
With the magic phase I drew some dice with an Enchanted Blades onto my Peg BSB just to place a Soulblight onto Chaos Troll with which they were ok, since the Vomit attack is not affected.
This time two RBTs teamed up with 5 Dark Riders and managed to make Night Goblin flee, crossing a unit of Wolf Riders and panicking them too. The last one, instead, had a flank shot on another Wolf unit and pierced them all, deleting the unit outright.
Comabt went as expected, with my BSB slaying the Goblin General with no harm back, even from Trolls vomit attacks, and winning the combat with ease. Trolls were still steadfast, but Ld8 can be failed outside BSB range, so they fled.
Needless to say, I failed miserably the pursuit.
Disc Lord killed the second elf attending the war machine, but at this point our opponents were pretty let down by my BSB killing their General and started complaining about their luck and whining about their dice rolls (actually, if luck would have been even, at that point I could have charged a unit of 3 or 4 Trolls after 54 shots and 21 Str5 atttacks from Chosen).
What’s worst, once they realized their forces were split up and surrounded they started a bad display of slow play to limit our unavoidable advance from here on.


Trolls Herd Turn 3

Image

After a lot of thinking, to get out from the thorny situation Throgg charged out of his unit into the bigger Dark Riders unit, while the Disc Sorcerer, being too far from my Peg BSB, went for the second RBT.
Chaos Trolls failed to rally, as well as Night Goblins, Wolf Riders failed animosity and stumbled forwards few inches, while the Fanatics decided to go mad. One dived into the river, another strangled himself and the third decided to stop at the beginning of the bridge, effectively obstructing the passage for the Mangler Squig, who went back near Doom Divers. Regular Trolls simply moved back.
Magic and Shooting did nothing, because of a low magic phase, a Doom Diver misfiring and the Hellcannon scattering onto the Warriors and activating the Blasted Standard. And many more complaining came from our opponents who started to evaluate the chance of hitting, wounding and saving of any of their decision.
Combats ened as expected, with Disc Lord killing RBT in one single blow this time but being unable to overrun because of Chaos Trolls and Throgg vaporized Dark Riders with the help of his Breath Attack.
Now they were left with a hard decision: they had a 10” overrun into my BSB flank, but this would have left him alone in the open. I could have charged him with the other Peg Master and Warlocks if the BSB held or else I could have placed 2 bolt thrower shots hitting on 3 and wounding on 3, as well as a Doombolt from Warlocks. In the end they opted to leave him there where he stood to have some cover from shooting and limit the charge possibilities.


Dark Force Turn 3

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This turn we shifted our alliance to untrusty, so I had to move my Cloak Master out of the Warriors unit and the best choice was to charge Throgg. They did not considered that two single models can be in charge even when touching just corner to corner, so the Peg Master could actually hit the Troll King. Chosen failed Frenzy once again (how bad I wanted a BSB for them the whole tournament!) and tried to leap onto Trolls, failing the charge. My BSB flew towards the Hellcannon and the other units moved around Trolls, with a Dark Rider falling into the woods.
Soulblight on Throgg was dispelled, Enchanted blades on the Cloak Master too, so I just put a Glittering Robe onto Dark Riders.
All the shooting could take down a single Troll (We should have targetted the Disc Sorcerer probably, but we were being very annoyed by our opponents behaving and tiredness was starting to step in too).
Throgg failed all his 3 Regen saves and went down in a rumble and the Peg Master overrun few inches, enough to get out of Troll’s charge arc.
At this point TO asked to pair the turns and our opponents were more than happy to end the match right there (we were almost even in points since they actually lost only Trogg, their general and a couple of Wolf Rider units), but fortunately we were told we must end at least 4 complete turns.


Trolls Herd Turn 4

Image

To limit damage and gather some late points, the Disc Sorcerer charged Warlocks, who fled forcing him into a failed charge and Wolf Riders charged the flank of Dark Riders to block a possible multiple charge on his Trolls in the last trun.
Chaos Trolls failed to rally (now at Ld2) and fled the table (I forgot to remove the unit from the diagram), while Night Goblins rallied. Trolls moved further back and the BSB Boss rode alone behind our Warriors.
In the magic phase they IF a three diced Transmutation of lead on the nearest RBT, wounding the Night Goblin Shaman and then failed to cast a three diced Final Transmutation on Warriors after loosing 2 dice.
Doom Divers temed up to kill Warlocks but just one elf was saddled. The Hellcannon, instead, had a last moment of glory landing a perfect hit on the Shrine and splintering it for good.
Wolf Riders failed their fear test and managed nothing on the 2+ Dark Riders, but lost a rider from the sigle Druchii attack instead. Dark Riders held on Ld8.


Dark Force Turn 4

Image

Both Masters charged the Hellcannon and Chosen went in support of Dark Riders against Wolf Riders.
Warlocks and Warriors moved to have the Disc Sorc in range.
A good magic phase made the split dice a non-issue since we had 5 dice to cast a boosted Searing Doom on the Lord which was dispelled and other 5 dice to try a Doombolt on him once they had no dice left, but we forgot the Night Goblin Shaman rallied, so it was simply scrolled.
The two RBTs also fired at him and both hit, both wounded and he saved only one of the two shots, but we rolled just two multiple wound. So close!
Again, with hindsight we could have focused magic and shooting onto the Goblin BSB for some last granted points.
Chosen did a short job of the Goblin Riders, as well as Peg Masters did with the demonic monster, who went down just with the riders attacks.
So the match ended there.


After match thoughts

That last turn earned us important 600 VPs for a 14-6 result (basically we were looking for a draw with Chaos Trolls and Hellcannon on the table), but from there on we could have fed RBTs to the Disc Sorcerer while Peg Masters would have cleared their backfield and Chosen along Warriors would have cut through Trolls in the last two turns for a even bigger win.
I have to admit I was surprised to lear how little we achieved before the last turn and how many points we gave them for free, especially if we consider that we had the control of the match since turn 2, when they split their two main blocks.
Probably it’s because Goblin units are so cheap and they had perfect ways to preserve points in the form of the Disc Sorcerer (450+ VPs) and the two Trolls block (almost 800 VPs including Throgg).
They’re all extremely hard to tackle and really dangerous to approach with unwarded units (I’d send Phoenix Guards against Trolls anyday, as well as flaming Sister of the Thorn on a flank).
It was also really interestiong the Goblin characters deployment since without template weapons we had no means to touch them before munching through lots of Troll flesh.
Their biggest mistake, in fact, was exactly to leave their General on the wrong side of the Chaos Trolls unit, reachable by my Master attacks. Once that unit was routed away from his lines all they could do was to limit the damage.
Another mistake IMO was to send the Disc Sorcerer on war machines hunter duties. That Character is extremely powerful and incredibly resiliant. If they kept him short behind their block I couldn’t have charged my Masters out so carelessly and they could have threatened all our central units, even if just pushing our fast cavs out of the table after some flee.
On our part we took some risks with the Peg Masters charges, but the prize for the price was high enough to give them a try (in all, they alone gathered 800+ VPs), after all we needed a good win in this last match to hope for a good placement.
Last edited by NonnoSte on 03 Jun 2015, 06:56, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by Aezeal »

Great game. I think you played well given what you had to work with (your friend should not be allowed to builds list though.. the BSB and the flaming banner would have greatly improved tournament results I think).
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by NonnoSte »

Thanks Aezeal,
but let's give him credit. It was the first time he played Warriors for real (yeah, you could argue that a tournament is not the best of the place where to try something out).
On the other hand, once he settled to use the Chosen/Shrine combo, the points were quickly down to core requirements and a (IMO) sub-optimal character. He insisted to use the Shrine to have a chance in displaying it for the painting evaluation and in the end this favoured us in the final scoring.
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by NonnoSte »

Dark Riders:

Their good mobility was great the whole day to control the board and move fast to threaten back lines. Their shooting, although never decisive, chipped wounds here and there and kept at bay other chaffs. They was also decent in combat thanks to the 4+ AS, which even made them the ideal target for Glittering Robes more than once, making them the most versatile of our units.
The advantage of fast cavs are well known to any elven player and playing with them made me regret our old Glade Riders (ie before they had to ambush).

Undoubtedly Dark Riders are the best brew of the thre core fast cavalries in the three elven books, in particular it was impossible not to confront them to Swiftshiver Glade Riders, since the fire power is somewhat similar and I tried them a coupole of times.
With their movement those 6” of shorter range never relly hurt and for two point less I think that having a 4+ AS is much better than AP in close combat (you won’t usually send them to fight something where AP would matter).

The only “issue” with them is that they bleed points any time you have to sacrifice a unit to slow something down. Where an Eagle costs 50 pts, you’re giving away more than double of those pts with a kitted out unit of them (110 for the unit with shields, xbows and mus. Other 35 if you included a standard).
Sometimes it’s unavoidable to feed some cheap unit to enemy approaching deathstars, but over 100 VP is not really on the cheap side. If it wasn’t to fill core points, many times a unit of 5 Harpies would have probably worked better.
Anyway they were priceless in so many situation which makes me regret the decision not to take a bigger unit (10-12) along one or two smaller one, as some Asrai members suggested when we were choosing the lists. To be honest, they’re the unit which persuades me the most to run Druchii again.
I was really curious about a Beast Sorceress in a Dark Riders bus along some kind of combat block and a couple of Peg Masters. I could give it a try sometimes, who knows?
(on second tought, a Beastweaver in a unit of Sisters could be even more effective, but then I’d have to go heavy on Eternal Guards in core to have a combat block and they’re not even near to the effectiveness of Black Guards or Executioners. Maybe Dryads? Treekin? Ok, let’s stop here before I say something stupid)

Reaper Bolt Throwers:

I initially intended them as a support to fast cavs in the board control, creating no-men lands in their range of action. Instead, they performed pretty poorly the whole tournament, but I don’t thik this was because of them being lacking in any way.
Their scarce performance IMO, was due to two main factors: Firstly, I was unable to deploy them with good lines of sight and therefore to use them to great effect and, second, we never faced armies where they would have really mattered.
Against T3 infantries they’re pure killers, since the slow advance of the infantry blocks expose them to two or three rounds of multiple shooting. When you’re exposed to 24 shots hitting on 3s and wounding on 3s, it means around ten models dead per turn (they give a -2 modifier to armour). Probably nobody is so fool to advance infantry blocks towards RBTs in the open (although I actually did it several times) but even a stationary horde at long range can be seriously crippled and eventually panicked, given time.
The other situation in where they shine is against Cavalry busses and Monstruous Cavalry units. The 1+ save is useless against armour negating shots and the multiple D3 wounds can be pretty dangerous for Demigryphs, Skullcrushers or Mournfangs and we faced none of them.

The real problem with them is that once you face T4 or warded models their influence becomes pretty much psychological and savy opponents will likely ignore them to suffer maybe some lesser loss. The occasional monster could be wary of them but it’s unlikely RBTs alone can take it down, since they need to hit, wound and roll at least 3+ on the wounds roll to start meaning something.
Skirmishers are also a problem for them, since a bit of cover or long range means they waste most of their shots not even hitting the target.
That’s why our Warhawk Riders are so cool against them. Being 3W T4 AND skirmishers (c’mon, who else can claim this?) places them at the best place as hunters for these war machines.

It’s also true that we had never had the chance to cast multiple Soulblight on a target and then follow with heavy volleys but, under those circumstances, even Skeleton and Night Goblin Archers become dangerous, as any TFA user should know.

At the end of the day I was not displeased by them (they helped in clearing chaff and forced some smaller decisions of single characters or simply occupied fast units who went chasing them and did nothing for the whole game), but I found them much less dangerous than as they looked from he receiving end. Probably because I’m used to face them with unarmoured T3 infantries or cavalry busses.

If I had to rate all the units, I think these would be my votes:

Peg Masters: 10/10
Warlocks: 8/10 (I think Sisters are better rounded and a unit of 5 Sisters with BoEF would certainly be a 9)
Dark RIders: 8/10
RBT: 6/10 (4 are too much, probably 2 or 3 are a better addition to an already strong army)

Tzeentch Sorcerer: 6/10 (useful to make Warriors untouchable, but very little effective otherwise, the classic build on Disc would be a 8 or a 9 thanks to increased mobility and versatility)
Blasted Tzeentch Warriors: 8/10 (Best core units in the game tied with Plaguebearers. Probably a 9 with a BSB)
Khorne Chosen: 7/10 (real killers, they just lack mobility. Nurgle mark could also be interesting for speed bumps. Free Daemon Princes are always Welcome)
War Shrine: 4/10 (this thing is useless outside the bonus on the Eye of the Gods roll and Chosen work on their own even without the Prince. Plain bad.)
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by Swordmaster of Hoeth »

Hi NonnoSte,

Thanks so much for another series of fantastic reports! I think you are currently the best battle reporter on Asrai.org and it is great to see you provide such a high quality material from your games on regular basis. Knowing how much time it takes to prepare a single report I wanted to say "Thank You" and I hope you will keep posting these for a long time!

I have already browsed your games but as always, making comments takes a little more than that. As always I apologize for being a little late but I hope I can also contribute to the discussion. But at least I want to add some feedback simply as a way of appreciation for your time and effort.

Other forum members added their comments but I haven't read them yet as I wanted to keep a fresh and unbiased point of view. Hence, please forgive me if I may ask or say the same thing already discussed. I will read the comments of others after that for sure!

I am very curious about your impressions from that first event. It can be a great thing to socialize and meet very good players and simply expand your horizons. You are already in a much better position, you have the internet! But it is still a game where battles with real people and real miniatures are the main goal. I am glad you could participate in this tournament and I am looking forward to reading about your overall impressions after all games are done. :)

It seems you picked a partner for the tournament that has quite a hot temper :) It may be a great thing to have somebody like that in a team as they usually are the reasons the stories about their behavior are told for years but at the same time it may be a difficult ally where you need to spend a lot of time constraining their explosive spirit. It is definitely a good start for some crazy background story where Dark Elves ally with savage Khorne Warriors.

Armies

The games where you fight long your allies can be quite funny encounters. On one hand you have the access to the units that can co-operate in a very good but new way, not available in the frame of a single army. On the other, you are to let another person to command half of the force and that in itself is a big thing as your ally might have different ideas as to how the game should develop. Very interesting combination!

Chaos Army is very compact but that is not surprising. I am actually glad you didn't take the all-too-popular choices such as Nurgle Wall. WoC army seems to have one huge anvil (at least for these points) and 3 harder hitting units. Although I wonder if the idea was not to have a chance for getting a free Daemon Prince with them due to the presence of a Warshrine too?

DE army is more similar to what I think is kind of "standard" for them these days. Fast cavalry in core (although I think DR are the best fast cavalry in the game), heavy shooting support, ever present warlocks and mandatory pegasus riders. That adds a lot to the army that can present a strong center point around Tzeentch Warriors and provide a lot of movement control.

I wonder what tactics you guys would adapt. It would make sense to use DE to kill as much of enemy troops as possible as Warriors may be to slow to catch it on their own.

Many thanks for taking time to do a write up of all the units. It helps seeing what you want to do with each entry and at the same time serves as a great reminder about the abilities of the troops. Even veteran players tend to forget some details about the units and it is even more valuable for others, in particular if they haven't met these troops on the battle field.

Ok, Game 1!
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by Swordmaster of Hoeth »

Game 1

Tough armies for sure. WoC had some similar elements, although no Daemon-Factory included :) I think it will work as a first anvil and platform for Tzeentch magic with some good point denial unit.

MSU-ish daemon army with some usual suspects. Plaguebearers form a second anvil. And then there is a mixture of support and hard hitting troops.

I think you are not necessary in a worse position. DE can use their superior speed and shooting to eliminate the support and get advantage in movement phase. On unkillable characters, both will be vulnerable to static results so while it is hard to kill one directly nobody says you should waste your resources. Kill the units instead and these two might have hard time to kill enough back. And be ready to exploit any mistakes and tie them in combat.

As I see (remember I write as I read :)) you had a similar plan :)

First question about the deployment. While I understand that positioning fast cavalry on the front line was to exploit their vanguard and start harassing the enemy early then I wonder why the rest of the army was deployed aggressively. You have shooting advantage, why not let the enemy to have longer way to go to you and get that one-tow extra shooting phases?

I understand that you didn't want to risk being shot at with skull cannon hence both peg masters hid behind the terrain. Was it also possible to hide behind the rock on top of the table? I am asking because the possibility to pin down the disk rider would limit his freedom of movement and your characters might actually do well against him.

Turn 1

What was the reason for pushing small units of Chosen fast forward? Also, is it a correct assumption that Warriors and Warlocks were reformed so that they could see the sorcerer landing behind your lines?

I think it was a good option to charge the hounds (I wonder why they didn't flee) with the Daemon Prince but I wonder if you considered an option of attacking the Flies instead? You would hold them and maybe even grind them down eventually (although their poisonous attacks look dangerous) and at this stage it was more important to limit the movement of the enemy rather than stop one of the slow blocks, that would be unable to reach combat yet.

It was a good move of course, because DP can hold units forever, I was just wondering if other options were considered and if yes, why did you decide to attack Warriors.

Turn 2

I also wonder if it was a good idea to place DR3 so that they had to flee from the beast. I don't think it was beneficial to do so, as even with a flee they were out of action for a while. Otherwise they could have started sneaking to the rear of the army and do harassment from there.

Wow, that was one kind of hot temper display! :D

With Tzeentch Warriors almost gone and Khorne Chosen caught in the middle, the center was reclaimed by the enemy. Especially with Nurgle Flies it meant they would be able to support both flanks. I think it was very lucky for your Warriors to hold against this attack and to be able to counter charge.

I like the Peg riders counters. You killed the beast and the flamers, not much in points but these units can be very annoying.

I assume you cast boosted version of the Doombolt. However, I wonder if you still could use Soulblight + Doombolt combination? Do you think that would have had better chance of wounding the Sorcerer?

Alternatively, if you didn't charge the Skullcannon you could cast 2 Doombolts, one on sorcerer and one on Cannon. Of course no one could predict double 1's for break test but I wonder which option was better? Of course the secondary objective was that the Cannon was not shooting. It also seemed like you reformed your BSB before that combat. I think it would have been nice to have him in a position to charge next turn against the cannon too.

Turn 3

I am quite surprised Sorcerer did so good in combat. He does not have that many attacks and with 3+ to hit and to wound and some saves for Chosen they should be able to put up a better fight?

Nice magic for your opponents, these Plaguebearers would clear the last bolt thrower much faster than slowly dying furies.

Turn 4

That was quite unfortunate with BSB and what is more, with the General but it just shows that one should plan ahead. Don't worry, I know because I make such mistakes too! :)

But to avoid this situation you should have reformed BSB earlier to help Warlocks. If not, then check if the cannon can roll to the position to shoot at any of your characters. If no amount of hiding behind the house would prevent that then simply put them 6+ inches apart to avoid panic checks at all. It is more of a lesson for the future than criticism but the thing I learned is that despite some unlucky dice you can avoid the consequences. You just need to ask yourself what would happen if plan fails and move accordingly.

After-battle thoughts

I agree that the cannon shot and general's failed panic test meant you lost the opportunity to have a combo charge done. But I also think that it was more of a consequence of the previous actions than pure bad luck.

I disagree that Battle for the Pass didn't help you. I think you could use it to your advantage and shoot/magic support for some time. He needs to come to you too and since you have good tools for the combat you can have a perfect counter attack.

In order to do that you can use DR aggressively but not in range of potential charges. You don't always have to vanguard and if yes not always forward! Keep the rest of the army back so he has less targets anyway. His Sorcerer is tough but I think with Tzeentch magic he would have been more dangerous with Gateway and magic missiles to hit your fast troops.

The fact that you didn't have BSB for the WoC army hurt but at the same time DE BSB was so far away he didn't help the troops that needed it either. If, however, you are afraid to flee no matter what then deploying a unit so that it has enough room to flee but then rally is important.

The cannon was a problem but at the same time it also can be targeted by repeaters, crossbows and doombolts so why not to wound it at least? That would make you opponents more shy with it and possibly make it easier to hunt it down.

I think it was a good game in general and the good thing is that if you make some mistakes then they can be corrected in the future! I am sure it was tough to lose the very first game of your very first tournament but fortunately there were more to come and it was time to climb back!

I also hope my comments don't seem harsh. My aim was to provide feedback but I will be always honest if I think something was a mistake. I am open for discussion too so if you disagree with anything it will be my pleasure to talk about it!

I will come back with comments about other games soon :)
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by Aezeal »

(c’mon, who else can claim this?)
Those new rat guys with all those fancy guns? (of course they don't fly).

Anyway about the RBT's: if 9th allows you to field RBT's in an army that would for the rest be similar to WE.. do you think they'd be an include.. or do you think you'd prefer using the shooty options the WE have (GG, scouts (with HB or TF to counter either infantry or monsters) or WW)?
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by NonnoSte »

@ Swordmaster:
I'm working on a more detailed reply (hopefully not on my phone as I am now) since you provided a very detailed and insightful analysis as usual.
For now, don't worry about pointing out mistakes, you'll always be someone to learn from (at the very least for your enormous experience. I'm glad enough to see that some of your options were the same we were considering during play or we considered afterwards.
Let's just say that playing in the morning after a 3 hours night wasn't the best of the situations (I'm finding excuses here :lol: ).

@ Aezeal:
I don't know actually. After these games I think that if I had to run DE again, I'd take 2 RBTs and a dozen of shades in two units.
Scouts control the board much better and I never felt them useless when playing WE.
Even with that mix, RBTs would serve specifically for anti-armour, so it's nothing that can't be addressed by WW + Withering.
After all we have all that RBTs are needed for. HBT for high toughness, WW for armour and TFA along WW again to whittle infantry blocks.
The.advantage of bolt throwers is that they can do all those things together.
In all, anyway, I'd say no. I think I always found myself better served by Asrai shooting than how RBTs performed in this tournament.
Maybe I'm just used this way, but to have mobile shooters is priceless IMO.
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by Swordmaster of Hoeth »

Hi NonnoSte,

Let's try to catch up with Game 2!

Armies

Indeed, WE part didn't look like what you usually see on the battle fields these days. Which is a shame because these are very cool models. Don't want to go into "tree spirits were nerfed" debate now but I guess that is the reason why people don't field them. All together it looks like a defensive force, with decent shooting and few units that can fight. I guess the cannons will be a problem for pegasus riders (nothing new) but with so many support troops they could be tied and neutralized quickly.

Deployment

I understand that you wanted to protect pegasus riders and I didn't know you can join allied troops with them. I wonder why didn't you do that against previous opponent? With Blasted Standard it is quite a good protection already! I also wonder why did you deploy so far on the flank, the hill in the middle offered good protection but allowed for better advance line.

Turn 1

I think your opponents made a mistake with a vanguard and broke formation with Iron Drakes to be in range and shoot at something. There was no need to move that far in their turn either. It left them exposed.

Their shooting was impressive but you have replacements and his cannons look exposed too.

Turn 2

It seems that the dice prompted you to charge IronDrakes but I believe it was a good call. They were exposed and in a wrong position not to mention the fact the normally deadly stand and shoot was inefficient.

Your opponents try to counter attack but it is done piecemeal due to unsuccessful charge of the Longbeards. That is bad for them as it further divides his battle line while WE are not in position to counter Dark Riders.

Turn 3

Nice to see Chosen performing, in such a small number it is great when they can chew through the enemies. Just a pity Warriors with Peg Riders are still so far away. I don't quite understand why did he accept the challenge? He can refuse and still use champion in combat plus he can have so many more attacks to kill him and keep moving. That was a huge mistake on the part of a Dwarven player.

Turn 4

It looks like another mistake exploited by you. Your opponent didn't stay in the forest so that his wardancers are stubborn. Even with 3++ dance they lost combat and fled instead of pinning you down. He was of course hard pressed but mainly due to staying in one place and letting your forces to surround them leaving no path to retreat.

It was a turn where things went bad for your opponents and they had no chance to recover. The last turn charge was very rewarding for these whole maneuvering and poor Longbeards stood no chance.

Well deserved victory, you clearly played a better game than your opponents and exploited their mistakes. Congratulations! :thumbsup:
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by Swordmaster of Hoeth »

It seems I may have a chance to catch up with game 3 too!

Armies

I think you should stop listening to your friend :)

So many trolls and no flaming attacks, now that is going to be a challenge. You will probably have to divert them rather than fight them.

I wonder why Metal magic is so popular for Tzeentch sorcerers, I find their own lore very dangerous. Orcs and Goblins provide some very good support units and artillery so it will be important to get rid of these fast. Manglers, in my opinion, are the first priority.

Deployment

I am not sure why did you expose your warlocks to Mangler with the vanguard? What was the plan?

Turn 1

Mangler went through your Warlocks as I was afraid it might. While you say you were 15 inches away it was still not worthy risking, in my opinion. Not even taking into account a lucky roll. I would stay 18+" away. It was very lucky to lose just 1 rider.

Hm, I wonder if shooting at trolls was a good idea. What about using that fire to hunt down the wolf riders and mangler squig? Wolf riders seem to be too far to benefit from the general's presence so failed panic check was likely.

You also angled the fast troops that allowed trolls to run towards your own line. I don't think it was necessary to move Khorne Chosen forward, to allows for overrun into them. Instead, you should keep them further away. Then you may perform your double flee. The alternative is to position fast cavlary in a narrow formation presenting a flank to both units. Then hold and let them destroy you but they have only overrun move to to, possibly towards right and by that you slow them down and direct to the part they don't want to go. Desperate option but I think worth considering.

Turn 2

It is a very interesting situation. I thought allowing trolls to charge might have been a mistake but it seems you actually created a much better position to split them up. It was good move with BSB, very well spotted and it is just a pity you didn't catch these Trolls as it would have made your day already! But it was a great achievement and I think I simply have to say I was wrong by criticizing your first turn blocking moves.

Fantastic news with Night Goblins panicking and taking wolf riders with them too!

Turn 3

I will jump toward your turn immediately. You had running trolls in front of your BSB and it looked like they would flee off the table, forcing a panic check on the sorcerer lord. Why did you decide to leave them there and fly towards Hellcannon?

Turn 4

Why Trolls were not using sorcerer leadership? Or am I missing something?

Of course that allowed peg riders to charge and destroy hellcannon but I am clearly missing something about the trolls :)

Well done anyway because it looked like a tough match up but you managed to divide and conquer hard to destroy enemy! It was very interesting game where you stalled the advance of troll horde and then split them to collect points.

It is just a shame that you could not finish the game as you could have destroyed more units in the next 2 turns after gaining the advantage.

Was it one day tournament or are we going to see more games from day two?

Thanks again for taking time to post these reports, they are really good and knowing that you have a lot of responsibilities in real life I appreciate it even more!

Cheers!
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by NonnoSte »

Swordmaster of Hoeth wrote:Hi NonnoSte,

Thanks so much for another series of fantastic reports! I think you are currently the best battle reporter on Asrai.org and it is great to see you provide such a high quality material from your games on regular basis. Knowing how much time it takes to prepare a single report I wanted to say "Thank You" and I hope you will keep posting these for a long time!

I have already browsed your games but as always, making comments takes a little more than that. As always I apologize for being a little late but I hope I can also contribute to the discussion. But at least I want to add some feedback simply as a way of appreciation for your time and effort.
Let's start with replies.

For starter, I want to thank you for the time spent in following all of these ramblings, but I think you're being a bit ungenerous towards other Asrai member who provide exceptional material, as well as much better battles than mine.
For instance, Mollesvinet has recently been trying a lot of things out, providing detailed reports and impression, with a level of play and experience I can only dream of.
Razorfate as well has provided the community with excellent battles. If I understood correctly and he's rather new to Wood Elves he has to be praised even more, since he has a very tidy and effective style of play.
Aezeal too has posted some great reports, despite his lack of chance to play many games.

The tournament was great all in all, althought very very exhausting. We met a lot of interesting peoples and faced good players. We also had a chance to touch first hand what the WHFB scene around here is.


Armies:

As you have already read, we had a lot to debate about the army lists and we weren't completely happy even with the last draft.
Chaos army started with the idea of popping out Daemon Princes indeed. Then we had to take a general, core requirements and the points were out. My army was all the best taken blindfold because neither of us had much confidence with the Druchii army book. I also wanted to take something as Woodish as possible, so it was pure shooting and mobility.
Our tactic was indeed to use Tzeentch Warriors as a point denial unit and anchor for the faster elven contingent. Warlocks and Peg MAsters are more than able to go taking points where they're easier, so we thought it would have been really optimal. Too bad we lost this focus during the matches.

My write ups (as well as the subsequent evaluation) are really poor and not very in-depth, because I absolutely lack the experience and the skill to make accurate reviews of units or armies. Mine is more the point of view of a noob approaching something and discovering it as he talks. Nonetheless I would have always liked to find some "first-approach" impression when I started playing and now I thought to provide some.
Sometimes I think that too complex analysis can be misleading for newer players. (for instance, I'm trying to follow Curu's blogs on Ulthuan, because he provides material of extreme quality, but sometimes I find myself a bit lost in the reading because he goes even too deep into advanced tactica)


Game 1:

Let me start saying that most of our action in this game were dictated by morning dumbness.
We never considerd to deploy back and wait for them (but with hindsight it would have really been optimal), we didn't think about the possibility of Flamers actually killing something (my mate rated them next to useless), we didn't pay attention to Flies at all until it was too late (a bit of confusion in the north side distracted us and we litterally didn't see them able to charge).

Turn 1: the DP had a very long charge on Flies (17-18") and an average one on Dogs with an easy overrun on his Warriors block. Tying his infantries (Plaguepearers couldn't have advanced alone) was a good thing, so we did it.

Turn 2: with DR3 we were just unconfortable to leave them in charge range of the Cannon, since we didn't wanted it to escape. In the center we were lucky that their block were tied by the DP or else they could have burst through our lines with ease. On the south we intended to use Peg Masters to clear all the flank, but once we saw how slowly DW were dying to the Skullcannon we gambled on them taking it out eventually. As you said yourself, none could expect the double 1. Big bet, big loss.

Turn 3: After slaying our champ the Sorcerer gained +1 St, so he was wounding on 2, no AS. A chosen fell do the disc attacks.

Turn 4: That last mistake/display of bad luck was the one that upset me the most, since it was basically all my fault. I learned the lesson now. Granted. It was also fairly easy to hide both of them, so that as my mate was cursing Gods loudly, I was doing the same with myself inside.

Losing the first game was tough and disheartening, but I'm glad we were able to find a new determination afterwards and we didn't let us down instead. The fact that the game was loaded of mistakes (we saw all of them just before they mattered in the final outcome) actually served to shake and to wake us from the lingering sleepiness.


Game 2:

Cannons are always an issue for lone characters or those without Look out Sir! chance. The Characters can be deployed in allied units as long as they're "trusty allied". the second placed couple had a War Priest in a Temple Guard unit :eek: .
In the first game we didn't exploit the banner for the Peg Masters against the Skullcannon because it was alone and the Charmed shield could have blocked the first shot (as it did).

In all, I don't think there's much to be said about the game.
It was a sequence of bad choices from our opponents part (but he didn't even know he had to play that day, so ha can't really be blamed). In turn 3 he accepted the challenge with the champ to limit the damage and win with resolution. we couldn't have predicted 4 whole wounds either.
The bunker not in the wood was a really bad idea too. If he was stubborn I couldn't have possibly shifted it, but it would have still been tied for the Warriors charge and 10 Wardancers against 18 Tzeentch Warriors is not something I'd be tempted to try from a Wood Elf perspective.


Game 3:

It looks like you're able to comment much faster than I'm at replying, so I ask forgiveness for the endless post, but I have some spare time now and it's something precious and rare these days.

Yeah, during the day I got accustomed to think the same, even if the reasoning wasn't flawed per-se.
Some times back I think Phil (SpellArcher) was considering the option to deal with Regen at range (or in combat for what it's worth) just by sheer firepower. I can say now that it doesn't reliably work.

Deployment: The plan was to draw the mangler indeed, 15+ looked lika a safe bet. Thankfully I don't play poker.

Turn 1: You're obviously right about shooting targets. The fact was that we hoped to drop a couple of Trolls with shooting and another couple with Chosen, so that they were manageable afterwards. Hitting on 5 with RXB and on 3 with RBT looked like good odds. They saved like Gods. With Regen up was absolutely a bad idea though.
Our goal with fast troops was to draw the two blocks far from each other and it somewhat worked in the end. We didnt think about using the single line of fast cav to stop both, but given that our opponents started to complain even for us using the double flee, I doubt they would have appreciated it.

Turn 2: Yeah, the plan worked out better than expected (and we actually planned it together during the previous turn). The panic reaction in Goblin backfield just shows your comment on shooting targets was right.

Turn 3: I was afraid to lose BSB to the Disc Sorcerer actually and it was absolutely unnecessary. Consider that Trolls without Throgg would have been Ld2, we were sure they would have fled the table. The BSB flew towards the Hellcannon to go chasing for points. As I said we were tied in points even with their heavy losses (in term of importance rather than cost).
Throgg on the other hand took us unaware, since the plan was to flee Trolls with both cavalries again (they would have had to charge the smaller one first), but Throgg charging alone meant we couldn't flee or he could have redirected on my BSB. after the first game I became overprotective with him.

Turn 4: I don't know if it was an house rule or not, but each game you had to elect a single General for the whole force who gives the extra 100 VP and provides IP to all the troops. This game it was the Goblin War Boss. Lucky for us.

I also think that from there on we could have just mopped up survivors, ignoring the DIsc Lord (even if severely wounded)

The tournament was indeed a one-day event since there were just 16 couples (it's 32 actual players, so not even that small for our standard) and this means my reports are over. Soon I should get back to Khaine Campaign (which I'm still playing. Two matches behind in reporting again), then I'd like to start a building work for my own army.
By now I believe I have gathered some nice experience and I have more perception of what units actually can achieve on the battlefield, so it's list building and test time (obviously waiting for 9th ed news).


I'm always a bit flattered by your comments, because I consider you some sort of a teacher in this game and the least I can do is to try and reply them in a quasi-proper way, so forgive me again for the long reply and many thanks to anyone patient enough to read through all of this.
Swordmaster of Hoeth
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by Swordmaster of Hoeth »

HI NonnoSte,

Thanks a lot for such a quick and detailed replies! It is great to have such a discussion because we can understand better what the plans were and how they survived the contact with the enemy. It is always a dynamic process and many factors can contribute to the overall result. Once again, I would like to highlight that my goal is to understand the game better and consider possibilities. That is the best way, in my opinion, to learn from your games. Especially that it is not possible to play often.

I would also like to apologize other battle reporters here. I simply like NonnoSte way and I should framed my encouragements differently. I wish I had more time to follow the reports on various sites, Asrai included, and I will do my best to check the others with similar detail as I did for NonnoSte. I hope no offense was taken.

Last but not least I am definitely not a teacher :) I may have more games under my belt but I often amaze myself when I make mistakes in my own games, the mistakes that shouldn't have happened! I simply love this game, love writing reports and share my observations. I also consider reading and commenting in the reports like yours as a chance to look at the game with armies I don't play myself. That is important skill for me to acquire because I would be able (hopefully!) to anticipate the moves of my opponents if I happen to face the similar army. And what is the most important, I would like to thank you the person who wrote the report and I think commenting and providing feedback is the best way to do so!

Cheers!
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NonnoSte
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by NonnoSte »

Let's have some last musings about the day.

We were the last couples to finish the match, so after a few minutes of break necessay to record our scores we were called back to the hall to assist the prizegiving, which we attneded with a much deserved beer (a regular commercial plainly bad one) since we were exhausted after the whole day and in need of some refreshing.
Firstly they gave the painting evalution of the armies and my mate obtained a wonderful second place with 9/10 scoring thanks to his gorgeous Warshrine and the three spectacular Daemon Princes he brought for the Chosen (first place wwent to the Gor horde we saw in the morning, which was painted in a pretty mediocre way IMO, but was presented spectacularly with an awesome movement tray which was almost a diorama. It also came with an handwritten parchment with the army list. We learned afterward that it was owned by the GW store manager of a town a couple of hundred km away, who came with a couple of his players to the event. This probably gave him a bit of an advantage). TO liked my freehand banner for the BSB, but I obtained just a score of 5/10 because of lack of coherence between models (let’s be honest, other than the banner, the Riders I painted were awful compared to my wife’s and with a different color scheme too).
In the end this gave us other 14 pts for a total score of 52/80, which were enought to claim the third place in the tournament, after the Ogre + Lizard army who won big all the three games for a 69/80 score and a Lizard + Empire army nicely painted and pretty effective at shooting and magicing opponents out of the table (Light Slann leading an imperial light council made Saurus and Temple Guards brutal in combat and had the firepower to force opponents to rush towards the two blocks).
Our first opponents took fourth place after whopping 16 pts for painting which placed them at 49 pts.

Here is the awesome prize we received:

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(How the heck can I resize images? It looks like the board is enlarging them automatically)

Even if the third place was not enough to grant the participation to the summer event (which has been moved in november, to see what 9th edition will bring) we are in the waiting list for it if anyone had to forfait the tournament.
After everything was off, we also had the chance to chat a bit with our first opponents (extremely kind and very sportsmen-like) and with the winner couple, finding we all live pretty close and we invited them to come and have some game with our club mates.
What really surprised us was that the winners are relatively new players (just a year and a half) and almost always played just each other with the occasional addition of the brother of one of them.
Clearly the field was not extremely strong or hyper-competitive (our third place says a lot about that), but it was nice nonetheless that two new players had the best of some veterans (there were peopole playing from more than a dozen of years).

At the end of the day we decided to celebrate the result going to diner in a brewery in our hometown with a couple of friends who had joined us to see the last match. This way we could get back home pretty tipsy and extremely cheerful for a perfect end to a most enjoyable day.

My only regret up to now is the sporadic frequence of this kind of event in my area. I guess I’ll have to start moving a bit more if I want to atttend more organized tournaments.
Last edited by NonnoSte on 04 Jun 2015, 12:20, edited 1 time in total.
Swordmaster of Hoeth
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by Swordmaster of Hoeth »

Congratulations! Really great finish and well deserved podium! It is even better that you made new friends and hopefully expand your gaming group. :thumbsup: :nod:
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Mollesvinet
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Re: Journey to the Dark Side - Game 3 - Goblins + Warriors

Post by Mollesvinet »

Congratulations indeed and thank you for the compliments :)

I don't have anything to add to the last games that the friendly neighbourhood swordmaster didn't already point out. Those were very insightful comments, so thanks to him for that. A good lesson to be learnt for new asrai players is not to shoot for the big blocks before the chaff is gone, so I thought i would repeat this. Thinking about the troll game here.


My invitation to play still stands, so I hope I will see you next summer!
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