Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Mighty Empires VI- Round 6





10- Warriors of Chaos- Rich
10- Empire- John
8- Orcs and Goblins- Anthony
8- Vampire Counts- Bill
8-Wood Elves- Chris
6- Lizardmen- Nate
5- Warriors of Chaos- Aaron
3-Dwarfs- Billy


Events

Billy- War Tax
Aaron- Headhunter
Chris- All or Nothing
Nate- Raid (Orcs)
Bill- No Guts
John- Building Boom
Rich- Heroic Battlefield (Landmark)
Anthony- n/a (forfiet)

Challenges

Dwarfs VS Vampire Counts
Massacre Vampire Counts- 5EP

Warriors of Chaos (Black) VS Lizardmen
Massacre Warriors of Chaos- 5EP

Warriors of Chaos(Brown) VS Empire
Massacre Empire- 5EP

Wood Elves Vs Orcs and Goblins
Massacre Wood Elves- 5EP (forfeit)



Notes:

No longer the campaign of "draws"Tough round of scheduling and the campaigns first forfeit led to 4 Massacres and mixed the map up quite a bit. Rich's Warriors and My Empire take tie for the lead, and a costly forfeit for the Orcs has them losing there capital to the Wood Elves. The Top 5 slots all have chance to win the campaign with only 2 rounds to go!, next meet Tuesday March 2nd.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Adepticon WFB Championship Primer- Report!


Adepticon WFB Championship Primer

2/20@ Chicago Battle Bunker


With a half dozen practice games under my belt I headed out to Chicago Battle Bunker for the Adepticon WFB Championship Primer, what better way to practice for the real thing, then well play in the real thing. Obviously the turnout here is much smaller at about 1/5 of the size of the actual event ( I think the head count was 22), but everything else taking place is identical including being run by the folks who’ll run the actual event so proper rules calls and FAQ’s are in effect. As well WPS Composition Scores

My List


Empire


Lord

General of Empire- Full Plate, GW, Pistol, Holy Relic, Helm of the Rat Slayer.

Heroes

Warrior Priest- Armor of Metoric Iron, Icon of Magnus, GW

Battle Wizard- Level 2- Rod of Power

Battle Wizard- Level 2- Seal of Destruction

Core

24 Swordsman , Full Command + War Banner

2- 9 man Free Company Detachments

10 Free Company, Full Command

10 Handgunners

10 Crossbows

10 Huntsmen

20 Flagellants (Core due to Warrior Priest)

Special

Great Cannon

Mortar

5 Pistoliers, Outrider w/ Repeater, Mus.

Rare

Steam Tank


Pts 1999 / Models 121/ PD 6/ DD 5/WPS Score 15.09


This list has performed very well for me in practice, tougher than it looks with no Arch Lector, No War Altar and No Knights I it find mobile and very flexible with a lot going on in all phases of the game, with the ability to counter some significant losses. I didn’t miss my BSB once in this event or my recent games, thou I certainly miss having probably my best looking model on the table.


General Strategy

I pretty much deployed the same way with army every game as long as I could fit in with the pre set terrain… My General and Priest with the Swordsman and Detachments at center, Flagellants to one side, and Steam Tank to the other…Shooters where on the flanks protecting both the Cannon and the Mortar,,Wizards were usually on the inside flank somewhere in order to get maximum LoS. The 10 Free Company full command unit is there to grab Objectives as these are scenarios or worst case defend the backfield from small threats, my Huntsmen would also go where they can march block nasty stuff, or grab a building or objectives, finally my Pistoliers would go where ever they looked like the be most helpful..shutting down fast flankers or supporting either Flagellants or the Steam Tank.


Game 1 Vs Lizardmen – John


Lizardmen


Lord

Saurus Oldblood, Light Armor, Shield, Cold One, Blade of Realities.

Heroes

Scar Vet, Sword of the Hornet

Skink Chief- Stegadon, War Spear

Skink Priest- Level 1, Dispel Scroll, Diadem of Power

Core

17 Saurus Warriors FC

10 Skink Skirmishers, Blowpipes X 2

10 Skinks Ranked Javs, Shields

Special

5 Cold One Cav, FC, Sun Standard of Chotec

3 Terrandons

5 Chamelon Skinks

Rares

2 Salamanders/ 8 handlers

2 Razadons/ 8 handlers.


Pts 2000 / Models 89/ PD 3/ DD 3/WPS Score 16

I went first and started out with one of more distasterous starts in recent memory, both Wizards miscast,(thankfully to no ill effects) I misfired on the Mortar (short fuse), and then in my shooting Threw a good 20, “1”’s, came up with absolutely nothing. My friend Aaron whom I played the day before and had a very strong dice game against, words were coming back to haunt me, he said “hope you burn all this dice luck out today” I was worried he was right, but thankfully things leveled themselves out for me most of the game. Turn 2, Johns terrandons fly over my wizard who's alone in the woods -2 to hit I figure he ok nope…a big roll on drop rocks crushes him, so I played the game with essentially one Wizard but he had the Rod of Power and I had both Fireball and Fiery Blast as Spells..so he could essentially do double duty. Next couple rounds I come up big in both shooting and magic phases, a long cannon ball takes out the Stegadon, lucky landing six wounds on the first shoot, and I take out the Razordons.Having a harder time with Salamander but pretty successful at keeping the tank between them and my main block…I think he only got the template on me once for about 4 kills.


The big moment comes when the Cold Ones led by the Blade of Realites wielding Old Blood charged my main block…John's Skink Skirmishers failed to take out my Detachments so I ended up with one Counter charging the Cold Ones flank. My Warrior Priest takes 3 wounds from the blade, I make all three leadership checks at an “8” not the Generals “9”And then save two of the wounds only taking, 1, My resulting Str 6 attacks, 3 from the General, two from the Warrior Priest..plus detachments, attacks and a static res of +5 put John’s General on insane courage. He fails and is run down…The Stank was tied up with Saurus Warriors and Scar Vet for quite awhile, eventually they were wiped out. After that I mopped up remaining lose stuff and grabbed all the objective for maximum points


WIN- 15 pts, + 5 Battle, +5 Objective 25 points.


Having played Lizards a lot lately I was very comfortable facing this list, it’s lower WPS scoring but not as effective as Steve’s list I practiced against, John put too much confidence in the Cold One charge unsupported because unfortunately his dice did not back him up, after the first turn- my dice were above average, while John's were not.John was great sport and a good opponent and I look forward to playing him again.


Game 2 VS Dark Elves- Mike


Oh how I hate playing Dark Elves, I rarely ever win, actually I almost just always barely lose And the army is so damn flexible, it like a different army every time I play them. My opponent Mike shows up with:


Lord

Dread Lord- Soul Render, Blood Armor, Null Talisman, Crystal of Midnight

Heroes

Master, Sword of Might, Null Talisman

Master, Sword of Battle, Null Talisman

Core

23 Dark Elf Warriors, Full Command, Light Armor, Shield, Spears

23 Dark Elf Warriors, Full Command, Light Armor, Shield, Spears

23 Dark Elf Warriors, Full Command, Light Armor, Shield, Spears

10 Repeater Crossbowmen

Special

5 Cold One Knights FC, Dread Knight, Null Talisman, Standard of Slaughter

19 Black Guard Full Command, Tower Master, Ring of Hotek, Banner of Hag Graef

Rare

2 Repeater Bolt Throwers

5 Shades


Pts 1996 / Models 114 / PD 2/ DD 2/ WPS Score 19

I recall the cheers of “60 Spears” at Core Comp and how armies with 60 Spears won the day and here we had 66, plus Black Guard, plus 2 Bolt Throwers (the best Tank killer),Plus the Ring and tons of Magic Resistance, No Hydras, Cauldron, Assassins, No Dark Riders, Witch Elves..etc..etc.. for which I was thankful.

Deployment here was tough, Mike won the roll off and took the hill side..there was no where in my deployment zone I could hide the Tank and have it do what its supposed to do in the game, even though the objective on this table was way too big and consider to block LoS and be impassable..putting the tank behind would have kept it out of the game for what I needed to do..so it was a sitting duck 1st turn. Luckily I won 1st turn, went first and drove behind the building avoiding the bolt throwers. Mike march is wall of Death across the table and the Shade captured a one story building on my right.giving them 360 shooting as BS5, with no way to hit them.… the Cold Ones want to charge the tank whose sitting behind the building waiting for the flank of the oncoming wall to reach its LoS, mike wants to lock the tank up with his Cold One Knights, but Fails the stupidity check and stops right in line of fire of whole bunch of shooting, I kill all but a lone Cold one knight (who eventually becomes unkillable saving off a dozen wounds and breaking my crossbows who run thru and panic my pistoliers…and I lose both due to one guy!


Magic was a wash for me I got off some spells but miscast a ton due to the Ring, luckily none of my miscast were bad ones. But Mikes list definitely works as magic shut down list.


The big moment is Tank charging the flank of the wall of Spears and Black Guard coming my way I charge the End unit who flees…but the tank just plows into next unit over who get charged by my main block…I win by a lot the break and get run down and with a big over run catch the other fleeing block next turn, then plow into the crossbows , then bolt throwers..in Short my Generals unit cleaned house..I got the tank into the black guard as the Flaggies held them for a while, but the tank too some early wounds had problems generating steam and quickly became unusable and the ASF strength 5 and 6 attacks took it down.


My Free Company detachments ended up killing the Shades while my Huntsmen grabbed a table quarter and my ranked Free Company grabbed the objective. In end Mike we both had our big units left (my swords, his BG) but I had more little stuff..the kill points where a tie but I was +500 on extras, Banner, General, + 3 table quarters..so I won the game easily. I have all the objective points..but managed to score “0” battle points Mike picked up about 3 of those, great, hard fought game..kudos to Mike.


WIN 15pts + 5 Objective- 20 points


Game 3 VS Warrior of Chaos – Dennis


Lord

Level 4 Sorceror Lord

Heros

Level 1 Sorceror, Tzeentch, Disk, Book of Secrets

Exhalted Champion BSB

Core

15 Warriors FC

20 Marauders

5 Marauder Horse, Flails

5 Marauder Horse, Flails

Special

4 Chaos Ogres

5 Chaos Knights FC

5 Chaos Knights FC


everyone is MoS expect the Tzeentch Sorceror


Pts 2000 / Models 62 / PD 7 / DD 5 / WPS Score 15



So I have played Dennis before he beat me with an almost identical list last round of Core Comp round 5 back in November…he had better list comp/theme wise this time(making his all Slanneshi,beautifully painted and converted army now led by a Slannesh Sorceror Lord)


Ok, Last Round- Dennis and I are on table 1, which is a first for me…I know we both have high soft scores so whoever wins this is going to win the whole enchilada. The pressure was on. This was a magic heavy game, I got lucky I took the lore of Light and rolled Cleansing Flare (1st time today) also took Dazzling Brightness…(in retrospect should have dropped it burning gaze but thought it would be useful) then I rolled Wall of Fire and took Fire ball with my other Wizard… Dennis had all the Slanneshi spells except titillating delusions (thankfully!) and then his level 1 had flickering fire AND Fiery Blast from the book…damn..it was a magic gun fight. At least Dennis wasn’t throwing 5 Dice Gateways at me every turn this time it was Ecstatic Seizures which is brutal on a toughness 3 army.


This game developed as you would expect early his Marauders on the flanks, I get my Huntsmen in the building, general cautious positioning. I don’t get much out my artillery or magic early..Dennis makes some big moves early…my Crossbows with Wizard packing the Seal of Destruction and Cleansing flare almost runs of the table while attached to fleeing crossbows running from a Knight charge...thankfully they rallied (not before again panicing my pistoliers and running them off the table (that’s two games in row, thank you!)


Dennis’s Lord had a couple big miscasts on Ecstatic Seizures…the second one removing the spell from the game before I could break out the Seal of Destruction on it. This was a big break for me. The Game began to go my way on turn 4 when the following occurred, Dennis used his Marauder horse to draw my Frenzied Flagellants away from my Flank he then charged the Flagellants flank with his Sorceror Lord and the unit of 15 Chaos Warriors he was with, Dennis also held up the tank by Charging it with a unit of Chaos Knight that also had his Exhalted Champion BSB in it. The set up was to Draw my Command Block into either fight and bring Ogres into the flank And then get the other unit of Knights into my other flank..I could see it coming so I waited a turn knowing/hoping my Flaggies would hold and they did..the tank also took a ton of wounds but held the other knights. The second of units of Knight is scared of my Cannon which the Sorceror on the Disk has failed to destroy. I then moved my Swordsmen toward the Ogres still leaving myself LoS to his Sorceror Lord. Dennis decides to Charge his Knights at my Detachment, hoping to redirect into my Command Blocks left Flank. I can see/think this is too far away as he has to wheel two inches to even get in line with my Detachment which flees..Dennis is short on the redirect and 7 inch failed charge drops his second unit of knight right in front of cannon leaving me the perfect flank shot. Seeing this Denis moves his Ogres back. On my turn I charge the Sorceror Lord on the Flank (now going the otherway) my Flagellants did there job and held with 4 guys left.


On the next shooting phase I do pull off the perfect cannon ball going allway thru the flank of the Chaos Knights..killing 4 of the 5 my Wizard buried in the woods gets off a huge Cleansing Flare that takes out 5 Marauder Horse and the wounded the Sorcerer on the Disk. My Command Block then takes down his Sorceror Lord no problem being I am on the Flank My dice are good, with a Static now +7, 3 Ranks, 2 Banners, Flank and out number… Dennis is on Snakes…I run down the General. All he has left at this point are marauders on foot, his Exhalted and 2 Ogres (after I got two with Wall of Fire) Who make a last ditch effort to charge my command block but can quite do enough. I kill both Ogres and the Exhalted runs and gets caught…In the end…I had+4 on battle points, +5 Objective Points


WIN, 15 pts, +4 battle, +5 Objective


This was one of the tightest best games, I’ve played to date..Dennis is great opponent and good guy I look forward to the next match up. This was neck and neck until it broke open my way in turn 4, I won the 1st turn but choose to go second so I could get last licks and that turned out to be a good move this time. Going back to my personal scoring all three of these games where FUN 5, SPORTS 5, COMP 5,

I know a lot of people don’t like (or better yet don’t think they like) WPS but this Event shows that it works, if used per spec (so 2K not 2250)..I played three random people with similar scores who all brought good lists…I don’t even think any of the really low scoring lists where even at the top three tables last round.


Well there you go, I won my first RTT style event as “Overall Champion” of the day. I got box of new Bestigors (awesome my favorite of the new Beastmen kits) and the plaque below. At least when I go to the Championships at Adepticon I will have a good feel for what I am doing as well as the scenarios. I have no delusions of winning based on today I just hope to make the top 20 or something! I think the best part about winning today is that the EMPIRE won!!


Wednesday, February 17, 2010

WFB- 8th Edition- Rumor round-up

Hey folks. I just wanted to take few minutes to reconcile a bunch of new rumors on WFB upcoming 8th rules and 2010 releases..this is really shaping up to be the GW's year of Warhammer Fantasy Battles..here locally WFB is a growing game, with more new players showing up all the time, if you havent played WFB in years or have an interest, now is a great time to get in. All of this info is recycled from other sites and I wanted to comment on some of it, given recent discussions I've had with folks and to point out some contradictions with past information that's been leaked. As far as I can tell all this is recycled from threads on Warseer but props to BoLS and specifically Col. Festus for a bunch of this.

8th Ed Rules:

-on Army Building

Army construction is moving back to percentages. (you may have 25% of your points spent on heroes, 25%-50% on core… etc.)

This makes sense to me some people say it didnt work in previous editions but right now we have people blowing huge amounts of points on just characters. This change will limit the number of characters for armies like DoC and VC where overpowered characters get spammed and support characters get ignored. If your playing a 2250 game you've only got 562 points to spend on Heroes, you can take a Greater Daemon or two or three heralds, not a GD and 3 Heralds..or a Level 4 vampire Lord with a Necromancer or Wight King, not a Level 4 Vamp and 3 Level 2 Vampires. While it kind of screws with my next army as well (yes I have decided I am doing Lizardmen (more on that soon) so if you want to Slann..all your getting is the Slann not the Slann and two Engines!!...personally I like this but I can see already this is going to push the standard tourament games up to 2500-3K, it just makes sense...keep the game standard a 2K with these rules would be coolby me...I just dont see the "give me more" masses swallowing 500 pts of characters in 2K game as the norm.


On Combat


1. Infantry now fights in two ranks by default

keep in mind you strike back in 2 ranks as well obvious suggestions of things like "wow so my 5 wide Chaos Warriors with extra hand weapons will be getting a base 30 attacks" That being before champions, frenzy, and or characters, sound absolutely devastating, I am sure some other caveats will apply but in a way it makes sense and makes things like Chaos Warriors (who in the meta game barely show up on the battlefield in current WoC armies) become crazy useful again and actually be what they are supposed to be, the baddest Mofos; in the land and not just some guys who occasionally show up in a Army that is based around them. Point # 1 fits nicely with point 2.-

2. Speeding up of combat in general. A possibility of introducing a type of combat familiar to Flames of War players, something in which there are no multi-turn combats

Instead
combat is fought over and over again until one side is dead or breaks, all in the same round of combat.

For example a 6x5 block of Saurus Spearmen fight a 3x6 block of
Swordmasters of Hoeth. The Elves attack and kill the front rank of the Lizardmen. The 6 back rank spearmen attack, get luckly and kill the front rank of the Swordmasters, now the next rank of the Elves attacks, and so forth until one side breaks or is wiped out.

Not sure how I feel about this, but Fighting in two ranks and this system will certainly speed things up..I think just infantry changes alone will do that...have to sit on this for a bit it might be cool.

3. Infantry in 40mm+ bases will now gain rank bonuses for ranks that are at least three models wide

makes sense considering the overall speculation of 8th Ed that ranked infantry will count for more and be more powerful, and conveniently help sell more models


4. The rules for Spears are not being changed (makes sense given point 1, spears are still useful)


5. The return of "lapping-around" in combat.- I recently asked how this worked in 6th ed on my local forum..where everyone basically said it didnt work which is why it got canned, how it going to come back and work this time we will have to see.


Artillery

Template changes are pretty much confirmed (no more partials) changes to using the pesky artillery dice are speculated but nothing more than from random commenters


Cavalry

All Cavalry will now cause impact hits making them much more deadly (they need to be with the fight in two ranks thing) again this makes sense given the overall theme of speeding up combat.


On Magic


The magic system is being made more risk/reward oriented

Suggested mechanic is you roll 2d6 to generate PD at start of the game you opponent gets your highest number of one die as dispel dice...so if I rolled a "5" and "6" and generated 11PD, my opponent would start with 6 Dispel Dice, this of course would need to be able to be augement by items/ powers

Dispel scrolls will now just add X "#" of Dispel Dice to your pool

again makes sense with above system.

Expect many changes to the magic phase, including giving irresistable force a downside, while making miscasts harder to have but much more devastating.

On Psychology

Changes to fear and terror -Basically if you cause fear you subtract one to the enemys final CR score, terror by two. Autobreak is gone, as well as having to take leadership checks to fight them (Although I have heard that you may still need a leadership check, but a failed one simply results in needed 6's to hit instead of failing your charge).

So you have a full command, 3 ranks, and you kill two skeletons you would have Banner, 3 for rank bonus, and 2 kills, -1 for fighitng a fear causing opponent. End result 5 instead of 6.


On the Game

No more pitched battles, games will be scenario and mission based with emphasis on having scoring units on the battlefield (ie. core troops)

Overall I must say, in context of all it together speculation aside I'm liking it looking to be a more balanced and faster game, fixing many of the current loopholes that create many of the WAAC abuses out there.



On Releases for 2010

The next two books are Tomb Kings and Ogres no doubt...the order given the rumors should be TK in may/june...Ogres Oct/Nov (so Ogres would be 1st book post 8th ed)
after Ogres signs are pointing to a new Orc and Goblin book.

Given rumors of this summer national WFB campaign...8th ed is either going to come out before or after. Here is the current purposed releases.

The 8th Ed Starter set is now High Elves and Skaven

I dont know whats up with that because I was told at Games Day last year that someone had seen prototypes in Baltimore of the 8th Ed Starter and it was Empire and Orcs with the below new Empire Knights and Orc Boar Boyz in the set..when this changedI dont know, but apparently its been changed...or my source was just speculating on what he saw (totally possible)

* Plastic Griffon
* New Plastic High Elf Spearmen
* Plastic Silver Helms
* Plastic Weapon's team of some sort for Skaven
* Ogre Kingdoms new plastic Rhinox kit
* Tomb Kings new mini
* New Orc Boys are coming (molds spotted being cut)
* New plastic Dark Riders
* New plastic Knights of the Inner Circle
* New plastic Black Knights
* New Orc Boar Boys

Comment away guys, yeah its ALL RUMOR but when combined the big picture is starting to come together.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Adepticon Checklist



If you noticed in the left sidebar I posted some brief details on my WIP toward Adepticon. I've been pretty busy of late and not much time for the hobby or blog, but with 42 days and counting I need to get serious about what needs to be done. I've been fiddling around all last weekend with non-GW related models and terrain (more on that later) but last light got cracking on my Adepticon to-do list. So if only for my own benefit here goes:

1. Lord of Rings, Championship (Friday AM) Models -done, Display Base- Done,
Objective Marker- Not Done..(this is kind of thing that gets overlooked until its to late.)

2. Warhammer Warbands (Friday PM) Models 45, Built 45, Painted 35 need to paint 10 converted handgunners..the entire warband is built from the Empire Militia box, except the 2 characters.

3. WFB Championships (Saturday) Models 120, Built 110, new models to build 10, models to paint around 15, The Stirland Deathjacks will be joining my Hochland/Talabecland Force
considering there color scheme matches perfectly, making good use of that new archer kit..a few new models (unit standard bearer, converted mortar) and new General (on foot) spice things up.


4. Display tray- at 120 models I can't do much with my tray other than try to spruce up the back panel with some Empire style graphics..some gothic text or something to really add to the army presentation as a whole would be nice.. I talked about this last year, ran out of time and now start thinking about it again when the clock is ticking..I plan on getting my models done this month or 1st week of March at the latest...so I should have two weeks to something for my display..we'll see..oh the procrastination!


5. Practice games..practice continues..thankfully I can try my 2k list out in our Campaign games
as it meets all the campaign criteria..I dont have the option for extra units in the campaign thou so it not ideal and everyone elses army isn't WPS Comp, but it's better than nothing. Steve and I had that rematch I talked about in the Playtesting post, Empire vs Lizardmen WPS 15 for me and 21 for him and the result was DRAW...good to know..looking forward to the Adepticon Primer hosted by the guys at IWFB.org on Feb 20...should give me a good idea where my Empire list is going to sit. a couple more 500 point warband games would be nice as well!

I seriously need to play some Lord of the Rings..I am cold turkey on it and was just getting a good feel for the game in the last primer I played in and havent played since. I wish I had my act together to attend Gathering in the Desert with Tim, Brent and the guys...but life is just too complicated to do it all. Hopefully I can convince some the club guys to throw down some LotR with me for a few games before I go into the Championships at Adepticon!. LOL..I'm going to get creamed!.

I think that covers my Adepticon preplist..if you've got your own lets hear it .I love hearing
the crazy ones and them seeing them actually get done!

 

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