Last weekend my local gaming group organised a nice 1000 point tournament. It really was an excellent day of gaming, we started off playing with our own armies vs a random opponent. Whoever won that battle would play the next battle with and army which lost, the best general getting the worst army and vice versa.

With that in mind I had set about last week coming up with an army list that would prove to be very frustrating to play with and against. This is what I decided to field:

Characters - 328
Noble + General, Great Eagle, Light Armour, Shield, Helm of the Hunt, Spear of Twilight
Noble + Great Eagle, Light Armour, Shield, Sword of Might

Core - 432
10 Glade Guard
10 Glade Guard
8 Dryads
8 Dryads

Special - 120
3 Warhawk Riders

Rare - 120
5 Waywatchers

Total = 1000
Magic Dice: 2
Dispel Dice : 2

I decided to minimise my magic defense and focus on other phases of the game, figuring that in 1000 point I wouldn't be facing much more than 4 power dice. Boy did I rue that decision

Battle I- My WE vs. Dark Elves

My opponents army included the following:

Noble on dark pegasus + magic lance (+3 S on charge)
Sorceress + lvl 2, dagger and additional spell (blade wind, soul stealer, another damage spell and power dice spell)
23 spearmen (power dice)
5 dark riders
chariot
11 crossbowmen
8 shades with great weapons and xbows

He deployed his army close to each other and had a hill at his disposal to place his xbows on. I deployed my waywatchers close to the noble in a nearby wood, hoping to get lucky on a killing blow or two. May army was deployed with dryads dead centre, glade guard in support and warhawk riders on a flank.

Turn 1 saw him move forward with all his units except for the noble who moved into contact with the wood. His magic wasn't yet in range, but his shades in the central wood opened fire on a unit of dryads, causing no casualties but annoying them greatly. In my turn I moved the waywatchers out of the nobles line of sight onto his flank and opened fire, managing 2 hits, of which one on rider and one on pegasus, no wounds. Dryads charged the shades and decimated them, despite their great weapons and hatred. They subsequently overran into the glade riders who also fled, but were not caught. Eagles moved across the board to harass and warhawk rider tried to charge the spearmen unit to skewer the sorceress but failed an inch short.

Turn 2 saw him move his noble to the hill where the xbows were, spearmen and chariot remained close to each other and hardly moved. Dark riders rallied on the edge of the board and remained close to where they were, for fear of the dryads who had put up a serious threat radius. In his magic phase he unleashed spell after spell, killing off 4 spearmen. Needless to say the warhawk riders and dryads suffered. Shooting then annihilated the remaining warhawk rider. In my turn I charged his spearmen unit with the dryads, hoping to kill the sorceress. The other unit of dryads pressed forward and the eagles moving into a position to combi-charge the large spearmen unit. Shooting saw me roll miserably, waywatchers had 2 hits once again on the noble (despite needing 2's to roll). In combat the dryads bounced, only managing a single wound: rats. They fled and were run down.

Turn 3 was looking bleak, with my failed charge on the sorceress I would have to endure another round of magic. His noble charged my waywatchers who stood and shot (they would have been run down otherwise) and the rest of his army took aim and shot the noble with sword of might to smithereens. Magic devastated me once more killing off 5 dryads and healing the wound I had caused earlier. Waywatchers were torn apart, but the noble choose to not to overrun (leaving him in range of my general). My general charged into his noble who stood his ground. Combat there was dicey, I rolled miserably once again with my noble's attacks. The only wounds coming from the lucky steed rolls. My dryads charged into the spearmen once more hoping to get at the sorceress, but failed to do more than one wounds once again. Needless to say they were run down.

The turns after that just saw the situations getting worse and worse. I lost to a solid victory. My only remaining unit was my general without eagle and a unit of glade guard (who had been rubbish throughout). The waywatchers had been killed by the noble and had failed to cause a single KB attack on him in 3 rounds of shooing. The rest of the army had been destroyed by magic... My opponent had gone through 12 spearmen at the end of the battle, not one being my casualties.

I don't know if I would have done things very definitely. Despite my magic defense I put up a good fight and really had him on edge by charging his sorceress the whole time. Eliminating her in turn 3 would have greatly increased my chances of turning that solid victory into mine... Oh well, 5 points out of 20 to be gained off to the following battle.

Battle II - Dark elves (yes the very army I had just played against) vs. Ogres

My opponent fielded:

Bruiser with tenderiser
Butcher
3 Ogre Bulls with mus
4 Ironguts with St and Mus, including both characters
Scraplauncher
20 gnoblars
gorger

This was a quick battle. In turn 2: I managed to combi charge his main irongut unit with my shades, noble and spearmen. I won the combat by 8 (despite losing a wound on my sorceress, but you can't have everything). I ran them down with my noble. My dark riders had flank charge the scraplauncher, causing a wound and winning combat, breaking the launcher and running it down. His remaining ogres were then cut down by missile fire and magic while the gnoblars fled due to the nearby ironguts being broken. The only model left after turn 3 was the gorger who I had forgotten about completely. He subsequently charged my xbows and chewed through them in 2 turns. In the final 2 rounds I tried to kill the beasty with magic and missile fire, but only got him down to 1 wound. I had destroyed his entire except for the gorger, who had 1 wound left. I had lost my chariot, a wound on my sorceress and the xbows.

Battle III - Ogres (the ones I just faced) vs. Slaanesh mortals (old HoC list)

My opponent fielded:

Exalted champion of slaanesh on steed of slaanesh with rending sword (ouch)
Sorceror
6 Chosen knights
2x5 hounds
19 marauders including sorceror

My opponent split his army into two battlegroups: chosen knights and warhounds in one and the marauders, warhounds and champion in the other. I placed my bruiser in the ogre bulls and the butcher in the ironguts, scraplauncher in the middle to aid either unit and the gnoblars close to my bruiser. In turn 1 all looked well and everything seemed to be going to plan. Then I misread the charge range of the exalted champ who charge across my battleline into the flank of the ogre bulls, having just made the charge. From then on, it was a downhill battle with terrible rolling. My ogre bulls were smashed to pieces by the rending sword wielding champ and the chosen knights. Gnoblars were annihilated and the ironguts fled due to a failed panic test. Scraplauncher bounced against the marauders and was run down. After just a half an hour my army was gone, he had wiped it out claiming 1200 points vs my 60 for two units of hounds.

It was a humiliating defeat, but I still didn't think I did too badly. My first time playing with ogres and I faced an army that was incredibly fast, had the right equipment to cause severe damage to my force, was immune to psychology and was heavily armoured. In the hands of an experienced general, who played a similar list at tournaments I was outmatched on all fronts.

3 Battles landed me with 5+17+0 = 22 points

My army did reasonably well in the second battle, going up against empire and scoring a massacre on them. However in battle 3 they faced the dark elves army once more and lost even worse then I had. This landed them around 9th in the tournament.

Best (and cheesiest) army went to the dark elves.

All in all it was a great day. I had loads of fun and laughs and got to meet a fellow glader: Jayz, who stopped by for a visit. It was very nice meeting you there and I hope to see that army of yours stopping by soon!

hahahah Will do Elbereth. I have to say I was there just to meet the guys and watch some games. I was a great afternoon, lots of fun games. I recall the best game of the tournement actually being an all out battel between a clan master style list skaven and Nightgobblins. 146 vs 148 or so models. all that on a 4 by 4 foot table was a great thing to see. I beleive the Goblins eventually took then win after the Skaven lost a combat and allmoust the entire army ran to the tables edge. all in all a great tournement and on off the best and fun set-ups I've seen in a long time.

and yeah Elbereth for the love of god bring some magic defence next time . but yeah saw the game where the WE masecred the Empire. first thing the Empire player was happy about was no HoDA but after a while he noticed that was the least of his problems. some half range GG shooting lots of things had started to die on him.

Cheers Jayz

Thanks for the report. It was a good read.

I think that you had a horrible luck in the first game. With the dryad attacks failing to kill the sorcerer and getting only 4 hits from 5 way watchers in 2 turns your luck could hardly have been worse.

There is nothing that is as frustraiting as to think that your oppoents uber unit of doom has the charge range of 14 when it really can charge 16 inches.

I wouldn't feel too bad about loosing to the Dark Elf player's magic phase. After all, he had two arcane items on one wizard . No surprise when you loose to someone who cheats.

That HoC list looked vicious. I wounder how it would play with the new rules. All in all, it sounds like you had a really good time. I've never played in a tourney where you had to swap armies. I'd probably enjoy it for one round, but it must have gotten frustrating when you can only use your army once in three rounds.

Not to mention that that Ogre list was ridiculously soft and you probably felt doomed after beating it and then drawing it against that Chaos list.

Your 1000 point list was solid, I'm sure you would have done a lot better had you been allowed to keep it. And of course, had Ogres been not-girly and the Dark Elf list been legal.

Haha! I knew there was something that wasn't right about his list!

Lol that might explain why it did better then average aah was still load of fun no matter what the outcome.

Cheers Jayz

Sounds like a really fun tournament!

I wouldn't mind playing in such a thing.

Frecus
The glade wanderer
Madwarrior

So when are you going to join? Perhaps sometime soon I can try out my new daemons army vs your wood elves

Frecus, Delft is only 3 hrs away...

There, I fixed it for you.

heheh Thanks Willowdark. and Elbereth I need to make my army first If you would lend me your army i wouldn't mind playing against the deamons I guess Might as well start getting used to getting massecered by them . But my army is getting allong slow but steady I'm desperetlay looking for some 20/20 bases.


Cheers jayz

In the interest of being more constructive, I'd like to comment further on the arcane item choices in the Dark Elf list.

I think that a lot of people fall too quickly for the Sac Dag. The tome of furion is a much better item. For only 15 points you get to generate an extra spell, which is huge for a lv 2. Power of Darkness is great, but not when you randomly generate in-optimum spells. Magic is unreliable, and rolling poorly for spells is one of the biggest reasons why. With that extra chance it becomes more likely that your Lvl 2 will roll good spells and will be consistantly effective during the game. Not to mention the fact that the Sac Dag costs, not only the 25 initial points but, at least 6 points every time you use it, meaning your opponent needs to invest at least 120 pts to be effective with the Dagger and not cripple the unit when doing it. With the tome of furion you have more than enough room for a powerstone (which are only 20 pts for Dark Elves) that will boost one phase reliably every game. All the murdered elves in the world won't help if you have 2 spells and one of them sucks.

so in the future, if you see the tome of furion on a lvl 2, you know your opponent has done his home work and is running a responsible list. its the Sac Dag on a Lv 4 that you need to worry about.

Isn't the Lv4 with Dagger a way to force a panic test on the high sorceress unit easier?

And yes, Tome of Furion's not a bad item at all. Actually, I think all the Dark elf arcane items are quite good (I like the familiar the best)

Which is why that is my DE Sorc setup!

Lvl 4 - Dagger, 2 x Scroll, Pearl of ItP
Lvl 2 - Tome of Furion, Lifetaker