I am posting this "in-progress," so here is what I got to last night:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I was heading to the SAWS Challenge Indy GT, but I was doing it with a list that scored a perfect 30 on their rather restrictive (at least for Wood Elves!) composition scoring system. So I ended with with what I called my “MSU Eternal Guard” list, which you can find below:


Characters: 408 points

Aewyn Machiara, Wood Elf Highborn, Army General (145) 268 points
w/Wild Rider Kindred (50), Annoyance of Netlings (25), Spear of Twilight (30)
Mounted on Elven Steed (18)

Alethia, Spellsinger 140 points
w/2 Dispel Scrolls

Core: 1,129 points

12 Eternal Guard 156 points
w/Champion

10 Eternal Guard 120 points

10 Eternal Guard 120 points

10 Glade Guard 120 points

10 Glade Guard 120 points

10 Glade Guard 120 points

8 Dryads 96 points

8 Dryads 96 points

8 Dryads 96 points

5 Scouts 85 points


Special: 613 points

3 Tree-kin 195 points

5 Wild Riders 166 points
w/Full Command

7 Wardancers 126 points

7 Wardancers 126 points

Rare: 100 points

Etos, Great Eagle 50 points

Etai, Great Eagle 50 points


When you see a unit of Wood Elf Scouts in a list (does anyone ever take these?), you know the owning player has either a) taken complete leave of his senses or b) trying to make a composition statement. We would see which one applied to me!

I arrived at the venue Friday night and had a chance to look around at some of the armies. There were a LOT of Daemon armies, including one whose army list was handed from player to player with looks of incredulity normally reserved for people claiming that Saturday Night Live is still funny. The list had FOUR (4) Staves of Nurgle, one on the Lvl 4 Great Unclean One and one on each of the three Heralds on Palanquins. For those of you without much experience with Daemons, the Staff of Nurgle is a Power Level 3 Bound Item that allows you to cast the “Rancid Visitation” spell from the Nurgle list. “Rancid Visitation” does d6 S5 hits to a target unit within 24”, and then does ANOTHER d6 S5 hits if the unit fails a toughness test, and then ANOTHER if the test is failed again, ad infinitum until the test is passed or the unit is destroyed.

Bad news for Elves, certainly. Hopefully I wouldn’t have to face the list myself, but it certainly made for some lively conversation amongst my clubmates Friday night!

Saturday morning, I arrived, to find I was playing against:

Craig Hunter’s Dwarves

Craig is pretty much the best sport in the Warhammer world (outside of Jason Johnson, perhaps) so I knew I was in for a fun game. Craig was running a very nice “Dwarven Ship Crew” list, which consisted of (this is from memory):

Lord

Thane BSB (w/Oathstone)

Thane

Big Unit of Warriors

Big Unit of Warriors

Big Unit of Longbeards

12 Thunderers

12 Crossbowmen

Cannon w/Runes, Engineer

Cannon w/ Runes, Engineer

Flame Cannon (for setting ships on fire! According to Craig, Dwarven ships are metal)

I had around 10 more drops than Craig so he was down well before I started placing the bulk of my army. He had his war machines and missile troops aligned from the left side of the board to the middle, with the Crossbows anchoring the line in the middle of a fricking town (seriously, there were like five buildings there!). The three big infantry units were well intersupported and set to move up the right flank with the town (and the Stonebearer unit!) covering the exposed flank.

I set up my Eternal Guard, the Eagles, the Dryads, and the Wild Riders to run down the open field on the left to get into his machines as quickly as possible. The Treekin were assigned to root the Crossbows out of the town, while my Glade Guard and Wardancers set up on the right, mostly to punish his big blocks of troops as they advanced.

I got the first turn, which didn’t help Craig’s problem of being horribly outnumbered by a boatload (haha!) of Elves. Craig didn’t have enough firepower to stop all ten units advancing into his left flank and center, although he did get the unit of 12 Eternal Guard down to one, took out a Treekin and wounded another on their way into the Crossbows, killed an Eagle, and damaged two Dryad units (one below half) before I got into him. Once engaged, however, the Dwarven missile troops went down like a cheap date, giving me complete control of the left and center.

On the right, Craig didn’t fare much better. Glade Guard whittled his BSB’s unit below half before it was engaged by Wardancers in the front and a unit of Eternal Guard that found its way over from Army Group Center in the flank. Craig’s right-most Dwarf unit was charged in the rear by Wardancers, who won the combat by one (four kills and rear bonus to static five), breaking (!!) and running down the unit DESPITE the BSB’s nearby presence. Of course, the pursuit move gave the General’s unit a charge on the Wardancers, who broke and gave up a subsequent charge on a Glade Guard unit. The BSB and the SOLE remaining Warrior with him simply would NOT go down, and since the Oathstone was dropped I kept losing (!!) that combat despite having the outnumber and (eventually) three units in the fight. I must have had 15 KB opportunities from the Wardancers on the BSB if I had one, but he would just not die.

Nevertheless, a comfortable victory for the Wood Elves.

TRE: Each battle will have a “Treekin Ridiculous Effort” entry, or “TRE” for short. As the name might indicate, this section will discuss the ridiculous (ly poor, in most cases) effort my Treekin put out during the tournament.

In this case, the Treekin took two cannon shots and lost a member before engaging a unit of Dwarven Crossbows, to whom they kept losing combat until rescued by a flank charge from my Highborn’s Wild Riders, who had already finished off a war machine, turned around, and reached the center of the table. At least they made their break test.

Treekin Ridiculousness Rating (10 being completely ridiculous, 1 being not bad): 3

After lunch, I headed back to the venue for

Game 2: Tom van Dyke’s Chaos Daemons of Nurgle

It seems like a solid quarter of tournament attendees these days have given up their previous armies for Daemons, and Tom is no exception. I seem to play Tom every time we meet at a tournament (seriously, we must have played 8-10 times over the past six years) and he is always a good game and a very solid tactician, so I knew I was in for a test.

Tom’s list (which I actually have a copy of):

Great Unclean One
w/Lvl 3 Caster
Trappings of Nurgle (4+ AS and Regen)
Pestilent Mucus (When GUO suffers wound, all models in base contact take a T test or themselves suffer a wound, no AS allowed)

Herald BSB
w/Lvl 1 Caster, Standard of Sundering, Palanquin

Herald
w/Staff of Nurgle

Herald
w/Staff of Nurgle

16 Plaguebearers w/Full Command

16 Plaguebearers w/Full Command

16 Plaguebearers w/Full Command

3 Beasts of Nurgle

Well, this was going to be a real challenge, as there was pretty much nothing in this list that my Eternal Guard could even touch. Every single one of his units had regeneration in addition to their 5+ Daemonic ward save, meaning that my Glade Guard weren’t going to do a whole lot other than perhaps take the edge off his rank bonus.

And I had absolutely no answer to the GUO, who had T6 and 10W. I couldn’t kill him from afar, due to the aforementioned toughness, ward, and regen (it would take 18 HITS just to average one wound) and I couldn’t really kill him in HtH due to the Pestilent Mucus, which would kill my guys faster than I could kill him. Is there any better army against Elves than Nurgle? Just asking.

And of course we had two Staves of Nurgle and another Rancid Visitation on his GUO, along with Shrivelling Pox and some other spell I can’t remember. So I was in for a treat in the magic phase as well. On to the game!

Well, again I had about 10 more drops than he did, so he was down quick while I still had the bulk of my army to place.

I've never been one to copy/paste a post into my signature, but this one is sorely tempting.

a comment on TRE, you could have made room for that 4th one. 4 Treekin have never let me down.

Keep it coming Mach, I'd love to here more.

I am mighty eager to see Part II.

My guess:

Using DD dice to contain the bound spells and save your scrolls for the worst of the first few Nurgle spells, you get to him with more of your army intact than one might suspect. Once up in his face, you can use your numerical (unit) superiority to divert him around a bit and set up some nice combo charges. He's ridiculously tough, but your army delivers a a high quantity of attacks, which is not a bad route to try and get around the ward/regen combo, esp. since you have decent access to Killing Blow. The strength and quantity of his melee attacks are not unmanagable if you need to stick around for a few rounds of combat.

The key would be getting around his Beasts quickly and finishing off your combo charges before having to give up too much in the way of throwaway units.

Am I close?

The upgrade to that is "The X went down faster than Paris Hilton in a Holiday inn". Which is ya know, pretty darn fast. I'll have to work that into my next battle report.

Mach, lookin good so far . . . Demons are the rage these days and I'm looking forward to the rest of your reports . .. my friend who plays DOW these days has a lot of drops too, and its always annoying on the other side of the table from that stategy. But WE players have high mobility and can deal with it a bit better. I'm currious to see how the Bret matchup went too, because your not fielding much in the way of tin can openners.

you could be on to something though verse demons (at least nurgle) lots of units for deployment and movemenbt phase suprememcy as well as redundancy for absorbing magic damage. . . . hmm

You know, I'm stealing this sentence.

Looking forward to the rest of the report, Mach.

Okay, back from vacation so I should get Part II up tonight.

We're waiting . . .

Some nights are long indeed!

You're a slacker McFly, just like your father.

I am a slacker.