Fortunes of War Report - 2008

My army:
Archmage: Ethereal robe, Seerstaff and Dispel Scroll
Mage: Ring of Fury, Silver Wand
Noble: BSB, Sword of Might, Helm of Fortune, Barded Steed
Noble: Lance, Temekadors Gauntlets (+1sv, 5+ward), Barded Steed

19 Spearmen:Full Command
10 Archers

13 Swordmasters: Full Command, Banner of Sorcery
13 White Lions: Full Command, Lion standard
5 Dragon Princes: Full Command, War Banner (bsb rides here)
5 Dragon Princes
Lion Chariot

2 Bolt Throwers
2 Great Eagles

This army has been constructed with a very attacking philosophy, it moves fast and hits hard but lacks a bit of staying power that comes with ranks and higher numbers of troops. It competes well in all phases to the extend that it has occasionally dominated every phase of the game in some of my matches. While most of my High Elf playing friends have been fielding star dragons I decided the archmage was the way to go, and while I will be trialling the big beasty for Convic if the points limit at a tourney is 2500 this is the army I will most likely use, primarily because it is balanced, strikes hard and fast, and has the tools to overcome any opponent which is perfect for competetive tournament play.

Day 1

Game 1 – Peter Spiller, Vampire Counts

Vampire Lord
3 Vampire Heroes
2*25 units of skeletons
25 Grave Guard
Corpse Cart
2 Dire wolf units
2 Varghulfs

Pete and I both hail from the Hampton Games Club, and to be facing on of my most respected (and somewhat feared – stupid undead) opponents in the first round made the start of this tournament rather daunting. Games between Pete and I are often quite cagey and this was no different, no one willing to commit their troops for fear of a swift and devastating counterattack from the other. Both armies were casting magic, including a second turn magic phase that saw me cast every spell I attempted. This followed by a few medium phases by both players and two magic phases where my archmage drained magic and wounded itself. Pete allowed me to charge his varghulf on the left flank with dragon princes, and some good rolling saw it killed, my white lions hacked through a unit of skeletons while the lion chariot eliminated the corpse cart after previously running through a unit of bats, and some ghouls. In the second last turn Pete charged two of his hero level vampires into my spearmen with archmage, both vampires fluffed so my archmage survived (despite already being on one wound) and both vampires popped due to combat res. This gave me a flank charge on the skeleton unit with the other two vampires in it with spearmen charging on one side, and the lion chariot on the other. I challenged petes hero level vamp to stop it wailing on spearmen, and despite not being able to hurt my archmage it managed to miscast, roll double 1’s and do a s10 hit on my mage, killing it. Final turn involved his vampire lord finishing on one wound at the end of the combat, and the grave guard charging and breaking my dragon princes with BSB.

Final result: 17-3
Top performer: The spearmen, killed 3 vampire lords and plenty of skeletons and left the vampire lord on one wound at the end of the game.

Game 2 – Mark Povah, Slaanesh Daemons

Daemon Prince
Exalted Daemon
3 units of Daemonettes
2 units of Pleasure Seekers
3 units of Mounted Daemonettes
1 Daemonette Chariot

Last time I played Mark it was at Conquest, I was using dwarves and things went badly with me not getting a single victory point. This time I assured mark that it would be different, and the game turned out to be an absolute bloodbath.

I deployed fairly defensively and made sure all my units were supporting each other, in the third turn Mark took my bait of the dragon princes with both his heroes and I fled, then flanked the exalted with the lion chariot and overran into the daemon prince who I’d magicked earlier. Unfortunately my Dragon Princes (with BSB) forgot that they were supposed to rally and fled the field.

Mark then charged my swordmasters with his pleasureseekers and a unit of mounted daemonettes. I’d hoped he would charge as with the hero on the flank of the swordmasters I didn’t think they would do any wounds, and I was fairly confident 13 WS6 S5 attacks would put a dent in the pleasureseekers. One failed fear check later and my 13 attacks were hitting on 6’s, and I lost combat by two, losing the swordmasters. The pleasureseekers then charged the spearmen, broke them and persued 9 inches. The spearmen escaped, but the mages who were 6 inches away fled 3 inches and were run down, along with both my mages. This took me from a fairly decent win to a loss which vexed me somewhat, but that’s warhammer for you.

Final Result: 7-13 Marks way.
Top Performer: Lion chariot, killed the exalted, pinned the Daemon prince in place and allowed me to kill it with magic and shooting.

Game 3 – Brendon Slade, Dark Elves

Highborne on cold one
Noble with Hydra banner on cold one
Two Mages, one mounted and one on foot
20 Corsairs
20 Spearmen
2*10 Witch Elves
5 Dark Riders
2 Bolt Throwers
10 Cold One Knights with War Banner.

As soon as I saw Brendons army I was fairly confident, High Elves really tend to walk all over dark elves with impunity, and I had the tools to take on anything his army could throw at me. The first 4 turns consisted of my army running up to his (half of which had been magicked to death) and basically hitting it with great weapons and lances. Some rather good rolling saw the swordmasters kill 9 which elves (in one round), break the had and do 8 wounds to a cold one chariot, then flank another chariot and do 7 wounds to that. The only thing that slowed them down was a unit of corsairs, and that was because I could only get 4 swordmasters in contact. The final turn consisted of my charging his Death Star (the CoK with both the Highborne and the Noble in them) with my Dragon princes (with BSB), my other mounted hero and the lion chariot. Some bad save rolling from Brendon meant 9 of the CoK died, as did the bsb and the Highborne failed to wound my BSB.

All tallied up and the High Elves had vanquished the foul Druchii to the tune of 4000 victory points to 75, there really was nothing Bredon could have done as I dominated the movement, magic, shooting and combat phases, and combined this with some absurd rolling.

End result: 20-0
Best performer: Swordmasters, didn’t kill that much in points but their absurd rolling gets them the award.

End of day one and I was sitting nicely on 44 battle points, I was loving how the army was operating and everything was doing its job. We went back to gregs and played a bit of Halo, which mainly consisted of Pete, Greg or I going for a ghost and hooning around like maniacs and running as far away from Greg in a mad panic as quickly as possible when we heard the much feared sound of a charging Spartan laser.

Day 2

Goblin Warboss
BSB, Re-roll panic banner
2 Goblin Big Bosses in chariots
4 Big units of Night Gobbos
4 Bolt Throwers
2 Stone Throwers
1 Doom Diver
25 Gobbo Archers
Lots of spiders/wolves

Stephan and I had been talking to each other a lot about differing stratagies and styled both at Uprising where we were in the same car, and yesterday after game 3. So when it turned out we were playing each other in round 4 it was time to put the #### talking to rest and show what the other was made of.

I was fairly confident as there wasn't much in Stephans army that scared me, I popped most of the fanatics with my eagles and while his shooting had the potential to really hurt me it didn't as all my units are thin so don't mind bolt throwers nd I had nothing big for him to shoot at. In the first turn I put flames of the pheonix on his generals unit with the bsb, stefan failed his re rollable panic test and his general fled the field! The rest of the game followed much the same pattern, I would pick a unit, hit it with flames of the pheonix (I had two copies) and it would panic. All 4 of the large goblin units fled the table from panic, and it allowed me to use my entire army to deal with his peripherals, which it did.

End Result: 20-0 win
Best Performer: The Archmage, burnt his way through 3 units of goblins with impunity, single handedly taking that game from what could have been a tight contest to a massacre.

Game 5: Andrew Goodman, Ogre Kingdoms

Tyrant
BSB
2 Butchers
3 Bulls
3*3 Ironguts
3 Maneaters
2*2 Leadbealchers
20 gnoblars
10 trappers
1 Bull Rhinox, War Banner
I know Andrew to be a very good opponent and his army was always going to present a challenge, during my games with high elves the thing i've mostly had problems with is units of monsters, and this army had plenty of them. Things started will with some good magic rolling reducing an irongut unit to 1 model, and then a bolt thrower came along and put 3 wounds onto the tyrant who was in the unit.

Andrew then charged his rhinox into my white lions, and when I held he explained that he hadn't heard me mention that the unit was stubborn. I (somewhat graciously) allowed him to take back the charge, despite the good position it put me in and let him charge the lion chariot, the chariot fled and we moved on. The rhinox that was now on my flank terrored the swordmasters through my entire army, this panicked the white lions (who ironically don't care about the rhinox) as well as the archers with mage in them. This tactical re-deployment put me on the back foot in a major way, and I went from a good position to one where I was forced to defend for all I was worth so I wouldn't be overrun. I wanted to charge my mounted hero into the flank of some bulls but i'd alread moved a great eagle and Andrew wouldn't let me take it back, but its a tournament so I shouldn't be making mistakes like that anyway. The bolt throwers hit the Rhinox 6 times in the game, for 4 wounds on the beasty meaning it survived, other than that I blasted the leadbealchers away with magic and ran down a unit of ironguts with my dragon princes (who were killed by maneater shooting). The other dragon princes panicked off the table and in the second last turn I managed to run down the bulls with my spearmen, panicking the ironguts with tyrant, butcher and bsb in them. They fled to within an inch of the board edge before rallying in the final turn.

End result: 10-10 Draw, 5 or 6 victory points my way.
Best Performer: No one, none of my units did anything spectaculer this game, unless having most of your battleline shift about 20 inches to the right can be called spectaculer.

Game 6 – Nathan Ash, Chaos Mortals.

Exalted Champion
Exalted Daemon
Aspiring Champion (BSB)
6 Chosen Knights
15 Bloodletters
20 Chaos Warriors
15 Marauders
1 Chariot
1 Chaos Giant
2*5 Marauder Horsemen
6 Chaos Hounds

Another army I was confident against, again because I knew I had all the tools in my arsenal that I would need to take it down. Not a godo match up for Nash because I had better movement, magic, shooting and combat than he did, so barring any horrendous tactical decisions on my part I figured I could come out of it with a good win.

I deployed with a fairly wide battle line, spearmen, swordmasters and white lions in the centre, dragon prince units on each flank with the mages and bolt throwers not having a very good line of fire. I took out his marauder horsemen with the lion chariot and magic in the opening turns, and the hounds were butchered to the tune of 12 wounds by the swordmasters. On the left I charged the chariot with the dragon princes, destroying it and overruning past the giant which had been flanked by white lions when it strayed too close to the forest they were protecting.

The lion chariot bounced off the exalted, allowing it to charge my swordmasters at the same time as the bloodletters. Despite this combined charge I was still confident in my swordmasters ability to kill toughness 3 troups, and when I did 11 wounds to the bloodletters and 2 to the exalted (before saves) with 15 attacks any worries I did have were banished. I used both my eagles to bait the chaos knights, allowing me to flank them with the dragon princes and despite niether side doing any wounds I broke them and ran them down. My spearmen charged the chaos warriors (with exalted champion) who were down to 6 models thanks to copious amounts of magic. This almost ended in disaster when I forgot that the exalted was in the unit (he blends into the warriors somewhat) and had he been packing a magic weapon my archmage would have been in a lot of trouble. He still would have been had the swordmasters not come to his rescue, with the exalted carving up the spearmen I was on the verge of losing combat and with it my archmage.

End Result: 20-0 Win
Best Performer: The swordmasters, more brutal rolling combined with rescuing the archmage gives them the honours for this game.

Prizes were announced and the alliance was victorious! I finished on 94 battle points which had me as the best general, and in the end tied equal first with Mark Povah, who was given first prize on countback. Congratulations to Phil as well for taking out 3rd place, as well as Pete and Ben Leopold for bringing the two 'best general' trophies to the Hampton Games Club. Thanks again Jack and Dom for running an awesome event, easily the most fun I've had at a tourney so far this year.

FOR THE ALLIANCE!!!