Well never having played the list I was very glad I was able to get the teams event in prior to the main tourney because I didn’t know the rules for my army very well at all and subsequently got things wrong a lot, going both ways though admittedly more going my way than the other [he says embarrassingly as he looks at the ground and shuffles his feet], over the course of the team event. Also it meant I got an understanding of what the units could do.
Rather than a battle report I thought I’d give a run down on what I think performed well and what needs adjusting or dropping for future tourneys.
The results were very good for the weekend kicking off with 3 wins in the team tourney from the number 2 slot whilst team muppet road head long for victory.
A quick run down of the main event games:
Game 1. Sean Myles (savage orcs). 17-3. Got the vast majority of the points after my chaos knights luckily broke through his savage orc biguns in the final turn.
Game 2: Trevor Cowper (ogre kingdoms). 12-8. It all looked bleak when my knights got beaten by his iron guts (WTF!) but brought it all back with the miscast result on the hell cannon misfire killing off the butcher.
Game 3: Matt Willis (dark elves).16-4. It was a cut and thrust game where a failed stubborn role for matt took the game.
Game 4: Andrew Galea (dark elves). 4 – 16. Both of us had a lot of luck – Andrew’s got him more points (1400 from two big roles versus my 800 odd) and from there he used his 2 to 1 advantage against me too well. Strange game.
Game 5: Luke van Kyke (dwarfs) 18-2. In what should have been a tough match up for my knights, Luke instead had a brain explosion with deployment that took his war machines out of the game. Thanks Lukey much appreciated.
Game 6: Ken Ferris (woodies) 16 -4: In what Ken confidently called the Karma match up he got a shot at retribution for my recent cracks at his decision making responsibilities. Unfortunately the forces of the universe obviously agree with me and ken struggled to get much to go his way and didn’t add to it with a foolish charge.
Overall I came 7th which I’m happy with. Puts me off to a good start for the year and with a little more practice with the list hopefully I can improve on that start.
But anyway back to discussing what did and didn’t work, let’s start with the characters.
The level 4 and level 2 in the bunker of marauders were very effective. The only game I lost was the game where I unnecessarily put it in a 1/100 risk when keeping them alive would have allowed me magic superiority for 4 more turns (only 2DD left). My only thought is I might look at a way of getting the black tongue on one of these guys to put a little fear of god in people during their own magic phase.
The infernal muthafarking gate way basically means your opponent lets through your other spells, whilst I didn’t get the gateway off a few times nothing got “sucked in” but the 1/12 risk is just too great to let through.
The BSB with favour of the gods and armour of damnation was nothing short of sensational, in most games his ability to buff up a unit of chaos knights made it into a killing machine. Plus the armour of damnation allowed me to neutralise a fair few attacks that saved the knights skin when ever it got in a little trouble.
I don’t think I’m going to make a lot of changes here. As I said maybe the black tongue for against other magic heavy armies and also the demon steed could use a review after it chipped in for a total of zero wounds caused for the tournament.
The Impact Boys:
The 2 units of knights performance was quite mixed, in the end they have limited static res which means they are at the whim of the dice. Still they are a very reliable and effective hammer and will undoubtedly stay in the list.
The Hell Cannon:
I’m still undecided on this bad boy, he was very tough and every opponent seemed in awe of it. Sure in a few games the miscast result on the misfire chart bailed me out, but I just don’t remember any games where it shot well.
Typically he just filled the role of an anvil unit and provided a ranged threat that rarely (2 hits all weekend) came into play.
Is the threat of the cannon blast enough that it doesn’t need to hit? Maybe.
Is 205 points a good investment for a tough to kill anvil unit? Once again maybe.
Is it worth trying something else out to see if it works better? Probably.
The war shrine
Gold, absolute gold this little beauty definitely helped out the chaos knights enough to essentially win two games.
The diverters
Well surprisingly I don’t think the little unit of 10 really performed a 54 point role and will be left behind with more time to paint a better alternative [really who would of thought that!!]
But some discussion here with other players was that whilst they did perform a role they were essentially points given straight over to your opponent, meaning I was starting off giving over 270 odd points. Would it be better off to instead just take a few things that didn’t really need diverters?
What now?
So in standard post tourney mode I am currently playing around with a couple of different things and I’m entertaining running a “different” list switching out the marauder cav and hellcannon for a unit of warriors and unit of khornate marauders.
Of course this would involve me painting more little plastic guys which may or may not ever happen.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The composition campaigners
This is a little vent post (I promise not to count it towards my resolution) about what I believe to be one of the blights on warhammer in Australia that is unfortunately the by product of a positive part of the hobby, composition campaigning.
Effectively it is getting your opponent to focus almost exclusively on the strong choices you haven’t taken rather than on the strong choices you have made with the likely outcomes, if successful, being that you get a better comp score than you otherwise would have.
Over the past few years some people have been very adept at it, some have been far too obvious and some have suffered, unfairly, from not practicing it. It is unfortunately a practice that I view pretty much tantamount to cheating your fellow tourney goers and at the very least an affront to the intent of the system.
It pops up in many forms the on the day chat the opponent is one that is only useful for peer game by game marked composition. For the more seasoned there is the planned campaign, usually wagered via their blogs or internet forum/s whilst posting up lists or, for the exceptionally crafty, simply whilst giving advice on others army lists.
Perhaps my worst first hand experience was when I saw a young player look at his opponents list and was horrified, but then I watched on from the next table as he was slowly talked around by his opponent to giving a good composition score has he had it explaining what hadn’t been taken and that his troops could “only” do this and that.
It is probably because of the prevalence of this that I speak out so often about VC and daemon lists, the major proponents of the comp campaigns at the moment. [Note this doesn’t mean every, or even a majority of, daemon/vc players are comp campaigners treat each case on it’s merits].
I’ve know people who previously agreed with my views on the under costing of VC/daemons but have now, having bought one of those armies, have coincidentally changed their views? Hmmm…
I know it’s a draconian solution but I’ve gotten to the point now that from here on out – you talk to me in a favourable manner about why your army deserves a certain comp score and you’ll getting marked down. Sure it isn’t the intent of the system but neither was cheating the rest of the field by attempting to unfairly influencing you soft score.
Vote no to the composition campaigner
Effectively it is getting your opponent to focus almost exclusively on the strong choices you haven’t taken rather than on the strong choices you have made with the likely outcomes, if successful, being that you get a better comp score than you otherwise would have.
Over the past few years some people have been very adept at it, some have been far too obvious and some have suffered, unfairly, from not practicing it. It is unfortunately a practice that I view pretty much tantamount to cheating your fellow tourney goers and at the very least an affront to the intent of the system.
It pops up in many forms the on the day chat the opponent is one that is only useful for peer game by game marked composition. For the more seasoned there is the planned campaign, usually wagered via their blogs or internet forum/s whilst posting up lists or, for the exceptionally crafty, simply whilst giving advice on others army lists.
Perhaps my worst first hand experience was when I saw a young player look at his opponents list and was horrified, but then I watched on from the next table as he was slowly talked around by his opponent to giving a good composition score has he had it explaining what hadn’t been taken and that his troops could “only” do this and that.
It is probably because of the prevalence of this that I speak out so often about VC and daemon lists, the major proponents of the comp campaigns at the moment. [Note this doesn’t mean every, or even a majority of, daemon/vc players are comp campaigners treat each case on it’s merits].
I’ve know people who previously agreed with my views on the under costing of VC/daemons but have now, having bought one of those armies, have coincidentally changed their views? Hmmm…
I know it’s a draconian solution but I’ve gotten to the point now that from here on out – you talk to me in a favourable manner about why your army deserves a certain comp score and you’ll getting marked down. Sure it isn’t the intent of the system but neither was cheating the rest of the field by attempting to unfairly influencing you soft score.
Vote no to the composition campaigner
Monday, January 5, 2009
New Year - New Article
Wow it’s been a while long enough to almost forget my long in to this little collection of ramblings.
Anyway I figured my new year’s resolution will be to try and average at least one meaningful post a month. You will be pleased to hear I wrote a real humdinger on how I compared units to put together my new WOC force for Dogcon. It was superb top shelf warhammer journalism at its best.
However, obviously these are secrets I am not allowed to share with the rest of the world as the blue screen of death descended to destroy all remnants of my 2009 Pulitzer prize winning article and the accompanying spreadsheets which had taken many many hours to build. So instead you get this hastily assembled shell of an article, please enjoy.
Well as is my way new year, new army. Despite having learnt time and time again that trying out your new army at a large tourney is difficult at best every year I forge on occasionally with a game or two under my belt but more often than not just my theory hammer list and zero game time. At least this year I will play the teams event the day before and hopeful identify the parts of my list that don’t work and the various traps and tricks I can employ.
So in order to replace my epic master piece my plan of attack here is to first give a run down on what I have selected and why and then post event (perhaps even mid event) say what worked as planned, what hidden gems were uncovered and what was horribly ineffective. [and thus knock over January and February in the process –sneaky hey]
The General Theme
Now when I say theme, I’m not referring to Tzalthar, formerly Patrick Vangellud, a once promising acolyte of the college of light who was manipulated by the lord of change as he sought to gain a position of power within the college, but rather the theme of the game play i.e. the strategy behind the army. I know I personally couldn’t care less about the d grade fiction people write about their army and so will attempt not to inflict the same upon you.
Now given that dogcon was going to have compressed short end to the battle points I thought that the kind of force I wanted was one which could go for the smaller wins, especially against the higher tier armies to do that I needed to be able to bunker down and conserve points whilst causing some damage from a distance or if the match up was favourable press home for the big wins needed. [As a side note I actually find with a new army that pressing for the big wins is easier to do but a quick trap to fall into. I find it tougher to go into my shell and eek out the margin victory when I’m less familiar with my list]
So the elements I was going to REQUIRE were
- Ability to hit from distance
- A bunker unit
- At least two impact units
- diverters
Elements that I was going to WANT were:
- combat character
- some multi role diverters/impact units
Choices
I always tend to start with character set-up. The rationale behind this is that, typically, it is your highest concentration of points and also will often guide how your army plays.
For my general I decided to take a level 4 mage given I wanted the ability to break off engagement and still cause damage. This is typically not my style of play so I was also keen to have a tourney where I could mix up the game play and set myself a challenge.
After weighing up the different mark choices I went for Tzeentch. This choice was made for three reasons, the +1 to cast, the +1 ward meaning an item like the collar of khorne becomes a cheap effective defensive item and finally the couple of game winning spells that whilst not always effective put the fear of god into your opponent forcing them to let other attrition based spells through. I chose to kit this guy out with an enchanted shield, dark puppet, collar of khorne, sword of might and a demon steed.
Why the demon steed? Normally I would spurn such an expensive choice but in this case I had already started painting the model (and I hate painting so didn’t want to waste the effort) and I figured this gives my general a more than respectable five S5 attacks enabling him to support the unit in combat. Also with the eye of god rules I wanted to give him a punchers chance when forced him into a challenge.
To support the level 4 in the magic phase I threw in a fellow level 2 Tzeentch boy on chaos steed with a power familiar and dispel scroll. One of my biggest fears with the list 5DD and 1 scroll is hardly shutting down the phase but I’ve survived with less so I should probably just harden up.
Finally I decided to take a third character that could aid in taking the fight to the opponent by grabbing a mounted Tzeentch BSB with flail, shield, armour of damnation and the Favour of the Gods. I used to be very anti BSB’s finding them a very defensive choice but with the newer books allowing them to be armed however you like I enjoy being able to take what is at worst another war banner and at best a great defensive tool and war banner.
The Impact
Well I analysed three choices, frenzied marauder horsemen with flails (low cost, good impact, no survivability), Chaos Knights with mark of nurgle (good impact, great survivability, high cost) and Dragon ogres (see knights). After looking through the guys who proved out to be the most reliable were the chaos knights. So in go two units of six one with the war banner both with muso and standard.
I think this twin linked knight choice is going to become more common than primary schools seeking restraining orders for Trent Denison.
The Bunker
Now I’ll hold up my hand here. I’m not a huge fan of the bunker simply because it is a negative use of points. To do the job really well you need to put some points in there and well I can be a little tight when it comes to spending points on purely defensive elements.
So whilst a lot of players have gone down the route of the chaos warrior unit for protecting their lord choice I’ve stuck with the swordsmenesque marauders with LA, Shield and mark of slannesh. These guys come in relatively cheap yet (I hope) still get the job done when the majority of their front rank is taken up with characters anyway.
Also from a composition perspective I wanted to spurn the more effective choice of the warriors and whilst I’m not prepared to start making wholesale concessions with a list that is expensive and lacks the flexibility of other new lists, you still need to every now and again make people think at least that isn’t a unit of X and give them some hope of taking your critical unit.
Diverters
I remember a time when chaos hounds were reviled around the gaming community too cheap, too effective at their role, more than three units and you were about to see tattooed knuckles of love and hate appear over your shoulder when you went for a quick toilet break..
Now with the new panic rules and almost every army seemingly getting some sort of cheap flyer the poor chaos hound has almost been discarded to the RSPCA.
All joking aside this is perhaps the glaring weakness of the WOC list the lack of skirmishing diverters/fliers to act as diverters, stalemate others fliers and hunt war machines. But alas in the list if you want diverters then, point for point, it is definitely tough to go past the hounds. So two units of these boys get thrown in.
Fleshing the List Out
So with the must haves filled out how do I fill out the list to best support the elements I already have. With this section I typically try to pick something that either accentuates my existing choices or fills a role that the core list can’t.
First off I added the hell cannon. Now I’m not really bringing this in as a sit back and blast war machine more the idea is for it to fill a role of flank blocker that can prevent elite elements swinging down the flank of my bunker whilst also posing a question of the opposing general as to how they keep their flying critter or expensive unit out of the line of fire. So this selection really fills two roles that the rest of the army isn’t capable of fulfilling. [and so it should at over 200 points!]
Next in were the ever dependable marauder horsemen originally with flails, light armour, mark of slannesh, standard and musician. But as with many things when it came to cutting into the peripheral points some of these bells and whistles started to be removed. First the standard went, then the MoS was discarded and finally they left the light armour at home making them cheapish diverters with the ability to inflict a little bit of pain on the charge at WS4 S5.
These guys filled one of the multi purpose roles I’ve talked about previously where they are tougher to compare the value of because you are paying for them to do more than one thing. The horsemen give me the option of additional diverters, helping out the knights if the hounds need to be sacrificed early, whilst also being able to threaten the flank of any units engaging the bunker.
The third “optional” unit I was tossing up between a ranked up unit of marauders with great weapons and mark of khorne or a warshrine plus another small throw away unit. The marauders would hopefully fulfil a threatening role keeping the bunker unit safe when I disengage or alternatively helping with the offensive when I press forward. In the end though the warshrine won out predominantly because of the more direct influence if could provide to my lynch pin units making it at first glance a better “support choice”.
This left a few points which I wasted away on 10 marauders with great weapons to keep fulfilling that cheap deployment, flank threatening role. Ideally I would normally look to reconstruct some of the core choices to use the points but time constraints on painting meant these guys got the call up.
The Plan
Predominantly the plan will be for the hell cannon to control a flank through its’ monster and handler skirmishing ability whilst also giving a pretty impressive field of fire (being a large target). Meanwhile the fast moving elements (depending on the opponent) will work in concert to bait and redirect enabling the knights to get into combat and out of the open field whilst the marauder units hold down the fort, pushing forward if the opportunity presents itself. All the while I’m hopefully forcing the issue with a solid offensive magic phase.
Still the most critical part of the plan is me getting these bad boys painted. I’d say I’m about two thirds of the way there with all base colours on and some of the shading/highlighting completed. Still I need bases, movement trays and detail on every figure so she could be pressed.
Anyway I’m hoping the next article will have a little more insight after the tourney to go through why things did and didn’t work.
Anyway I figured my new year’s resolution will be to try and average at least one meaningful post a month. You will be pleased to hear I wrote a real humdinger on how I compared units to put together my new WOC force for Dogcon. It was superb top shelf warhammer journalism at its best.
However, obviously these are secrets I am not allowed to share with the rest of the world as the blue screen of death descended to destroy all remnants of my 2009 Pulitzer prize winning article and the accompanying spreadsheets which had taken many many hours to build. So instead you get this hastily assembled shell of an article, please enjoy.
Well as is my way new year, new army. Despite having learnt time and time again that trying out your new army at a large tourney is difficult at best every year I forge on occasionally with a game or two under my belt but more often than not just my theory hammer list and zero game time. At least this year I will play the teams event the day before and hopeful identify the parts of my list that don’t work and the various traps and tricks I can employ.
So in order to replace my epic master piece my plan of attack here is to first give a run down on what I have selected and why and then post event (perhaps even mid event) say what worked as planned, what hidden gems were uncovered and what was horribly ineffective. [and thus knock over January and February in the process –sneaky hey]
The General Theme
Now when I say theme, I’m not referring to Tzalthar, formerly Patrick Vangellud, a once promising acolyte of the college of light who was manipulated by the lord of change as he sought to gain a position of power within the college, but rather the theme of the game play i.e. the strategy behind the army. I know I personally couldn’t care less about the d grade fiction people write about their army and so will attempt not to inflict the same upon you.
Now given that dogcon was going to have compressed short end to the battle points I thought that the kind of force I wanted was one which could go for the smaller wins, especially against the higher tier armies to do that I needed to be able to bunker down and conserve points whilst causing some damage from a distance or if the match up was favourable press home for the big wins needed. [As a side note I actually find with a new army that pressing for the big wins is easier to do but a quick trap to fall into. I find it tougher to go into my shell and eek out the margin victory when I’m less familiar with my list]
So the elements I was going to REQUIRE were
- Ability to hit from distance
- A bunker unit
- At least two impact units
- diverters
Elements that I was going to WANT were:
- combat character
- some multi role diverters/impact units
Choices
I always tend to start with character set-up. The rationale behind this is that, typically, it is your highest concentration of points and also will often guide how your army plays.
For my general I decided to take a level 4 mage given I wanted the ability to break off engagement and still cause damage. This is typically not my style of play so I was also keen to have a tourney where I could mix up the game play and set myself a challenge.
After weighing up the different mark choices I went for Tzeentch. This choice was made for three reasons, the +1 to cast, the +1 ward meaning an item like the collar of khorne becomes a cheap effective defensive item and finally the couple of game winning spells that whilst not always effective put the fear of god into your opponent forcing them to let other attrition based spells through. I chose to kit this guy out with an enchanted shield, dark puppet, collar of khorne, sword of might and a demon steed.
Why the demon steed? Normally I would spurn such an expensive choice but in this case I had already started painting the model (and I hate painting so didn’t want to waste the effort) and I figured this gives my general a more than respectable five S5 attacks enabling him to support the unit in combat. Also with the eye of god rules I wanted to give him a punchers chance when forced him into a challenge.
To support the level 4 in the magic phase I threw in a fellow level 2 Tzeentch boy on chaos steed with a power familiar and dispel scroll. One of my biggest fears with the list 5DD and 1 scroll is hardly shutting down the phase but I’ve survived with less so I should probably just harden up.
Finally I decided to take a third character that could aid in taking the fight to the opponent by grabbing a mounted Tzeentch BSB with flail, shield, armour of damnation and the Favour of the Gods. I used to be very anti BSB’s finding them a very defensive choice but with the newer books allowing them to be armed however you like I enjoy being able to take what is at worst another war banner and at best a great defensive tool and war banner.
The Impact
Well I analysed three choices, frenzied marauder horsemen with flails (low cost, good impact, no survivability), Chaos Knights with mark of nurgle (good impact, great survivability, high cost) and Dragon ogres (see knights). After looking through the guys who proved out to be the most reliable were the chaos knights. So in go two units of six one with the war banner both with muso and standard.
I think this twin linked knight choice is going to become more common than primary schools seeking restraining orders for Trent Denison.
The Bunker
Now I’ll hold up my hand here. I’m not a huge fan of the bunker simply because it is a negative use of points. To do the job really well you need to put some points in there and well I can be a little tight when it comes to spending points on purely defensive elements.
So whilst a lot of players have gone down the route of the chaos warrior unit for protecting their lord choice I’ve stuck with the swordsmenesque marauders with LA, Shield and mark of slannesh. These guys come in relatively cheap yet (I hope) still get the job done when the majority of their front rank is taken up with characters anyway.
Also from a composition perspective I wanted to spurn the more effective choice of the warriors and whilst I’m not prepared to start making wholesale concessions with a list that is expensive and lacks the flexibility of other new lists, you still need to every now and again make people think at least that isn’t a unit of X and give them some hope of taking your critical unit.
Diverters
I remember a time when chaos hounds were reviled around the gaming community too cheap, too effective at their role, more than three units and you were about to see tattooed knuckles of love and hate appear over your shoulder when you went for a quick toilet break..
Now with the new panic rules and almost every army seemingly getting some sort of cheap flyer the poor chaos hound has almost been discarded to the RSPCA.
All joking aside this is perhaps the glaring weakness of the WOC list the lack of skirmishing diverters/fliers to act as diverters, stalemate others fliers and hunt war machines. But alas in the list if you want diverters then, point for point, it is definitely tough to go past the hounds. So two units of these boys get thrown in.
Fleshing the List Out
So with the must haves filled out how do I fill out the list to best support the elements I already have. With this section I typically try to pick something that either accentuates my existing choices or fills a role that the core list can’t.
First off I added the hell cannon. Now I’m not really bringing this in as a sit back and blast war machine more the idea is for it to fill a role of flank blocker that can prevent elite elements swinging down the flank of my bunker whilst also posing a question of the opposing general as to how they keep their flying critter or expensive unit out of the line of fire. So this selection really fills two roles that the rest of the army isn’t capable of fulfilling. [and so it should at over 200 points!]
Next in were the ever dependable marauder horsemen originally with flails, light armour, mark of slannesh, standard and musician. But as with many things when it came to cutting into the peripheral points some of these bells and whistles started to be removed. First the standard went, then the MoS was discarded and finally they left the light armour at home making them cheapish diverters with the ability to inflict a little bit of pain on the charge at WS4 S5.
These guys filled one of the multi purpose roles I’ve talked about previously where they are tougher to compare the value of because you are paying for them to do more than one thing. The horsemen give me the option of additional diverters, helping out the knights if the hounds need to be sacrificed early, whilst also being able to threaten the flank of any units engaging the bunker.
The third “optional” unit I was tossing up between a ranked up unit of marauders with great weapons and mark of khorne or a warshrine plus another small throw away unit. The marauders would hopefully fulfil a threatening role keeping the bunker unit safe when I disengage or alternatively helping with the offensive when I press forward. In the end though the warshrine won out predominantly because of the more direct influence if could provide to my lynch pin units making it at first glance a better “support choice”.
This left a few points which I wasted away on 10 marauders with great weapons to keep fulfilling that cheap deployment, flank threatening role. Ideally I would normally look to reconstruct some of the core choices to use the points but time constraints on painting meant these guys got the call up.
The Plan
Predominantly the plan will be for the hell cannon to control a flank through its’ monster and handler skirmishing ability whilst also giving a pretty impressive field of fire (being a large target). Meanwhile the fast moving elements (depending on the opponent) will work in concert to bait and redirect enabling the knights to get into combat and out of the open field whilst the marauder units hold down the fort, pushing forward if the opportunity presents itself. All the while I’m hopefully forcing the issue with a solid offensive magic phase.
Still the most critical part of the plan is me getting these bad boys painted. I’d say I’m about two thirds of the way there with all base colours on and some of the shading/highlighting completed. Still I need bases, movement trays and detail on every figure so she could be pressed.
Anyway I’m hoping the next article will have a little more insight after the tourney to go through why things did and didn’t work.
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