The army lists on display here were, as is typical for a tournament attended by a tight knit gaming group, were “different”. I’d say 50% of the field was probably balanced or tuned lists and the other 50% were scissors paper rock armies.
Some feedback on the tourney: Positives, now these far outweighed the negatives: Played in excellent spirits, great to see so many young WHFB guys play in the open rather than the junior. Clearly the CTA guys are doing a great job of encouraging young fantasy players. Quality of game play was actually well above what I expected.
The negatives were firstly that transparency was very low I still don’t know how the sports and comp scoring actually worked including what mark I gave my opponents? I’d normally expect to know what the score I gave was. The scenarios, okay capture the flag and kill the general, a couple of hundred points at most here and there is fine, it skews the game a little but not disastrously so. The take and hold style scenario was in my view an utter diaster that completely destroys any balance in the game,.
Army List
My list was very similar to the list for dog con minus the useless unit of marauders.
Characters:
Level 4 MOT – collar of khorne, enchanted shield, black tounge, demon steed
BSB MOT – favour of the gods, armour of damnation
Lvl 2 MOT – puppet
Core
2 x 5 hounds
2 x 5 marauder horsemen with shield flails and MOS
20 Marauders – MOT LA/SHLD
Special
2 x 6 Knights – MON, one with War banner other banner of wrath
Rare:
Warshrine (mos)
Hellcannon
Game 1: Louis Samuels (Dwarfs)
First game up against an unknown young guy with dwarves. Great a 15-5 at worst and a good start to the tourney unfortunately it became the old age lesson of never underestimate your opponent.
Louis had a moderate dwarf army with 2 bolties, a cannon, a unit of thunderers, 2 units of quarrellers, a unit of hammerers, a unit of clansmen, 2 rune smiths, 2 units of ogres, a BSB and a lord. Magic items were heavily weighted towards defence.
Louis made only one mistake in deployment putting a unit of thunderers, with rune smith on the extreme flank that best case could only claim a unit of horsemen. His placement of artillery thought was perfect, aligning them so there was no way for me not to offer a flank on both of my knights when I pushed forward.
I on the other hand screwed my deployment and first turn something fierce. I didn’t screen the flanks of my knights from the bolties (idiot) and for some reason spent a runt dicking around rather than pressing forward. That one turn cost me my knights and saved his clansmen (with rune smith) from a 6 knight + BSB charge (all with +1 attack from the shrine).
In the end his shooting took care of the knights and the hell cannon (well his engineer in combat killed the hell cannon but hey...)
End result: 8-12 loss and me left wondering about my case of muppetitis.
Game 2: Joel Espinosa High Elves
Joel is a former club mate of mine but we had only really played once, thanks to my sporadic attendance, in that game Joel made a couple of deployment errors that cost him.
In this one he had a rock hard He army with the obligatory two units of sword masters, dragon princes, 2 mages, phoenix guard, two min units of sea guard, 2 eagles, 2 bolties and of course the obligatory lord on star dragon (seriously they should rename it COTD clash of the dragons).
Game was kind of decided turn 2 when Joel brought his star dragon and lord out from behind cover hoping to get him in combat ASAP to stop gateways being opened up left right and centre. So I got one turn to shoot at it with the Hell cannon, after a perfect guess the cannon hit killing the lord.
Next turn he threw the dragon into the flank of my unit of knights which had the Stubborn 4+ ward gift bestowed on it by the warshirne along with banner, BSB, warbanner. Knowing he would otherwise lose combat he threw the phoenix guard into the front of the same unit. Over the course of the next 4 turns it went back and forth him beating me, me passing the stubborn, me beating him, him holding until eventually both units broke. I didn’t get the dragon but got half points.
Across the rest of the battlefield my magic held sway (after black tongue killed his best wizard), still Joel was able to eventually shoot down my knights and do enough to keep the result close.
Result: 13-7 (21/40 points)
Game 3: Tom Goldie (Wood Elves)
Tom had a relatively typical wood elf army – 2 units of war dancers, a treeman, an eagle, wild riders, 5 units of dryads, 2 units of archers, warhawk riders, a bsb, 2 mages and a branch wraith.
I kind of knew what was going to be the problem for tom his screening units of drayds couldn’t stand up to my knights and his archers weren’t going to be able to punch through them.
Tom made the mistake of firing at my knights first turn which gave my marauder horse one turn of not being fired at and allowed them to charge one unit and kill it, whilst the knights took care of the other. The BSB’s unit (with +1 attack) ploughed through the dryads and over ran into the treeman, he made the Ferris error of throwing the wardancers into the knights and ended up losing his flank as a result.
He had a massive combat in the middle where the dryads hit my marauders front whilst an eagle and warhawks hit the rear. He won the first turn by one, I held and then broke them the two turns later. After that it was a bit of mop up. Tom had taken enough off me to prevent the 20-0 though.
Result: 19-1
Game 4: Chris Ball (VC)
I had a bit of a spit before this game when I found out that the game was decided only by table quarters nothing else (the players pack I read on the net was, lets say, light on for detail and as such did not talk about this hence a rude shock that we would play a 40k scenario at a WHFB tournament).
I was playing against a VC army with 9 pd and a dragon, essentially without copious amounts of luck, a great game by me and a few errors from Chris the best I should be able to do was a draw given that he can raise units in every quarter and is unbreakable.
To me this scenario had no place in WHFB it is a 40k scenario that just straight up does not work in WHFB. It was far and away in my top 2 worst scenarios I’ve ever played. [side note: the other being where the centre of the battlefield had a mystical crevasse and when you went near it you had to roll on a table and anything could happen to you from being attacked by 4 vampires to auto destroying all units with 2D6 inches that was tops.]
Chris had a lord on dragon, two other vamps, one with +1 level, 1 a BSB, 2 units of zombies, a unit of skellies, a unit of black knights, one large unit of wolves, wraiths, varghulf and some bats.
The game basically went:
Step 1: got some good luck Chris’s dragon went stupid two turns in a row so couldn’t cast and I rolled up two pandemoniums for spells which meant he kept miscasting and I kept altering his miscasts to get rid of his best spells and magic levels. With me holding sway over magic it was tough for Chris.
Step 2: Chris made a mistake of drawing the battle line inside his two table quarters allowing me to meet him there and control all 5 (there was an objective in the centre that counted as a “quarter”) when he should instead pushed to get across the middle and force me to fight my way into his half. He probably did this because at the start of the game he had a bazillion options for getting each quarter that the strategy wasn’t needed
Step 3: Fired up by the stupid scenario, plus being hangover free, I played tactically my best game of the weekend coming up with a plan and executing it perfectly
End result: 15-5 (55/75)
Game 5: Darren Donaldson (Khorne warriors)
Darren had an uber combat army with 4 units of Khorne knights (eep), 3 or 4 units of dogs for screening, 2 units of khornate marauders with great weapons, a unit of khornate warriors with GW, 2 level 1s with 4 scrolls and a lord on jugger with the demon sword and some ridiculous negative on his save.
On an open table he would have been able to hem me in and control the game but our table had a diagonal river through it splitting it in two and on one side a Forrest splitting it into three.
I deployed the fast cav on the open side of the river knowing they had the move to redeploy across if he weighted that flank, and kept the knights close by with the hope of neutralising one unit of knights on the far side of the forest and hopefully redirecting and punching through the other three with my diverters and two units of knights.
The game went pretty much to plan Darren made two rules based errors that essentially cost him the game:
1. one with where my chargers were going to end up after his hounds fled. He thought they go straight ahead not centre to centre following the hounds, this meant that instead of my unit being in no-mans land it hit the flank of one unit of knights carved it and then over ran into the flank of his marauder block supporting the two units of knights over the river. Which allowed my BSB’s unit to charge another unit knights and pursue them into the unit behind. This was pretty much the game.
2. the other mistake, though less costly, was he brought up the general in a unit of hounds but positioned him so I could avoid him with the hell cannon (as the dwarfs can’t reach they go to the back) meaning I broke him and at least got rid of his frenzy and immunity to psychology and many panic tests ensued (though none failed).
Taking those units out meant I could focus all of my magic on his one remaining unit of knights that was bottled up behind the forest eventually whittling them down to two and forcing them to charge my generals bunker.
End result: 20-0 (75/95)
Well second tournament with these guys so have to be happy to pull in a second place behind the immortal Jeff Traish. I must admit I’m enjoying having tactical options after the beastmen and the O&G generally being forced to concede certain elements of the game.
Breakdown
Things I did wrong over the weekend that I and hopefully others may learn from.
- Kept forgetting my bound spell and using that at the end, rather than trying to drag dice with it at the start. Rookie error.
- Have to think of blot throwers as a ranked up unit when in my flank, never present the knights flank to the bolties; or
- Screen the freaking flanks of the knights for Christ’s sake Brad (seriously how many shots to my flank will it take before I learn)
- black tongue was nice but I could think of more effective uses of the 50 points.
- Hellcannon is over rated and I was still uncertain how to use him. However my opponents very much over rate it which gives it a fear factor (that ironically by writing this I’m helping to dispel – so ignore that point)
- Marauder horsemen are shite with flails, may as well throw some axes on them.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
Baby with the bathwater?
So here we stand at the window with our baby bath full of dirty tiered composition water and question do we just chuck it out the window? So I think it maybe time to consider checking if it is absolutely necessary for the panel comp baby to take the four story drop with the second hand suds?
Now on the tier comp side I think it was a worthwhile experiment half bringing the objective and subjective comp guys together. [side note: We kind of already knew it wouldn’t work at dogcon given it didn’t work at masters, but despite this its failure at DC seemed to catch people off guard. I personally went in expecting a 6 point range]
There were several problems and many can be argued over and over from both sides but the central problem I think is it combined the “non-core” attributes of both the objective and subjective approaches.
From an objective system stand point it didn’t take into account what was in the army just what book and from a subjective view it constrained the reviewer and prevented them from assessing the army against the rest of the field.
Now the first question I have from here is can it be salvaged or is the combination a fatal flaw. I think it may be possible to get the train back on track.
Some potential changes that I think may give both more freedom and direction and hence better results:
- The tiers need to not be hard tiers that appear to cap and floor an army’s score. Rather I’d prefer to see what score we expect the average army for any book to achieve. Don’t then have a restriction on the pluses and minuses just say score this army out of 5, 7, 10 or what ever keeping in mind average army for this type is (for example) a 2 out of 5. This way the panel can mark not only in regards to that army book but also against the field as a whole.
- We need for each book a sample “average” list for each tourney. Happy to admit I WAS WRONG in opposing this earlier. I have finally come round to this after being an opponent of it as I thought people would try and loophole the standard list or take something different and cry like roger federer when they get a comp hit “what do you mean my regenerating grave guard bunker is significantly harder than the two units of zombies in the standard list? Lets have a 37 page thread on how unfairly I was treated”. But heres the thing people will cry over those four or five points either way, so if clarity will produce more consistent results and make people feel more aware of their score I’m all for it.
With those two changes I think we get a system that is more flexible and consistent. The flexibility, I believe, is the most important thing. Speaking from professional experience, as soon as you overlay multiple static rule sets you can loophole them.
[side note: it is interesting that people can consider that objective comp will eventually be the answer when if you say look at another system of overlaid complex rules tax and ask how have governments around the world started to cut down on tax structuring and arbitrage? By putting place subjective tests because people consistently found the new loopholes with every change in the traditional objective tests. But hey I’m sure we are better at designing an objective system to overlay than every tax lawyer engaged by the governments around the world who only live and breath those systems and specialised in them academically.]
But the next question is: are tiered and panel comp inextricably linked? Can you only have one if you have the other? This appears to be the argument conveniently being pressed home with vim and vigour by the formula composition guys. [Side note: I was taught this as a negotiation technique: link two elements together then argue against one and effectively get them both conceded.]
I personally thought panel comp was working pretty well prior to the introduction of the tiers and that whilst there was the occasional outlier whose results weren’t justified but we sure abandoned the approach very early given how well it seemed to go. Sure army bias was exaggerated but I think tiering in conjunction with it only compounded that bias.
One other thing I would like to encourage is for panel members to look through their results and test to see if the “average” they’ve given for each race is appropriate. Any panel I’m a member of I do this and if I vary too much for one race or seem to be displaying bias I look through again and try to form arguments against my initial feelings. This isn’t to say that I always change them just that if I’m not giving an average mark for the race then I want to be certain it isn’t because I’ve misread the “hardness” of the tournament or because of unreasonable bias.
So I guess what I’m suggesting for the way forward is, for at least larger tourneys, revert to straight panel composition, preferably with the guidance for average scores for each army provided.
The next few months will be an interesting time in Australian warhammer, I get the feeling that the ETC (a system that I actually agree with in the environment it is intended for – a battle points only tourney bringing many different tourney scenes together) is being used to shoe horn comp formulas into Australian tourneys which will be primarily for the benefit of the elite players.
Now on the tier comp side I think it was a worthwhile experiment half bringing the objective and subjective comp guys together. [side note: We kind of already knew it wouldn’t work at dogcon given it didn’t work at masters, but despite this its failure at DC seemed to catch people off guard. I personally went in expecting a 6 point range]
There were several problems and many can be argued over and over from both sides but the central problem I think is it combined the “non-core” attributes of both the objective and subjective approaches.
From an objective system stand point it didn’t take into account what was in the army just what book and from a subjective view it constrained the reviewer and prevented them from assessing the army against the rest of the field.
Now the first question I have from here is can it be salvaged or is the combination a fatal flaw. I think it may be possible to get the train back on track.
Some potential changes that I think may give both more freedom and direction and hence better results:
- The tiers need to not be hard tiers that appear to cap and floor an army’s score. Rather I’d prefer to see what score we expect the average army for any book to achieve. Don’t then have a restriction on the pluses and minuses just say score this army out of 5, 7, 10 or what ever keeping in mind average army for this type is (for example) a 2 out of 5. This way the panel can mark not only in regards to that army book but also against the field as a whole.
- We need for each book a sample “average” list for each tourney. Happy to admit I WAS WRONG in opposing this earlier. I have finally come round to this after being an opponent of it as I thought people would try and loophole the standard list or take something different and cry like roger federer when they get a comp hit “what do you mean my regenerating grave guard bunker is significantly harder than the two units of zombies in the standard list? Lets have a 37 page thread on how unfairly I was treated”. But heres the thing people will cry over those four or five points either way, so if clarity will produce more consistent results and make people feel more aware of their score I’m all for it.
With those two changes I think we get a system that is more flexible and consistent. The flexibility, I believe, is the most important thing. Speaking from professional experience, as soon as you overlay multiple static rule sets you can loophole them.
[side note: it is interesting that people can consider that objective comp will eventually be the answer when if you say look at another system of overlaid complex rules tax and ask how have governments around the world started to cut down on tax structuring and arbitrage? By putting place subjective tests because people consistently found the new loopholes with every change in the traditional objective tests. But hey I’m sure we are better at designing an objective system to overlay than every tax lawyer engaged by the governments around the world who only live and breath those systems and specialised in them academically.]
But the next question is: are tiered and panel comp inextricably linked? Can you only have one if you have the other? This appears to be the argument conveniently being pressed home with vim and vigour by the formula composition guys. [Side note: I was taught this as a negotiation technique: link two elements together then argue against one and effectively get them both conceded.]
I personally thought panel comp was working pretty well prior to the introduction of the tiers and that whilst there was the occasional outlier whose results weren’t justified but we sure abandoned the approach very early given how well it seemed to go. Sure army bias was exaggerated but I think tiering in conjunction with it only compounded that bias.
One other thing I would like to encourage is for panel members to look through their results and test to see if the “average” they’ve given for each race is appropriate. Any panel I’m a member of I do this and if I vary too much for one race or seem to be displaying bias I look through again and try to form arguments against my initial feelings. This isn’t to say that I always change them just that if I’m not giving an average mark for the race then I want to be certain it isn’t because I’ve misread the “hardness” of the tournament or because of unreasonable bias.
So I guess what I’m suggesting for the way forward is, for at least larger tourneys, revert to straight panel composition, preferably with the guidance for average scores for each army provided.
The next few months will be an interesting time in Australian warhammer, I get the feeling that the ETC (a system that I actually agree with in the environment it is intended for – a battle points only tourney bringing many different tourney scenes together) is being used to shoe horn comp formulas into Australian tourneys which will be primarily for the benefit of the elite players.
Monday, January 26, 2009
7th Place not a bad start
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Ode to Daremons and VC
I started playing way back before 1992
routing units and electing to pursue
If I won by 13 I actually had a shot at breaking through.
Oh-a oh
They went and gave them all immune to psychology
then made them combat monstrosities,
Went and gave them rengen and unbreakable for free.
Oh-a oh
I met the moron
Oh-a oh
who wrote these rules and
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
free wards came and broke our heart.
Oh-a-a-a oh
And now we play on the tables way down low.
Army balance seems so fictional and long ago.
those twin terror causers put on quite a show.
Oh-a oh
VC were the first one.
Oh-a oh
Daemons the last one.
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
I’ll take my dice and hit the bar, we can't FAQ we've gone to far
Oh-a-aho oh, Oh-a-aho oh
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
I’ll take my dice and hit the bar, we can't FAQ we've gone to far
free wards came and broke our heart, blame these design team “stars”.
You are a demonic star.
You are a VC star.
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
routing units and electing to pursue
If I won by 13 I actually had a shot at breaking through.
Oh-a oh
They went and gave them all immune to psychology
then made them combat monstrosities,
Went and gave them rengen and unbreakable for free.
Oh-a oh
I met the moron
Oh-a oh
who wrote these rules and
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
free wards came and broke our heart.
Oh-a-a-a oh
And now we play on the tables way down low.
Army balance seems so fictional and long ago.
those twin terror causers put on quite a show.
Oh-a oh
VC were the first one.
Oh-a oh
Daemons the last one.
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
I’ll take my dice and hit the bar, we can't FAQ we've gone to far
Oh-a-aho oh, Oh-a-aho oh
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
I’ll take my dice and hit the bar, we can't FAQ we've gone to far
free wards came and broke our heart, blame these design team “stars”.
You are a demonic star.
You are a VC star.
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
Demons killed war ham-mar
VC killed war ham-mar.
Monday, October 13, 2008
A year with the little ones
Well four tourneys into the season and I’ve gotten a feel for how my O&G list performs and the strategies to use and to avoid if you’re going to eek out a good result.
Leviathan:
This was the opening run for the little guys and because of this my results were fairly mixed as a results with 3 wins from 5 games and about 60% of the total possible battle score.
What this tourney taught me was that you just can’t play in the current environment with leadership 8 non-immune to psych troops. With the plethora of terror causers running around it is near impossible to keep your battle line in tact with a worse than ¾ chance of things sticking around.
It also taught me that the army had a truck load of potential but also a truck load of variability, from the hoppers movement, to stupidity, to animosity to the nets. There was a large amount of potential for a “can go wrong” turn and when these turns happened it was difficult to rebound.
Fortunes:
Another average tourney this time 3 wins, 2 draws and a loss (cumulative 6-2-3). Taking the lessons learnt regarding variability I got rid of the trolls and the hoppers and dropped one of my wizards for a unit of biguns with the spirit totem.
From game to game Is till struggled to get largish wins as the cavalry almost always dies and I had limited means to appropriately release my fanatics. Of course not packing my full army and playing a unit short all weekend probably didn’t help….
So I left another average performance with some new lesson, devise some method of controlling the fanatics release and remember to bring your entire army.
Pilgrimage:
Finally a quality result. This time I chose to go down the route of dropping all the cavalry and instead using two units of short bowmen to screen the army. Their purpose was two fold – one give me a few shots to force maybe a panic check or two on the fast moving fanatic bait and also give me a sturdy front line to launch fanatics through.
The tactic worked well and with animosity not being a massive hindrance in critical moments the boys performed well pulling in 5 wins and a narrow loss (11-2-4) and grabbing a podium slot.
The main thing this taught me was that if animosity didn’t kill you and you could control your fanatic release then you had a shot.
Moab
The anti-pilgrimage. Unfortunately the “if animosity didn’t kill you” problem raised it’s head leaving a fair few points on the table it was frustrating to say the least (I’d hazard a guess at around 20 “easily attainable” points with potential for more). But in the two losses animosity didn’t play a part just poor play from me against match ups I couldn’t afford to play poorly against.
Added to that I found the little fellas struggle from a slight match up problem against armies with cheap skirmishers. These guys get rid of the fanatics and then are in amongst the war machines very quickly.
Still the results sheet looking back was relatively good with 4 wins 2 draws and 2 losses the problem only being that in my wins many points were left waiting in front of units suffering animosity.
I was very disappointed with my comp score for this one. I had deliberately left many things in the box effectiveness wise and yet I got a below average mark from half the judges. My guess is that none of these guys have ever played with an O&G army at a tourney and probably felt my leadership 9 was unfair with goblins.
Overall
The results weren’t too bad, I still won more than my fair share of games with 60% and only lost 24%. If you play enough tourneys you’ll get the four quality results for your ranking as the good animosity tourneys will offset the bad ones.
Also it taught me a lot more patience and defensive style of play than I am accustomed to, plus how to guess ranges with the rock lobber (easily my biggest impact weapon).
Still as far as tourney armies go whilst potentially strong its game to game variability makes it a difficult prospect under it’s current guise.
Leviathan:
This was the opening run for the little guys and because of this my results were fairly mixed as a results with 3 wins from 5 games and about 60% of the total possible battle score.
What this tourney taught me was that you just can’t play in the current environment with leadership 8 non-immune to psych troops. With the plethora of terror causers running around it is near impossible to keep your battle line in tact with a worse than ¾ chance of things sticking around.
It also taught me that the army had a truck load of potential but also a truck load of variability, from the hoppers movement, to stupidity, to animosity to the nets. There was a large amount of potential for a “can go wrong” turn and when these turns happened it was difficult to rebound.
Fortunes:
Another average tourney this time 3 wins, 2 draws and a loss (cumulative 6-2-3). Taking the lessons learnt regarding variability I got rid of the trolls and the hoppers and dropped one of my wizards for a unit of biguns with the spirit totem.
From game to game Is till struggled to get largish wins as the cavalry almost always dies and I had limited means to appropriately release my fanatics. Of course not packing my full army and playing a unit short all weekend probably didn’t help….
So I left another average performance with some new lesson, devise some method of controlling the fanatics release and remember to bring your entire army.
Pilgrimage:
Finally a quality result. This time I chose to go down the route of dropping all the cavalry and instead using two units of short bowmen to screen the army. Their purpose was two fold – one give me a few shots to force maybe a panic check or two on the fast moving fanatic bait and also give me a sturdy front line to launch fanatics through.
The tactic worked well and with animosity not being a massive hindrance in critical moments the boys performed well pulling in 5 wins and a narrow loss (11-2-4) and grabbing a podium slot.
The main thing this taught me was that if animosity didn’t kill you and you could control your fanatic release then you had a shot.
Moab
The anti-pilgrimage. Unfortunately the “if animosity didn’t kill you” problem raised it’s head leaving a fair few points on the table it was frustrating to say the least (I’d hazard a guess at around 20 “easily attainable” points with potential for more). But in the two losses animosity didn’t play a part just poor play from me against match ups I couldn’t afford to play poorly against.
Added to that I found the little fellas struggle from a slight match up problem against armies with cheap skirmishers. These guys get rid of the fanatics and then are in amongst the war machines very quickly.
Still the results sheet looking back was relatively good with 4 wins 2 draws and 2 losses the problem only being that in my wins many points were left waiting in front of units suffering animosity.
I was very disappointed with my comp score for this one. I had deliberately left many things in the box effectiveness wise and yet I got a below average mark from half the judges. My guess is that none of these guys have ever played with an O&G army at a tourney and probably felt my leadership 9 was unfair with goblins.
Overall
The results weren’t too bad, I still won more than my fair share of games with 60% and only lost 24%. If you play enough tourneys you’ll get the four quality results for your ranking as the good animosity tourneys will offset the bad ones.
Also it taught me a lot more patience and defensive style of play than I am accustomed to, plus how to guess ranges with the rock lobber (easily my biggest impact weapon).
Still as far as tourney armies go whilst potentially strong its game to game variability makes it a difficult prospect under it’s current guise.
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