SO OBVIOUSLY: as we are sitting around for lunch the same bloke came up to me and goes "Ben?" "Yeah.. your playing me" Typical.. anyway, a few seconds of moaning and hoping to roll dwellers below we are off to the game 2..
Army Lists:
Wood Elves:
Spellweaver, lvl 4, dispel scroll
Treeman
10 glade guard
10 glade guard
10 glade guard
10 glade guard
10 glade guard
10 glade guard: banner of eternal flame
8 dryads
8 dryads
Skaven
Grey Seer, Power Scroll, Scalm
Chieftain: Battlestandard bearer, obsidian lodestone, shield
Warlock Engineer: lvl 1, doom rocket
Warlock Engineer: brass orb
40x clan rats, shields, musician, standard, champion, warpfire thrower
55x skaven slaves, musician and champion
2x doom wheel
Deployment:
Okay.. He deployed with a doom wheel on each flank.. with an engineer in 2/3 slave units presumably for leadership bonus's. The chieftain is in the middle rat unit with the seer and an engineer in the far right unit.
My deployment, I put all the tree spirits on the right flank in the hope I could push through one flank and use the forest for cover.. But I'l confess I was wondering how I could take down that many rats.. and not die to the doom wheels..
Spells.. I got dwellers below, throne of vines, awakening of the wood and flesh to stone..
Spells.. He got the thirteenth spell and vermintide.. that's all he cast.
Skaven Turn 1:
Movement: He forgot to move his doom wheels which need to be done in the compulsory movement stage.. I considered myself lucky.. The rest of his army moved 10 forwards..
Magic: he rolled an 11 and channeled as well.. after pondering for all of about 3 seconds.. he cast the dreaded 13 targetting my spellweaver's unit.. out came the double 6.. and I was powerless to dispel. I rolled my eyes mildly. The 4d6 of the 13th comes down.. and he rolls a 10.. a VERY relieved Spellweaver is left standing as her entire entourage is annihalated.. The miscast is a str 10 hit which takes 8 slaves to a fiery doom and wounds the seer, 5 dice lost from the pool and the magic phase is over..
Shooting: he restrains both wheels.
Combat: none
Wood Elf Turn 1
Movement:
The Spellweaver dives into another unit the glade guard eagerly assimilating her into their ranks.. The forest spirits fortify the forest daring the rats to come in after them.. The rest of the arm moves gingerly into short range.
Magic:
Roll a 6 and a 1, he channels.. he let's me have a throne of vines on 2 dice, I five dice a flesh to stone on the treeman he fails to dispel on 7 dice.. I swop my generic treeman for the stone one.. just cos I had the model.. plan being that he can't take my treeman out easily with the doom wheel..
Shooting:
A hail of shooting goes out killing 6 clan rats and 8 or so slaves.. I felt a little outclassed here..
Combat:
None
Skaven Turn 2:
Movement:
His grey seer joins the chieftain in the slave rats leaving an engineer to lead the slaves versus the forest spirit fortification.. the wheels trundle slowly forwards..
Magic: he rolled a 7 chanelled once.. 3 diced vermintide, I tried to 3 dice dispel and of course failed by 1 to get the 8 or something that I needed.. the 2d6 str 2 hits dragged 4 elves to a bitter death.. he then ate a warpstone tokens two of 3 to cast surprise surprise the 13 spell targetting my wizards unit.. this time without the double 6 I scrolled it..
Shooting.. he fails a ld test and kills a slave on the left flank, right one is fine.
Engineer in the far left unit death rockets the glade guard next to the forest.. large blast hits perfectly and str 5 blasts wipe the unit. On the bright side.. the brass orb thrown out of the other engineer at the treeman misfires and kills a slave..
Combat: none
Wood Elf Turn 2
Movement, the tree spirits charged respectively while the other dryads moved round to outflank.. the rest of the army moved back nervously..
Magic:
Rolled a 7 still having throne of vines in play.. 6 diced dwellers targetting the slave rats.. no double 6 came up, but it turned out he didn't have a dispel scroll and he failed to dispel it.. 27 rats, a grey seer and a dead chieftain later I began to think I had a chance..
The slave rats fail their leadership test and quite sensibly fall back.
Shooting: the two left units pepper the slaves dropping 7 more rats.. and the two right units drop 5 more clan rats..
Combat: the Treeman double wounded the wheel taking no wounds back. The wheel flees and the tree fails to catch him, failing to reform and forced to pursue
The dryads assassinate the warlock engineer before loosing combat by 1.. at this point the critical mistake of the game is made.. I thought that skirmishers were steadfast in forests if they are touching a forest but it has to be a majority.. so I make my ld 7 test which of course i fail.. the dryads are overran and the slaves overun ready to charge the spellweavers unit next turn.. oh dear.
Skaven Turn 3
Movement:
Yeah.. spellweaver was too close to the board to flee (scale on map is a bit off), the rats in the middle moved forwards, the wheel charged the glade guard who can't make a charge reaction cos it's random... The wheel rallies.
Magic:
The spellweaver with her last breaths shuts down the puny engineer..
Shooting:
A few glade guard get fried.. and the wheel fails to hurt the treeman.
The spellweavers unit loses 4 of it's number before being run down.. the unit in combat with the wheel are ground down and flee, the wheel doesn't pursue.
Wood Elves Turn 3
Movement: Firstly, the reason the 2nd unit of glade guard just lost 4 chaps was cos they were the victims of vermintide 2 turns earlier.. and I wasn't rewriting the maps. Apologies.. you get the idea.. I couldn't get the left 2 out of there so they stayed to fight.. the 3rd ran like hell. The dryads moved back to protect the evacuating glade guard and the treeman charged.
Magic: none
Shooting: some futile kills nothing significant at this point
Combat: treeman crushes the wheel
Skaven Turn 4
Movement: the slaves and the clan rats charge forwards the slave unit moves away from the dryads. The fleeing slaves flee some more..
Magic: none successfully cast
Shooting: resisted wheel
Combat the glade guard in the forest despite loosing 5 or so hold, the other unit flee's dragging a few rats down with them..
Wood Elves Turn 4
Movement: consolidation of units into the woods
Magic: 6 dice treesinging with the treeman serfing the forest 2 inches forwards.. WOO
Shooting None
Combat: loose the last glade guard unit in combat.. he reforms.
Skaven Turn 5:
Movement:
Shooting: restrain
Combat: none
Wood Elf Turn 5
Movement: charge the slaves with the treeman.. quick confirmation of rules.. ld test for terror is done regardless of how successful the charge is.. slaves none the less pass their ld 5 test.. move my survivors a bit..
Magic: none
Skaven Turn 6
Movement:
He knew full well I was going to try the terror test again next turn,but couldn't avoid it.. so shifted to improve his odds and left it..
Wood Elves turn 6
Movement
Managed to scare slaves off the board..!!
Magic
None
We actually had to count up the victory points...
Skaven:
Spellweaver 275+100 general
5x 10 glade guard + banner 622
8 dryads 96
total: 1093
Wood Elves:
Grey Seer + general: 405
Chieftain: 117
Warlock engineer 65
doom wheel 150
one unit of slaves 116
total 853..
A confession to make, at the time we counted that I got the bonus 100 for BSB despite not running him down, we thought it was a bonus for killing him like the general. Either way, vp's werent' counted for the tournament so it didn't make a major difference..
Feedback:
Well, i'l be the first to admit I played the game atrociously.. For the first 3 turns or so I seemed to have lost any sense of tactical acumen and assumed my opponenet would continue to make mistakes like forgetting his doom wheels..
Mistakes: The entire glade guard line deployment was wrong.. I can't say what exactly but standing there as that many rats comes towards you just doesn't work. I think I overestimated the combat potential of his army after all they are only str 3 toughness 3 rats.. I hugged the forests appropriately, I should have used my bonus wood in this match up as it negates steadfast and I was obviously going to be on the defensive.. I didn't want to clutter up my own board edge too much..
The dryads charging.. while I did manage to kill the warlock engineer thus negating the ld bonus that allowed the treeman to scare them off later I knew I was steadfast in the forest and he wasn't .. there was no way he'd have charged them into the forest with dryads in.. if i had only charged with the treeman and kept the dryads on the defensive to retreat behind with my evacuated glade guard.. I'd possibly have been able to survive on victory points.
I got lucky on dwellers, though Dave said afterwards his army was horribly weak to it and he knew it, but this stroke of luck bailed me out of the game and woke me up.. i had already charged by then but I seemed to play a bit better after this moving my units around the forest.
KEY: in the skaven match up the dryads are key.. find terrain and hug it using the dryads to block the skaven onslaught.. if i'd had the other unit of dryads on the left I'd have probably lost the flank to the wheel but it wouldn't have been quite a white wash on the flank which I gave up pretty much without fuss..
Allocating attacks against the engineer.. I should have used my 4 attacks 7 total in 2 rounds on the engineer with the trapped forest unit.. I just wasn't thinking victory points..
I was lucky that the brass orb didn't bump off the treeman.. who was the rallying point that my army clawed back to only a minor loss too.. maybe just a case of keeping my distance from suspicious looking warlock engineers..
In future: I'd have abused terror a lot more.. he's stubborn ld 8.. I'd probably have the treeman in the center forcing him to divert the wheels to deal with it or not be able to move through the center.. the treeman would then march towards the grey seer and try to kill him until stopped hopefully forcing a few ld 8 panic tests on slave units on route.. have a dryad unit in each forest..
use my free wood
not overestimate the combat potential of the army..
hopefully lessons learnt.. and i look forward to playing against skaven again to see if i learnt anything from my first tournament game vs. skaven and it showed :).
Ben, as ever feed back welcome (and apologies for the proportions on the maps.. the moves are right.. it's just the scales gone a bit mad..)