So last weekend, New
Zealand held the the Inaugural New Zealand Team Championships. Big
thanks to Pete Dunn for standing up to organise the whole thing and
Locky and Ryan for TOing.
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| Blatantly stolen from my teammates. Glen appears to be constipated, this had no effect on his gaming fortunately. |
I teamed with an
exceptional (and rather attractive) group of gentlemen to form Team
OMEN (RAWR!!!):
- Sam Whitt using a
filthy Cold One Knight bus
- Glen Burfield running
a pretty left field MSU VC list with double Terrorgheist, and three
flying - Vamps
- Joel van de Ven Long
with a pretty solid Empire gunline cockblock list
- Myself running a Star
Dragon High Elf army
So overall, we took one
solid allrounder in the Empire and three Smash and Grab lists that
could get big points in the right circumstances but we all knew could
also fail hard if we screwed up the matche ups. Risk big, Win big?
Anyway rather than run
through the teams results (mainly cause I barely remember my own
scores, let alone everyone else's, and you'll be able to find their
tales on their own blogs) I'll just go through my own list and games.
I've been running a
Lvl4 based High Elf build for the last 6-7 months, but I've never
felt like I had a way to push for the win, always fighting on the
back foot to claim points. I also havent been enjoying the playstyle
as I much prefer to have mobility and speed, so I choose to go for
the Star Dragon to give me some power and reach. However due to Xmas,
and moving to Melbourne, unfortunately I didn't get a chance to play
a single game with the list going in, which wasn't great but how hard
can pushing a Dragon be? Anyway my list was:
Lord on Star Dragon –
Warrior Bane, Charmed Shield, Talisman of Protection, Tricksters
Shard
BSB on Eagle – Helm
of Fortune, Guardian Pheonix
Lvl 2 Mage (Metal) –
Extra Spell, Ring of Fury
20 Archers – Flaming
Banner
10 Archers
10 Archers
10 Archers
26 White Lions – +1M
Banner, magic attacks
6 Dragon Princes
3 Eagles
So pretty much aiming
to shoot and hold stuff with the archers while throwing the
Dragon/BSB/White Lions at one target before moving on. Simple
Sorry there are no photos as I got drunk and forgot...
Round One: Team Nerdymen - Paul Dalton's Daemons
So first up we drew the
only other team to bother with a team shirt, and they did look pretty
good, even if they were all filthy JAFAs...
I was drawn against
Paul's Daemon list with only 60 Letters, but a Mindrazor/Siren
Song Daemonette horde as well... Overall pretty happy with this match
up, as I've figured out how to handle it in the past.
Ignore one horde, block
the second, smash the third, just made slightly harder by the Siren
Song.
So this game pretty
much came down to me not getting screwed by the Siren Song... Paul
got Mindrazor through T1, but my Dragon failed the 20” Siren charge
by skillfully rolling a 9!.
As it was the Dragon
distracted the Nettes, until he fell down a Pit, but the Lord
survived and ran away saving me all those points, the Archers
whittled down one unit of Letters, until Paul overcommited against an
Eagle blocker, letting the White Lions take them off, and Paul was
far too cautious imo with the second unit meaning they wer out of
position to countercharge. BSB killed the Fiends stopping them
clearing my backline and special mention should be made to the 10
archers that heroically took 4 Fleshhounds down in combat over 6
rounds and saved me a massive pain in the backfield. They earned a
beer!
Last turn I got the
Lions into the second unit of Letters but unfortunately I had to save
my Lord from Magic Missiles rather than stop the buffs on the Letters
and it meant a couple survived at the end, however I had only lost 2
units of archers and the Eagles, so job well done for a 13-7 win!
The rest of the team
fought hard, but we ended up with a 35-45 loss in round one.
Round Two: Kapiti Crushers – Sam Campbell,
Daemons
Sam was running a 90
Letter spam list. Tough but doable. However my eyes lit up when I got
a building a third of the way in from my left flank. Buildings are
ace for running around and blocking things off, particularly huge
wide hordes of Letters.
So I managed
tocunningly bait Sam into putting two units on the short side of the
building with my White Lions, essentially taking at least one out of
the game entirely and the other for a good three-four turns. The
Lions then ran as fast as posible around the building toward the
centre of the table, and the rest of my army.
Sam then made a big
mistake and moved one unit os Screamers up too far in front of the
middle letter block. Tactical combat archers ran in and held them for
two rounds, letting me clean up the chaff and while the letters were
stuck, before smashing the Letters with the Princes and Dragon. BSB
flew headlong into the Herald/Horror bunker at the back and killed
Sam's magic. This left me with two units of Letters that finally
arrived on T5, however I screwed up with a blocking Eagle and let one
unit get into my back field with poor angling killing about 30
archers. On the last turn, after discussion with my team mates and
the realisation we were proably on the round cap anyway, I went for
it (never would've gone in if round was closer) with the Dragon/BSB
into the front of the Khorne BSB's Letter block. I killed the BSB but
lost both the Lord and my BSB to Killing blow, Luckily the Dragon
fled and got away, saving me from some severe embarrassment as I
ended up with a 12-8 win but that wouldve flipped if he got the
Dragon...
Round three – the Von Dunn Family, Tom Dunn's
(you guessed it!) Daemons!
So another 90 Letter
spam fest, but this time run by the Master himself. This'll be
tricky... and it was made harder by the complete and utter lack of
any decent abuseable terrain on the table. Still I was feeling pretty
confident after two wins vs similar armies, and also (probably more
so) by the substantial amount of beer I'd consumed at this point.
Anyway Tom pushed it
all forward at me as a good player should, chaff on both flanks, and
the Letters up the middle. I went for my usual kill, distract, ignore
tactic, which worked-ish. Unfortunately, the key moment I think, was
me forgetting that BS faq ruling about overruns vs Daemon Crumbles,
which cost me the BSB, who flew off to hit a Plaguebeast and planned
overrun into a Fiend behind and instead got 2 Crushers to the face.
FAIL!!!
This meant when I
killed the first unit of Letters with a Dragon/Lions combo charge,
the Dragon had to take one for the team against the second unit of
Letters following up, failed to do anything useful to the Champion
and broke on a 5-6 Ld test, with no rerolls... then the Lions got
ground out by the same unit. I managed to claw back some points by
killing Tom's chaff but it was a 16- loss in the end. In hindsight I
think I wasted my Eagles too early, which meant I couldnt keep out
the second unit off Letters
The rest of the team
got run over a bit too, and we only closely avoided the lower cap of
20pts. Ah well, Submarine time?
Round Four - Shaken not Stirred – Tim Joss,
Chaos Dwarfs
So round 4 in one day
was up and players looked shattered all over the place. I think the
beer was getting me through though! I got shoved up against the Chaos
Dwarfs, an army I know very little about, except Deathshriekers hurt
like buggery, and Kdaii smash the shit out of stuff, if you can't get
a flaming ward save into it. I got too carried away with the second
part of that equation...
Tim castled as I
expected, but I could use a building to hide the Dragon from one
Shrieker so I thought I might be okay. I pushed up hard at Tim, who I
think was a little bit brain fried as he didn't really react very
well I don't think. Dragon took a couple wounds but things looked
good for me.
Then I had a brain
fart... Turn 2 I charged the Lions into the Centaurs, with a overrun
lined up for the Kdaii. Aimed the Dragon at the Kdaii but failed to
get the 9 I needed. I also for reasons I cannot fathom, chucked the
BSB into the Ironguard to hold them up (Dear James, thats what
unridden eagles are for!) Anyway, the Lions killed the Centaurs to
hit the Kdaii all by themselves, the BSB held for a turn, before
dieing, and the Dragon got pasted by two Deathshriekers as his charge
pushed him just far enough out for LoS... After that the kdaii
cleaned up the Lions and I got magiced/shot to death by Jossys army
for a 19-1 loss.
Heres what should have
happened: The Dragon and BSB hit the Iron Guard, the Lions kill the
Centaurs and overrun into the IG too (the size of the Lions meant I
could overrun into either them or Kdaii by unit placement) and take
them all, or most of them at least, off in T2, then the Lions hold
the Kdaii until I could Dragon smash it. Note to self, never focus on
doing something so much you go for long odds to do it instead of the
safe play.
After a night of
annoyed self incrimination, I awoke feeling utterly tired from a long
day (without any ill effects of alcohol, thank you to all those that
asked!) and ready for redemption.
Game 5 – Capital Crusaders – Tony Peever, Tks
So we draw some filthy
Aussies (they were all great guys despite this...), and I get the Tks
as Dragon Armour > Catapults. I was alright with the matchup as
only the Casket really worried me...
I moved up aggresively
at the flank with Hierophant, everything going well as I passed 6
Casket tests and Final Transmutationed the Death Priest like a boss.
But then I left the BSB in 19” of the Necrosphinx when he really
didn't need to be there and Tony took the long shot, got the BSB and
overran into the White Lions and proceeded to grind them all off. The
Dragon went on a happy little rampage killing Warphinx, Chariots,
Casket, Catapults but without any help couldn't get the Heirophant in
a big block of Skellies. Meanwhile the rest of my army decided that
without a BSB they didn't really care much for the game and ran off
the board, leaving me with a 11-9 loss that never shouldve
happened...
My teammates made up
some good points however and we headed into the last round in 5th
place with a podium shot to play for.
Game 6 – NZHammered – James Brown, Ogres
Yay, Ogres!!! probably
my worst matchup behind Skaven. Fortunately James is top bloke who
I've chatted with a lot over the last 6 months so it would be good
fun regardless. Also there was only one Ironblaster so the Dragon
might live for a turn or two!
So with the pressure of
the last round and me being shoved under the bus anyway, I decided to
go for it. I faced off all my combat troops vs the MF, with the aim
to get them, the small ogre block and then maybe one of his big
blocks if all went well.
To my delight and
James' horror, the Dragon dodged a Cannonball before it blew up, and
2 Lightning bolts for no wounds :-D. My Level 2 did however decide a
comet was worth running from the table on T1... The MF fled from the
Dragon through the rest of the army to be out of the way for the
game, but the Lions had to pull a conga to hold the Maneaters for
the Dragon. Meanwhile I blocked off the Gutstar as much as possible,
and it never made a decent combat which I'm always proud to achieve.
The Archers spent 6 turns shooting the small Ogre block and just got
there on T6.
The Dragon hit the
Maneaters and started the grind while the Lion Champ took the
challenge, but in the second round the Lord did the 1 remaining wound
before the Dragons attacks, and it fled but luckily got away and
rallied to be charged again. The grind then continued til the end of
the game, with the Stardragon on 2 wounds remaining after some
horrible wound rolls by James. I got the Butcher, but the last
Maneater had two wounds, and cost me 450 odd pts :-P the BSB and a
couple units of archers survived too. In the end I was happy to
scrape a 3-17 loss from a shocking match up.
The rest of Team OMEN
unfortunately struggled too, and we went down hard dropping us back
to 7th overall, which is a bit disappointing from where we
could have been.
Overall I had 2 wins,
one small loss, and 3 big losses, but with a bit of practice I'd be
confident to turn 2 of those losses into wins. Star Dragon has big
potential and I will defintiely keep running him when I use the Elves
as I just felt better and happier using it than the Level 4 list...
For the team, we had
two to many high risk lists and that cost us as we had to be very
careful in getting the right matchups and some decent luck in games.
Next year we'll be back and we'll do it properly with solid filthy
lists across the board and claim that trophy for its rightful owners!
As for my list, overall
I think it was pretty solid and only a few things need to change, one
being my attention to detail in game...
