Farewell and So Long!

Howdy all!

Its been a while as I've been lost to Dragon painting, alcohol and Rumblings but I'm back to say a not so fond goodbye to the old High Elf book.

It turns out High Elf Core was not the only Core to suck balls...

On the weekend, I had my last ever run out with the old book at the Rumble in the Bronx tournament in Geelong. The overall tournament was fraking ace! A bar on site at a tournament is something I've missed so very much from the UK. Not to get smashed, mind you, just its so good to have a nice Beer or two with your Warhammer. There is not much better in my opinion. It just lightens up the whole mood a bit, where often I think people get a bit too serious in tournaments.

As for myself, I had some pretty mixed results due to taking a pretty left field list, as I was struggling for enthusiasm to run the requisite 40 archer core... In the end I took a a Nullstone Lord (always amusing) with a Dragon Prince "bus", archers and some Bolt throwers and Eagles. I also made a massive mistake in taking High Magic on my Level 2, and proceeded to only once roll a spell other than Shield or Courage...

My results were:

11-9 Win vs Mark Skiltons Bugman scouting Dwarfs

Basically I avoided Marks big scouting Longbeard bus as long as I could while killing everything else but the Dragon Princes with BSB, decided they couldn't kill a Grudge Thrower in one round and got mashed. The severely unfair comp boost I received (I got +3 to final battle score) lifted a small loss to the win

12-8 win vs Empire

Dragon Princes somehow ground the two units of Knights off the table, despite wiffing on the charge (sadly one knight got away on T6...) but I couldn't finish the big infantry blocks off while losing too much on the way out. However a glorious last turn in which the Chaffmasters killed the Mage Lord, BSB and Paedohunter, and finally getting the Cannon and Helblaster with archers/reavers got me the win.

12-8 vs Lizards

Party Slaan and Friends. Despite losing my BSB to Final Transmutation T1 (seriously every bloody time!) I cleaned up all the Skinks by T2 and played avoid the Saurus Block and Stegadon for 4 turns. Nullstone came up big time charging into the Slaan and stopping his magic for 3 turns :-). Sadly however he decided to die to a bad touch from the frog on turn 6 (having lost two wounds to Rocks earlier) giving my opponent his Boast (his was to kill him, mine was him to live...) and the 4 bonus pts dragged me back.

Just wanna say, I seriously don't understand why people find Lizards so hard to beat? Maybe I need to write a "Lizardmen for Dummies" blogpost at some point

13-7 loss to High Elves

Nick ran 2 Sun Dragons, and had no sleep the night before due to the Champions League final, and somehow I still managed to play worse than he did... Made so many Muppet mistakes its not funny and got the beating I deserved. I was only saved by Nick going for the big points on the last turn to kill my Lord with the Dragon Mages Sun Dragon and taking its last wounds before he could strike.

13-7 loss to TKS

Just not a great matchup for my Elves. Greg had 2 Sphinx, a Bonegiant, 2x8 Chariots and 2 Scorpions. I either had to roll 6s to win or I'd struggle. I did not roll 6s... The Scorpions then ran riot through my Archers and while the Bus killed one block of Chariots, the Giant and a Sphinx I lost everything else. Such is the luck of the dice. Really fun game though and I gave Greg my Best Sports vote.

12-8 win vs Wood Elves.

Combat Archers ftw baby! In the process of trying to just hold up the Wildrider bus Johannes was running into my backline, one unit of archers somehow managed to first hold and then break the bus, much to the shear and utter astonishment of everyone and their dog (Okay the Nullstone and a Shield of Saphery may have helped but thats not the point here...). Johannes then ran away with everything else to keep me to a small win.


So overall I went 4-2, but only managed to get 61 Battle Pts which with help from an overly picky paint scoring system pushed me down to 22nd/36. Given I knew I'd taken a seriously bad list I was happy to get over half points, but I seriously need to run a list that can push for the big wins as I'm getting really tired of small wins and not being able to clean anything up... For all, I'm winning games and not losing very big if it happens, I can't recall the last tournament game I scored over 14 and it seriously impacts the overall position.

In general though, after a couple practice games with the new book, I just sat there thinking how constrained the whole army was by the core tax. To be honest, it seriously annoyed me by the end of game 6. But that's that, the last time I ever take more than 20 archers in a High Elf army, and the last time I ever get to re-roll a Great Weapon attack with a Swordmaster... Onwards and upwards, into the lands of choice and variety and fun. I can't wait to start playing with the Swedish comp rules for Convic, if they ever actually get released.

We'sa coming, okiday!