Top of day 2 and I've got first up top of the table Raymond with Bret's. This will be the first time game against him and with a reputation as the 2010 NZ Masters champion, this will no doubt be a very hard game. Pulled the socks up brought a energy drink to shake last nights beers and we're off...
Pretty solid list from Raymond which was pushing a 1.5-2 on the scale out of 5. He had three buses of Knights one with the Errantry banner and another with General and BSB, supported by a Pegasus entourage. The two large blocks of Men at Arms was my worry which was led by a Knight on foot along with a Trebuchet. The great thing about this army was that it also had a Damsel with the prayer Icon to give the peasants the Lady's blesssing and supported with a block of archers and some scouting archers this was going to be a very hard game.
Setup was going to be the middle of the board for me so I could get a clear indication on where he was going to deploy his Knight buses and then place redirecters (hounds, and Fast cav) to let me clear out the weakest flank and perhaps get a minor win if I could hold his advance on the other. I was surprised that he obliged and went for a double flank advance instead of the strong push up the middle that Brets are so good at and for this tournament probably an unstoppable deployment. The more surprising thing was that the Bsb had moved with Two of the Knight blocks plus the Pegasus blocks and was placed ready to take my right flank. This left the other Knight block protecting the centre and the two blocks of Men at Arms pushing my Left flank out of the BsB bubble which I was very keen to take advantage of.
With the Bret's praying for the blessing it was first turn to me and after the vanguard roll off I had made the Yeoman retreat back onto his board edge right next to his first block of Men at Arms. Never seen many people shoot the Hell Cannon so I had to risk it and send a shot into his furthermost block of Men at Arms and with close to 40 in the unit it had to be a good shot to make him test on leadership 7. The Hell Cannon decided to play good and landed bang on the middle. With half the peasants dead the Leadership test was failed and Raymond proceeded to roll 11 five times in a row for his tests for all the Blocks and flee distances. This meant that both his Men at Arms blocks and the Yeoman ran off the table before his first turn and that gave me the big swing I needed in otherwise a very hard game for the Warriors.
Still with Three blocks of Knights, Pegasus Knights and a whole lot of shooting the Brettonian lance hadn't been blunted just yet. I moved my army as a solid block forward and redirected his Knights as much as possible with Hounds and throw away marauder Cav. He had to engage otherwise I would have flanked the knights and that's one of the big downfalls of a Bret army, it's manoeuvrability. With the inevitable combat where I managed to get a flank the game favoured the WoC and Brets were chopped down to a man with only peasants left to lament the lost of armoured Buses.
20-0 Win
Game 5 vs Mike Lizardmen. Another first time game and great Wellingtonian.
I always had a huge respect for the Lizarmen army book and it's solid what ever build you can bring to the table so I walked into this game a little too confident for my own good. Mike had two large blocks of Saurus, Saurus Cav, Kroxigors, a million Skink blowpipes in three units, supported by Razordons and Salamanders. I looked at my army and breathed a sign of relief with its Toughness 4, if it had been a toughness 3 army I'm sure a large box of band aids wouldn't help me outta the funeral home to be this encounter would have re-enacted. So thinking that my army would have a bit of a upper hand I lost the first turn and preceeded to knuckle down to see how much a million skinks could do to toughness 4, which was surprisingly little but Salamanders made up for it on the Marauders.
The Game was all about who controlled the flanks and having to leave the BsB in the Chaos Knights to ensure I won the flank left my army taking a lot of panic tests where it shouldn't have but it was a risk I had to take. The Hell Cannon rampaged 1st round and without its support my main blocks of infantry couldn't get a favourable engage and was forced to manoeuvre for 2 more turns to get the charge I wanted. It really showed how fragile the WoC army is and perhaps the weakness of a mounted Bsb with so many expensive units. If I had failed any of the leadership tests on a 8 the two Saurus blocks would have ripped up the middle and it would have been game over turn 3 but with the Knights winning the flank and rolling around to help the massed combat in the middle the Warriors were looking good for a solid win. Best moment of the game was end of turn 5 and after casting Comet irresistibly the Skink priest perishes in combat along with the main Lizard army. My complete army is below the howling ball of meteorite and proceeds to run as fast as it can away from the middle before the catastrophic detonation, and it's good that they build good legs in the Chaos wastes ...
19-1 win
Game 6 Jorin, O&G, good mate.
Jorin and I have had a couple of practice games at our local club before this match up and O&G have always been my bogey army and I never seem to do well against them. With Jorins army it was going to look like either I play very defensive and take a draw or play all out and risk getting slaughtered as he had in my opinion a solid army list to the tournament which I would have given 1.5-2 for realistically. Unit on unit it would have matched my army and then he had the Doom Diver which would have and should have taken out my trump unit the Chaos knights and given him a comfortable win. His army was infantry heavy with Black Orks, Large unit of Orc Big'un's, a Large unit of Gobo netters, Arachnarok and assorted accompanying Chariots, pump wagons and wolf riders.
Now I would have said that the new animosity rules for O&G have improved markedly since 7th and it doesn't become as much of a liability now since you only stall if you roll 1's in a row, and I was to be proven wrong. With Jorin placed top table he decided to use his deployment and placed his army in a defensive refuse flank with a building on his left. He left all the fast stuff to harry my force and protected his Doom diver, which was behind his main army to get maximum points as I advanced. Awesome battle plan in theory but the dice gods proceeded to make this solid tactic a no contest unfortunately for him.
The Game was won by my aggressive moving of my Marauder Cav into the face of his Wolf riders on his right flank. With animosity making the wolf riders charge into their imminent doom it gave me a fresh charge on my turn to engage all his fast stuff with one unit of Marauder fast Cav. This in turn let me move my entire army to flank his army as the Doom Diver misfired first turn and exploded so with a series of 3 important roll's of a 1 the game swung fully to me. Thoroughly a great guy and also a solid warhammer exponent but having some bad luck with his dice this game.
18-2 Win
Fantastic fully relaxing tournament where I enjoyed meeting the new and chattering to old friends. Thanks to all the good natured guys who made the tournament a great event to attend. It's good to be back into tournament scene as a player again and the whole building and painting the Warriors army for this tournament has really made me get back into the hobby in a big way. I'm looking forward to finally finishing my Wood Elf army and possible taking it out for a spin in a tournament soon. Not too much time before I have to TO Equinox and with around 130 competitors coming it's going to be a big tournament and I'll be blogging it right here. We've got a field of ~50 for Fantasy alone and also on the Saturday night we'll have 8 teams competing for the 'Team challenge trophy' for some good ol' fashioned friendly rivalry.
FluffyCon results.
1st Me Warriors
2nd Raymond Brettonians
3rd Andy Wood Elves
Best Painted : CSS Nick
Best Sports : Jorin
Slaughterer : Me.
Chaos Sorcerer and BsB survived every game of the tournament.
First of all, Congrats Phil
ReplyDeleteBut you have to ask yourself.. How on earth did you come to the conclusion... Hell Cannon == Fluffy!!?
Interesting Question there PaW (Pete). For every tournament there is a set of guidelines and for FluffyCon the ideas were to bring to the tournament units that you didn't see normally at a usual tournament. With no Lords allowed and and only 100pts limit to how you could upgrade your characters, magical banners, items, marks etc for the entire army the tournament was going to have a very different aesthetic to your normal warhammer game and playing it over the weekend it felt a bit reminiscent of 7th edition. The games saw more judging the charge and out manoeuvring you opponent than uber killing characters and over powering magic, which I thought the Umpires did very well to create.
ReplyDeleteAs you are a very experienced wargamer I would think by looking over my list and not just concentrating on one aspect the Hell Cannon, you would also agree with every one at the tournament my list was probably a 1.5-2 out of 5 on the hard scale (0 is the hardest). From the peer comp there everyone voted that all the armies were fairly similar with a + or - 1 from the median mark for all the armies there.
with that all said I genuinely hope you haven't gone over to the camp of I'll lie down and play a non competitive game. I'm still in the camp of an exciting competitive game and we saw units in everyone's army that still packed a punch. So that was why FluffyCon was such a novelty as everyone had very similar strength armies so combat required strength in tactics more than strength in arms. My games may have seemed one sided but the deciding combats in each of the games could have swung either way and the results had the total potential to have been a complete swing around the other way.
Since you're the poster child for soft armies I think you'll enjoy puzzling out an army design for next year at this event, and I soundly thump you with my gauntlet of challenge. I know full well that you are a better man than some others to just blame it on one solitary unit on the outcome of an entire tournament too.
I can hear the cries of " Seaguard, Seaguard..." in the background :).