The Fabulous Orcboy

Tigger Visits the Big Apple: 19 Nov 2011 (Intro)

2011-11-26T19:52:00.000-08:00

It has been some months since I last played Warhammer 40K. In large part, that’s because much of my gaming time this year (2011) has been spent playing the following miniatures wargame:

That’s only partly tongue-in-cheek, as of course D&D in all its incarnations has always been somewhat “wargamey”, and the current two editions (Pathfinder and 4e) are both particularly well adapted to widespread use of miniatures.

When I learned that my friend Kenton “Fighting Tigers of Veda” Kilgore, a.k.a. “Tigger”, would be dropping by New York City briefly on the weekend of 19 November, and would be badly in need of some entertainment for a few hours in the early afternoon, I was happy to escort him to the local gaming establishment (the Compleat Strategist on 33rd Street in Manhattan) and have a little friendly game of 40K.

The newest, biggest St. Francis fanboy
on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Go Red Flash!

I put together 1500 points of Sisters of Battle, using the new White Dwarf minidex “update” to the Sisters, and after growling a little at how badly this weakens the Sisters list (at least on paper), figured I might as well try things out on the table-top. Tigger promised to field 1500 points of his Dark Eldar, and we had a potential match-up.

Based on the on-line advice of the ascerbic Stelek, and the rueful Kirby, I put together the following list, based on the models and units I actually own:

The Swinging Sisters of Battle (1500 pts)

HQ: Archprelate “Awe/Stun” Powers (Uriah Jacobus)
Troop: 2x10 Sisters with Melta, Multimelta, and Rhino transport
Fast: 3x5 Dominions with 2xMelta, Combi-melta, and Multimelta Immolator transport
Heavy: 10x Retributors with 4x Heavy Bolters, and Multimelta Immolator transport
Heavy: 10x Retributors with 4x Heavy Bolters
Heavy: Exorcist

This is a list that appeals to my preferred style of play, which is to stand off and blast the opponent (though in the case of Sisters, the range band is somewhat closer-ranged than I normally might choose). Unfortunately, it does this for more points, and with less punch, than many Marine or Guard lists, and the ‘ace-in-the-hole’ of the previous codex, the fast-moving Immolator with Heavy Flamer and fire-points, is no longer. Immolators in the new minidex can no longer move 12” and fire, no longer have fire points, and the army no longer has access to cheap, numerous Troops choices, relying instead on expensive, only marginally effective Space Marine wannabes.

Tigger, meantime, brought his Kurindans (a proxy Tyranid list), based largely on the fact that his Dark Eldar were currently on campaign, and thus unavailable for use (translation: he had forgotten that his Dark Eldar were literally not at his house at the time).

----------------

Krinophora-Adelphe Theophany Jones, Sister Superior of the Monastery of the Sisters of the Emperor’s Mojo, also known in vulgar Imperial slang as the “Swinging Sisters of Battle”, looked over the ruined cityscape and gave a deep sigh.

A mere century previous, the fighting orders of the Ecclesiarchy had been strong, fully-funded, well-equipped, in a position of great military and logistical strength. Although a series of reforms in the previous centuries had undermined recruitment, the different orders had managed to make up for the manpower shortages through a combination of technological might and seconded support units from local imperial units. The Swinging Sisters had been no exception, and Sister Jones remembered well the years shortly after her initiation, riding ‘shotgun’ in the monastic Immolators, frying xenos and chaos scum with well-aimed melta blasts out of the top hatch next to her ‘tailgunner’. She could still hear the cheers and whoops of allied PDF squadrons as they sent supporting blasts of autocannon fire over her position, could hear the blistering hive-dialect curses of the Arbites over the regimental vox-frequencies as they maneuvered their transports to supporting or flanking positions.

But the game of Imperial politics is never-ending, and the light of the Ecclesiarchy was clearly dimming in the far-distant councils of the Lords of Terra. There were continued budget cuts from higher up in the Ecclesiarchy, and unspoken embargoes by the Forgeworld tech-adepts, meaning that the technological edge once enjoyed by the military Sororitas orders had nearly vanished. Replacement parts, and replacement adepts, were in short supply, and the Sororitas were forced to rely once again on raw manpower. But that manpower that was no longer forthcoming. PDF squadrons were mysteriously no longer available, Arbites post commanders would mysteriously no longer respond to reinforcement requests, and recruitment from the orphans of the Imperial Collegium had reached new lows.

Theophany was a faithful daughter of the Emperor, but the present circumstances faced by the Sororitas Orders were notably trying. And now, tasked with defending a nameless backwater imperial outpost, largely abandoned for nearly a millennia, from the bestial forces of some two-bit xenos horde, Sister Theophany Jones was facing the unpleasant likelihood of heavy casualties among her already thinly stretched forces.

Possibly the only good news was the presence of the Archprelate Powers. Or was he an Inquisitor, or perhaps a ranking member of the Administratum? He had worked hand-in-hand with the order for as long as Theophany could remember, though his rank and title seemed ever-changing, and his imperial duties often spectacularly ill-defined. She thought only the Canoness or Inhumenia might know exactly who or what Powers was, but as a veteran of the order, Theophany had faith that the mysterious Powers’ presence was a sign of good fortune. As he was fond of noting, he had ‘mojo’.

Tigger Visits the Big Apple: 19 Nov 2011 (Part I)

2011-11-26T19:45:00.000-08:00

Opponent: Kenton’s Kurindans (Tyranids proxy). In the past, Kenton’s Kurindans have been filled with many more ‘fluffy’ units, such as Genestealers, Ravagers, Hive Tyrants, Carnifexes, etc. However, today he was fielding a stripped-down ‘nasty’ Tyranid list, heavy on Tervigons and Termagants and lean-and-mean on ranged shooting and support units (like Warriors). This is without a doubt one of the better all-comer Nid lists, particularly when playing objective missions.

Kurindans Army (1500 pts Tyranid proxy list)

HQ: Prime with Rending
Elite: 2x3 Hive Guard
Elite: 2x Venomthropes
HQ/Troop: 3x Tervigon with Catalyst
Troop: 2x10 Termagants
Troop: x4,x5 Warriors with Deathspitters and 1x Venom Cannon

Mission: Seize Ground/Pitched Battle. In this match-up, we randomly generated three objectives, with me placing two, and Kenton placing one.

Terrain: Ruined cityscape with wide avenues, plenty of overgrowth and low ruins in the middle and right thirds of the table, and several sizable multi-story buildings blocking LOS on the left third of the table.

(grey areas represent low rubble. The three red dots are the three objectives)

What Happened?

Kenton chose to let me deploy (and begin) the game first, and decline to seize the initiative, deploying all his units in reserve. Accordingly, I dropped each of my Rhinos on the two closest objectives, flanking (and protecting) the leftmost one between the hulls of an empty Immolator, and the Exorcist. I then pushed the three Immolators with Dominion squads (including my Uriah proxy) forward toward the far board edge, just outside potential Tyranid assault range, and popped smoke. I now held two of the three objectives, and although I didn’t want to lose units trying to hold the third, I could easily move a vehicle or two over to contest it if I needed to.

In the bottom of the 2nd turn, Kenton reserved on all the Tervigons, Venomthropes, and Hive Guard, and the small brood of Warriors. He placed everything out of LOS; the Tervigons and Hive Guard to the far left (his right flank), behind the large ruined buildings, and the Warriors behind the small building in the middle of his deployment zone. The Warriors quickly vanished as they were swarmed by Dominions, who wiped them out – however, I was a bit too aggressive with one Immolator, and it immobilized itself trying to plow through the side of the building to get to the Warrior brood behind. I also managed to snipe an overly aggressive Hive Guard with my Exorcist, but did little else, having no LOS to most of the Tyranids from my stationary (non-Dominion) units.

Dominions swarming the (now-vaporized)
Warrior brood behind the building

Kenton reserved on his second unit of Warriors, placing them behind his Tervigons, and also reserved on a unit of Termagants, which he sent toward my Dominions – but was blocked from assaulting them by the bulk of their transports. He then puked out another three broods of Termagants (a total of 24 bases), sending the largest Tervigon-spawned brood to sit on the objective in the middle of the large building – the only objective I hadn’t tried to hold. The Tervigons hit themselves with Catalyst, then moved up in cover from the Venomthropes, with the bulk of the Tervigons hiding the Venomthropes themselves. The Hive Guard decided to ignore the many vehicles, instead sniping a unit of Dominions, but managed to kill only a few.

The Tervigons advance in the shadow
of the ruined buildings.

The Termagants hanging on my Immolators were quickly tank-shocked off the table (they were far too far away from a Synapse creature), and I tried futilely sniping at Hive Guard and Tervigons before realizing that, in an objective mission, I really needed to be taking out Termagants. Proving the point, Kenton’s Tervigons quickly puked out another 30 Termagants, while a Prime (and 10 Termagants) strolled onto the table and ate one of my three units of Dominions. The Hive Guard switched to shooting vehicles (not bodies in power armor), and blew up an Immolator – then decided to assault the unit that fell out, rather than allow them to rampage in the Tyranid backfield with their meltaguns.

Dominions make Tyranid Prime angry!

Running out of Dominions and Immolators, I was having to rely on my backfield of Battle Sisters and Retributors, and now that the hordes of reserving and newly-spawned Termagants was coming into view, I disembarked my units of Battle Sisters and opened fire, blasting the Prime-led Termagants in the center into oblivion, and blasting another dozen Termagants to shreds on the left as they ran, pell-mell, toward my position.

This is what is left *after* you shoot
a dozen of the little suckers. And then
the big guys in back just spawn more!

With just one Tervigon left that could spawn Termagants, Kenton spit out a final brood of 6 Termagants, meaning that he had “only” six broods (and forty-six bases) for the remainder of the game. He continued to run them madly at my lines, backed by Catalysted Tervigons and the portable Venomthrope cover, ending up just inches away from the nearest Sororitas unit, an empty Immolator.

Meantime, one of his Hive Guard units was slowly getting whittled down by Uriah and his five accompanying Dominions, and my final surviving Dominion unit (and their Immolator) was contesting the objective the Tyranids were trying to hold.

Turns out that Hive Guard just aren’t all
that good in close combat. Although with T6,
it’s also hard for Sisters to hurt ‘em.

So, after five turns, we rolled to end the game... and it did. Had the game ended at this point, it would have been two objectives in my favor, and a third contested – a Sisters of Battle victory. But given that Kenton really hadn’t done much yet (largely as a result of having started the game in Reserve), we just decided to ignore the dice roll and see what would happen subsequently.

Tigger Visits the Big Apple: 19 Nov 2011 (Part II)

2011-11-26T19:39:00.000-08:00

It had been a hard-fought battle, and the last ninety or so minutes had been a frantic whirlwind of activity and death. But as Krinophora-Adelphe Jones looked upon the field, it was clear to her that the “Swinging Sisters” had won this contest. The Kurindan position was untenable, and trying to continue the battle would only result in horrific further casualties as they rushed headlong into the superior positions held by the forces of the Blessed Emperor. There was no shame in retreat; anything else was more than futile, it was stupidity.

And yet, Theophany realized with a cold chill, the Kurindans were not falling back. In fact, they were rushing forward with increasing speed, and she felt a sudden dull ache in her soul. The day was not over, and the “Swinging Sisters” were not going to avoid taking pointless, meaningless fatalities. All for an abandoned Imperial substation on a worthless little dirtball of a planet...

When several of the Rassophora-Sisters under her command looked at her in surprise, Theophany realized she was grinding her teeth so loudly that her jaw was beginning to ache as much as her soul. “Faith in the Emperor”, she thought to herself, and barked out the order to open fire.

Phase Two:
At the start of the second phase of the game, the two sides had the following units left:

“Swinging Sisters” (2 objectives held, one contested)

HQ: Archprelate “Awe/Stun” Powers (Uriah Jacobus)
Troop: 2x10 Sisters with Melta, Multimelta
Fast: 2x5 Dominions with 2xMelta, Combi-melta
Heavy: 2x10 Retributors with 4x Heavy Bolters
Heavy: Exorcist
Transports: 1x Rhino, 2x Immolator, 1x immobilized Immolator

Kurindans (1 contested objective)

Elite: 4 Hive Guard in units of 3 and 1
Elite: 2x Venomthropes
HQ/Troop: 3x Tervigon with Catalyst
Troop: 6 broods of 46 total Termagants
Troop: x5 Warriors with Deathspitters and one Venom Cannon

The Sisters of Battle opened the sixth turn by opening fire on the swarms of Termagants, wiping out the ones within assault range of my lines. I didn’t have much firepower left to do anything else, however.

Tired of taking slow, incremental damage on his Hive Guard from Uriah and the Dominions, Kenton jumped the five Warriors into melee and quickly wiped out the old man and his accompanying Dominions. His Tervigons, Venomthropes, and Termagants continued to rush my lines.

In the seventh turn, my Retributors and Battle Sisters wiped out more Termagants (leaving only the thirteen hiding around the objective in the depths of the large ruined building), and Kenton responded by turning his Warriors and Hive Guard onto the Dominion unit (and their Immolator) that had been busily contesting ‘his’ objective, and sniping at his Venomthropes in the meantime. Two Dominion sisters survived the wreck and subsequent hail of bioweapon fire.

That’s a lot of Monstrous Critter just inches from my lines.
Lucky that it’s my turn to shoot ‘em, now, yeah?

Without any Venomthropes left to provide cover saves, and without any Termagant broods left to threaten my lines, I could focus my firepower at last on the three Tervigons that were now at point-blank range. One dropped, another took 5 wounds (with one remaining). The two survivors pounced on my lines, destroying an empty Immolator and eating through one of my two units of Battle Sisters. At the same time, my other unit of Battle Sisters (disembarked, and sitting in the open) suffered a withering hail of fire from Warriors and Hive Guard, taking a few losses in the process.

Running low on units by this point, I spent my ninth turn blasting the exposed Tervigon (the one not eating through my Battle Sisters) to kingdom come with my Heavy Support units, ignoring for the nonce the Warriors and Hive Guard (as well as the hidden Termagants firmly sitting on the hidden objective in the building). Kenton finished eating my Battle Sisters with his Tervigon, then shredded my nearby Exorcist, at which point I blasted it, and the Warriors, to pieces, leaving Kenton with just Hive Guard and Termagants. They were able to send my final unit of Battle Sisters fleeing in panic, at which point Kenton and I decided to call it a (fun, productive) day.

The last Kurindan Warrior snarls defiance at
Krinophora-Adelphe Theophany Jones. Who is
running away in panic at the moment, actually.

Final score: one contested objective, two objectives empty. Both Kenton and I had just a few units left: in fact, I had just two units of Retributors, and badly mauled units of Dominions and Battle Sisters (the latter busy fleeing off the table) remaining. Kenton had left just some Termagants, two mauled units of Hive Guard, and a single Warrior.

Turning the Tables:

All in all, the Tyranids found themselves in a poor position, and were consistently losing the game (that is, down on objectives held) until the tenth turn of the game. There were probably a number of things that Kenton could have done differently to make the odds significantly better for him, such as:

(a) Not starting in Reserve (major gaffe). Given that Tyranids typically do most of their damage later in the game, and really rely on having a single, concentrated assault to really maul opponents, starting the game two turns later (one turn in reserve, and one turn to get to the place where they would have started the game had they deployed at the start) and piecemeal means that they simply aren’t as effective. I understand that Kenton was worried about getting shot up, but his units generate their own cover -- the Termagant swarms provide cover to everything not a Monstrous Creature, and the Venomthropes are there specifically to provide cover to the Monstrous Creatures. Then the Tervigons start puking out more Termagants (with an effective assault range of 18” from the Tervigon’s base), and bob’s your uncle.

(b) Choosing to go second (major gaffe). Although it seems ideal for grabbing objectives late-game, the utility is limited by the fact that games are of random length. Having the first turn, on the other hand, is 83% reliable. Plus, the Tyranid player really could use the first turn of the game to puke out Termagants, run closer to their prey, trigger Catalyst, shoot at enemy transports, etc.

(c) Choosing to deploy the Tervigons behind LOS-blocking cover, well on the far left flank (major gaffe). By coming in from reserve on the far flank, Kenton did ensure that I couldn’t see (or shoot) his Tervigons for several turns, but it also meant that he needed an extra turn or three to get his Tervigons into my lines – in our game, it took the Tervigons until turn EIGHT to get to my units, which were deployed about fifteen inches up, in the center of the table. Had the Tervigons come up the middle, assuming they reserved onto the table on turn 2, they would have gotten to my lines no later than turn six (and, on average, would have managed this trick by turn five). Had the Tervigons started on the table and come up the middle, they would have managed to get to my lines by turn 3, and well into my deployment zone by turn 4.

(d) Choosing to give Catalyst to the Tervigons, not the Termagants (moderate gaffe). By the fourth turn of the game, it was clear that the Tervigons were going to do very little to affect the outcome of this particular game, whereas the hordes of Termagants in the open were probably going to get badly shredded by bolter and heavy bolter fire. Giving those Termagant broods some Feel-no-Pain protection would have made it almost impossible for the Sisters of Battle to scour away those little objective-grabbing bugs. Granted, the Sisters of Battle were foolishly not aiming at the Termagants until the fifth (!!) turn of the game, wasting a turn of firepower at extreme range on the Venomthrope-protected Tervigons. Ah, well, the principle still applies, despite poor choices by the opponent (me).

(e) Choosing to shoot at Sisters in power armor with Hive Guard (minor gaffe). Although the S8 shots are pretty nasty, power armor units tend to shrug off anything that isn’t AP3 or better. S8 shots do really well against AV11 transports, however, and those transports not only gave my units mobility, it also gave them additional protection, plus acted as move-blocking mobile terrain that could contest objectives, all very annoying for the Tyranids.

Tigger Visits the Big Apple: 19 Nov 2011 (Post-Mortem)

2011-11-26T19:35:00.000-08:00

The new Sisters have significantly fewer options than I remember from before – and don’t appear to have had many new options added in balance. Although the “Immolator-spam” strategy they employed was largely a matter of limited options in the previous codex, and the new Sisters are back to being the mid-ranged shooting list they were in 2e and 3e, they really don’t do it particularly well. Their Battle Sisters are basically Tac-Marine-wannabes, and have none of the real benefits of Tac squads (like the ability to Combat Squad, ATSKNF, or Toughness 4). Although marginally fewer points, they have a minimum squad size of TEN (not five!), and their Faith ability, though versatile, is also unreliable and very limited in terms of what it can accomplish. It does nothing, for example, to help units armed with flamers in the Shooting phase.

The new Sisters also have fewer unit options (basically sacrificing everything from the previous codex that wasn’t an Ecclesiarchy unit), and while some of the previously overpriced units (like Death-cult Assassins, Seraphim, or Repentia) are a bit more effective, they still don’t seem to be reliable enough to include in an all-comers list.

Sister Repentia by DustyGrafix (deviantart)

Similarly, the Sisters’ Faith Point system is now far less versatile and useful than it might have been previously. While it’s now much easier to put together an army list that uses the Faith Points, I often found that I had very few units that could effectively make use of any of their Faith Powers, given that each Sisters unit now has a specific Faith power that only it can use – which means (I suppose) that the very limited (but regularly replenished) number of Faith Points that the army gets has only a limited downside – at least with the 1500 pt army list I was using. I can readily see how a larger army list (1750 points, 2000 points, etc) would constantly be running short of Faith Points.

On the other hand, it’s kind of nice that some previously-underuseful units, like Retributors and Dominions, are now the most reliable and cost-effective units in the list. I’ve always been a fan of Retributors, and really like that it now makes sense to include them in an all-comers list. That said, part of the reason they are now auto-includes in a Sisters list is because the Sisters codex no longer has access to PDF units with autocannons (and other long-ranged heavy weapons).

All in all, I’m finding the new minidex to be rather restrictive and limiting, and the new Sisters units to be significantly less versatile (and more specialized) than before. It basically plays now like a less powerful Marine army list, complete with fewer options – kind of a shame, given that the Sisters of Battle really ought to have a distinctive flavor and play-style of their own; among other things, being Marine wannabes means that pretty much every opponent all-comers is going to be designed to take out MEQs, only easier in the Sisters’ case because they’re just T3. But heck, it’s not like I don’t mind playing low-power army lists, particularly if they are fun to play – and with a story concept like the “Swinging Sisters” of Battle, led by Interstellar Man of Mystery Powers, they’re almost never not fun to play. I imagine there will be further batreps with the Sisters in the future.

Meantime, my next set of 40K games will probably be in February 2012, when I take the Technorecidivists (my proxy Chaos Daemon list) to TempleCon 2012.

Yes, yes, I know it’s primarily a Warmachine/Hordes convention. I’m also bringing Retribution.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Tournament, 11-12 March 2011 (Intro)

2011-08-03T19:07:00.000-07:00

The Northeastern Warhammer Ancients community has started to splinter somewhat with the arrival of the new 2nd edition of the ruleset – some long-time members of the community have been unhappy with the changes to the rules, while others have taken to the new rules with few complaints. This 2011 Cold Wars was an opportunity for the two ‘sides’ to reach a sort of working compromise on the issue – those favoring the 1e rules (as well as those looking for a change of pace) flocked to the English Civil War tournament, while the remaining few who showed up at this low-turnout event played in the fully 100% anachronistic, not-at-all historically accurate Ancients/Medievals combined tournament.

Of course, before the shenanigans on Saturday (12 March), there was the traditional evening doubles tournament to start off the festivities. Unlike in previous years, I already had a partner for the doubles in advance – fellow Warmonger Ancients gamer (and fellow prenomen) Ken P, fielding his Arthurian Saxon army.

The French (via Chad) R&B duo Les Nubians;
What you get when you google "Nubians"

What did I bring?
Still struggling with the inherent randomness of elephants, and hoping to finally master an elephant-heavy, light-infantry list with amazingly awful cavalry, I brought my Meroitic Nubians yet again (a proxy list that uses the Imperial Mauryan list, with the “no longbow” option throughout, as Nubians did not use longbows). I had mixed results at the Warmonger Charity tournament in January, but fielded basically the same list as I had then, with an additional heavy ballista. My general tendency in all cases is to default to more reliable firepower, and that was the case here, as well.

3000 points (Doubles list):
MEROITIC NUBIANS

General/Candace on (Mv6) horse, with Lt Armor, Spear, Bow, and Broadsword
ASB on (Mv6) horse, with Shield
10 formed cavalry (Mv6) with Sword, shield, Spear, and full command, a.k.a. "The Worst Cavalry in the World"
3 Elephants, each with 3 crew (all with bows, lt armor, javelin, broadsword)
2 units of skirmishing Elephant Escorts (8 models with broadsword, javelin, shield)
2 Heavy Ballistae, each with 3 crew
2 units of 14 archers, each with bow, broadsword, and full command

ARTHURIAN SAXONS

3 units of 28 freemen, one with General & BSB
1 unit of 28 churls
1 unit of 10 skirmishing freemen cavalry
2 units of 9 skirmishers

1750 points (Singles list):

General/Candace on (Mv6) horse, with Lt Armor, Spear, Bow, and Broadsword
ASB on (Mv6) horse, with Shield
10 formed cavalry (Mv6) with Sword, shield, Spear, and full command, a.k.a. "The Worst Cavalry in the World"
3 Elephants, each with 3 crew (all with bows, lt armor, javelin, broadsword)
2 units of skirmishing Elephant Escorts (8 models with broadsword, javelin, shield)
3 Heavy Ballistae, each with 3 crew
3 units of 16 archers, each with bow, broadsword, and full command

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Doubles Tournament, 11 March 2011 (Game 1)

2011-08-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

Opponents: Mike D (Teutonics) and John B (Ottomans). John is a long-time opponent and I am very familiar with his maneuver-heavy playstyle with Ottomans. Mike’s Teutonic Knights, on the other hand, was sure to be a fairly blunt instrument, but also heavily reliant on cavalry.

Armies: (3000 pts)
TEUTONICS (Mike)

General & BSB on warhorses with full armor, not attached to units
2 units of 5 Knights and 5 Turkopoles in back ranks, one unit with WS5
3 units of 8/8/9 crossbows with heavy armor and pavise (3+ saves)
1 unit of 8 skirmishing cavalry with bows

OTTOMANS (John)

General & BSB on horses with armor, not attached to units
2 units of 10 medium spear/archer cavalry (one unit is Janissaries)
2 units of 9/10 skirmishing nomadic cavalry
2 units of 9 skirmishing infantry archers
1 unit of 10 medium infantry (Janissaries with halberds/bows)
1 Bombard artillery piece with crew

Mission: Alternating deployment (2 units per side until all units set up), 12” in from long board edge, and an unmodified roll-off afterwards to decide who takes first turn.

Terrain: Playing on a 4x8 table, the left half was almost completely open, with a few trees and hills about 12” in from either long edge. The right half had a huge hill in the middle of the table, neatly blocking up LOS from most angles.

What happened?
I knew that Ken and I would do best if my elephants could be sent to “greet” the relatively slower-moving Teutonic Knights, while Ken’s Saxons would fare much better fighting against the lighter-armored Ottomans in melee. As a consequence, Ken and I spent a good deal of our initial deployment ensuring that as much of the Ottoman cavalry was lured into setting up on one half of the table. To our delight, John chose to set up his mobile, ranged cavalry on the side with the large hill blocking off his LOS, while the Teutonics spread out on the far more open side of the table.

That’s a lot of unwashed hordes

Once that was accomplished, it was simply a matter of closing the jaws of the trap. All of Ken’s Saxons, as well as two of my elephants, trapped John’s Ottomans into one corner of the table. The rest of my army simply played for time, delaying Mike’s Teutonic forces as long as possible. We were aided by the fact that neither Mike nor John noticed what we were doing until the second turn of the game; by the third turn, the fast-moving Saxons had completely cornered the Ottomans, and by the end of the fourth turn, only the Teutonics were still left on the table.

Between my archers, ballistae, and a surprisingly solid performance from the Worst Cavalry In The World (the Nubian cavalry), the Teutonics had been unable to come to the aid of their allies, and the final score demonstrated the lopsided nature of the contest:

The Ottomans had lost everything, save the one unit of Nomadic cavalry they had seconded to the Teutonic far flank. Everything else had been trapped and destroyed by the Saxons.

The Teutonics had lost only one unit of crossbowmen, and a smattering of casualties to their Knights from ranged attacks. In turn, they had killed my Nubian cavalry (although it took them the whole game to run them down), as well as one Elephant, one ballista, and had caused a second Elephant to go berserk.

The Worst Cavalry in the World defies its nickname,
refusing to go gently into that good night.

The Saxons had not only lost no units at all, but had captured two standards from the Ottomans in the process. Final score: 1707 for the Ancients, and 617 for the Medievals.

Turning the Tables
In many ways, this game was won and lost in the deployment phase. The Ottomans allowed themselves to get trapped in a corner of the field, and the Teutonics found themselves too far out of position in order to help. What’s more, the two medieval generals didn’t seem to think out the consequences of which opponent they would have faced. Even had a aggressive Teutonic response occurred, Mike would have been faced with elephants and war machines, the twin weaknesses of his heavy-cavalry-dependent army list.

Only a good setup if your cavalry have room to maneuver.

Against the Mv5 Saxons, John had only a very short time to recognize the danger of his deployment and get his cavalry units out of the trap, but even had he done so, the ‘mouth’ of the trap was a combination of woods (difficult terrain) and elephants (cause terror in cavalry). In all, it was an untenable situation, and the medieval generals started the game with a huge disadvantage, particularly when the ancients armies (Ken and I) got the first turn of the game and chose to move up, greatly restricting their options.

Given the combination of units they had at their disposal, the medieval generals would have been far better off fully integrating and intermixing their two forces, with a traditional setup of heavy cavalry and infantry in the center, with progressively lighter cavalry on the wings, and their limited ranged weaponry on the flanks. Instead, the two generals set up as largely discrete forces, and the Ottomans paid the price for this decision.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Doubles Tournament, 11 March 2011 (Game 2)

2011-08-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Adam (Imperial Macedonians) and Duncan (Spartacus Romans). Duncan is a tournament regular and true ambassador of the hobby, and had traveled to Cold Wars from England to participate in the events. Adam is one of the more notorious members of the Warhammer Ancients scene, as you will see below.

Armies: (3000 pts)
IMPERIAL MACEDONIANS (Adam)

General & BSB on horses with armor, not attached to units
4 units of 21 phalanx pikemen
1 unit of 11 companions (medium shock cavalry)

SPARTACUS ROMANS (Duncan)

Special Character General Crassus, on horse and not attached to unit
BSB and Lictor on foot, not attached to unit
4 units of 18 legionnaires (three are drilled/stubborn)
1 unit of 9 skirmishers
1 unit of 12 archers without command

Mission: Alternating deployment (2 units per side until all units set up), 12” in from long board edge, but also more than 12” from short board edges, and an unmodified roll-off afterwards to decide who takes first turn.

Terrain: A large hill and long arm of trees largely divides the table into two parts, one part significantly larger than the other. Hills and trees ring the rest of the killing grounds.

What happened?
Given how well our clever strategery had worked out in the previous game, both Ken and I were keen on trying something similar. The terrain worked to our advantage in this regard, with a large chunk of trees likely to be able to cut off the advance of any opponents that deployed on the wrong side of it.

Both Adam and Duncan were extremely obliging during their deployment, giving us what we hoped was a fairly optimal setup for a repeat at the weighted flank (aka “dogpile one guy first”) strategy. There were only a few differences that played a role in what turned out to be a total debacle:

(1) Duncan is a really, really good player. He turned the tables on us, playing the hammer to Adam’s anvil. Basically, the Macedonians absorbed the headlong rush of elephants and Saxons, and then either broken/stampeded them, or let the drilled Roman units move around and hit the enemy units in the flank. Pow!

(2) Ken’s Arthurian Saxons are NOT a hard-hitting army. They lack the important Warband rule that allows them to auto-break opponents they beat in combat, and they also lack the nearly-as-important heavy throwing spears upgrade. As a result, against pikemen in phalanx formation, they were at a notable disadvantage. In hindsight, they may have been better off going after the smaller units of Romans.

(3) Elephants operating solo are highly unreliable against decent infantry units – a term that describes all of Duncan’s legionnaires. Of my three elephants, two ‘bounced’ and stampeded wildly about the field – one off of Romans, and one off of Macedonians.

Despite all this, it would probably have been a pretty close game anyway, except for one key factor that both Duncan AND I had thought we had accounted for, but (as it turned out) we had not:

(4) Adam cheats.

Despite knowing this in advance, and despite keeping a close eye on him throughout the game (indeed, Duncan had purposely been paired with Adam *specifically* to keep an eye on him in the doubles tournament), Adam still managed to find at least three ways that I can see, in hindsight, to cheat.

You’d expect the Nubians to lose this one,
and the Saxons to win at 2:1 odds with their characters.
But that’s only if you don’t expect the pikemen to cheat.

As a result, what probably would have been a close loss for Ken and I instead turned into a rather slow-motion drubbing. The Romans lost a single unit of Skirmishers, the Macedonians lost nothing (rather than the two units of Pikemen, and one unit of Companions, that they probably should have lost), the Nubians lost a few skirmishers and the half-points for two stampeding elephants, and the Saxons…

….the Saxons lost everything, save their General’s unit of freemen, and their mobile unit of skirmishing cavalry. “Fortunately” for them, their General and BSB survived, keeping the points-total from being even more one-sided.

Final score:1306 for the Greco-Romans, and 72 for the Barbarian Hordes.

Turning the Tables
The quick, glib answer is simple: don’t play against Adam again. It’s widely known that he’s a notorious cheat, and he’s clearly “good enough” to cheat even when being closely watched by people who have a good grasp (Ken and me) or even excellent grasp (Duncan) of the rules.

That said, the slightly longer answer is that Ken and I completely underestimated the opposition, and had very few good answers for what we faced. In hindsight, the Elephants would probably have done better against the Macedonians, and the Saxons fared better against the Romans. Adam was understandably quite leery about throwing his phalanxes into melee with Elephants, and it’s likely that Ken and I could have distracted that cheating Macedonian bastard long enough to do a number on Duncan’s hard-as-nails Romans.

Spoiler: the fleeing Macedonian pikemen will beat the Elephant.
Unbelievable, you say? Why yes, you are correct, sir.

As it stood, the game turned into a grinding melee in the center of the table, and both the Romans and Macedonians are better at that kind of game. Without Adam’s cheating ways, the Greco-Romans probably would have pulled out a minor victory anyway, simply given the natural advantages they had.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Singles Tournament, 12 March 2011 (Game 1)

2011-08-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Eric (Sassanids). A cheerful enough fellow leading a historically unlikely foe, Eric had a cavalry-heavy force of Persians that seemed, on paper at least, to be exactly the sort of foe that an Elephant-heavy list like mine would most prefer to face.

Army: (1750 pts)

General & BSB on horses with armor, not attached to units
Elephant with Howdah and archers
1 unit of 8 Kontos/Bow Drilled Heavy Cavalry (Clibanarii)
2 units of 9 Kontos/Bow Medium Cavalry (Clibanarii)
1 unit of 15 spearmen/archer infantry
1 unit of 10 light cavalry with Parthian shot
1 unit of 9 nomadic cavalry

Mission: Fog of War (special mission). Diagonal deployment zones 24” apart, alternating deployment, and an unmodified roll-off to decide who takes first turn.

Terrain: A number of low hills broke up the deployment areas into a number of separate sections, and some sparse copses of trees further enclosed and restricted the midfield area. This would be a relatively tight fight in the center of the table.

What happened?
Given how restrictive the terrain was, and how heavily Eric’s list depended on his cavalry, I was hoping that things would be straightforward. I deployed all my Archers and elephants in the center of my line, stuck the Worst Cavalry in the World out of the way off to one flank, and put my skirmishers on either wing to keep his skirmishing cavalry away from me as long as possible.

If nothing else, the Persians are really brave.
Here they’re all lined up facing three Nubian elephants

Eric’s plan was simple: shoot at my elephants, a lot. I moved forward and shot him up in return, and the plan came together perfectly. One of his Clibanarii medium cavalry units faltered under a torrent of ballista and bowfire and fled off the table. The second was chased off the table more traditionally, by Elephants. The final unit, now badly depleted, sought the ‘safety’ of close combat with my archers, but despite tearing up one of my archer units, the other two quickly jumped in, with my own characters helping, too. And finally, my skirmishers had tag-teamed with one of my own Elephants to shred the solo Persian Elephant in melee, and that poor fellow stampeded.

The Sassanids have a beautiful white elephant.
But only one.

By the time I got around to the rest of his army, it was turn four. His Nomadic cavalry had finally crept around my left flank and taken out my ballista battery, but by this point I didn’t have much left to shoot at. The nomads were chased off the table with arrows and catcalls from nearby archers and elephant archers, and the game soon drew to a close.

The Sassanid general and his elite Clibanarii
fighting for their lives against a Nubian horde

In all, Eric had his General still alive, fighting for his life against a unit of my archers, plus a stampeding Elephant, the spearmen on the hill (who I had ignored for basically the entire game), and one unit of skirmishing cavalry, who had managed to evade the Worst Cavalry in the World for the entire game.

In return, I had lost one unit of Archers (to his baddest unit of cavalry, led by the Sassanid General), all three ballista, and both my units of skirmishers. The final score: 1295 to 442, in favor of the Nubians.

Turning the Tables
This was really a bad match-up, and even worse mission deployment and terrain, for Eric’s Sassanids. Even though he did as well as he could under the circumstances, he was also hit with a spate of bad luck right when he could least afford it (at the very start of the game, when I managed to panic one of his Clibanarii units right off the table), and his armor saves against my shooting and melee attacks were abominable throughout.

However, there are two things Eric could have done to improve his chances, and which hurt his odds in this game. First, he deployed his infantry – the only melee unit in his army able to realistically stand up to elephants – well off to one flank and out of the battle. They spent the game basically watching from the sidelines, and chucking a few (ineffectual) arrows downfield. The Sassanids would have been better served with the spearmen and Elephant right in the middle of their deployment zone, giving the mobile cavalry (which desperately wished to avoid getting charged by my three Elephants) space to move around the edges of the midfield area. Had more than one, badly damaged unit of Clibanarii made it into my backfield, I probably would have lost more than one unit of Archers to it.

Second, there wasn’t much reason to place the skirmishing cavalry on the wings, other than habit. They would have been best placed to shoot-and-move against the elephants in the middle, and instead found themselves out of range or LOS of elephants for much of the game, tasked instead with terrorizing my own skirmishers. An atypical deployment, with formed cavalry on the wings, and skirmishers and infantry (and elephant) in the middle, would have probably given Eric a far better shot at beating the three-elephant army he faced. I had basically nothing deployed in the flanks (only skirmishers and the Worst Cavalry in the World), giving his far more mobile core units a more-or-less clear path down the sides of the table had he been in a position to do so.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Singles Tournament, 12 March 2011 (Game 2)

2011-08-03T18:42:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Ken P (Arthurian Saxons). This is an army list that I’m very familiar with, as I’ve helped Ken playtest and modify the list over a number of months. It’s a pretty straightforward fast warband horde list – save one key difference that wouldn’t make much difference against me: no auto-breaking opponents after winning combat. Since my elephants stampede automatically when they lose combat, and I don’t expect my archers to do well against the Saxons in melee, I figured this distinction was more or less moot.

Army: (1750 pts)

4 units of 28 freemen, one with General & BSB
1 unit of 28 churls
1 unit of 10 skirmishing freemen cavalry
2 units of 9 skirmishers

Mission: “Meeting Engagement”. Armies deploy in pre-determined sequence (‘marching order’), with war machines automatically setting up last. Units deploy 6” away from center line, and no closer than 18” to enemy units. NO special/skirmish deployment to start game, and player who finishes first – or who has no war machines – gets automatic choice of first turn.

Terrain: Low hills and trees surrounding an empty midfield. The Saxons had no terrain really breaking up their deployment zone, while my zone was broken up into several discrete areas, forcing me to set up fairly tight in order to have mutual supporting LOS with all my ranged units.

What happened?
Neither Saxons or Nubians are terribly subtle, and so this battle basically came down to who could do the most damage on a charge. Ken deployed as close as possible, 6” off the center line, and I deployed well away from him (nothing said I had to be within 18” of him, and instead, I chose to set up more than 24” away with most of my army).

The Saxons rush forward at top speed.
Now it’s time for the Elephants to charge.

Well aware that when fighting alone, elephants are quite unreliable, I deployed my three elephants very close together, and hoped that I would be able to handle the Saxons. Ken very obligingly marched his entire army forward, putting them within charge range of my skirmishers and elephants. I wiped two of his units on the first turn of the game in a thundering pachyderm assault, but that still left three more – all of them reliable Saxon freemen, and one led by the warlord himself!

Putting the brakes on a rampaging elephant is a feat in and of itself, but the mahout handlers got the three elephants turned around and thundering down on the Saxon rear. The Saxons hurriedly turned about-face, and the warlord himself managed to force two of the beasts to stampede away. Then he immediately led a frenzied charge into the rear of the stampeding elephants (warband rules can be problematic!), instead of doing the far wiser thing and letting them run away from his hordes, and paid for his bloodthirst by being flattened by a bloodcrazed hephalump.

Guys, we beat the elephants!
WHY ARE WE CHASING AFTER THEM?

Only one unit of freemen was still free to act, and found itself the target for every ranged weapon left on my side of the table. Suffering a hail of ballista and arrow fire, they panicked and fled, and rallied far too far away from the battle to have any effect.

Meanwhile, the rest of my army had destroyed his skirmishers, including his cavalry, and although I actually lost an elephant to close combat attacks (against one of the two units of freemen that had charged into the stampeding elephants), a nearby unit of Archers was able to flank them and wipe them out. With only one unit of freemen left on the table in the middle of the fifth turn, and that one almost back at his table edge, Ken had hit army break point, and the game was called. In all, I had lost some skirmishers and one elephant, and had another stampeding elephant still pounding the Saxon warlord’s body into a fine paste in the midfield. Final score: 2175 to 423, and that in a 1750-pt game, no less!

Turning the Tables
Ultimately, this game was just a case of really poor luck and the warband rules conspiring to sink Ken’s army. However, his basic strategy seemed fairly sound – lining his units up as close as possible to me, charging them forward, blocking as much of my movement as possible, and hoping for the best. Given that my elephants charger further than his warbands, he didn’t have many other good options. As might be expected, he lost two of his infantry units straight away as I charged in with three elephants, but he still had three very effective melee units (especially against me) to handle my back line, and some skirmishers to screen his rear as he assaulted...

…except that he had marched forward with his skirmishers as well, and I had either tied them up or wiped them out with my own skirmishers and cavalry! This meant that Ken effectively had nothing to protect the rear of his three units of Saxon freemen, and had to waste time (and risk further losses) by turning units about-face in order to fight off the Elephants on their second charge.

Even had Ken not then flubbed two Warband tests and charged into the rear of two stampeding elephants (!), he would still have been in an awkward position, with three units of archers able to shoot him up, ballista with enfilading fire, and no guarantee that he’d be able to beat all three units of Archers after having suffered more losses. Granted, his odds would still have been decent if he had all three freemen units left (as he did), but that was relying on luck and good fortune to shake off the Elephants, instead of having skirmishers around to do the trick.

In all, the Saxons probably had the slight edge in this game, as they could afford to lose two of their five infantry blocks and still win; but losing all their screeners and skirmishers meant that they were down to luck to beat back my Elephants and then break my archers – and Ken ended up having monstrously bad luck on the Warband roll, despite having the good fortune to stampede two elephants at once from a single combat just the turn before.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Singles Tournament, 12 March 2011 (Game 3)

2011-08-03T18:38:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Duncan (Spartacus Romans). Possibly the only plausibly historical match-up I had this tournament! The Spartacus Roman list is an interesting one, and in hindsight, possibly one of the nastier Roman army lists out of the many that exist in the Ancients rules. The key elements are dirt-cheap Legionnaires, led by what are effectively minor heroes in the Centurion upgrades – and those Spartacus-era Centurions are head-and-shoulders above the ones from other eras, too.

Army: (1750 pts)

Special Character General Crassus, on horse and not attached to unit
BSB and Lictor on foot, not attached to unit
2 units of 12 legionnaires (veteran/drilled/stubborn) with Centurion
1 unit of 21 legionnaires (drilled/stubborn) with Centurion
3 units of 18 conscript legionnaires with Centurion
2 unit of 9/10 archers without command

Mission: “Delayed Reserves”. Both units must set aside a formed infantry or cavalry unit as a reserve, and note which short table edge they will enter (left/right) later in the game. Alternating deployment 12” in from long table edge, and an unmodified roll-off to decide who takes first turn. Flankers enter on 4+ on Turn 3, or 3+ on Turn 4, or 2+ on Turn 5, or do not enter at all and are considered lost.

Terrain: Low hills and trees surrounding an empty midfield. The Romans (as a melee army) didn’t really need to worry about terrain in their deployment zone; my Nubians ended up being squeezed a little by some woods in my deployment zone.

What happened?
During the first turn of the game, Duncan and I discovered a flaw in the 2e Ancients rulebook – one that allowed elephants to directly use the Leadership score of the army general. After multiple judges finally consulted the 1e rules for clarification, Duncan graciously allowed me to rewrite a portion of my army list, to allow me to take the Ld8 upgrade for my elephants (I had not taken it, as it seemed a waste of points with a General nearby...unless, of course, the General is not allowed to lend her Leadership to the Elephant’s morale checks). With that done, we continued our game.

Expecting the Romans, who had a grand total of zero non-javelin ranged weapons, to march toward my lines, I had set up a bit back from the forward edge of deployment zone, with elephants spread out and ready to double or triple-team some Romans. Duncan, however, moved up only gradually with the units on his wings on the first turn, forcing me to spend a turn moving my own archers up to get them into range.

The game continued to develop slowly, as I forced Duncan’s skirmishers to flee with my own skirmishers. He had been waiting for his sixth legion unit to enter the table, and they did on my left flank, completing the pincer maneuver.

I finally had my Elephants within charge range, and charged two of them straight into biggest unit of Legionnaires on the table, winning the combat, but of course the stubborn chaps hung around for three more combat phases. My third elephant ground its way through a smaller unit of Conscript Legionnaires on my left flank, finally wiping it out in the fourth turn of the game.

The Worst Cavalry in the World had been my flanking force, and they came in from my right, headed straight to the Roman backfield, and caused a minor traffic jam between the three roman characters and two legion units, as they frantically shifted to protect their leaders and their flanks. I counted that a job well done, as it effectively took two Roman infantry units out of commission for the rest of the game.

The sneaky Romanses sneaks around
the hill and attacks us, yes they do.

Of course, although I had managed to account for four of the six legions through my cleverness, and threaten a fifth with a largely fresh elephant, the point of all this back-and-forth had been to allow Duncan to maneuver his sixth and final legion into my backfield and threaten my archers. I shored up the nearest threatened unit with my General and BSB, and unexpectedly, they lost the combat. The Romans ran them down, and with the death of my general, a nearby Archer unit panicked and fled. The subsequent points swing took the game from a narrow victory for the Nubians, to a narrow victory for the Romans. Final score: 1169 Romans, 668 Nubians.

Turning the Tables
I finally played my Elephants well – I lost none of them, I was careful to put them into combats they were favored in, and they chewed their way through two of Duncan’s legions quite thoroughly in the process. I also had (re)learned my lesson during the doubles tournament, and kept my skirmishers well away from combat with formed units, especially when my elephant was involved – no point in “giving away” wounds to combat resolution.

But I definitely took a risk with my General, putting her in a unit of Archers to bolster their melee ability and take down some Roman legionnaires. Although I would probably do the same thing again (I was statistically favored in the match), it was definitely a risk, and I ended up losing the game as a result.

Both the legion and the Nubians play
a deadly little game of keep-away.

Both Duncan and I had played relatively cautiously in this game, and apart from over-anticipating his initial movement and losing a turn of archer fire, I think I played this game well. Similarly, Duncan was equally able in managing to tie up my elephants for several turns, and only the fact that he hadn’t accounted for my flanking cavalry kept him from sneaking more of his units around my flanks to threaten my soft, juicy back line.

In all, one of the closest games of Warhammer that I’ve played in a long, long time, and one that I enjoyed even more for the fact that I played so well against a top-notch gamer like Duncan.

Retrospective: Cold Wars WAB Tournament, 11-12 March 2011 (Postscript)

2011-08-03T18:33:00.000-07:00

John B, our tournament organizer, had added an additional layer of historical fun to this event: the armies had been divided into armies of “Good” (aka ‘Armies of Christendom’), and armies of “Evil” (aka not). The armies of “Evil” ended up with an impressive total, edging out the armies of “Good”, and spelling (at least temporary) doom for the forces of the White Christ.

How the pagan polytheistic Romans of the era of Spartacus ended up on the side of “Good” is anyone’s guess, but I suppose that’s just Classical bias for you.

It turns out that in my third game of the Singles tournament, against Duncan’s Romans, I had been playing for the Best General. I thus wasn’t at all surprised that Duncan was crowned Best General of Cold Wars 2011 (at least, in the Warhammer Ancients tournament); a well-deserved victory for a masterful gamer and a very sharp guy.

Far more surprising was discovering that I had won an award, as well:

Put simply, of all the prizes and tournament awards I’ve won, I think this is the one I’m proudest of. I even love the awesomely silly high-five emblem.

Retrospective: 6-8 August 2010 Counteroffensive VII (Intro)

2011-06-21T09:11:00.000-07:00

You can also read coverage of this event at the Jungle, from the perspective of Sho-T (Pat) and Justiciar (Bryan):

I had been very excited about this particular counteroffensive event, and put together no less than four (!) army lists for the event, based on any number of crazy 40K army ideas that have been percolating over the years. The Usual Suspects had agreed on 1750 point army lists, and so I brought along:

(A) A Space Marine Dreadnought Bash.

(B) A Slann (space lizard!) army list, using Tau rules.

(D) My "Swinging Sixties" Sisters of Battle list.

(A) First up is a Space Marine Dreadnought Bash, with an alternate list using some of the Spearhead rules that had recently been released. This allowed me to put to use the many marine and dreadnought bits that had been hiding away in my bits collection for many years, and with a few other selections (and conversions) to fill out the list, I had the following for 1750:

Master of the Forge w/Conversion Beamer
3x “Rifleman” Dreadnoughts with double twin-ACs
3x “Support” Dreadnoughts with twin-LC and Missile
2x 10-man Tactical squads with Missile/Flamer, and Sgt with Combi-flamer and meltabomb
2x Razorbacks with Lascannon/twin-Plasma
2x Typhoon Landspeeders with Multimelta
1x 5-man Scout Snipers with Camo-cloaks and Missile

All in all, a fairly shooty, fairly mobile list that is pretty high on the “fun factor” and not too nasty. Ironically, despite being the army list with the highest “fun factor” for both me and opponents, this list never saw use at this particular Counteroffensive event.

(B) Next is a Slann (space lizard!) army list, using Tau rules. I’ve been playing and painting this army for many years, and this particular incarnation finally uses the piranhas and kroot that I’ve been avoiding converting and painting for a long time (despite having the models for many years…and despite the fact that the kroot conversions were the VERY FIRST THING that got me into this list!). Finally, no more excuses, I thought! Here’s what I had for 1750 points, using Tau names for units:

Shas’el with plasma/missile/target array, HWMulti, HWT-lock
2x 3-suit Crisis teams with Missile/Plasma and Multitracker
2x 2-suit Broadside teams with Target array, Leader with HWT-lock, HWBlacksun, 2x Shield Drones
2x 8-man Pathfinders with Ld8 upgrade, in Devilfish with D-pod
2x 6-man Fire Warriors
2x 10-man Kroot, with 4 Kroot Hounds each
1x 2-vehicle Piranha squadron, each with Fusion, D-pod, Target array, Flechette

Not quite as streamlined and optimized as Tau can get, but pretty close to min-max glory for the army codex, and definitely brutal for opponents who don’t know what to shoot at first – the Pathfinders in particular make cover vanish, which can be nasty for units or vehicles at the receiving end of Tau heavy-weapons fire that accompanies that ability.

(C) A Tyranid Warrior list, fielding all the old-school plastic Tyranid Warriors I’ve collected over the years – and supplemented with some Zoats (as Hive Guard) and Cthulhuoid monsters (as Zoanthropes), and a few other conversions here and there. Although mostly put together as a “fun” list, it has the potential to be really quite nasty, as the swarms of Tyranid Warriors are somewhat difficult to put down, because almost nothing is Monstrous (and thus can easily find cover), and because virtually every unit in the army can put a hurt on light transports and infantry squads.

2x Tyranid Primes with twin-Boneswords, Scything Talons, Adrenal Glands
6x 3-model Tyranid Warriors, Rending Claws, 2 with Deathspitter, 1 with Venom Cannon
1x 3-model Zoanthropes brood
1x 3-model Hive Guard brood
1x Deathleaper
1x Tyrannofex with Rupture Cannon, Regeneration, Cluster Spines

Although the army probably would struggle against heavy Armor Values, this isn’t anything different from most Tyranid lists. Other than that primary weakness, though, there’s an awful lot of crunchy.

(D) My "Swinging Sixties" Sisters of Battle list, using the infamous ‘Immo-spam’, and probably one of the nastier army lists I’ve ever used (and certainly in this current 5th edition of the game). I’ve been playing this list on-and-off for several years, including in tournaments – and found it can be extremely brutal when it works well, but can fall apart and turn into a long slow (losing) slog if I make mistakes in deployment or the initial phases of the game. Sisters are a little too tough to completely fall apart, but that tends to result in a losing game for me that lasts for many turns longer (with no victory in sight!) than other army lists I’ve fielded.

1x Demonhunter Inquisitor Lord w/Hammer of Witches, Psychic Hood, BP/CCW
……with Retinue of Chirurgeon, and 3 Meltagun veterans
1x Palatine with Book, BP/CCW, with one unit of Celestians as retinue (see below)
4x 5-model Celestians (2 Meltaguns, and Leader with BP/CCW), in Immolator w/Ex-Armor, Smoke
2x 5-model Dominions (2 Flamers, and Leader with Brazier/BP), in Immolator w/Ex-Armor, Smoke
2x 5-model Adeptus Arbites (IST’s with 2 Meltaguns, 3 shotguns)
3x empty Immolators w/Ex-Armor, Smoke
1x IG Platoon (Lt with AC, 2 Snipers) (2x Squads with AC) (1x HW team with 3 ACs)

Definitely an unfriendly list, and one that will no longer be entirely legal (due to the Demonhunters ally and allied Imperial Guard) after the White Dwarf update to the Sisters of Battle comes out this summer 2011.

Retrospective: 6 August 2010 Counteroffensive VII (Game 1)

2011-06-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Eibel Offensive
The desert planet of Auros IX has seen numerous conflicts, and much blood spilled upon its red sands. The Imperial Guard regiment in the sector was sent to the ninth planet to investigate the possibility of survivors of a new enemy of the Imperium to the region, a splinter Hive Fleet that was engaged and (largely) defeated by the naval fleet that was making a routine sweep through the Auros sector.

Under the command of Commander Eibel, and accompanied by the infamous xenos specialist Inquisitor Vader, the small force scouted Auros IX and immediately upon finding signs of xenos drop-spores, began a standard search-and-destroy pattern around the landing site. As they approached a long-abandoned Imperial mining camp, the sands suddenly erupted upward, and what appeared to be the core of the surviving xenos elements, led by a “Hive Tyrant” designee, rushed toward the Imperial units.
Ally: Bryan (Tyranids). As this was a huge mega-battle event, Bryan and I combined our Tyranid forces, minus a few points each, to face the combined might of Pat’s Imperial Guard. I took Deathleaper and one Prime out of my list. For this event, Bryan was fielding:

Hive Tyrant with dual twin-Devourers, and two Tyrant Guard
2 standard Trygons
Carnifex with dual twin-Devourers in a Spore Pod
2 Zoanthropes in a Spore Pod
2 Hive Guard
2 units of 8 Genestealers
1 unit of 20 Hormagaunts
1 unit of 4 Warriors

Opponent: Pat (Imperial Guard) had been rubbing his hands with glee at the opportunity to field as many of his tanks and heavy guns and other sexy Imperial vehicles as possible, and put down a truly massive 3000-point horde, heavy on armor and other nastiness:

Commander with Medic/Meltagun/Standard/Lascannon in unit (including Master of the Fleet)
Inquisitor Vader (junior Inquisitor) with Power Armor, Psychic Hood, and Storm Shield
2x Platoon Command (AC/Plasma/Standard, Missile/Grenade/Standard)
5x IG squads (2x Missile/Grenade, 2x HBolter/Plasma, 1x HBolter/Melta)
2x Heavy Weapons Teams (Heavy Bolter, Lascannon)
1x Ogryn team in Chimera
1x Stormtroopers with upgrades in Chimera
1x IG Veteran squad with upgrades and Priest in Vendetta
1x Hellhound
2x Lascannon Sentinels
6x Leman Russ tanks (2 standard, 2 demolisher, 1 executioner, 1 exterminator), with sponsons

Mission: War of Attrition. Taken from the Battle Missions book, this is an IG-themed mission, and the attacker (the Tyranids) would get to recycle any wiped-out Troops units. The table was divided into two 4x4 squares, with Tyranids getting to set up anywhere in the one square (and recycle from any table edge therein), and Imperial Guard setting up in the other.

Terrain: Auros IX, the desert planet. Terrain was standard 1/4 of table, and what was present largely blocked line-of-sight without actually being obviously area terrain. There were two large hills, two enclosed bunker complexes, and three open-framed (Necromunda-style) ruined buildings, along with some scattered low walls and tank traps. Because most of the terrain was at the edges of the board (within 12” of a table edge), the center of the board was basically a giant kill-zone with hardly anything to hide behind.

What Happened?

The Imperial Guard right flank. Imagine this mirrored

on the left flank, and fill in the rear with IG squads.

Pat set up his units in and around cover in a U-shaped arc in his deployment zone, trying to maximize his firepower in the open kill-zone. The Tyranids all lined up on the edge of their deployment zone and tried to bum-rush the Guardsmen, who all got to shoot first.

The Tyranid left flank (directly facing the IG right). Notice

the Trygons off to the side, out of LOS of much of the IG

because of the hills in their deployment zone. All other units

are screened by Hormagaunts or low terrain.

The Guard shooting was wildly ineffectual, as Pat quickly discovered that many of his infantry units, at the base of the “U” shaped formation, were out of range (only 36” on his heavy bolters). The Leman Russ tanks blasted merrily away, but mostly aimed at the center of the Tyranid line, and despite killing many Hormagaunts, did almost nothing to the bigger beasties behind.

The game itself went downhill from there for the Imperial Guard. Over on the Tyranid right flank (primarily a ‘distraction force’ of several Warrior broods and some Hive Guard), the Tyranids took advantage of the large, open, unoccupied building and ran up to shoot at IG vehicles with near-impunity. Pat threw a few more units into the fray to shore up the flank, led by Inquisitor Vader, but the Tyranid Warriors simply rushed out of the bunker and onto the over-extended Stormtroopers, rending them to bits.

Despite being told the consequences, Pat didn’t really believe

how the rules for empty buildings might seriously hurt his units.

Inquisitor Vader’s last stand, defiantly holding his ground

next to the smoking hulk of his Chimera. Several

stormtroopers are fighting valiantly nearby.

Pat threw his Ogryn into the fray as well, but they too were summarily shredded by Tyranid Warrior broods, who then tore apart the nearby Chimeras and Hellhound. In all, a mere four broods of Tyranids had managed to stymie and destroy five Guard units and an IG character, without taking serious losses in the process.

Pat’s other flank was experiencing even more difficulty, as two more turns of shooting proved largely ineffectual. The Trygons and surviving Hormagaunts blew threw the two Sentinels on the hill, and slammed into the Leman Russ tanks (and Vendetta) at the base of the hill. A combat turn later, more guard vehicles were going up in smoke, and with almost half of his army gone, the Tyranids having lost virtually nothing, and the odds decidedly against him, Pat conceded the game.

RAWR says the Trygon! AUGH says the human!

Turning the Tables:
Pat’s biggest mistake by far was during his deployment phase. He got to deploy first, and he chose to do three things that immediately lost him the game.

(1) He deployed his forces far too close to the Tyranid deployment zone, literally within assault range. What’s more, those units – even if they had survived!! – were also within assault range of any Tyranid troops choices that recycled in this scenario (like the Hormagaunts, or all the Warrior broods). He should have deployed all his forces as far back as possible, forcing the Tyranids to spend many turns in the open getting into assault range, and forcing recycled units to travel as far as possible to join the fray.

(2) He deployed his units poorly, blocking off his Line-of-Sight on both flanks. Cover serves you nothing if you’re a shooty army (IG) that can’t see your target. As a result of this decision (for example), the Trygons were largely out of LOS of his units for the first two turns behind a large hill, giving Pat only a single shooting phase to try to deal with them. Similarly, the empty bunker on the other flank not only blocked his LOS, but also gave the Tyranids a nice, safe, protected corridor up which to advance, and from where they could (and did) jump on any Guard units that wandered too near.

Pat probably would have been better off deploying on the opposite half of the table – there would have been far less cover on each flank behind which the Tyranids could have advanced, and the multi-level building frames would have given his infantry numerous places in which to deploy and still fire at full effect at the advancing hordes.

Not only are the Guardsmen too far away to help,

but there’s all this LOS-blocking terrain in the way!

(3) Finally, the other major problem with the “U” shape was that the infantry squads with shorter-ranged weapons (like heavy bolters) could do absolutely nothing to support the units further forward until the Tyranids were already in melee.

The deployment errors were compounded by failing to target non-Troops units (like Trygons) first, as in the scenario, those units did not recycle. Even on paper, Pat’s Imperial Guard force struggled with proper organization of forces – for example, he chose to squadron his Leman Russ tanks into three squadrons of two, for example, when at the Apocalypse/Megabattle level he was working it, he should simply have taken each tank separately and split fire more effectively.

Not that Bryan and I were mistake-free in our game: for example, Bryan deployed his Hive Guard so far back that they couldn’t do anything all game long, and I spent several turns futilely shooting at the front/side AV12 Hellhound until I realized I should simply assault the damn thing (Pat was moving it well under 6” each turn, and keeping it far too near to my Warriors) and kill it with rending claws against its far crunchier AV10 backside.

Retrospective: 7 August 2010 Counteroffensive VII (Game 2)

2011-06-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Phil (Imperial Guard) was a new player to the 40K hobby, and he and his young son had shown up at Counteroffensive hoping to get in a few games with more experienced players. While my able colleagues took on the enthusiastic younger gentleman, I faced off against Phil’s mix of Guard units with 1500 points of my “counts-as-Tau” Slann lizardmen. I removed the two Piranha and one unit of Pathfinders (moving “their” transport to the Fire warriors) to make points, while Phil had the following:

Commander with Standard, Astropath, Vox, and Medic
2x Platoon Commanders (one with Vox/Missile/Commissar, one with Plasma Pistol and Vox)
4x IG infantry squads w/Vox (Lascannon, Autocannon, HBolter/Melta, Missile/Plasma)
1x Veterans with 2 Flamers, Heavy Flamer, and Meltabombs
2x Leman Russ MBT (one with HBolter sponsons, one with MMelta sponsons)
6 Ogryn (in Reserve)
Marbo (in Reserve)

Mission: Spearhead/Capture & Control (corner deployment and 5 objectives)

Terrain: A generally open table-top with a heavy slope upward in one corner (my deployment area), and a large mesa in the other corner (Phil’s deployment area). Ruins and woods were scattered around the rest of the table in-between. One objective was at the base of my sloping rise, another behind the mesa in Phil’s corner, and the remaining three were scatter about in between, in various bits of area terrain and/or cover.

What Happened?
I got to pick corners and deploy first, and chose the big, sloping hill (of course) in order to maximize my LOS and firepower. I was worried far less about cover, of which the big slope had exactly none. I set up my one unit of pathfinders behind some ruins to one flank, and deployed my Broadsides and Crisis Suits in the open, the Crisis Suits as far forward as possible so as to get into cover ASAP. My two units of Fire Warriors stayed in reserve, while the Kroot bands each deployed forward into woods terrain during Infiltration.

Phil deployed his units…behind the big LOS-blocking mesa in his corner. He did deploy two units in the open, however – his HQ (which he deployed on TOP of the mesa), and a unit of Guardsmen (which he deployed to one flank, in the open). He also deployed both his tanks, as well as his Ogryn, in reserve.

The colonel, all by himself, looking rather surprised he’s still alive

Naturally, I didn’t look this gift horse in the mouth. The Colonel’s squad evaporated, although I wasn’t quite able to kill the old man himself. The unit of infantry next to him also evaporated, and I realized that I was initially actually deployed a little too far away from the Imperial Guard – so used to deploying far back was I that I hadn’t anticipated facing a slow force like Guard that would start out of range! Happily for me, however, Phil set about to remedy this problem by…moving all of his units forward into the open.

My Kroot immediately jumped a nearby unit of Guardsmen, while my guns annihilated a few more guardsmen, eliminating three more units this turn (for a total of five). The Guardsmen had managed a few pot-shots with their guns, but even when one of Phil’s tanks and his Ogryn reserved onto the table, they did a grand total of Not Much. IG bullets and shells veered wildly to one side, missing their targets by a country mile. Meanwhile, the Tau continued to wreak merry havoc on the poor humans, although the planned “shoot up Ogryn and assault survivors with vicious Kroot” plan managed to fail badly, leading to the Ogryn spending a happy turn or two chasing down and stomping one of my two units of Kroot.

The Ogryn happily chase down a unit of Bright! Orange! fleeing Kroot.

The “Stealth Suit” is actually a mission objective.

The rest of the battle was pretty much a clean-up action, as the Tau mercilessly hunted down the stragglers, killed the Guard tanks, and took a little damage in the process. By games’ end, I had a total of three objectives, and had lost one unit of Kroot, and one transport. Phil was still, tenaciously, holding on to one objective (hiding behind the big mesa), and had just two units left on the table – a unit of Veterans, and his second Leman Russ, which arrived from reserves very late.

Turning the Tables:
The Guardsmen made a number of very odd decisions starting in the deployment phase, each of which made things much harder for them. For starters, they deployed all their shooty infantry units – out of LOS, behind a big hill. Then, they deployed their HQ completely in the open. And then, they spent much of the game running forward, trying to hurt me, rather than setting up in cover and shooting me up lots.

As a result, my Pathfinders were actually somewhat superfluous – there simply weren’t a whole lot of Guardsmen in cover for the markerlights to affect, so they ended up sniping with their Pulse Carbines at nearby units when they came close, instead.

That said, Phil did do a fair amount of damage to my Crisis Suits, and I lost several of them during the game. But he was never able to completely wipe out any one squad, and as a result, I still had all my units of suits still bouncing around flinging shots downfield at the end of the game.

This is kind of a microcosm of how the game went for the two sides.
In this picture, it’s the very end of the Tau movement phase.

The Ogryn did manage to do very well, even given how badly my Kroot whiffed, but Phil simply didn’t have anything in his army to back them up and exploit any gains they made. Instead, the Ogryn wiped out a unit of Kroot, and then stood around in the open as some Crisis Suits moved nearer and blew them away.

Marbo starts looking in the classified section for another line of work.

Phil is a new player, and still learning. He does have a good core to his list, but needs to work on deployment and playing to the strengths of his army. He did make (I think) an excellent decision to start his Leman Russ tanks in reserve, rather then letting them get shot by my Broadsides at the very start of the game, but ended up shooting them mostly at targets of opportunity when they entered, and losing the tanks shortly thereafter. Practice, practice, and he’ll get better, I’m thinking.

Retrospective: 8 August 2010 Counteroffensive VII (Game 3)

2011-06-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Attendance at this particular Counteroffensive event being rather paltry, Pat and Bryan and I decided to set up a megabattle event for anyone interested in playing some 40K on Sunday 8 August. If no-one showed up to play, we decided to play a megabattle event ourselves, pitting Pat & Bryan’s Tyranids against my Sisters of Battle. As I’d only brought a little over 2000 points, I borrowed a few pieces from Pat’s collection, and the Dreamwizards store collection, to make up the extra points.

In the end, my 3000-point Sisters list included the following “extrys”:

Callidus Assassin
A third 5-model unit of Arbites (2 Meltaguns, 3 Shotguns)
A third 5-model unit of Dominions (4 Flamers, Leader with Brazier/BP)
….and four extra flamers to equip the first two Dominions with a total of 4 flamers each
A second Inquisitor, equipped identically to the first with identical retinue
3x Immolators with Extra Armor & Smoke (to transport the three units above)
3x Exorcists with Extra Armor

For those of you playing the home game, that’s 12 immolators, 3 exorcists, 20 meltaguns, 15 flamers, and a smattering of Autocannons because honestly, why not. Plus two Ld10 Psychic Hoods and five faith (‘mojo’) points for good measure. It was really an awful army list, full of all kinds of Beatface and Sealclubbing, and other generally Not Nice things.

Opponents: Pat and Bryan combined their Tyranid forces to field 3000 points of the following:

Hive Tyrant and 2 Tyrant Guard
Hive Tyrant and 1 Tyrant Guard
1 brood of 2 Hive Guard
1 brood of 4 Tyranid Warriors (incl. Venom Cannon)
1 large brood of 20 Hormagaunts
5 broods of 8~12 Genestealers
3 Trygons
Hive Tyrant with Wings (in reserve)
1 brood of 6 Shrikes (in reserve)
1 brood of 2 Zoanthropes in Spore Pod (in reserve)

Mission: Megabattle! No real mission or objectives, just a straight-forward “shred the other side” operation.

Terrain: A huge 4x12 table with ruins and trees and hills all over the place.

What Happened?
As the Sisters set up first, I deployed heavily to the right side of one long edge, trying to limit the angles that the Tyranids could attack me from. I placed my Exorcists in the back center of my formation, with my allied Guardsmen on either side, in cover, then set up a row of twelve Immolators in front of all that, and three more Immolators to my ‘heavy’ right flank. Pat & Bryan were very obliging, deploying the entirety of their army within a 4’ wide span in the right-hand (their left-hand) corner of the table, allowing me the opportunity to ‘box’ them in quite nicely.

This is what 12 Immolators and 3 Exorcists look like all together. Gleep!

I had forgotten that Genestealers could infiltrate, so ended up deploying with a large blind spot on my right flank (where LOS was blocked by a large multi-story building), but as I retained the initiative during the first turn, this was less of a problem than it might have been otherwise.

This is what is known in the Imperial military as an “assload” of Genestealers.

My first move was fairly straight-forward: my Callidus somehow convinced the Hive Guard to wander forward into the open, where they fell to a volley of Exorcist fire. The Tyranid Warriors also were blown to smithereens, and with the Tyranids now deprived of what little long-range firepower they had brought, the Sisters of Battle sent forward their Immolators, with half of them making a hard-right turn toward the lurking Genestealers.

The Tyranids ran forward – all except the Trygons, which mysteriously stayed stock still, hiding behind a tall rock formation at the far side of the table.

One Sisters Immolator took the ‘bait’ role and rushed into the nearest mob of Genestealers, flaming away madly. The four remaining Genestealer broods rushed the tank, shaking it slightly but failing to do anything. On the following turn, I tank-shocked them into a rough circle and flamed two of them to cinders. More Genestealers rushed in, spilling the ‘bait’ out onto the turf as they ripped the Immolator to bits. The ‘bait’, made up of a Dominion squad with four flamers and a Brazier, promptly let loose and flamed another Genestealer brood into oblivion.

The Trygons finally started to move forward.

A Spore Pod screamed down out of the sky, trying to block the LOS of the Exorcists in my back rank. I tank-shocked it into a wet, sticky mess (note: this is no longer a viable tactic, what with the FAQ clarification on immobile models being tank-shocked), and the Exorcists started plinking away at the Trygons slithering frantically toward my lines.

My Callidus reserved onto the table, and went after the only even-slightly soft target on the Tyranid side: the Hormagaunts. She got eaten rather decisively the following assault phase. It was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise very long afternoon for the Tyranids.

A giant circle of flaming death.

On the right-hand side of the field, Hormagaunts and Genestealers found themselves herded together into a giant circle of flaming death. The Shrikes chose (inexplicably) to land in the exact same place as they came out of reserve, and were flamed into oblivion a turn later. With loads of meltaguns to spare, first one Trygon, then another, then a third, were blown to bits.

The Tyranids kept coming, killing a few more Immolators, and wiping out my ‘bait’ squad of Dominion sisters, but by the middle of the fourth turn, they had been practically annihilated – only the three Hive Tyrants remained alive, largely because I had ignored them all to this point. Two of them were in good position to hurt an Immolator or two, but after that it was clear which way this was going to go.

The surviving members of the Hivemind contemplate their impending fate

Turning the Tables
Bryan has a good write-up and post-game analysis of what happened at the Jungle.

In short, both Bryan and Pat brought a hodge-podge of models that weren’t really designed for a competitive match. They definitely have more Hive Guard and Tyrannofex models, all of which would have helped in this game, but instead they fielded only two Hive Guard, and two other Venom Cannons besides, which did basically nothing to stop all the armored vehicles I had zipping around.

They also set up so that they were effectively sending units at me in waves, rather than all at once. The Genestealers were deployed in an arc, and kept clustered very close together despite the fact that I had all the flamers at my disposal. The Trygons chose (inexplicably) to lurk for a turn before moving forward, giving my army more breathing room. The units in Reserve probably should have started on the table, and when they entered from Reserve simply dropped into the middle of all my short-range weaponry, rather than someplace a bit safer.

So: definitely not a Fun Time for anyone. Probably could have gone a bit better had a different match-up been proposed, as there was clearly a bit of miscommunication about what everyone should be fielding, and about what particular level of crunchy list should be fielded. Ay, ya. I think that at the next Counter-offensive (in 2011, one hopes), I will be making more of an effort to find out what my opponents are expecting before shredding them with my nastiest list.

Retrospective: 6-8 August 2010 Counteroffensive VII Postscript

2011-06-21T08:34:00.000-07:00

A very quiet year at Counteroffensive, and a somewhat bitter taste in the mouth to end things. All things to keep in mind for next year’s Counteroffensive, and keeping things a bit more ‘Real’.

My thought is to bring the same (or similar) lists and armies again, and try (try again) with a slightly more overt ranking of “Tasty” to “Crunchy” to “Just Plain Mean” to best calibrate to what my opponents are using or how they’re playing that day, which suggests to my mind the following hierarchy of sportliness and competitivosity:

Light & Tasty: SM Dreadnoughts
Crunchy Fun: Tyranid Warriors
Just Plain Mean: Slann (Tau)

I KEEL you: Sisters of Battle

Retrospective: Warmonger Charity WAB Tournament: 29 January 2011 (Intro)

2011-06-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

The third annual Warmonger Charity tournament to benefit the American Cancer Society, organized by our local Warhammer Ancients fanatic and condottiero John Bianchi, was held on 29 January 2010. One could also think of it as another fine excuse for me to field my (mostly finished) Nubian historical army, and to play a version of Warhammer Fantasy that actually doesn’t suck most mightily (and which is within a reasonable price-range for a full army), all whilst introducing myself to an anachronistic array of historical opponent from virtually every period of human history.

The Nubians are the third of my WAB armies, and by far the most random, relying as they do almost entirely on the hitting power of elephants, which are unpredictable creatures even at the best of times. When things work, they tend to work great. When they don’t, it’s either a brutal loss (for me) or a long, slow, grinding tie game (also fairly common). And because the elephants are so not maneuverable at all, I can easily lose a game in the deployment phase. Still, practice makes permanents, and the more practice I get with the Nubians, the better I (hopefully) can be with them.

What did I bring?
My Meroitic Nubian army (using the Mauryan Indian rules) saw some dramatic modifications after their rough handling at Historicon 2010.

In the original incarnation of the list, I had fielded two large blocks of mixed spears and archers, and several smaller units of skirmishing archers. Over the course of five games, it had become clear that Nubian (and Mauryan) infantry is of dubious quality in a fight, and the difference between a block of (pricey) spearmen, and a block of (cheaper) bowmen is negligible in melee. Furthermore, the skirmishing archers are far too brittle to be at all reliable, and were simply points wasted. As a result, I gave up the spearmen and skirmishing archers entirely, choosing to field instead three blocks of formed bowmen, complete with command. I expected they would put out comparable firepower, be far sturdier in the rare combats they were involved in, and prove less brittle (due to being able to use the General’s leadership value as formed units) in general. Happily, these expectations all proved to be true.

I also discovered that Elephant Escorts were wildly useful skirmishing units, and one of the better skirmisher options in WAB. They were particularly useful against enemy skirmishers, the primary weakness of elephants, and could even give light cavalry pause. As a result, I found the points to bring a second unit of Elephant Escorts in my revised list.

1750 points:

General/Candace on (Mv6) horse, with Lt Armor, Spear, Bow, and Broadsword
ASB on (Mv6) horse, with Shield
10 formed cavalry (Mv6) with Sword, shield, Spear, and full command
3 Elephants, each with 3 crew (all with bows, lt armor, javelin, broadsword)
2 units of skirmishing Elephant Escorts (8 models with broadsword, javelin, shield)
2 Heavy Ballistae, each with 3 crew
3 units of 16 archers, each with bow, broadsword, and full command

As a general strategy, I intended to deploy my archers and ballistae back slightly, with general and ASB nearby, and send my elephants (and escorts) forward to do as much concentrated damage as possible. Archers and ballistae would either soften up elephant targets, or try to take out heavy/medium cavalry threats, and escorts would chase off enemy skirmishers, and possibly jump in to help the elephants in melee if they had the opportunity. My cavalry (dubbed “the worst cavalry in the world”) would maneuver around a flank and attempt to look threatening, and maybe chase after some skirmishers or something given the chance.

Retrospective: Warmonger Charity WAB Tournament: 29 January 2011 (Results)

2011-06-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

In all, I played three fine opponents that day, starting with Dave and his samurai list. Now, it’s no secret that the official Samurai list in the “Armies of Antiquity” supplement is quite nasty, and I rather expected that Dave would hurt me quite badly. That said, I was a bit surprised at how small his army was, and in particular how he had no cavalry to speak of. I even (foolishly) allowed myself the hope that I might actually win this.

Beautiful models, apparently of the “Mountain” clan.

General and ASB, complete with scenic bases.

Samurai Army List:

General & ASB on horse
1x12 Samurai on foot (med infantry with stubborn) with Katana (as shield), and full command
1x18 Samurai on foot (med infantry with stubborn) with Katana and Longbow, and full command
2x18 Light infantry on foot, with spear, and full command
2x12 Light infantry on foot, with longbow, and Standard/Musician
1x5 Ninja (skirmishing hidden deployment)

Foolish hope indeed. Dave and I each had secret deployment, and each deployed with a heavy right flank. Of course, that meant that my heavy right (my three elephants) thus had a very, very long slog across the table, getting shot up by all those Samurai and Ashigaru longbows on the way. Meantime, Dave quick-marched his spearmen and samurai down his right flank (my very exposed left flank) and had fallen upon my archers and ballistae by the middle of the game. I foolishly wasted several turns trying to fight an archery duel with superior archers using superior bows and in superior (= any at all) armor at long range, before realizing a little too late that the spearmen and samurai marching toward my lines were the far greater threat.

Pretty much how the game went. One elephant has stampeded,

the other two are pressing hopelessly onward. Spearmen

Ashigaru are maneuvering to charge several of my archer units at once.

It didn’t help that one of my elephants stampeded directly into my archers, causing mayhem and havoc and generally mucking up any plans I might have had to throw a bunch of arrows at the approaching samurai. Who finally charged into combat in the sixth turn, despite all the maneuvering I had done to try to prevent it, and the damage they had taken, and a mere seven (!) samurai simply annihilated a full sixteen-model unit of Archers, despite the ranks and height bonus I had. Because, see, they all have TWO attacks each, which is why the “Armies of Antiquity” Samurai army list is so, so nasty.

The final charge turned the game from a narrow tie into an outright loss, and although I had managed to smack up a few of Dave’s units – more by sheer dumb luck than anything else, he had lost two units of Ashigaru to my stampeding elephants, who had miraculously chosen to run TOWARDS him – but I had lost half my forces to his dastardly samurai and ninja (who had very neatly taken out my Ballistae), and had three elephants running wildly amuck about the board.

So, lesson learned: protect my ballistae better. And don’t get distracted by shiny enemy shooters. Focus on the assault types that are marching toward your lines. Check.

=============

My next opponent was Don with a Republican Romans list. This is the Roman variant (one of seemingly dozens and dozens of published lists!) in which the Romans use lots of little mutually supporting units of medium infantry, rather than the classic legionnaire list of med/heavy drilled infantry.

Republican Roman Army List:

General on horse (Ld10 variant)
4x 16 Hastati medium infantry (pilum, large shield)
4x 16 Principes medium infantry (pilum, large shield)
2x 8 Triarii heavy infantry (light armor, large shield, drilled, stubborn)
2x 8 Velites skirmishers (shield, javelins)
2x 6 skirmishing slingers

Don’s strategy was very simple – as he had no way of matching my firepower, and was very leery about facing off against my elephants, he simply placed most of his army out of sight, behind hills and trees. He did have two units (one Hastati, one Principes) set up in the open, well back from the Nubian lines, but only because there was no-where else in his deployment zone for units to hide, and he threw a Hastati and Principes into reserve (as allowed in this scenario). Then he sat and waited for me to do something.

Despite the gap in the lines, you’re looking at a single unit of Hastati (red shields)

in front of some Principes (light blue shields). Behind them are the elite Triarii (dark blue shields)

So I moved up with everything, shot up some Romans, and then did it again. I chased off the Velites with my elephant escorts in the third turn, quite handily trashing them in combat, and my Elephants finally made it into charge range as well. Unfortunately, as noted previously, they are unreliable. Instead of trashing three Hastati units (which they were odds-on favored to do), two of the three elephants blew their attack rolls, lose the combat due to crazy Republican Roman rules about ranks and command models, etc, and stampeded from combat. Only one of three elephants did anything, although he did what I had expected (ate the Hastati), and smashed into the unit of Principes behind them. At the same time, the Worst Cavalry In The World came out of reserve and threatened the Roman left flank. Hah. Right, I wish.

No, Don’s not picking his General off the table. He’s advancing

three units out of cover and marching them toward my archers.

The little plastic rings indicate casualties…because Don’s

refreshingly old school about how he bases his units.

The rest of the game had a depressing familiarity about it. Although my one (well-trained) Elephant went to town on the Principes, and then helped the WCitW beat down some elite Triarii, and although I grabbed quite a few standards as a result of that action, I ended up losing quite a few units of my own as the Romans marched along behind my stampeding elephants, and spent the last few turns of the game picking off a few Nubian units frantically getting out of the way of several tons of berserk pachyderm. It ended up being a tie game, with some of the damage I sustained being self-inflicted, but with the Romans managing to kill three units themselves (two Archers, one Cavalry) and grab some standards of their own in the process.

This just about sums up the second half of the battle. In case it isn’t clear,

the Romans *are* indeed laughing uproariously.

So in this case, the overall plan was probably pretty solid, but the unreliability of my units demonstrated itself quite decisively. Oh well, I suppose that’s what happens when you play an Elephant-heavy army.

==============

My stellar record to this point (zero wins!), and the fact that there were an uneven number of players in the event, meant that I was up against the tournament ‘ringer’ – my old nememenisesisis and tournament organizer himself, John Bianchi.

Because John is *insane*, he has hand-painted tartan on his Scots.

That’s four units-worth of stripey Scottish clothing, folks.

John was playing his Scots, an army he had long talked about, and which he had finally completed. It consisted of large infantry blocks, with some supporting cavalry and skirmishers:

Medieval Scots Army:

General on horse
ASB on foot, in a unit of Spearmen
4x 28 Spearmen with Light Armor, Spear, Shield, full command, Medieval Phalanx
1x 10 Knights (3+ save, lance, warhorse, First Charge, impetuous), full command
2x 10 skirmishing shortbows

John had a fairly standard deployment – spearmen spread out, with archers in front, and knights hidden behind a hill on the flank. With so little firepower facing me, I simply led with my Elephants, and John responded by… moving *toward* my elephants with his skirmishing archers!

Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth (if you’ve heard otherwise, it’s a lie, I swear it), I sent the elephant escorts careening into them, and in a trice, John had lost all his missile troops. Sure, some of my escorts overran into the nearest unit of spearmen and were cut down, but my Elephants now had clear sailing… assuming they didn’t mess up the charge. Happily, they did not – two smashed into the ASB’s spearman unit and shredded it, while the last charged the unit of Spearmen next to that, and the flustered Scots were forced to Fall Back in Good Order.

John moved his Knights out of cover, and I promptly fired all my ballistae and archers at them. Undaunted despite heavy losses, they charged my nearest unit of Archers…but with the losses they had sustained from earlier shooting, my ranks, and the hill bonus, I won the combat, and the knights fled off the table, chased by my cheering archers all the way!

This does not happen often. Savor it when it does.

Unless those are YOUR knights, of course.

Down to just two units of Spearmen, and having inflicted almost no damage on me (apart from one unit of expendable skirmishers), John was in a spot of trouble. Although one of my Elephants eventually ‘bounced’ and stampeded (when working solo against a large formed unit, especially one in Medieval Phalanx, that sort of thing happens from time to time), by this point I had trapped and destroyed a second spearman unit between elephants and archers, and the remaining two were looking somewhat battered.

You are having a bad day when this happens to your spearmen.

John’s general hopped into a unit of spearman for protection, and got dogpiled by some overly-exuberant Nubian archers from both the front and flank – his spearmen having gotten badly turned about what with all the craziness on the field. He was saved by the setting sun (game ran out of time), however, and with that, the two armies quit the field.

It was a near-total demolition of the Scots, and finally, a win for me on the day. My schemes and plans had finally worked, with the Elephants doing what I had asked of them. What had helped in particular? Sending two elephants after one unit – perhaps a little bit of overkill, but definitely a way to ensure that they do some damage when they hit.

=============

So, in all, a fairly entertaining day, with some beautiful and well-painted foes. And what’s more, I collected one each of a win, tie, and loss, so nothing to complain about there. The new army list worked much better, and the infantry in particular were far more sturdy (as demonstrated by the fight against the Scottish Knights!). Now all I needed to do was cross my fingers and hope that the Elephants don’t completely crap out on me – which is to say, I might as well enjoy the wins I get, because an elephant army is going to be inherently unpredictable regardless.

Why the blog went on hiatus

2011-01-26T12:18:00.000-08:00

There are two versions of what happened at the Counteroffensive event in August 2010. Here’s Bryan’s writeup on the Jungle, which strikes me as pretty measured:

Here’s Pat’s takeaway.

Here’s basically what I felt about 40K afterwards:

It’s been years since I had a real desire to crush my enemies, see them driven before me, etc, etc. That’s one of the reasons I don’t really game much with the current crowd at the Warmonger Club anymore (that, and the whole Fantasy kick they’ve been on for a while now). When it comes to hyper-competitive (albeit polite and well-mannered), these guys are pretty much the final word. So it was a bit of a surprise, and depressing to boot, to be put in the same category. Since I don’t game for seal-clubbing, pound-face reasons, I decided perhaps it would be best to put away the toy soldiers for a while, until I felt differently.

It’s been a few months since then, with only one small test-match between Cilician Armenians (me) and ancient Saxons (played by Ken P).

==========

Why the blog stayed on hiatus

Although the Counteroffensive experience of my friends might have put my game on "pause" for a while, it wasn't why I basically stopped wargaming for a number of months. For that, we need a bit more background.

See, there aren’t many things that upset me, but one thing that is pretty much guaranteed to do so is an arrogant, elitist, privileged self-entitlement.

Sociological and ethnographic surveys support the personal anecdotes of many scientists and sociologists – recent decades have seen an increasingly larger number of extremely talented, bright people choosing to move into arenas of expertise that pay significantly better than science. As a result, you have a new generation (now nearly two) of very bright, talented professionals who are not only extremely aware of how bright they are, but are also convinced (due to their own successes, societal reinforcement, and social networks) that they are brighter than most people in the world.

Combine with unexamined privilege (to wit: not recognizing all the advantages and good fortune they benefit from), an unfailing belief in the ideology of American meritocracy (significantly flawed, and more so in the past 30 years than ever before), and unvarnished success in their personal lives, and I find myself meeting significant numbers of such cocksure young professionals in wargaming circles.

Their self-confidence and passionate belief in their (unexamined) ideologies is further reinforced by the fact that they make very, very good money. Because that is the ultimate measure of social approval, isn’t it? (Just ask Karl Marx.)

Here are some interesting (and terribly flawed) ideologies perpetuated (and loudly volunteered) by wargamers that I’ve had the dubious pleasure of engaging with in the past few years. Note that the statistical and historical evidence doesn’t support any of the following ideologies or false beliefs – yet, they persist most mightily, apparently because a simple “feel-good” story, and gnostic predisposition toward feeling like you know some "special truth" always trumps tough, complicated facts.

(a) Labor unions are necessarily evil, especially teacher unions

(b) Scientists are idiots, and science is a vast conspiracy
(c) 9/11 was the design of a massive government conspiracy.

(d) Government is necessarily evil, and has no purpose, nor provides any benefit.

(e) Racism is anachronistic and outdated, and minorities take advantage of good upstanding folk.

(f) Religion is responsible for all the ills of the world
(g) Poverty exists because poor people are too lazy or selfish to work hard.

(h) It’s okay to objectify women because I don’t think that I am, and it’s a free country and what are you some kind of PC monster feminist witch pussy-whipped etc (add infinite ad hominems)

I suppose a simpler explanation for why I got tired of gaming (and blogging about games, accordingly) is that I got tired of hanging around cocksure, arrogant little puppies who liked to drape their personal (typically but not always conservative or libertarian) politics over everyone within earshot.

I found that I no longer got a thrill out of confronting stupidity and unexamined falsehoods. I definitely no longer found the rhetorical game of “Making Smart People Feel Like Goddamn Idiots” terribly enjoyable. Mostly, it just made me feel old and very, very tired. And I no longer felt like going “cold” to tournaments, because I know that the demographic of gamers tends to skew heavily toward: white, male, upper-middle-class, conservative/libertarian, non-self-reflective. The odds of running into loud, pushy, arrogant young fellows who looooove to share their social insights.... is extremely high.

See, the problem (for me) is that even when people aren’t being terribly political, the cocksure chaps that are full of themselves will still put their foolishness gratuitously and openly on display. Then he (and it’s almost always a “he”) will glory in a rhetorical game I like to call “Show Other People That I’m Smarter/Better Than Them”. And gosh do I get tired of such displays.

I’ll demonstrate by using a blog I read. Keep in mind that I enjoy reading this blog, but it does a lot of the sort of thing I’m talking about –without cruel intent, but sometimes that’s worse, no?

(1) Scientists are dumb and I am not.

(2) Women are to be looked at because I have a penis and they do not:

And then there’s the webcast that I used to like…but I stopped listening to because they kept being homophobic, misogynistic asswipes:

(3) Women are whores that should submit to my penis, and the evil gays want to rape me because they can’t get enough of my penis.

===============

Finally, I realized that I was tired of gaming against cheaters. Apparently my tolerance for them is much lower than it is for other people, or maybe I’m just more willing to call people out when they’re being cheating asswipes.

(4) A bad cheater tries to cheat and I call him on it.

(5) A very, very good cheater plays it ‘straight’ here…. but at the local tournament where he played against me, he cheated his ass off in order to win the free toys (and first prize). BTW, if you’re confused about which one is the cheater in this batrep, it’s NOT the Stelek (the Space Wolf player)

(6) And here’s even more fun – this time, it’s not just cheating by other players. It’s also straight-up shenanigans from a tournament organizer who wants to be an asswipe. Possibly he was being cocksure at some point in the (distant) past and I made him look the fool, and he was trying to get back at me. Maybe he’s just an asswipe regardless.

===============

Why I’m posting again

Because I’m playing Warhammer Ancients again at a charity tournament at the end of January 2011. Hopefully I’ll post results.
Because my 40K friends at the Gate (Pat and Bryan, named above at the top of the post, included) have continued to share their enjoyment with the game on-line.
Because I really do like painting and playing with toy soldiers.
But perhaps this is just another phase in my ongoing maturity and development. Turns out that this truly is a ‘social’ activity for me, and at this point in my life, I prefer to spend my ‘social’ time in situations and circumstances that have a relatively high likelihood of being enjoyable – meaning I probably will focus on gaming more with just friends. Like the 2011 Counteroffensive event, which is being planned as I write this.

8-9 July 2010 Historicon Warhammer Ancients Tournaments (Intro)

2010-08-04T11:25:00.000-07:00

This review of my games at Historicon 2010 will be somewhat different than normal. Instead of writing individual battle reports for all my games, I’ll do a more general overview of my results, and what I learned while playing. I’m doing this for two reasons:

(a) I was playing a completely new army list, and completely new army, using unit types I’ve never fielded before in Ancients games. As a result, I don’t know that a detailed analysis provided by me would be terribly useful.

(b) I have enormous difficulty writing up battle reports for games that I didn’t much enjoy. This is not to say that I had no fun at all, but let’s just say that one person cheated, one person was a bully, one person was both, and one other surprisingly lacking in social graces. This meant that the games with the several other gamers I played with were somewhat overshadowed as a result, although I did have good fun with several quality opponents.

I put together a Meroitic Nubian force (Sudan circa 100 AD) as my third historical army (the other two being Dacians – Hungary circa 90 AD – and Burgundians – eastern France circa 1470 AD), and because no Nubian army lists exist for Warhammer Ancients, looked for a set of proxy rules based on the three basic concepts reflecting a historical Nubian army from this period: lots of archers, lots of elephants, and not a lot of armor.

Ancient Nubia – also known as Kush – has been particularly intriguing to me not only because of the relative paucity of information about what historically is one of the oldest civilizations of the world (and a long-time competitor with Egypt), but also because many of the leaders of this civilization were warrior-queens, known by the title as Candaces (Kandakes). The Candace Amanirenas, for example, was a fierce one-eyed woman who fought the Romans during the period of Augustus, defeated several Roman armies, and returned to Meroe with statues of the Emperor. She then took the heads of the statues and buried them in the steps of a temple in Nubia, so that they would be stepped on by the feet of her subjects.

Map of habitable areas of ancient Nubia. After the peace treaty between Augustus and Amanirenas,
the border between Rome and Nubia was fixed just north of Aswan and the first cataract
(at the top of this map) for another three centuries.

The best part to this story is that it was long considered apocryphal – until several such heads of Augustus were found buried in ruins in modern Sudan some years ago.

In the end, I decided to use the Mauryan Indian army lists (from the Alexander supplement) as the basis for the Nubian force I constructed. The Indians had many bow options (I simply chose not to use the longbow option in the list), many elephants, and not a lot of armor. The following is the list I put together:

Candace (Queen) on horse, with bow, spear, and light armor
Army Standard Bearer on horse, with shield
Priestess of Apedemak (inspires Hatred in attached unit)
1 unit of 10x Light Cavalry (movement 6”) with shield, spear, and full command
2 units of 30x mixed spearmen (with large shield) and archers, with full command
2 units of 13x skirmishing archers (with warband rules)
1 unit of 8x skirmishing elephant escorts (with halberd and shield)
3 elephants (each with mahout and three crew, armed with bows)
2 heavy ballista (Str5), each with three crew

The list relies rather heavily on the threat and punch of three elephants, with two blocks of infantry (one of the subject to Hatred due to the Priestess) providing backup. It can also put out a decent amount of firepower. At least, that was the theory -- and it was time to put it to the test.

8-9 July 2010 Historicon Warhammer Ancients Tournaments (Analysis)

2010-08-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

All my list construction theory was tested during actual fielding of the army, at which point I noticed a number of things:

(1) Elephants are quite punchy, but they are also very slow, and against large blocks of infantry really do need to be supported by another unit (ideally a second elephant). Given how slow they are, they really can't be held in reserve, and putting them on a far flank is a bit of a risk -- there's a danger that they'll never actually get into battle at all. Elephants need to be set up with a plan to throw them into the thick of the enemy, as soon as possible.

They are also an all-or-nothing investment, as I discovered that in half of my games, my elephants panicked fairly quickly, rampaging around the field uncontrollably after being either shot to pieces, or (more commonly) losing combat after doing poorly in melee against a large block of resilient infantry.

In my match-up with Heraclian Byzantines, all three of my elephants managed not just to stampede
but to stampede directly into each other at one point. Pratfalls and other hilarity ensued.
In fact, in this picture, you can see the Greek skutatoi (spearmen) pointing and laughing.

(2) The cavalry option in my army list is awful. Beyond that, however, I suspect that in general, any light or medium cavalry in an elephant-heavy army list will be fairly fragile, simply because, as a fast and hard-hitting unit easily able to support an elephant assault, they also make excellent targets for enemy attacks.

(3) Elephant escorts are very nice for keeping enemy skirmishers off my elephants, and even providing a few potential extra attacks during a charge. Skirmishers can very easily frustrate elephants, and having a relatively punchy skirmisher unit (in the escorts) to screen my elephants is great. I ended up wanting as many such units as possible, and probably will try to field more in the future.

(4) Having two blocks of infantry was rather redundant – I rarely had any reason to use both at once, and in fact, often ended up using one or both blocks of infantry to support elephant assaults, simply because I had no other good use for them. And because elephants remove ranks of all units in a melee, I discovered it was actually somewhat dangerous to simultaneously assault units with both an elephant and an infantry block – the risk of losing combat (due to infantry losses) was too high. I would be better served saving a ton of points by dropping one infantry block, and plowing the cost-savings into other units.

Big blocks of infantry are both pretty on the table, and give a sense of security.
But throughout all my games, these two units were the least effective and reliable for their points.

(5) Relying on large units of Ld5 skirmishers as my relatively static archer line is pretty much a waste of points: they break too easily, and a formed unit with a higher leadership value would probably be well worth the extra two or three points each.

I ended up forming my archers into lines in most of my games, anyway.
After all, why move around with a unit that is designed to stand around and shoot?

(6) Drilled enemy units are my bane. Of course, I got to learn this lesson over and over, facing five enemy forces that ALL had drilled units. Drilled cavalry can simply dance away from my elephants, while drilled infantry will simply let elephants run right through them (well, most of the time, anyway. If they fail a Leadership test to open a hole for the elephants during the charge, the elephants assault them successfully). The counter is probably to swivel the elephant around directly afterward, and threaten to charge the drilled infantry unit in the rear, two turns later – at the very least, it would take that particular infantry block out of the game if they choose to turn about, and slow them down otherwise.

(7) Quite a few people choose to mount their characters on elephants. Given how much of target for enemy fire this would make them, as well as how immobile, I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to do this. My decision to field my general and battle standard on cavalry and simply place them where they could best provide leadership bonuses to units, seems like the way to go moving forward.

We see here the Candace and Battle Standard escorting two elephants.
The fellows in the white pants are proxies representing Elephant escorts.

(8) “Bad games” are certainly very possible in historicals wargaming – I certainly experienced my fair share this weekend. However, it’s pretty clear that some of (what by reputation are) the worst opponents in a historicals tournament were still far less onerous than some of the worst opponents in a 40K or Fantasy tournament. I suppose this is just another data point suggesting that older, more mature gamers tend on average to be more civilized and mature to face in a miniatures wargames (even when they’re not a ton of fun overall).

8-9 July 2010 Historicon Warhammer Ancients Tournaments (Doubles Results)

2010-08-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

Warhammer Ancients Doubles Tournament
Despite not teamed up in advance with anyone in the doubles event, I was confident that other singletons would be in attendance, with whom I could form an ad hoc alliance. Indeed, I was matched upon my arrival to the event with Adam Hughes, fielding a Han Chinese army made up of four units of crossbows, four of spearmen, and seven heavy chariots -- plus general and battle standard on horse. Despite some lackluster contributions on my part, the Nubian/Chinese tag-team still placed a respectable 6th out of 16 total teams.

Adam's Han Chinese force. Hard to make out clearly in this picture is his fourth unit of crossbows,
which are in ranks in the center of his line, just back of the other crossbows.

Game One: Me and Adam (Han Chinese) vs Paul Georgian (Macedonians) and Duncan McFarlane (Sassanids)

Adam and I win the game, largely as a result of Paul’s horrific bad luck with the dice (every single one of his pike units broke and ran from combat from Adam’s Chinese spearmen!). The Sassanids, on the other hand, totally had my number – Duncan’s three units of bow-equipped, drilled cavalry were doing a number to my poor elephants, but at the end of the game he got a bit reckless with one unit of cavalry, assaulting one of my infantry blocks. Unfortunately for Duncan, the cavalry flubbed the assault, lost the combat, and were run down (by infantry!), and the resulting points-differential meant that the Sassanids ended up in a points deficit to my Nubians as well.

Paul's glorious Macedonian pikes, doing everything exactly according to plan.
This is shortly before ALL FOUR UNITS turn and flee from Chinese spearmen.

Seems pretty self-explanatory, no? I call this one "Last Stand of the Nubian Cavalry".

Game Two: Me and Adam (Han Chinese) vs Phil Pournelle (Heraclian-era Byzantines) and Mike Bates (Nanda Kingdom Indians)

A relatively miserable showing for the elephants, who faced drilled cavalry (again) and nomadic cavalry, which just danced and danced all game long – I think I managed to trap and kill just one unit of cavalry, and a few skirmishers. The Byzantines peppered my elephants with bowfire, resulting in all three of them stampeding, and then jumped on my supporting block of infantry, which had gotten far too close to their lines. I re-discovered that basic spearman blocks (without any special rules) really can’t stand up to multi-assaults, unlike phalanxes or pikes. Ouch, said I, after losing nearly half my army. Were it not for Adam’s Chinese forces beating up Mike’s Indian forces at range (using 40 crossbows), it would have been a sizable loss rather than just a tie game for our team.

Nubians advancing en masse against Byzantines. The Byzantines have a skirmish screen
and Nomadic Cavalry in front of units of Drilled infantry and medium cavalry. Ick.

A closeup of the above picture. No-one was exactly sure what Mike was doing here.
But on the face of it, it looks like his chariots (his only hard-hitting non-Elephant unit)
are busy running AWAY from the battle as fast as possible.

8-9 July 2010 Historicon Warhammer Ancients Tournaments (Classical Results)

2010-08-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

Ancients Tournament, Classical Division

In a change of pace for me – I have played in the Chivalry division (1200-1500 AD) division for many years – I entered the Classical (400 AD and before) division with my Nubians. In what was possibly one of the more…interesting…aspects of the tournament (and something that managed to very neatly suck out what enjoyment I’d had during the course of the three games I played), I realized later that the tournament organizer had not been joking when he told me I had intentionally been matched up against three armies with drilled infantry – the bane of an Elephant army list. Out of 12 players (and 11 possible opponents), only four fielded drilled infantry. I faced three of those four, twice being re-matched in later rounds to ensure I faced drilled infantry. The tournament standings (and round-by-round results) that support this grim conclusion are all available online. Ah, organizer shenanigans. How exciting.

Despite this, I somehow managed to pull a draw in all three of my games, and finish a moderately respectable 5th out of 12 total players. And by the end of the third game, I felt I had a fairly solid grasp of what I should be doing with my Nubians on the tabletop.

Game One: Me vs. Chris Buckley (Spartan Greeks and allies)

This game hinged on two key errors by yours truly that led to a draw instead of a possible Nubian victory. Although my elephants all charged merrily into ranks of hoplites, I declared (and implemented) my charges poorly, and ended up clipping the unit of Spartans as well as the adjacent phalanx units. As a result, Chris’ best combat unit, complete with general, was in combat with my elephants, backing up his phalanxes. Second, I foolishly charged one of my infantry blocks into combat as well – foolishly, because (as I note elsewhere), this simply gave the Greeks a softer target to strike at, to win a close combat. The game ended after only three turns, but that was to my benefit – a longer game would have resulted in my elephants eventually being surrounded and driven off, and the loss of more of my units to the grinding slow-motion power of the Greek phalanx.

The Spartans are the elite gentlemen with red cloaks on the left.

Notice how a poor charge of the non-Spartan Greek Phalanx in the center,
would result in the Spartans being clipped and dragged into the combat, as well. Oops.

This picture is here because Chris' Greek phalanxes are very, very pretty.
Click on the picture for a close-up of the detail.

Game Two: Me vs. Don Perrin (Early Imperial Romans)

A wild whip-saw of a game, the Romans and Nubians simply lined up across the field and ran at each other. I managed to successfully charge two units of (Drilled! Stubborn!) infantry with my elephants, run down one, then kill the Roman general and standard-bearer. The Romans responded by wiping out my skirmishers, trapping and destroying my largest infantry block, then throwing my general under the feet of the nearest elephant until she finally fell down for real. At various points, each of us was winning or losing the game, and by a lot – but at the game’s end, we had destroyed about two-thirds each other’s forces, and ended up in an almost perfect tie.

Those are Roman Legionnaires marching forward in column.

It's all very pretty right until the point where the little toy soldiers start dying.

A Nubian elephant, and a block of fanatical Nubian infantry,

introduce themselves to the Roman general.

At first glance, this looks bad for the Nubians. But actually,

all those Romans are busy fleeing. Then the Candace bites it and
the Nubians pull a draw out of the jaws of overwhelming victory.

Game Three: Me vs. Mike Kennedy (Early Imperial Romans)

This game called for hidden deployment of each of our forces, and when the morning fog rose, we each saw that the other player had deployed in a refused flank, concentrating most of their forces in a fairly narrow frontage. The Nubians and Romans marched toward each other, and several Roman units failed to allow charging elephants to pass through harmlessly. However, with only limited assault support, the elephant assaults were inconsistent, and Mike had three unengaged blocks of drilled, stubborn infantry still with which he was able to maneuver about and threaten my flanks. The game ended in a bloody draw, but not for lack of trying on the Roman part to tear apart one particularly vicious Nubian infantry block over several turns of close combat.

This is what happens when a Drilled Infantry unit fails to let an Elephant pass through.
Here we see a Nubian Elephant (and cavalry) busy stomping an Auxilia unit into the ground.

This is what happens when a Drilled Infantry unit passes an Elephant through.

That’s a Nubian infantry block about to get pounded by two units of veteran Romans,
while the Elephants accompanying them putter around in the Roman backfield.

22 May 2010 “Planet Urr-Ass” Warmonger 40K Tournament (Intro)

2010-06-11T11:57:00.000-07:00

Having been looking forward to a ‘local’ tournament (Big Apple) at my ‘home’ club (the Warmongers) for a number of months now, I tweaked my existing Sisters of Battle lists, and put together an 1850-point force for the patently silly “Defense of Planet Urr-Ass” tournament. This variant keeps the ‘core’ of nine Immolators, filled with meltas, flamers, and an Inquisitor Lord (with more meltas!), adds a few extra flamers, and includes a little long-range supporting fire in the form of nine IG Autocannon teams (in various units). It’s a pretty nasty ‘all-comers’ list, or at least intended to be, and gives me a ton of Objective-holding units, as well as some long-range vehicle-busting firepower to support my primary focus of heavy close-range firepower.

What did I bring?

Demonhunter Inquisitor Lord with Tarot, Psychic Hood, and BP+CCW, with retinue of 2 Mystics and 3 Meltagun Veterans
Canoness with Book, Eviscerator, and Bolt Pistol, with one unit of Celestians (see next)
4x 5 Celestians (including 2 Meltaguns, and Krinophora with BP+CCW)
2x 5 Dominions (including 4 Flamers, and Krinophora with Brazier & BP)
2x 5 Adeptus (Stormtroopers with Shotguns, including 2 Meltaguns)
9x Immolators with Smoke Launchers (6 are dedicated transports)
1x 5 Inducted Infantry Platoon Command (2 Snipers, Autocannon team)
2x 10 Inducted Infantry Squad (Autocannon team)
2x 3 Heavy Weapons Team (3x Autocannon teams)

22 May 2010 “Planet Urr-Ass” Warmonger 40K Tournament (Game 1)

2010-06-11T11:55:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Jeff (Tyranids). A boisterous fellow convinced utterly of the fundamental weakness of his choice of codex, Jeff insisted that my masses of flamers and meltas would make short work of his forces. I was a bit less certain either of his convictions was actually the case, but isn’t that what you play the game for – to find out?

Army: (1850 pts)

Swarmlord and one accompanying Tyrant Guard
2x 3 Hiveguard
2x 8 Genestealers
2x Tervigons
2x 10 Termagants
3x Trygons

Mission: Dawn of War/Annihilation. The mission had a modified KP rule, with HQs worth 3 VP, Troops and Transports worth 1 VP, ‘newly created’ units worth 0 VP, and all other units worth 2 VPs.

Terrain: Cityfight. A moderate quantity of ruined buildings were scattered across the field, with two of the bulkiest buildings right in the center of the table. In all, there was more than enough terrain to force my transports to split up and have to pick one of several avenues of advance, and plenty of cover everywhere, but very little actual LOS-blocking, apart from my vehicles neatly blocking my own LOS at ground level….oops.

What happened?
Jeff got to set-up, and move, first. He began with one Tervigon and one unit of Termagants on the table, and moved all other units off his table edge at the start of the first turn – save the Genestealers, which he sent to outflank. The Trygons anchored both of his flanks, with the Swarmlord and Hive Guard advancing up the center, and the Tervigons angled off to the right (Jeff’s left) flank. In all, it was a fairly wide deployment, covering most of Jeff’s table edge.

I had set up two Autocannon squads in elevated cover, and then chose to move all my units onto the table, and decided to punch the transports straight up the middle. This was, of course, the exact moment where I lost the game – because I chose to send virtually all my (short-ranged) forces into a bottle-neck in the center of the table, right at the center of the Tyranid line. Jeff could hardly believe his luck, and after blocking my advance (killing my lead transports and moving up with his uber-nasty Swarmlord), collapsed both his flanks in on me and began popping transports and eating the soft-skinned humies inside.

A bottleneck, plugged by two Trygons, a Tervigon, some Gaunts,
and a Swarmlord. Oh, and the other Tervigon and all the Hive
Guard are just off to the sides, behind those buildings. Ick.

Because Sisters of Battle are incredibly resilient, Jeff managed to eliminate only three units of actual infantry despite jumping my army with his, but combined with the five transports he managed to wreck over the course of the game, it was more than enough for him to get the victory. In turn, my slapdash, ill-advised, and badly implemented assault managed to kill a grand total of…. three Tyranid units: a Tervigon, one unit of original Termagants, and a Trygon. Were it not for the two units of Genestealers who came off the flank one unit at a time (and got Immolated for their ultimately futile efforts), I would have had even fewer Kill Points than I had. The two units of Termagants that I DID manage to immolate counted (of course) for zero VP, due to mission rules. Augh.

Here, have some Termagants. They're worth 0 KP if you kill 'em.
Or you can let them run around and eat you. Your choice.

There was an entertaining moment in the fourth turn when Jeff and I both realized that Jeff’s Tyranid army was a total 2000 points (as opposed to my 1850 points), and feeling awful about it, Jeff pulled two Trygons off the table in apology. He wanted them to count toward my KP total, which would have put us at a 10-10 tie for the game, but given how little those two Trygons had done in the game (they basically spent the game wandering around the flanks of the Tyranid horde, rolling “1”s on their Fleet-of-Foot), I insisted that wasn’t hardly fair. I had played like a moron, and Jeff had done the right thing, and deserved his 10-6 KP minor victory.

Turning the Tables

Obviously, the biggest thing I could have done in this game was play smarter – and not try to drive all my transports up the center of the table into the heart of a Tyranid army. I also shouldn’t have tried to drive all my transports up the center of the table and get them jammed up in a bottleneck between two buildings. Given these two changes in overall strategy, I think my Sisters would have done a lot better had they picked either of the two (more relatively open) flanks to roll up and stuck with it – probably the right flank (Jeff’s left flank) which had a lot of relatively large, slow units of Tervigons and Hive Guard.

Jeff’s big problem in the game was his own set-up, where he had spread his entire army across most of his long table edge, and he had compounded that decision by moving toward my lines as fast as possible, but instead of trying to take advantage of either of his choices, I instead played like a moron. Jeff, on the other hand, most assuredly did not, and thus he ended up with the “W”.

At the very least, my playing differently from the start would have made the game a good deal closer than it was. In the game I actually played, I dug myself into a hole in the very first turn, and spent the rest of the game trying (futilely, as it turned out) to dig my way out of it.

22 May 2010 “Planet Urr-Ass” Warmonger 40K Tournament (Game 2)

2010-06-11T11:48:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Vinny (Sisters of Battle). A very odd duck, Vinny was fielding a very mixed bag of forces, heavy on Exorcists (converted from Marine Whirlwinds, not the “Church Organ” variety currently sold by GW), and backed by Chimeras and inducted Guardsmen. If nothing else, it was quite beautifully painted, but I wasn’t sure how it would match up against a rather sleeker, punchier (at close range) force like my own.

Army: (1850 pts)

Jumppack Canoness (with Cloak, Inferno Pistol, Blessed Weapon, and Book)
Jumppack Canoness (with Cloak, Mantle, Master-Crafted Eviscerator, and Book)
Junior Inquisitor with Tarot, 2 Mystics, and 3 Heavy Bolter Servitors
2x 10 Sisters (Heavy Flamer, Meltagun, Veteran with Book) in Rhino with Extra Armor, Smoke, and Searchlight
1x 7 Grey Knights (with two Psycannons)
1x 5 Inducted IG Platoon Command (with 4 Flamers, in Chimera with Multi/HFlamer)
2x 10 Inducted IG Squad (with Grenade, Autocannon, in Chimera with Multi/HFlamer)
3x Exorcist

Mission: Pitched Battle/Seize Ground (12” deployment and 2 objectives)

Terrain: Cityfight. An enormous low ruin dominated the center of the table, with two-story ruins on three of the four corners, and a huge (five-story) ruined building offset a ways from the fourth corner of that large center ruin. The huge building happened to be in Vinny’s corner in this game. The two objectives were placed on two adjacent corners of the enormous ruined area in the center of the table, one in Vinny’s deployment zone and one in my deployment zone.

What happened?

Red dots indicate objective markers.

Having won the first turn, I deployed in a line as far forward as possible in my deployment zone, and immediately rushed forward with all transports, with the infantry Autocannon support sitting back and shooting at long range. Vinny had deployed essentially in two blocks: four vehicles (and accompanying units) on his far right – my far left flank – and four vehicles (and accompanying units) on his center left – half his army guarding each approach around the sides of the huge low ruin in the middle of the table. I split four transports off to my left, to deal with half of Vinny’s forces, and sent five transports to my right.

"Ladies and gentlemen... start your engines!"

In hindsight, I probably could have used a 3/6 split, as I sent 4 transports against the punchier half of Vinny’s forces (2 exorcists backed by the Canonesses and two transports), and lost most of that force stalling them, while eating the other half of Vinny’s forces (due to a little bit of luck) over two turns with my other 5 transports. But it might have been a bit safer to send six on that side, and try to delay with just three.

Regardless, the essential strategy worked quite well. Vinny had one chance to make an adjustment to the overall strategy – he could have shifted his units around in his backfield, chosen to overwhelm one of my two assaults, or otherwise caused me serious problems. Instead, he chose to also split his forces in half, and we ended up fighting two battles, side-to-side. On the left flank (his right flank), I lost two units of Arbites and one unit of Celestians, and had all four Immolators immobilized or destroyed… but tied up that side of the table for three full turns, even killing half of the forces over there.

On the other side of the table, however, I had a good deal more good fortune – my supporting Autocannons had better lines of fire, there was more open ground, and I had five transports full of nasty, as compared to just four vehicles for Vinny. By the bottom of the third turn, I had eliminated everything on that flank with minimal losses (just my Inquisitor, really), and was turning to deal with the battered remnant of Vinny’s army.

"Hey, that's a very pretty Exorcist you got there.
Shame if something was to happen to it.
You know, like a meltagun at close range or something."

At which point, we had played three full turns, and had just 12 minutes left to play in a two-hour-long match. Vinny, it must be said, is NOT a fast player.

Having counted on AT LEAST four turns, I selfishly needed at least another turn to capture at least one objective (currently, it was a zero-to-zero draw), so I played a superfast five-minute turn, collapsing most of Vinny’s left flank (leaving him with two half-strength units, one Exorcist, and two fully operational Canonesses in the whole game) and securing my own objective in the process. I then spent seven minutes explaining to Vinny why he couldn’t win NOR tie the game, with his Canonesses (the only fast-moving units left in his army) out of position to contest my objective, and his Troops choices too far away to capture his objective, even if he could miraculously clean off the five or six units currently contesting it.

Regardless, a Massacre win for me in four (barely) turns, with well over half my forces still intact (and Vinny with less than a quarter of his still alive). Sigh.

Turning the Tables
The simple strategic response Vinny could have made, was to reshuffle his vehicles in his backfield and send the bulk of his forces after the smaller of my two assault waves. Instead, he kept his army split evenly in two, and my slightly unweighted approach steam-rolled one of his two flanks. He had an opportunity to do the same thing to me at the start of the first turn, but did not. Instead, Vinny shifted his vehicles only slightly in order to maximize his firepower (at vehicles of mine that had all popped smoke, no less). In all, he killed two Immolator transports on my right flank (the stronger flank), but it availed him nothing, as the bailed-out units simply walked up and added to the fusillade in the following turns.

As a longer-term gameplay concern, Vinny is easily the slowest-playing slow-player I have ever played. Easily. We had very few assaults (two in total, I think, involving Canonesses in both cases), and those assaults and assault phases passed VERY quickly. I bear at least a little responsibility for not playing faster in the first turn, not realizing the Power that is Vinny, but we averaged over 30 minutes for each of the FIRST THREE TURNS. And keep in mind this included: Neither of us doing much complicated moving. Neither of us doing too much shooting. Basically no assaults. Basically no special rules or Sisters powers going off. Just astonishingly slow.

22 May 2010 “Planet Urr-Ass” Warmonger 40K Tournament (Game 3)

2010-06-11T11:43:00.000-07:00

Opponent: George (Thousand Sons). A cheerful fellow with a brightly painted army list, George told me that he had fond memories of having gotten beaten by me, many years previously. I responded that it was more than a little likely that he would be returning the favor, and then we got to the grim/serious task of getting stomped like a rented red-headed bug into the ground by our Fearsome Foe. To mix an idiom or three.

Army: (1850 pts)

Sorceror Lord with Lash, Force Weapon, Meltabombs, Mark of Slaanesh
1x 9 Thousand Sons (including Sorcerer with Bolt of Change and Force Weapon)
2x 10 Thousand Sons (including Sorceror with Wind of Chaos and Force Weapon)
2x Rhinos with Extra Armor, Smoke, Searchlight
1x 8 Thousand Son Terminators (all with different equipment)
2x 2 Obliterators
Vindicator with Daemonic Possession

Mission: Spearhead/Capture & Control (corners deployment, and a pre-specified 4 objectives in this game)

Terrain: Cityfight – the same board I had faced Vinny in the previous game. An enormous low ruin dominated the center of the table, with two-story ruins on three of the four corners, and a huge (five-story) ruined building offset a ways from the fourth corner of that large center ruin. The huge building happened to be in George’s corner in this game – he placed one objective on the top story, and one objective well off to the far side of the table. I placed one objective on the bottom story, and the last one twelve inches away, in the middle of an open area between the huge building, the huge ruin, and some nearby ruins.

What happened?

The red dots indicate objective markers

George deployed his Obliterators and one unit of K-Sons on the upper stories of the large ruin in his corner, basically ensuring that he would retain one objective short of my Sisters crawling up several flights and beating up three separate (very resilient) units on the way up. He deployed his vehicles in cover to their right (my left), hiding behind the mass of low ruins, with the Terminators in reserve, ready to Deep Strike onto the table.

With only one good line of advance around the ruins, and having already chosen to place my two objectives on that side and in the open, anyway, I piled all nine transports onto my right flank and hid them behind some convenient low ruins, ready to jump and scream forward at top speed. My infantry support got ready to move and deploy in the first turn off to my left, gaining both high ground (to shoot over the huge low ruins in the center of the table) and the objective marker that George had placed well off to that far side of thet able. Unless the Terminators deep-struck back there, or the K-Son Rhinos chose to cede the center (and two objective markers) to all my Immolators and Sisters, I was basically guaranteed one objective marker, as well. The game would be a vicious brawl in the center of the table for the last two markers.

George got the first turn, but between the range and the cover, did basically nothing to me. I set up my infantry Autocannon support as intended, and then punched my transports forward. And here is where I lost the game.

In order to maximize the distance traveled toward George’s forces in his corner, I chose to send my four forward-most transports directly forward 12 inches. This meant that three of them would be traveling through the side of the building they started the game hiding behind – in other words, they would be making difficult terrain checks.

All three vehicles failed the difficult terrain check. I had basically lost 1/3 of my attack force in the very first turn – they wouldn’t get into range to do anything for another two turns, running all the way to try and keep up. As a result, I was facing the entirety of George’s army with about 2/3 of mine. It was a foolish risk, and one that I’ll be sure not to take in the future. Simple rule of thumb with this kind of Rhino-(chassis)-rush army: take difficult terrain checks in second and SUBSEQUENT turns, after you’re already most of the way to your goal. In the first turn, burn the one or two inches of forward distance you’ll lose, to guarantee the distance you’ll still be moving – and to maximize the number of targets your opponent still faces.

Foolish, foolish risk.

"I think we'll stay here and uh...guard the rear!"

George compounded my problems by rolling like a demon with his armor saves: about 50% better than average, for both Terminators and regular K-sons alike. In the end, I hurt his army badly anyway, and it only highlighted just how much more damage I could have inflicted had ALL NINE of my transports still been mobile.

With only four Obliterators (and only one survived the game, the other three being whittled away by my Autocannons and chopped down by a solo Canoness with Eviscerator and Faith Points protecting her) to provide long-range fire, and without the close-range firepower that my Sisters could put out, the K-Sons took a real beating: the Vindicator did virtually no damage before being blown by a side-shot from Autocannons, and I was able to surround both K-Sons rhinos with my own transports, neatly blocking the K-sons within from disembarking on their own, and allowing me to deal with the two K-sons squads one at a time.

"Please keep arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times!"
(Sisters and Arbites block all hatches and exits of the K-son Rhinos)

But between the amazing armor saves, and the early loss of 1/3 of my close-in firepower (to my own stupidity), I wasn’t able to fully eliminate any of the K-Sons units. The game ended in a bloody draw, with each of us holding only one objective, contesting the two in the middle, and George finally able to gun down the rampaging Canoness in his multi-story building before she was able to climb up high enough to contest his “safe” objective.

I had killed all of the K-son vehicles, and the Sorceror Lord, although 25-odd K-sons still survived (all four squads were still technically operational, sadly). In exchange, I had taken moderate losses: five squads of infantry and three transports, as well as my Canoness – and most of those losses were a result of disembarked infantry trying to keep K-Sons in their vehicles. In terms of victory points, it was about as close to a draw as you can get – but in terms of Kill Points (the secondary/tie-breaker objective), it was a 5-9 minor loss for the Sisters of battle. For want of three transports and the squads inside…!

Turning the Tables
Obviously, taking the risk I did in the very first turn was foolish – even with normal odds, a 50% chance of immobilizing one of my transports, as opposed to having all of them still operational (and nearly 12” further forward) is still a bad risk. Essentially losing three at the start of the game, and losing the squads in side (effectively) for several turns as well, was just painful. Given how the rest of the game went, I stood a very good chance of rolling the Thousand Sons had I had just a little more close-in fire support in the middle few turns of the game. Instead, it was a bloody draw, with the tie-breaker going to my opponent.

So I’ll also take a quick look at what the K-sons could have done differently, had I not been an idiot and started the game in the hole.

Objective Placement: Obviously, putting the objective marker on the top floor of a multi-story building was a genius idea for the K-sons, albeit potentially risky had the Sisters of Battle gotten to deploy (and move) first. The risk was exacerbated by where I placed my two objective, basically forcing most of the game to play out in the largest open area on the table – which played to my strengths of mobility and close-range firepower. That said, George’s decision to place his second objective marker WAY the way away from the rest of the potential action was also a good choice: it meant that he was basically guaranteed to grab and hold one of the two regardless of how deployment ended up.

Unit Placement: George placed his more static forces well: one unit of K-sons back far enough to hold the objective on top of the tall building, with Obliterators protecting the approach upward, and the K-sons still had range to harass any infantry units that came close enough to go for the two objectives in front of the building. However, George didn’t seem to have any clear idea of what to do with the two Rhinos and Vindicator: they started the game off to one side, and chose to move FORWARD into the “kill zone” in the second turn, rather than back up further. As a result, I was able to surround both of his Rhinos and basically block up the units inside for the rest of the game, leaving them at my mercy and crippling their tactical options.

The K-sons would have done better starting further back, forcing my transports to spend three (rather than just two!) turns moving forward into range of his everything, and then going after isolated and/or disembarked units of Sisters (and Arbites) as they saw fit. Particularly once the Terminators came in, this would have meant that I would have been trying to deal with three units of K-sons (one of them Terminators!) stomping around and harassing my relatively far-more-fragile infantry, as Obliterators and Inferno Bolts blasted at me from On High. Instead, I almost literally was able to deal with one unit of K-sons at a time, and one unit didn’t even make it out of their Rhino over the full five turns of the game.

Finally, George didn’t seem to have any good plan for his Vindicator – the thing took one potshot at my transports (doing no real damage to speak of) before getting hit in the side armor at long range by Autocannons and blown to bits. Particularly once the middle of the field became a giant, swirling melee, with my infantry and transports at point-blank-range from his own forces, shooting into the middle of the fray was going to be potentially very dangerous for his own K-Sons. However, the 13 front armor of a Vindicator (especially one with Daemonic Possession) is a real pain-in-the-patoot for Autocannons to deal with. With no other real good options, the Vindicator would have been far more usefully employed “tying up” and harassing my inducted Imperial Guard, and very potentially contesting that fourth objective – the one far away from the other three, and held only by several (very soft T3) Imperial Guardsmen units.

22 May 2010 “Planet Urr-Ass” Warmonger 40K Tournament (Postscript)

2010-06-11T11:32:00.001-07:00

Given that it took place the weekend after the first round of the ‘Ard Boyz Tournament, turn-out was (kindly put) relatively low: a grand total of six players showed up for the Warmonger tournament on 22 May. That said, I think it was an overall positive: the club space, in the basement of the Compleat Strategist, was never over-crowded, and the players were relaxed and having a pretty good time. And despite the silly name, the missions and scoring were balanced and well thought-out, and the tournament was well-organized and well-run under the auspices of longtime Warmonger Lou (aka “Gunslinger”).

What I didn’t realize until after the tournament was over was that, apart from my two minor losses (and attendant minor victories for Jeff and George), EVERY OTHER game in the tournament (seven in total) ended in a Massacre result. Lee ended up the overall champion with three Massacre victories, with George, Jeff and myself all clustered together: the former two with a minor and Massacre victory, and me with a Massacre (against Vinny) and two minor losses. Had Jeff or I actually fully painted our forces, we would have been in an effective three-way tie with George for second place.

Instead, George, Jeff and I placed in that order due to quantity-of-army-fully-painted. So for want of some paint, I came in fourth place. Infelicitous, unlucky number four – serves me right for showing up with an unpainted army! And for starting with a stupid move in all three of my games, too!

Big picture, I think to really “get a feel” for this Sisters of Battle list, I’ll need to put in quite a bit more practice. As it stands, I keep making mistakes early in the game that cost me badly, and force me to try to pull out a late-game draw or victory, and only more practice and play with the army will change that – and probably more than the limited “practice” of a few tournament games every couple months.

When it comes to army list design, however, I think I’m pretty set. What I’m fielding already (with a few tweaks here and there, of course) can seem to handle most opponents. The only significant change I would think about making to the list is the inclusion of Extra Armor on all the transports – mobility really is key for this list, and I should be able to scrape the points together from elsewhere to fill that need. At higher points-values, I can either field Chimeras for the inducted Guard (whee!) or more Autocannon teams (whee!) for extra firepower – either seems to be a useful investment that provides both more firepower and objective-grabbers.

As for the painting score – well, since I’ve such an ambitious paint scheme planned for this list, I’ll probably keep getting dinged in that area, too, until I’m (eventually, after many many moons?) finished painting the force. We’ll see how it goes on that front. In the meantime, I’ve got another month or so to get ready for Historicon – so it’ll be all Nubians, all the time, getting them primed and painted for July.

24 April 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Intro)

2010-05-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

The fine gentlemen of the Frederick Area Gamers were putting together another small-scale tournament in Glen Burnie, Maryland, and having had a long series of very positive tournament experiences with the Maryland crews, I was looking forward to another geat series of games. Based on feedback from their tournament the previous month (in March), the FrAG guys chose to lower the points value for this tournament slightly, to 1850 points, to keep games moving a little faster. Although I had done remarkably little work on my Slann (Tau Empire proxy) army in the months since I had used it last, I decided this was a fine time to debut the Slightly Modified And Updated (with Kroot!) army list.

The most significant changes this list sees at 1850 points are as follows: I have traded out 44 Fire Warriors (and several upgrades), for a Hammerhead, for Missile-Pod/Plasma-Rifle combinations on the Crisis Suits, and for two mid-sized units of Kroot with Hounds. In other words, this means a moderate downgrade in S5 firepower (albeit from very static units), in exchange for more high-strength firepower and more effective screen/sacrificial units. It also meant that I would be using the converted Chronopia Lizardmen models that got me interested in creating a 40K Slann army in the first place – but I just hadn’t found a good use for Kroot in 4th edition, and hadn’t gotten around to trying them in a 5th edition game yet. Now was the chance to see what they could do!

What did I bring?

Third Servant (Shas’el) with Missile Pod, Plasma, Multi, Target-Lock, Blacksun Filter, and Target Array.
2x 3-suit Rangers (Crisis Suits) with Missile Pod, Plasma, and Multi-tracker.
2x 8-model Braves (Fire Warriors), with Ld8 upgrade
2x 10-model Slann Warrior-Philosophers (Kroot), plus 4 Hounds each unit
2x 8-model Scouts (Pathfinders), with Ld8 upgrade, in Transports with D-Pod, Flechette, and Multi
2x 2-model Hornsuits (Broadsides) with Target Array, plus one model with Blacksun and 2 Shield Drones
Quasar-class Stonecruiser (Hammerhead) with Railgun, Smart Missiles, D-Pod, Target Lock, and Multi

24 April 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Game 1)

2010-05-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Dave (Blood Angels). Earnest, soft-spoken, and pretty talented with the strategery, Dave was one of the younger gamers in attendance, and a good friend of Tien, my Tyranid opponent from the previous tournament. He was fielding a dual Land Raider assault army, which had the additional intriguing (terrifying!) twist of being Blood Angel flavored – meaning who knows what, as I still didn’t have a copy of the codex. But I was sure there would be any number of nasty surprises for me in the game, and I also knew that should either Land Raider get to my lines, the game was going to be over for my guys. I sure hoped my Railguns wouldn’t let me down!

Army: (1850 pts)

Furioso Librarian with Assault and Jumping powers
2x Vindicators
5 Terminators & Librarian inside Standard Land Raider
5 Death Company inside Redeemer Land Raider
1x10 Tactical Marines with Lascannon & Flamer
1x7 Tactical Marines with Plasma Cannon

Mission: “Storm of Annihilation” special mission. Pitched Battle set-up (12” deployment), with night-fight rules in the first turn. Primary objective is kill points. Secondary objective is to capture (any unit may capture) the sole objective (the ‘vortex’), which moves 1d6” in a random direction at the start of each player’s turn. Tertiary objective is to get a scoring unit into your opponent’s deployment zone at any point in the game.

Terrain: Some high hills scattered around the table blocked LOS to smaller (standard infantry-sized) units, but between those hills and some blocks of trees, there was plenty of cover but very little place to actually hide out of LOS if you were larger than an infantry marine or Fire Warrior model.

What happened?
I won the roll-off to deploy, and set up both units of Hornsuits (Broadsides) on a tall mesa-like hill in the middle of my deployment zone. I surrounded them with a unit of Scouts/Pathfinders (giving the Pathfinders as much cover as possible, as the Hornsuits have plenty themselves), and deployed the Quasar (Hammerhead) to one side, with the Ranger (Crisis) Suits doing their best to hide behind the hill and tank as much as possible.

A hilltop full of Slann, including a few suits obviously lying down on the job.

(picture taken by Chris "TheEC")

I deployed the second unit of Scouts/Pathfinders in some woods on my right flank, the only other piece of terrain in my deployment zone with decent LOS, and attached the HQ/Shas’el model to the unit for the moment. The transports and Brave/Fire Warriors were left in Reserve, to come in and try to capture the objective later.

Dave hid his two Tactical squads behind a tall hill in the far corner (my far left) of his deployment zone, with only the heavy weapons sticking out to shoot. His Librarian Furioso found some cover behind them, and he deployed his other units in two squadrons: his Terminators and their Land Raider, plus a Vindicator, behind some woods in the middle, and the other Land Raider and Vindicator behind some woods on my far right. I responded by infiltrating my two units of Slann/Kroot, one to screen my Pathfinders on the right flank, and another deploying into woods on the center-left of the table, to try and distract those pesky Tactical Marines as much as possible.

Then the game began, and my Railguns proceeded to spend the next five shooting phases disappointing me bitterly. They managed to do absolutely nothing to either Land Raider, but fortunately my Missile Pods were far more impressive, blowing the Demolisher Cannons off both Vindicators on multiple glancing shots (!).

Although disappointed by the loss of his pie-plates of S10 death, Dave rallied and blew the Railgun off my tank with a Land-Raider twin-Lascannon shot. He also had his Librarian Furioso jump and run forward toward my Slann/Kroot. Wait… your dreadnought has jump-packs? Your DREADNOUGHT has a potential 18” assault range? Dear god!

I had a much better turn two, as my Missile Pods managed to immobilize the Librarian Furioso, and the Railguns (after I used all four remaining shots) managed to kill one of the two Land Raiders – the more dangerous one (in my mind), the Redeemer with the flamer templates. Death Company models spilled out and rushed at my lines, with Vindicators roaring merrily behind them, sniping away with Storm Bolters (to very little effect). The immobilized Furioso added a mini-salvo of Storm Bolter shots, but did nothing of consequence.

I successfully killed the Death Company at the start of the third turn, and the remaining three turns were simply a sniping match between Dave’s three long-range units, and all of mine. I reduced the second Land Raider to a weaponless hulk, as well as both Vindicators (finally managing to kill one of them in the fifth turn), but my heavy firepower consistently underperformed. Fortunately, Dave’s units had far less firepower, and despite my poor luck, he was able only to kill one unit of mine (a Broadside team), although he did also shoot up my Hammerhead quite nicely.

My Reserves came in relatively late, and thus were unable to realistically contest the objective, which had spent the entire game drifting around and toward Dave’s unit of Terminators, who ended the game atop of it, winning the secondary objective.

Turning the Tables.
Dave was far too cautious in his game-play, choosing to inexplicably sit tight with BOTH his Land Raiders, rather than rushing forward at the first opportunity and trying to get his Death Company and Terminators into close combat. He did move the Redeemer, but for some odd reason moved it only 6 inches forward (so as to fire guns, I believe), rather than move it a full 12 inches. At any rate, melee is a colossal weakness that he could have exploited – and what's more, my poor shooting meant that I failed to immobilize the second Land Raider until the third turn, at which point Dave’s Terminators would already HAVE BEEN IN CLOSE COMBAT AND PUNCHING MY BROADSIDES TO PIECES… but only if they had been driving pell-mell at me, at top speed, from the very first turn.

The Terminators pose heroically next to their smoking hulk of a Land Raider,

and many many inches away from the Slann-pounding goodness of an assault.
(picture taken by Chris "TheEC")

Dave also had poor target choice with his weapons. The Heavy Bolter on his Land Raider should have been shooting at Pathfinders, not Broadsides. Similarly, the two Tactical Squads kept splitting their fire – although the Lascannon did keep shooting at Broadsides (good job there), the Plasma Cannon kept dropping shots on Kroot… in cover… and gone to ground. That’s a 2+ cover save for those Kroot. Why are you shooting at worthless, useless Kroot? Shoot more Broadsides (and/or Pathfinders) instead!

Next, that whole jumping Furioso thing – if your close-combat dreadnought has that kind of movement… why are you deploying him as far away from me as possible? Deploy him as far FORWARD as possible, and try to get into combat as quickly as possible! When Dave deployed the Furioso (in the table corner furthest from my units!), there was no enemy unit literally within 36 inches of the guy – my Kroot had not infiltrated onto the table yet. Why not deploy him in the middle of the table, and hide behind a Land Raider at the start of the game if you’re worried about him getting shot? But now you’re immobilized, and it doesn’t matter. You go ahead and vent your impotent fury with your only “long range” weapon, a mighty, mighty storm bolter. Which I have now just blown off. Enjoy.

Finally, Dave was much too cautious with his Vindicators. True, they had lost their primary weapons before he even had a turn, but they could still Tank-Shock things quite nicely. Why were they messing around moving just 7 or 8 inches and sniping with a Storm Bolter? They’re Fast Vehicles in the Blood Angel list, aren’t they? Floor the accelerator and TANK SHOCK my units! They’re only Ld8, some of them will fail, and then you can escort them off the table. But too late, because now you’re immobilized.

24 April 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Game 2)

2010-05-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Vaden “Hobbybreaker” (Space Marines). Winner of the last tournament, the intense and deliciously sarcastic Vaden had earned his “Hobbybreaker” nickname due to some unusual circumstances that led to one of his (very unbalanced) opponents from that last tournament stomping out of the store mid-game in a huff, and subsequently place his (fully painted and converted!) army up for bid on e-bay, along with the rant about how he would never be playing Warhammer again. “Hobbybreaker” indeed! I had never played against Vaden previously, but he came with quality recommendations for being a good sport, and also a very good gamer. He was fielding a fast and highly mobile Ravenwing-proxy army, using the Marine codex, led by none other than Khan (or at least, a proxy on a bike), a very different kind of list from his usual mechanized Imperial Guard.

Army: (1850 pts)

Khan Special Character, on bike
5-man Command Squad with Storm Shields, Apothecary, and misc close combat gear
3x 5-man Troop Bikers with twin meltaguns, and attached (6th-man) multimelta Attack bikes
3x Rifleman (two twin-linked Autocannon) dreadnoughts
3x Typhoon Landspeeders with Heavy Bolters

Mission: “Rogue Trader” special mission. Pitched Battle set-up (12” deployment), with five objectives placed before deployment. Primary mission is to capture the most objectives. Secondary objective is most victory points, and tertiary mission is to kill your opponent’s most expensive HQ choice.

Terrain: One sewage treatment pool (and attached building) created both cover and some LOS-blocking in Vaden’s far-right (my far left) corner. Otherwise, a moderate amount of trees and craters, and one low hill, provided plenty of cover, but no real way to hide out of LOS, throughout the table. My side of the table had a crater, the sole hill, and some trees; Vaden’s side had the sewage treatment plant, some craters, and some trees, with some more trees and craters in the middle. The objectives were mostly on ‘my’ half of the table, with only one on Vaden’s half of the board.

What happened?
I deployed a unit of Scout/Pathfinders in a large crater in the middle of my deployment zone, with both Hornsuit/Broadside units behind them. I started with Ranger (Crisis) Suits in the open, as I didn’t much worry about Vaden’s ranged weapons, and expected to kill his Riflemen straight off, and infiltrated and scouted both a unit of Slann/Kroot forward into woods in the middle of the table, and my second unit of Pathfinders into a crater in the center/right of the table. As usual, both units of Brave/Fire Warriors started in reserve, but only one of them would have a transport to carry them onto the table out of reserve.

Closeup of my two of my Hornsuits (Broadsides), the MVPs of this game.
(picture taken by Chris "TheEC")

Vaden started the game with only the Riflemen on the table, all at the far corners of his deployment zone, in cover – everything else was in reserve. He attempted to steal initiative, but failed, and I rewarded him by blowing up all three Riflemen (two in the first turn, and the third in the second turn).

Only two Marine units came out of reserve; one Biker unit pounced on my Pathfinders in the center-right, who were just a little too close to the right-hand-side table edge. That was my fault, as I had known what the margins were during deployment and not bothered to be careful about things. To my dismay, the Pathfinders refused to run from combat.

The other unit that came on was the Command Squad, plus Khan, who was just out of assault range on the other (left) flank. I turned all my guns to deal with them, then learned that Apothecaries in the new Marine codex give their squad “Feel No Pain”. And with the varied equipment in the unit, this meant that I was dealing with a unit with 3+ invulnerable saves, T5, and Feel No Pain. Ruh, roh, shaggy.

My whole army opened fire, and killed a grand total of… three bikers. Khan, one biker, and the apothecary remained. Vaden deep-struck in two Speeders, killed most of a unit of Crisis Suits with Typhoons (the survivor fled), killed a transport full of Brave/Fire Warriors (trying to contest an objective) with more Typhoons, and split-assaulted two units with Khan (Kroot) and the Command Bikers (full-size Crisis Suit unit). And then, more bad news – the suits fighting the Command Bikers refused to run away.

Fortunately (for me), Khan had won his fight against the Kroot handily, and was now stuck in the open. Similarly, the Bikers on the right had finally chewed through the Pathfinder unit they were eating (who had stuck around during my last turn before finally getting wiped in Vaden’s assault phase), and so I had targets. Khan took a Railgun to the head, and the Bikers on the right… sucked up a ton of firepower and had an Attack Bike still survive. Damn, but my heavy weapons fire was really sucking it up. To make things worse, the Command Bikers ate my last two Crisis Suits and were now free to hurt me at the start of Vaden’s next turn.

Bottom of 4 found one more Mariner biker unit flanking onto the table, where they shot up one of my two unit of Brave/Fire Warriors; the Attack Bike assaulted and wiped out the other unit of Fire Warriors, who had just entered the table the turn before but failed to shoot the guy dead. The two Command Bikers ate my second and last unit of Pathfinders. I was down to Broadsides, Hammerhead, and one unit of Kroot led by my HQ. Despite all that heavy firepower, I only barely killed the last of the Command squad, and the Attack Bike.

There's a reason why I call my version of Fire Warriors, "The Brave".

Note that I didn't call them "The Wise", or "The Good-With-Odds"....

(picture taken by Chris "TheEC")

Vaden made only one small error at this point – he shot up my Kroot with a unit of Bikers before trying to assault. I happily managed to tank the leadership test and fall back out of assault range, then rallied (due to the HQ still in the unit) and shreded that biker unit with my superior firepower at the end of the game. But it’s a small consolation, as Vaden’s fourth and final bike unit reserved onto the table, and busily hid (as best they could) in the far corner, claiming the one objective that was on Vaden’s side of the table. His three (still operational!) Speeders shot my Kroot to bits, and with no Troops units left, I had no ability to claim any of the four (!) objectives on my side of the table.

The Marines won the game, 1 objective to none. I had the edge on Victory Points, as my HQ, one transport, and all my expensive Heavy Support units were still alive, and Vaden just had some cheap Speeders and Bikes left. I also managed to deny him (by sheer good fortune) his Tertiary objective by keeping my HQ alive with cover saves, whilst killing his HQ units quite decidedly dead. A very tight game all around.

Turning the Tables.
In a game like this, and against an army list like Vaden’s, I had no business spreading units out across the table willy-nilly. I should have deployed in a layered castle set-up, with Crisis Suits seeking as much cover as possible in the crater in my deployment zone (where they would have gotten cover saves against Typhoons), Pathfinders hiding between or behind my Broadsides, several inches separating every unit from each other, and a “bubblewrap” of Kroot and drones and vehicles protecting the whole shebang. Even with average rolls, I was going to kill only about 4 of the 6 bikers in that command squad (including Khan in that total of six), so finding a way to mitigate the assault was my best bet. However, I absolutely failed to do so, and lost more units to biker assaults than I really ought to have.

You have almost no template weapons, and lots of speed? Okay, then,

I’ll be sure to spread out instead of castling up. D’oh!

(picture taken by Chris "TheEC")

With better deployment-in-depth, I think I would have done similar damage to Vaden, and preserved more of my own units (putting me in position to win, or at least tie) throughout the game.

This particular game also highlighted for me the potential benefits of fielding Piranhas in a Tau list – with the addition of several chunky (and fast!) vehicles, as well as the associated (and deployable) drones, I would have in theory been able to provide even more of a screen to my castle, and better protect it (and maneuver around it as well). This game definitely provides a little extra incentive to finish modeling and painting the proxy Piranha models I’ve been sitting on for many moons now.

That said, Vaden didn’t exactly play an error-free game. He started his Dreadnoughts on the table – basically giving me the chance to blow them up before any of his Bikes or Speeders showed up. He should have started them in reserve as well, as with their 48” range they would have been easily in range of everything they wanted to be, as soon as they walked onto the board.

24 April 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Game 3)

2010-05-07T08:38:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Bobby (Orks). One of the FrAG club’s long-time core members, I’d known Bobby for a number of years but don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing him. A cheerful and avid gamer, he was fielding a classic Ork horde list, and I felt particularly lucky to have the chance to face off against such a fluffy and characterful Warhammer army.

Army: (1850 pts)

2x Big Meks with Kustom Force Fields
3x 30-ork Slugga/Choppa mobs, including 2 Rokkits, and Bosspole Nob with Powerklaw
1x 30-ork Shoota mob, including 3 Big Shootas, and Bosspole Nob with Big Choppa
1x Deff Dread with 2 Skorchas
2x 2-ork Deffkopta squads, with twin Rokkits each
3x 3-kan Killa Kan mobs, two mobs with Grotzookas, one mob with Rokkits

Mission: “Domination” special mission. Spearhead deployment (corners, with 12” radius from the center-point a no-deploy zone), with night-fight rules in effect for turns 6 and 7 (if the game lasted that long). Primary objective was to control the most board corners at the game’s end. Secondary was to kill all of your opponent’s Troops choices, and tertiary was to kill your opponent’s most expensive non-Troop choice, not including dedicated transports.

Terrain: Four very tall hills blocked LOS, but only one was positioned between two catercorners; the other three were well off to the sides, providing great vantage points to shoot from, but basically not going to play much of a role otherwise. Several large clusters of trees provided additional cover to units, but there was plenty of open “killing ground” between all the terrain.

What happened?
Bobby won the roll-off and began his deployment, setting up his Orks in layers: an arcing line of Killa Kans (and the Deff Dread) in the front rank, with all four mobs of Boyz behind them, in two layers of units. The Big Meks were positioned toward the front of two units of Boyz, giving all the walkers (and the front units of Orks) cover, and the Deffkopta units were sent to outflank.

I deployed all my heavy-hitter units: the Hornsuits/Broadsides, Ranger (Crisis) Suits, Quasar/Hammerhead, and Scout/Pathfinders. The suits deployed in and around a large wooded area deep in my own corner, and as far back as possible while still deep in cover. A layer of Slann/Kroot provided an assault screen for the suits (and one of the Pathfinder units). The second Pathfinder unit deployed off to my left, using their scout move to clamber onto a tall hill at my nearby short edge of the table, and the Hammerhead gently floated to the right of my trees full of guns.

I kept one unit of Kroot, and both transports (full of Brave/Fire Warriors) in reserve, with the Kroot planning to outflank, and hopefully get into one of those other corners to contest or claim later in the game – by which point, I expected most of the Orks to have migrated more toward my corner, and thus well away from the Kroot.

For the most of the rest of the game, Bobby ran his entire army toward me, and not only ran but kept rolling very high for his run moves (4 inches or more, EVERY TIME). With a massive wave of Green rolling toward me, I began choosing targets, and hoping that I was making the right choices.

In the first turn, I killed 6 of 9 Killa Kans. Markerlight hits took away the KFF cover save, exposing the AV11 walkers to a barrage of high-strength weapons fire. In the second turn, BOTH units of Deffkoptas buzzed onto the table, right in my back corner, but fired (and missed) with all their Rokkits, attempting to kill Crisis Suits. Well out of assault range of the Suits, they were swarmed by the nearby Kroot out of the trees, lost the combat, tried to flee, and were wiped out (Kroot Hounds for the initiative!) in short order.

They’re in the trees, man. In the trees!

(picture by Chris "TheEC")

With one unit of Sluggaboyz having gotten close to my lines in the second turn, I threw the firepower of my entire army at them, and they went away – the three survivors were well out of assault range, and ate some Smart Missiles the following turn. It was impressive, the firepower I could bring to bear, particularly with Pathfinders stripping cover saves from units. In turn 3, it was the Deff Dread that ate it – but I otherwise had a pretty lousy shooting phase, managing only to stun another Killa Kan, and otherwise very little else. My transports and Kroot began to come onto the table, however, and zipped around Bobby’s far flank, making for his rear (and for corner captures).

Bobby sent two Killa Kans, as well his unit of Shootaboyz, after the Kroot and Slann transports, and now that he was within a next-turn assault range of my main lines with a second unit of Sluggaboyz, stopped running his units forward and instead took potshots with Rokkits and Big Shootas, killing two of my Crisis Suits. With a big, pristine unit of Ork boyz to deal with, I went to work, but managed to kill only 23 of 31 Boyz that turn – the surviving eight WAUGHED (to make absolutely sure to get in assault range), and assaulted my Pathfinders; one Killa Kan also made it into my lines, and assaulted my assault screen of Kroot.

The Pathfinders collapsed like a wet noodle, and the triumphant boyz were shot to pieces by vengeful Crisis Suits. The Kroot, on the other hand, stubbornly stuck around instead of running, causing a little heartburn for a turn or two (happily, they stuck around during my assault phase as well). My remaining Big Gunz burped, and most of another unit of Sluggaboyz (the last unit left) fell down. And, joy of joys, my second Kroot unit in the far corner were now within assault range of Bobby’s Shootaboyz. After ‘softening up’ the unit with a Fire Warrior drive-by, the Kroot piled into the Shootas and wiped them out decisively, consolidating into some nearby woods afterward.

Night fell at this point, but the game continued. With only one (badly mauled) mob of Boyz left, Bobby piled them into combat with the Kroot, helping out one of the remaining Killa Kans. The Kroot didn’t even have a chance to run, but this meant that the Killa Kan, and the last unit of Boyz, was now standing in the open at point-blank range to all my surviving Big Gunz. After the smoke cleared, the Orks had just one Killa Kan, one Nob, and one Big Mek left, and the game came mercifully to a close at that point.

I had claimed two corners, the Orks only contested one (ironically, my starting corner) and claimed none. I had come one wound from claiming the secondary objective (kill all enemy Troops), but had claimed the tertiary objective (kill the most expensive enemy non-Troops unit) by wiping out the priciest unit of Killa Kans at the game’s end.

Turning the Tables.
Bobby’s biggest mistake in this game was made during his deployment phase – there were several problems with his deployment that meant that instead of assaulting me with his entire army (at once!) and overwhelming me with targets, he was instead feeding me one unit at a time, and as a result giving me an excellent chance of dealing with each unit in turn.

(1) First, when I say the Orks “deployed in an arc”, you would think this meant an arc with the wings closer to me, given the 12” radius restriction from board center in the deployment. Instead, what actually happened was that the Orks deployed in an arc with the wings further from me – a nice way of using Killa Kans to protect the flanks of the mobs taking cover behind them, but also resulting in the models on the wings deploying nearly 12 inches FURTHER AWAY from my corner. Orks shouldn’t be worried about Tau assaulting them, or moving CLOSER to flank them. Orks should be worried about getting as close as possible to assault, the better (and faster) to do it. This deployment meant that I literally had an extra turn to shoot at Bobby’s mobs, compared to what could have been.

This is how the Orks actually deployed

(2) Second, the four Ork Mobs deployed in four loose clusters, with two clusters in front, and two clusters behind. In other words, the two mobs in the back would have to travel not only to my lines, but ALSO the entire distance of the mob in front, in order to get to assault range. Bobby would have been better served deploying his four mobs in four thin columns, so that all four mobs would have members at the ‘front’ of the assault at the same time. Given that he is allowed to remove casualties from the rear, this wouldn’t have hurt his ability to assault me quickly with any one mob, and would have meant that multiple mobs would have been in assault range simultaneously. Instead, after I nearly wiped out one mob (which took my ENTIRE ARMY’S firepower to pull off), the next mob in line still had nearly twelve inches (the width of the mob in front!) to travel, just to get to the same place.

This is how the Orks should have deployed

(3) Third, the Ork models were very spread out, with nearly 1.5 inches between each model. True, I did have a big blast Railgun template, but on the other hand I had only ONE template weapon. The Orks could have been better served packing in a little closer, just to ensure that the leading edge of all four mobs would be as close as possible to my lines. Granted, Bobby was deploying first, so couldn’t be sure that I would be deploying here or there, but it wasn’t as it he had no idea what my army was likely to do (= stand and shoot).

(4) On a related note, Bobby’s instinct during game-play was to keep his Ork mobs separate, and not intersperse models from different mobs. I did point out that this was basically denying his mobs the additional movement (in some cases, as much as three inches of additional movement!) they needed to get to assault range, and indeed, none of his mobs would have gotten into assault range if they hadn’t used those extra inches (‘mixing’ models from different mobs in the process) during the game to get just that bit closer my lines – his mobs only JUST made it into assault range on those two occasions when they did. This also applies during deployment, of course – you still get cover saves if most of your (huge, huge!) mob is in cover behind those Killa Kans… so why aren’t you interspersing models in front with the Kans, to get as far forward as possible?

Apart from these deployment and formation problems, however, the game went pretty well, with only two further decisions I would consider questionable. The first was choosing to send the Deffkoptas after my Crisis Suits, instead of jumping on a fully exposed unit of Pathfinders on my far left flank – particularly after having just seen what Pathfinders could do to an Ork army. Instead, the Deffkoptas not only missed, but then were beat down by a nearby unit of Kroot, rather than taking down Pathfinders and then buzzing around and being an ongoing pest. Even if the two squads had been separated a bit more, odds were that I would have had to split fire, and not been able to assault both at once with my Kroot. All in all, a missed opportunity here.

Second, the Shoota boyz that I hit with a Fire Warrior drive-by chose to remove models from the “back” of the unit, rather than remove models from the “front” and pull the unit out of assault range of my outflanking Kroot. I know that this is a very Orky thing to do, but it meant that instead of assaulting (or not) on his own terms, and getting additional models into range to throw dice, Bobby’s Shootas ended up strung out in a long line (Bobby chose to keep his Nob, at the “back” of the unit alive, and thus had to maintain a long string of models to keep coherency) that, when assaulted by the Kroot, lost the ensuing melee DECISIVELY. True, given the damage Shootas had taken, the combat was probably going to be in favor of the Kroot anyway (even had the Orks been assaulting), but at least an Ork-turn assault would have been able to go in shooting, cause some more damage, and potentially have a better shot of winning.

24 April 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Postscript)

2010-05-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

After another highly enjoyable and entertaining day of gaming with the FrAG (and Inner Circle) gaming crowd in Glen Burnie, I realized several surprising things:

First, the mix of armies and codices in attendance at this tournament was (unusually) majority non-Marine! In all, among 14 attendees, there were seven Xenos players (2x Orks, 2x Tau, 2x Eldar, 1x Demons), two Imperial non-Marine players (both Sisters), and only five Marine lists (2x Blood Angels, 2x Marines, and 1x Dark Angels). Ironically, given the mix of armies in attendance, I played two of my three games against Marines. But still, an excellent time had by yours truly, and I particularly enjoyed the opportunity I had to face off against the classic Ork horde list fielded by Bobby in my last match.

Second, I received very high sportsmanship scores from all my opponents, and would have received the Best Sportsman award were it not for some tiebreakers. While I’ll admit to occasionally being a fun opponent, I’ve never thought of myself as an extremely sporting and friendly fellow. What’s more, in my experience I tend to do worse on sportsmanship when fielding very shooty armies (like, for example, the Slann army I was using in this tournament). Indeed, at one point in my gaming career, my sportsmanship scores were exceptional for being especially LOW. I guess I’ve grown up a little – that, or all three of my opponents were smoking something of remarkably good quality.

Finally, the key ‘tiebreaker’ that prevented me from having a shot at Best Sportsman was overall tournament victory I won. Astoundingly, I managed to win the whole shebang, and with my wildly colorful and highly shooty Slann (Tau empire proxy) army, no less. What helped give me the extra edge over some other competition – like, for example, Vaden “the Hobbybreaker”, who wiped the table with me in game two – was the absurd number of extra points I got for scoring secondary and tertiary objectives, and also the fact that the two evil strategerists in this tourney, Vaden (Hobbybreaker) and Scooter (Sisters!), played each other to a bloody draw in game three. It turns out that a Sisters of Battle army is just mobile enough to completely block off the short side of a table in two turns and prevent most of the units in an outflanking Marine Biker army from making it onto the table. Ouch.

So an unexpected but very happy-making victory for the Slann in this tournament, adding an additional positive note to a very successful tournament experience.

Philosophical Musings:
Not a lot of thoughts, but more a few short musings about the Slann list I fielded. First and most obviously, of course, I need to finish painting my converted Kroot models, which are currently languishing with a very rough base-coat of colors. A few touch-ups on some of the Crisis Suits is also called for. When finished, the army should look more-or-less complete.

Second, I’m glad that I was persuaded to switch out Fire Warriors for two blocks of Kroot. The Kroot are simply far superior melee screens than Fire Warriors, particularly if they find themselves in cover in woods. Between being able to infiltrate (and thus deploy last, as well as potentially deny infiltration/movement to my opponent), and having the superior cover saves, to being significantly cheaper AND able to throw a few punches, and finally to having a lousy 6+ save and Ld7 in melee, increasing the odds that they’ll run away immediately… Well, the Kroot are just better all-around than Fire Warriors at the sort of screening role that the Pathfinders and Suits really need.

Third, with all that said in favor of Kroot, the removal of most of the Fire Warriors from my usual list resulted in a very noticeable reduction in firepower. Although I’ll grant that Fire Warriors don’t often have a ton of shooty punch, there were a few times (particularly against Bobby’s Ork Horde) where I missed having the massed shootiness able to sweep large numbers of models off the table in a single turn. I can tell that the firepower upgrades to the Suits, and the substitution of Kroot for Fire Warriors as cheaper (and more effective) screens is a Good Thing, don’t get me wrong. I’ve become a real believer in Kroot. However, there were a few times I found myself wishing for massed pulse rifles throughout the tournament.

Finally, if I’m trading number of shots for quality (and power) of shots, then I really need to finishing assembling and painting my Piranha proxies. Having fast-moving mobile screens that can add additional vehicle-killing shots (if necessary) would not only help keep my suits alive longer, and give my army more mobility, but it would mean that I wouldn’t have to rely solely on my Railguns to take out all the big nasty tanks. As shown in my first game, even a little bad luck when firing only a few guns can mean a lot of frustration when facing a lot of AV13 and AV14 armor.

1 April 2010, at the Warmonger Club in NYC

2010-04-03T22:22:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Lee (Tyranids). One of the competitive New York City Warmonger club’s young turks, Lee had just returned from Adepticon where he had placed third overall*. He was testing out a new twist to his Tyranid list, a beautifully painted army that is still in the process of being fully updated to the new Codex. The last time we had faced each other, my Slann (Tau Empire proxy list) had virtually wiped out his tyranid horde, only to lose the game due to Lee having cannily destroyed my Troops choices… albeit only my Troops choices… and ending the game with more objectives than I.

(*in Fantasy, Lee pointed out)

My List: (1850 pts)

Palatine with Book & Executioner, with x5 Celestians (2 Meltas) in Immolator with Smoke
3x5 Celestians (2 Meltas) in Immolator with Smoke
3x5 Adeptus Arbites (2 Meltas) with Shotguns, in Immolator with Smoke
3x5 Dominions (2 Flamers) in Immolator with Smoke
Inducted Guard Platoon Command with 4 Flamers
3x Inducted Guard Squads with Autocannon

Lee’s Army: (1850 pts)

Tyranid Prime
3x3 Hive Guard
2x Tyrannofexes, kitted out
2x Tervigons, kitted out
2x10 Termagants
1x30 Hormagaunts

Mission: Spearhead (corner deployment) and Capture and Control (2 objectives, one in each deployment zone)

Terrain: Cityfight. A large ruined building very nicely provided cover (and blocked some LOS) in the center of the table, and smaller ruins clustered in each of our corners also provided more (if sparse) cover for units in each deployment zone. We each placed our objective far back in our corners, behind the furthest-most ruined building.

What happened?
Lee chose to set up first, and chose the corner that gave his units the most cover from my corner; he also made sure to give me the corner that would be hardest for vehicles to claim cover from directly (thus giving his Hive Guard the biggest benefit in the initial shooting phase), and yet with the most terrain blocking up movement (to make my initial “Rhino Rush” more difficult). He placed one unit of Termagaunts on his objective, hidden behind a ruined building, and used the other unit of gaunts to screen all his other units, placed as far forward as possible. The Bugs were going to rush me.

I set up my Immolators in two blocks, planning to go around each side of the center ruin, and deployed all my infantry Guardswomen on top of the objective, Autocannons at the ready. Then I caused Lee some consternation by seizing the Initiative – which meant that I would not only have the chance to use Smoke Launchers (making his Hive Guard shooting less effective), but that the big “crunch” would occur in the middle of the table, rather than in my corner, and closer to my objective. I even sniped one Hive Guard model with long-range Autocannon fire.

Lee then took a look at my advance: I had overweighted my Immolator rush on the left, with seven vehicles on that side. He very sensibly shifted his entire army to his left (toward my right flank), which had ‘just’ three Immolators, and opened fire. Despite all the smoke, with a little good fortune Lee managed to immobilize two Immolators and shake three more (so no flamer goodness for them!).

I responded by thinking that we were playing a casual game. Silly me! Lee (being the competitive full-contact gamer he was) was suddenly very, VERY precise with flamer template placement, with LOS, and with cover saves. It turned out that he was mistaken with the last two of the three (hey, these things happen), but it was a bit of surprise for me to have to switch suddenly to “killer debate mode”. Too, my units were not **quite** in an optimal position to do as well as they could. As a result, I was able to kill only half a unit of Hormagaunts (rather than nearly all of them), wasn’t able to “herd” gaunts into a cluster as well as I had wished (as Lee was, shall we say, rather “competitive” about where he placed tank-shocked models), and had left a ‘hole’ in my vehicle wall that was almost an eighth of an inch too wide to actually protect the disembarked units behind the vehicle wall.

Welcome back to New York City, mate.

The rest of the game was rather predictable. Although I was able to tie up a few units here and there for most of the rest of the game, I had overweighted my Immolator rush in the wrong direction (straight at all the Monstrous Creatures = bad idea), I had not really appreciated just how tough THREE units of Hive Guard could be, particularly when being buffed by nearby Tervigon models, and I most particularly wasn’t expecting to be playing quite so (shall we say) cut-throat a game.

However, Sisters of Battle are still extremely resilient, even when being mauled by a mass of Tyranids, and one thing Lee’s army was really lacking was a massive assault punch (rather, he had several punchy units that couldn’t easily take down lots of Faithful Sisters with 3+ Invulnerable saves). I was ultimately able to chew up two units of Gaunts, the Tyranid Prime, and nearly all the Hive Guard (about 700 points of stuff), but in exchange lost pretty much everything except my Inducted Guardswomen (meaning over 1500 points of stuff).

Fortunately for me, eating the rest of my army meant that the Tyranids didn’t have the time (or speed) to get to my back lines, and the game ended in a draw, with my last four units (of Guard!) still sitting on one of the two objectives.

Turning the Tables
As noted above, I overweighted my Immolator rush in the wrong direction, and very badly underestimated how tough T6 critters with Feel No Pain can be. I think my best bet in this game (even had I not stolen Initiative) would have been to deploy every vehicle unit just outside of 30” away from the Hive Guard on the right flank (as they only move 6”, and they have only a 24” range with their vehicle-killing, cover-(mostly)-ignoring gun), then rush every mobile vehicle in a single mass rather than splitting into two groups (popping smoke along the way). This would have had the effect of basically fighting the same fight I did in this game 6 inches closer to my objective, but not only would my support fire have had better LOS, but I could have focused on killing:

(a) as many fast-moving things as possible, to prevent an easy Tyranid victory
(b) concentrating on killing Tervigons next
(c) going after the Tyranid objective third.

And given the terrain, fighting the “Big Mess” in “my” corner would have had the benefit of providing cover for most of my vehicles against the Tyrannofexes on Lee’s far flank.

I also should have been trying to go for Faithful Rending attacks in close combat, rather than Faithful Hammerhand (+2 Str) attacks, as statistically that’s a slightly better bet against T6 critters that have decent armor saves, but ultimately that’s something that wouldn’t have done anything except on the margins.

Obviously, being a bit more careful about ‘herding’ gaunts and more precise Vehicle walls would also have been more optimal. But even in a more casual game, I still would have been badly bruised by Lee’s army, given how poorly I initially set up against the Hive Guard, and how poorly I rushed forward as well.

I’m hoping that Lee and I managed to patch up our differences over the rest of the game – particularly once I patiently pointed out to him exactly WHY he was coming off as such a (ahem) quintessential hyper-competitive New Yorker, and why that wasn’t actually such a good thing to be, **especially** in a competitive setting that has soft-scores. Like nearly all of the tournaments he goes to play in, for example. Like how it was real weird that he had (very clearly) chosen to wait until the shooting and assault phases to make his concern about my application of the rules known. Like how that really was going to rub most people every possible kind of wrong way.

I tried to gently point out how (in particular!) it was going to look really shady if he was going to be (shall we say) hyper-precise about MY application of the rules, and then move/shoot/roll/assault/etc at very high speeds, use ‘shortcuts’ when shooting/assaulting without explaining or asking permission, and in several other ways act very “casually” about his own application of the self-same rules. Like, you know, starting in the set-up phase before the game even began.

That arguing as hard and as rough as he did could easily make things much worse. And that no, it didn’t matter if he was technically or effectively right or not (I had to explain that last thing several times).

Strange as it is for many New Yorkers to believe, not everyone in the rest of the country really appreciates that particular Big Apple flavor of social behavior. Weird, I know.

Ah, well, in the future, I’ll just be sure to clarify just *how* hard-core someone at the Warmonger Club wants to play a game, before the game starts. I really don’t blame Lee for this – it’s been a few years since I was a regular on club nights, and I definitely forgot how full-contact the competitive players in the Club can get. Shoot, I used to be one of them. No biggie, just something to remember for future reference.

27 March 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Intro)

2010-04-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

The 3167th is a “Revenant” regiment, nominally part of a Necromundan founding (and indeed, the largest single portion of the regiment is the several platoons of Underhive gangers that still makes up its infantry core), but consisting of orphaned squads and platoons from dozens of different, nearly annihilated Imperial Guard units. As a result, the regiment is a constantly changing hodge-podge of traditions, uniforms, equipment, and units, but nevertheless an effective fighting unit due to the experience of the battle-hardened survivors that make up its highly diverse ranks.

3167th Necromunda “Revenants” (2000 pts)

Company Commander with Fleet Officer, Standard, 2 Bodyguards
2x Platoon Command with 2 Meltas, each in Chimera with turret Heavy Flamer
6x IG Infantry squads (3 per platoon) – 3xMissile, 2xLascannon, 1xAutocannon
4x Autocannon Heavy Weapon Squads
x3 Scout Sentinels with Autocannon (in squadron)
Hellhound
Exterminator with three Heavy Bolters and Pask
2x Executioner with Plasma sponsons and hull Lascannon

What did I bring?
After having fielded a basically unpainted Sisters of Battle army in two successive tournaments, I decided to change things up for this FrAG tournament. It’s much nicer for opponents to face a fully painted army, after all. My initial thought was to field a re-worked Slann (proxy Tau Empire) army list, with fewer Fire Warriors and with some converted Kroot and Piranhas making up the extra points, but I ran into a problem: I just didn’t have the desire to finish the painting in time. Oh well.

Fortunately, I have several fully painted armies, including over 6,000 points of fully painted Imperial Guardsmen – I’ve been playing Warhammer 40K for a looooong time, and Imperial Guard has been my army of choice for many years. So I dug around my collection and threw together a list that (a) had all the autocannons I owned, shoe-horned into it, (b) was infantry heavy, and yet still (c) easy enough to transport and set-up without worrying too much about finding enough cover for every model.

My compromise was to “fill up” a good chunk of points with vehicles. In a previous tournament, I had faced an Imperial Guard army list fielding two Executioner tanks, and had been very impressed at how effective and versatile they were. Although I’m a bit of a Plasma-Cannon skeptic, I saw firsthand what two tanks capable of firing FIVE Plasma-Cannon shots each could do: shred light and heavy infantry, as well as light vehicles. As a result, I decided to include two Executioners in my list (using old Conqueror turrets as proxies – the Conqueror variant no longer being available in 40K games).

I also fielded an Exterminator with Pask, as the BS4 really makes the Exterminator quite nasty. As an added bonus, even with the Pask upgrade, the tank is still the cheapest Leman Russ hull I’m fielding, and it meant that I got to use not only my Exterminator, but also the nifty Tank Commander turret I had in my collection.

With only two painted Chimeras in my collection (the other four are assembled, but unpainted), this meant that I would be a relatively static force, but with some old-school (Rogue-Trader era!) Sentinels to round things out, I hoped that I’d have enough mobility to at least contest objectives if I needed to. Ah, famous last words…!

27 March 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Game 1)

2010-04-03T22:05:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Tien (Tyranids). A cheerful younger gamer with an eclectic but quite punchy collection of Tyranid models, Tien was fielding a number of very nice conversions in his list, including Giger-esque Ymgarl Stealers, multi-legged kitbashes standing in for Tervigons, and an imposing Broodlord straight out of the Space Hulk game. This was my first game against the new Tyranids, and I wasn’t sure how well my infantry-heavy Guard army would do, but there’s no better way to learn than to face the chittering horde.

Army: (2000 pts)

Hive Tyrant with lots of Psychic Powers
Carnifex with all Talons, and Bioplasma
Trygon Prime
Mawloc
Zoanthrope

x3 Hive Guard
x10 Ymgarl Genestealers
x10 Gargoyles
2x Tervigons
2x10 Termagants
x15 Hormagaunts
x10 Genestealers with Broodlord upgrade

Mission: “Cleanse” – table-quarters deployment, and the first two turns are played with Nightfight rules. Primary objective: capture quarters (as objectives). Secondary/Tertiary bonuses: gain the most VPs, and kill the enemy’s most expensive HQ choice.

Terrain: Cityfight. The table had a lot of low ruins (about eight) scattered about, with two pieces of area ruined terrain as well. There was one large intact three-story building in my corner, and a large multi-story factory building in Tien’s corner. (We treated both as area terrain, to make things simpler). Line-of-sight at ground level was decent, but with plenty of obstructing terrain no matter which direction you looked.

What happened?
Tien won the roll-off and chose to set-up and move last, giving me choice of corners and the top of the first turn. I immediately chose the corner with the best LOS – which is to say, I chose to set up in and around the tallest building on the table. The best way to avoid obstructions at ground level, after all, is to shoot over them.

Knowing that Tien had several units that could outflank or burrow (deepstrike) in, I set up several units of guardsmen as ‘bubblewrap’ in the lower levels of the structure, and also placed several units of ‘bubblewrap’ protecting the rear and flanks of my vehicles, set up to either side of the building. I had one Executioner on the far left, and the rest of my vehicles towards the middle of my long board edge, all hunkered down in cover and ready for bear.

After a little thought, Tien chose to set up half of his list on his side of the table – with Nightfight rules in effect, he was pretty sure he could rush me fairly successfully before I could get too many shots off. The Gargoyles, Stealers, Ymgarls, Mawloc and Trygon were kept off the table – the Stealers would outflank, the Ymgarls would pop out from somewhere, and the other three units would be deep-striking. I was just happy that there were so many units in Reserve, as it meant that there would be fewer targets to start things off.

The Nightfight rules crippled my firepower in the first turn, and even after the bug horde rushed close enough for my units to see them, fewer than half my units had visibility in turn two. However, what I could see was enough to kill a nearby unit of Termagaunts, and as a result the Tyranids were only able to jump one of my squads of infantry in the bottom of Turn 2. However, I did have to first deal with a Trygon Prime in my backfield, as it burst from underground and puked over some nearby guardsmen. Two units of Genestealers had also jumped my left flank, trying to pull down a Hellhound and Executioner – but I had been careful to move all my tanks the previous turn to make that task more difficult.

As it turns out, the Trygon is a Monstrous Creature that is so large, that it has trouble getting a cover save. As dawn broke on the top of the third turn, I had more than enough firepower to drop the Trygon (in fact, one squad alone did 5 wounds to the beastie), leaving me with plenty of dakka to deal with the Ymgarls and Stealers – and also the Hive Guard brood, and the Gargoyles that had deep-struck nearby, and no less than two units of Termagants. I was impressed. Tien was somewhat less cheery, though similarly impressed.

Tien’s Mawloc appeared the following turn in the middle of my infantry ‘castle’ in the large building, after first burying alive most of several nearby squads. But with few targets left on the table, and at point-blank range to most of my infantry squads, the Mawloc went away almost as quickly as the Trygon had. The Hive Tyrant, Hormagaunts (who had finally chewed through a surprisingly resilient squad of Guardsmen), and two more units of Termagants also got shredded.

But time was now running out, even though we had played only four turns. Tien had been burping out Termagant broods all game long, and although he had started with two, and I had destroyed five, he still had five (!!) units of the little beasties, and between them and the two Tervigons still on the table, that was seven units that could contest corners. He also still had a Zoanthrope and Carnifex left alive, though the latter had managed to eat only one squad of guardsmen in three assault phases (having lost two in a row before finally devouring the last of the annoying little humies – how embarrassing!!).

Yet I had managed to contest only three corners (moving Chimeras with a Lieutenant into two neighboring corners), giving Tien a comfortable 1-objective victory at the bottom of the fourth turn.

Turning the Tables
The foreshortened game is really what did me in – and a good portion of the blame goes to me, for showing up with an army list that I had never played before. Practice with an army makes games go quicker, and I certainly had more than enough firepower to kill Gaunts and monstrous critters. By this point in the game, I had lost a *grand total* of two guard squads, and had the range and guns to easily drop at least two Monstrous Critters (a wounded Carnie, and a Tervigon), and still wipe out at least two squads of Gaunts. That, and get in position to contest all four corners… but none of that matters if you run out of time, does it?

In a foreshortened game, it’s a little harder to see what I could have done, although I might have been better off moving the Chimeras earlier, and working on the assumption that I would be playing only four turns instead of five-plus. The Imperial Guard certainly demonstrated that they could badly hurt an opponent in the shooting phase, but given the mission objectives, anything short of a complete tabling (and that seems unlikely given that for the first two turns, I basically wasn’t shooting) isn’t going to do well against a much more mobile opponent.

Ah well. I think the lesson I learned here is to play tournament games as if they are a four-plus turn game, instead of a five-plus turn game. Tien definitely kept his eyes on the mission objective, burping out as many Termagaunt broods as possible, and spreading them around the table throughout the game. If I go into a game with the assumption that I will play only four-plus games, and plan accordingly, I should do better in tournament settings.

27 March 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Game 2)

2010-04-03T22:02:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Tim (Tau Empire), a.k.a. “Old Shatter Hands” from the Tau of War gaming blog. A soft-spoken, thoughtful fellow with a beautifully painted Tau army, I discovered after the battle that Tim had intentionally reworked his army list in order to do something a bit less predictable with the Tau. Fully aware of what the Tau were capable of, I was a bit nervous about facing them with the Imperial Guard, but at least I knew that neither of us would be making much use of the Assault Phase of the game.

Army: (2000 pts)

Commander (BS5) and two Bodyguards (BS4) with Plas/Missile, plus two Gun Drones and gear
Shas’el (solo, BS5) with Fusion/Missile
1x3 Crisis Suits (BS3) with twin-Missile and Flamer
1x3 Broadsides (BS4) with Smart Missiles and two Shield Drones
2x8 Fire Warriors, in Devilfish with D-Pod and Multi-tracker
1x5 Pathfinders, in Devilfish with D-Pod and Multi-tracker
1x10 Kroot, plus 5 Kroot Hounds
x3 Piranha (BS4) with Fusion and D-Pods
x1 Hammerhead (BS4) with Railgun, Smart Missiles, D-Pod, Multitracker, Target Lock
x1 Skyray (BS4) with Smart Missiles, D-Pod, Multitracker, Target Lock

Mission: “Total Annihilation” – 12 inch deployment from long table edge. Primary objective: kill points. Secondary/Tertiary bonuses: get at least one Troops choice into the enemy deployment zone at any point in the game, and kill the most expensive enemy unit.

Terrain: Cityfight. The table had several large pieces of area terrain ruins spread through the center of the table, three two-story ruins scattered about the table, a very solid bunker (on Tim’s side of the table), and a four-story ruin on the left side of my deployment zone.

What happened?
Tim chose to go second, forcing me to deploy first, and I made a very poor decision. In my desire to get the best LOS and deployment, I chose the four-story building in the left-hand side of my deployment zone to put most of my infantry squads, including most of my Autocannon heavy weapons teams. I did put my tanks and vehicles in/around the ruins in the middle of the table, screened by a big mass of 30 guardsmen, but I had essentially limited the mass of my firepower to only the left-hand side of the table. Not only did this mean that Tim’s far more mobile Tau army could simply snipe at me from long range while my infantry squads simply wept in abject futility from their perch with beautiful LOS (and not enough range), but the Tau weren’t even deployed yet.

Fortunately, Tim chose to keep his Piranhas, Fire Warriors, Kroot (out-flanking), and his Bodyguard unit of Crisis Suits (deep-striking) in reserve. He did try to deploy the rest of his forces out of the range of my infantry in the Big Tall Building, however. Unfortunately for him, his Pathfinders, his Broadsides, and his second unit of Crisis Suits were all in range of the Big Tall Building – and the Pathfinders simply evaporated by the middle of the second turn, given my complete lack of alternative targets.

From there, the game basically turned into two completely different battles. The bulk of the shooting was between about half of my forces (most of them vehicles), against the units Tim had started on the table. Tim rolled like a demon for every one of his Disruption Pods (nearly 80% success rate on his 4+ cover saves; I kept track as I was so amazed by how well he was rolling), which certainly helped him keep his multiple Devilfish, and his tougher Skyray and Hammerhead, aloft through most of the game. Meanwhile, Tim struggled to kill my Leman Russ tanks, as he simply did not have many S10 or fusion shots to throw at them throughout the game (the Broadsides gradually went away over four turns), although he did shake or stun the tanks rather frequently.

Tau reserves trickled on turn by turn, and Tim threw nearly all of them onto his right flank, directly across from (and well within range of!) the Big Tall Building. I believe he was trying to support his starting unit of Crisis Suits, who were effectively pinned down behind the bunker there as there were no easy ways to move elsewhere on the table without being targeted by a ton of Imperial Guard guns with nothing else to shoot at. However, this simply had the effect of giving those guns of mine something else to shoot at, one at a time as they came on, and only sheer good fortune (and amazing D-Pod cover saves) kept the two reserving Devilfish, and the Piranhas, and the attached drones, from being utterly destroyed (instead, the Devilfish were simply immobilized).

The game ended on the fifth turn as we both ran out of time. Tim managed to eke out a final secondary bonus point as his out-flanking Kroot finally made it onto the table and into my deployment zone – but no-where near enough to the Big Tall Building to do any damage to any more of my units. The Tau had lost a Devilfish, the Broadsides, the Pathfinders, two units of Crisis Suits, and two pairs of Drones. I had lost my two Chimeras (and both Lieutenants), a 30-man “blob” of guardsmen, and one Russ tank on the last turn (to a partial squadron of Piranha fusion guns jetting into close range) – but it was still a very close game on Kill Points, with the Guard having pulled out a tight 7-6 victory on the strength of drone kills.

Turning the Tables
You can read Tim’s writeup at his website. To his credit, Tim does mention the luck involved in what was a close game, but there were several things that the Tau could have done to greatly improve their odds.

First, I deployed like a moron, with the bulk of my firepower lacking range to about half the table. Tim’s initial deployment took that into account… except for his inexplicable choice of reserve, and also that unit of Crisis Suits that got “trapped” as the only unit in ready range of my Big Tall Building full of infantry. I ended up digging those Suits out of cover and smacking them with meltaguns – another big mistake by me in a Kill Point mission with units still in reserve, as I was essentially “trading” two units (Chimera and squad inside) for one of his. But then Tim reversed the exchange by moving EIGHT units (2 Fish, 2 Fire Warriors, 1 Squad Piranhas, 3 units drones) into range of my big guns. That was a bad, bad trade, and only the fact that the game ran slow, and thus ran out of time, saved the Tau from being very badly mauled.

Second, Tim chose to deep-strike a unit of Crisis Suits. He chose to start two units of Crisis Suits (the mono HQ with Fusion gun, and the Twin-Missile/Flamer unit) on the table. It was the Missile/Plasma unit that was kept off the table, and they did not enter until the fifth turn of the game. I had specifically set up “screens” of guardsmen to protect my units from out-flanking Kroot and deep-striking Suits, but honestly, I don’t fear deep-striking Missile/Plasmas. Tim would have been far better off deep-striking the solo Fusion (as that gentleman basically did nothing for several turns, until finally eating three autocannons to the face when I ran out of better targets to shoot), as well as the Flamer units (their twin-Missile Pods had very few good targets in this game) to devastate my infantry squads packed into the building. Instead, the unit of the three that was MOST effective at long ranges, and LEAST fearsome at close range, was chosen to deepstrike.

Third, Tim deployed his Pathfinders and Broadsides too close to my Big Tall Building full of autocannon goodness. At the start of the game, they were the ONLY two units fully in LOS and within 48” of that building. They had no business starting there, as their primary, secondary, and tertiary objectives were all about shooting my vehicles, and not getting shot back in return – and there were several other good places to set up in cover in the Tau deployment zone that were comfortably well away from the Big Tall Building. Yet, instead of fighting half my army (the tanks) with most of his firepower (the Railguns and Markerlights, Suits, and Seeker Missiles), Tim lost about half of his effective firepower due to poor deployment.

Fourth, Tim kept his Piranhas in reserve. Huh? This made no sense – they were fast vehicles, there were a number of locations (like behind his AV-13 tanks) that they could have hidden to start the game, and they were one of the bigger threats to my armor available.

Finally, Tim knew going into the game that drones were his Achilles Heel in Kill-Point missions. He chose to keep them attached to his vehicles anyway, for the very marginal increase in firepower, instead of detaching them and hiding them out of LOS or in reserve. In the end, those easy drone kills were what put me ahead on Kill Points.

All in all, I would say that both Tim and I had horrible deployment in this game, and as I was able to use most of my firepower in every turn of the game, whereas Tim could not, I pulled out a tight victory at the end of the game.

27 March 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Game 3)

2010-04-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

Opponent: Marc (Space Wolves). The entirely deserving winner of the Best Sportsmanship award, Marc is a boisterous, gregarious, hilarious, and also deceptively canny and skilled wargamer. With Marc fielding a Space Wolf army capable of getting almost anywhere on the table it needs to, complete with some beautiful (albeit non-GW) Thunderwolf models, I knew that the game would come down to the first one or two turns of the game – could I stop the Thunderwolves and tie up the Drop-podders long enough to gain the advantage? Or would the Space Wolves instead tear through my massed infantry?

Army: (2000 pts)

Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf, plus another character on Thunderwolf, in a unit of 4 Thunderwolf cavalry, plus two “ablative” wolves
Runepriest in Terminator Armor with Force Lightning ability
1x15 Wolves
1x5 Scouts with meltagun, plus Wolfguard with combi-melta
3x10 Grey Hunters with two Meltaguns in Drop-pods
2x5 Longfangs (6 Missile Launchers, 2 Lascannons total), each with Wolfguard champ

Mission: “King of the Hill” – 12 inch deployment from long table edge, and each player gets to place one objective marker. Primary objective: have the most units (of any type) within 6 inches of the center of the table. Secondary/Tertiary bonuses: wipe out all enemy Troops choices, and capture at least one objective marker.

Terrain: My third Cityfight in a row! Both Marc and I had already fought on this table, so we randomly re-arranged the terrain with the use of 3d6 and scatter dice, resulting in a circle of area terrain and ruined buildings surrounding a totally open kill zone in the very center of the table, easily 20 inches across, and almost 48 inches wide. We each placed our objective on the leading edge of a large piece of area terrain, overlooking the Kill Zone in the center of the table.

What happened?
Marc chose to set up and move second, giving me the initial deployment. I set up the bulk of my vehicles in the center of my deployment zone, surrounded by screens of infantry (which also neatly blocked up any Wolf Scout moves from my rear with their meltaguns!), and with one platoon deployed in some area terrain on the right, with clear LOS down a line of buildings and ruins that would give Marc his best approach (through cover) across the table.

As I expected, Marc chose to set up his Thunderwolves and wolves on his far left flank (my right flank), planning to use the line of ruins down that side of the table to screen his advance. Two units of Long Fangs set up in and around a rickety tower in the far corner, coincidentally putting their heavy weapons out of range of most of my vehicles (including both my Executioner tanks), and the Drop Pods and Scouts naturally started in reserve.

I started the game by killing the “ablative” wolves, and one T-wolf rider, and blowing away half the squad of wolves nearby. I also charged my Hellhound, and two Chimeras, directly across the field at the Long Fangs, popping smoke along the way.

Marc then dropped two pods full of Grey Hunters directly in front of my Executioners, spilling out and… tanking his to-hit rolls. One of my two tanks was stunned. The Long Fangs, meanwhile, mistook the Chimeras for Hellhounds and after a brief panic attack, managed to blow away one Chimera (Marc had persisted in thinking the Chimeras were additional Hellhounds, until finally realizing they weren’t when infantry models spilled out). That still left another Chimera, which very nicely kept the Long Fangs quite busy for another two turns – the Hellhound turned around and went after the Drop-pods.

I had a very poor turn of shooting in Turn 2, which left me convinced that all was lost – I could not kill either unit of Grey Hunters, I could not kill the wolves, and I could not kill the Thunderwolf Cavalry. All four units were easily within assault range of my vehicles and infantry. I began making plans to try and mitigate a very decisive Imperial Guard loss… and then Marc flubbed four rolls in a row: one unit of Grey Hunters fell back out of assault range, the wolves fell back (and as a half-strength squad, could not rally), and the Thunderwolves fell short on their fleet AND assault rolls, ending up just 1 inch away from the safety of close combat.

That meant that one unit of Grey Hunters found itself taking on an entire Imperial Guard army on their own. With no infantry units nearby to assault, the Grey Hunters bravely shot the nearest Executioner (and missed), and assaulted with Krak grenades (and blew up the tank, killing three of themselves in the process). Despite the loss of the Plasma Cannons, things were looking up for the Imperial Guard.

At the top of Turn 3, I basically shut down the Space Wolves. Both units of Grey Hunters were wiped out, after I made sure to drop the last two Thunderwolves, of course. With all my surviving guns available to shoot, it was quite a gruesome mess – and the last Grey Hunter was actually stomped to death by Sentinels assaulting the sole survivor of the close-range fusillade. With my infantry “screen” along the table edge still fully active, Marc’s arriving scouts found themselves without any good shots on vehicles, and after assaulting and wiping out a Guard squad, were themselves Hellhounded in Turn 4. The last drop-pod had yet to arrive, and the full fury of (half of) my army was unleashed on the Long Fangs that had survived the crazed Chimera assault (and Meltas inside) the previous two turns.

With that, we ran short of time, and the game ended in a … draw! Marc had just two Long Fang models left on the table, and a Drop-Pod (with Grey Hunters) still to arrive. I had lost just two Chimeras, with the Lieutenants inside, one Guard squad (to the scouts), and an Executioner, but **neither** of us had any units near the center of the table. Ay, caramba.

Turning the Tables
Ultimately, this was a highly entertaining and wildly back-and-forth game, with both Marc and I managing to roll some awe-inspiringly bad dice rolls (particularly in the second turn of the game). Had either of us rolled better that second turn, things probably would have gone very differently in the game. That said, here’s what each of us could have done:

Winning with the Noble Guardsmen: Again, the foreshortened game really hurt my rather slow-moving Guard army. I had been assuming 5+ turns, and a tight (but doable) victory, moving at least four vehicle units into the center of the table, moving infantry units up to get within range for potentially helping in turn 6 (they had already moved to help capture the objective in Turn 4, having been out of range of the Long Fangs), and shooting up the last of the Long Fangs at the top of the next turn. Even had the last Grey Wolves drop-pod come on and contested, they would have been just two units, and capable of killing only one of mine on the turn they arrived – which would have left me with three units contesting to their two.

Winning with the Evil Space Puppies: Marc made two decisive placement errors: first, he placed his Long Fangs very far away from the rest of the battle, and unable to range in on either of the Big Nasty Tanks (Executioners) that did so much damage to his army. In fact, the Long Fangs basically wasted three turns shooting at Chimeras and Guardsmen; in this mission, they were largely expendable, and should have been focusing on bigger threats: those Autocannon teams (all neatly packed together!), the real Hellhound, or even one or more of the Leman Russ tanks.

Second, Marc placed his Drop-Pods almost directly in front of my Executioners. They should have been placed more to the flank, to almost completely block LOS to his Thunderwolf cavalry and wolves – instead, I still had excellent LOS with both Executioners, as well as most of my infantry, and did significant damage to both units, even though I was not able to entirely kill them both. What’s more, placing both pods further to the flank would have given Marc an additional piece of cover to hide behind just in case he fell short on his Fleet/Assault rolls… as he ended up doing (he needed to move 11 inches total on those two rolls, which is statistically well below average for fleet cavalry).

27 March 2010 FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) Tournament (Postscript)

2010-04-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

Although I always enjoy participating in the FrAG and Inner Circle tournaments in Glen Burnie, I had a particularly good time in this tournament. I faced three knowledgeable and extremely sporting opponents, all with distinctive and flavorful armies, and got a chance to field an old standby of mine (Imperial Guard) using the latest codex. Guard are still quite shooty, and infantry guard are still very static and somewhat brittle – but much more effective in the current edition and codex than I feared they might be. They're almost certainly going back into semi-retirement for the time being, but my Imperial Guard can now be certain that they can field a competitive list that I can credibly play at need; a good thing to know, particularly if I ever manage to begin regular club play again.

My Guard finished +1=1-1 at the tournament, and placed 8th out of 18 total, about right for how I did overall. About the only gripe I could have about this tournament was my painting score – I earned 8 points out of 15, for an army that was fully painted AND heavily converted. I earned fewer points than some partially unpainted and WIP armies (!), so I’m not sure exactly how this particular bit was scored. That said, it’s not really a big deal, as I didn’t expect to win the event, and certainly had a great time against some class opponents, an experience I wouldn’t trade for just a few more points in the tournament. I mean, honestly, what’s the difference between 6th or 7th place, and 8th (where I placed)?

About half the armies at this tournament (10 of 18) were Marine or Marine variants (including three Space Wolves, one Blood Angels, and two very vicious Chaos Marine armies), and there were a good mix of Xenos armies in attendance as well – three Nids, two Tau, and an Eldar player. No Inquisition armies in this tournament, and the overall winner was a heavily mechanized Guard list. Go, guard!

As for the future, in the next few months, I plan to keep working on revising my Slann (proxy Tau Empire) army list, and to begin putting paint to my Sisters of Battle immolator list. I’ll probably take my time on the second project, however, as I understand that the Inquisition codex is due out later this calendar year, or possibly early in 2011. I’ll keep tweaking and practicing with what I have now, but try not to get too locked into a single army design just months before a new codex comes out.

Thanks again to my three excellent opponents – Tien, Tim, and Marc – and to my earnest and hard-working hosts (and tourney organizers) at the Frederick Area Gamers. I’ll be sure to keep coming down to Maryland and participating in tournaments, so long as you guys continue to put together such amiable and friendly competitive events.

20 February 2010 Inner Circle High Stakes Jamboree and Pancake Breakfast (Intro)

2010-03-05T10:09:00.001-08:00

What did I bring?
The Inner Circle Gaming Club was putting together something they called a “Pancake Breakfast Tournament” at Games & Stuff in Glen Burnie, MD. With a name like that I knew I was going to have to go and check out what was happening, and with 2000 points to put together a 40K army, it was going to be a few nights of modeling just to put together the units I thought I would like to field.

Taking a page from YTTH, the following is a variation of the Sisters of Battle “Immolator Spam” list I had used at the previous Inner Circle tournament. At the time, I had noticed several things about the army I had been using that made me want to upgrade its capabilities:

First, I didn’t find any significant benefit to having vehicle redundancy (extra transports) for my infantry units. In theory, that makes them harder to knock out of their rides, and provides additional Immolator templates at close range, but I found that in practice – at least given my limited practice with the list – the extra hulls were simply getting in the way, and I was always scrambling to have sufficient meltaguns. Besides, once I got close, I was voluntarily disembarking to get shots at things anyway.

Second, the prior incarnation of the list had no weapons with a range of greater than 24 inches, and the nastiest weapons (meltas, flamers) had an effective range of about 6 inches. This meant that mobile armies could simply outmaneuver me for a turn or two while their long-range firepower did damage to me, then jump on isolated units piecemeal while my transports tried to get into range to help.

Third, my previous list had only two Troops choices (both units of Battle Sisters), and I found myself really struggling in some missions with only two Troops choices to capture objectives. What’s more, units of Battle Sisters are fairly resilient, but they are also relatively expensive for comparatively less value than Celestians and Dominions in Immolators. I definitely wanted MORE Troops choices. And, nothing against resilient objective-grabbing units, but I also wanted Troops choices that contributed more directly to the game as well.

Finally, I really liked having a Psychic Hood to back up the Sisters’ inherent resistance to psychic attacks – but taking an Inquisitor Lord (for the Ld10) was relatively pricey, even if I could mitigate some of the cost by fielding him with several meltaguns (as part of his mandatory retinue).

In the end, I stole a page from Stelek at YTTH and addressed each of the above concerns as follows: took Storm Troopers as basic Troops (cheaper than Battle Sisters), supported by inducted Imperial Guard (extra Troops choices) in Chimeras and with Autocannons (long-range firepower). All of this was led by a Grey Knight Brother-Captain with Psychic Hood (cheaper than the Inquisitor Lord, but still Ld10), who would be hitching a ride in a Chimera due to his mandatory Terminator armor. And, because I had the points, and because I knew that an Eldar Seer Council would be a real problem for me (lots of light vehicles, close-range army, not so good at close-combat), I gave the Grey Knight character an Incinerator.

All in all, a very brutal and gruesome 2000 point list – possibly one of the hardest army lists I’ve ever had the opportunity to field and use in 5th edition. All in all, I’d say only my all-Rending Ripper Swarm army from 3rd edition was clearly nastier than this list.

HQ: Grey Knight Brother-Captain with Incinerator and Psychic Hood
HQ: Canoness with Book of St. Lucius, BP/CCW; retinue of 5 Celestians with 2 Meltas; Immolator with Smoke
Elite: 5 Celestians with 2 Meltas in an Immolator with Smoke
Elite: same
Elite: same
Troop: 5 Adeptus Arbites with 2 Meltas
Troop: same
Troop: same
Troop: Inducted Imperial Guard squad (4 scoring units) -- Command Squad with 4 Flamers and Chimera with Heavy Flamer turret and Heavy Bolter hull, 3x IG squads with Autocannon and Chimera with Multilaser/Heavy Bolter/Pintle-Mounted Heavy Stubber
Fast: 5 Dominions with 4 Flamers in an Immolator with Smoke
Fast: same
Heavy: Immolator with Smoke
Heavy: same
Heavy: same

20 February 2010 Inner Circle High Stakes Jamboree and Pancake Breakfast (Game 1)

2010-03-05T10:07:00.000-08:00

Opponent: Steve S (Imperial Guard). A cheerful fellow with a mechanized Guard army slightly more painted than my own force, Steve was brutally honest about what a mish-mash his own force was. Between the Hellhounds and Immolators, however, it was going to be one flamer-crazy ride, and we both knew that any model wearing less than full power armor was going to vanish off the tabletop in a gout of blazing promethium if there were any enemy vehicles nearby.

Army: (2000 pts)

5x Chimeras (2x Vet with 3 Plasma, 2x Vet with 3 Melta, HQ with Astropath)
4x Hellhounds in 2 squadrons
2x Sentinels with Lascannon, in squadron
2x Leman Russ Executioner with HPG sponsons and LC hull
1x Basilisk

Mission: Annihilation, Pitched Battle. The only variation to the usual rules was that the victor would be determined by 4th-edition Victory Points, rather than Kill Points.

Terrain: Neither Steve nor I wanted to place terrain, so we took it as it had been set up. A massive factory building (averaging three stories high) blocked LOS and movement in the center of the table. Some sparse woods were in either deployment zone, as well as some low hills scattered throughout. A reinforced trenchline had been dug on the far left of my deployment zone, but neither Steve nor I had any use for it, so it simply was more difficult terrain for our transports and vehicles.

What happened?
Steve won the roll-off to set-up and move first, and chose to set up in a line across his deployment zone. Given the massive building in the middle of the table, though, this meant that he was effectively creating two ‘wings’ to his army, as such:

Right Wing (my left): Leman Russ on the far side, with two Chimeras, then two Hellhounds, and the Basilisk hiding behind trees on that side.

Center (hidden from nearly everything in my deployment zone): HQ Chimera.

Left Wing (my right): one Chimera on the far side, with a Leman Russ in cover in the woods on that wing, then two Hellhounds and a second Chimera toward the center.

Outflanking: the two Lascannon Sentinels.

I set up in a mobile castle planning to rush to my right around the building, with AV12 front-armor Chimeras in front, and everything else screened behind them. Steve’s first turn was fairly ineffectual, given that only one vehicle (his Leman Russ on the right) was shooting, but it did manage to immobilize the Chimera with my Brother-Captain and flamers. The unit sat out the battle in the back lines, in relative safety, as everything else happened around them.

My shooting in the first two turns was astoundingly bad – even with multiple close-range melta shots (over 20 shots at BS4 over two turns) at close range, I managed to kill just one Hellhound and one Chimera. Fortunately, the fact that half of Steve’s army couldn’t see me, meant that I was able to keep most of my force intact despite choking two turns in a row in the shooting phase. I had thrown two Chimeras and Immolator onto my left flank, hoping to delay the other half of Steve’s army while my units got over their massive hangover and figured out where the triggers on their weapons were – and it worked, though I had lost all three vehicles (and their contents) in the process by the third turn.

Then in the bottom of the third turn, my units started to get serious, and seven Guard vehicles died – two more Hellhounds, two Chimeras (and their contents), the unit of Sentinels that had just arrived (and missed after shooting at a transport) and a Leman Russ. Now I was cooking with fire (literally)!! Steve’s entire flank collapsed, and thrown onto the defensive after a very decisive turn, the Guard tried to retreat to the far side of the table-top to take advantage of their range advantage. But now that I had the range, I wasn’t going to let the Guard get away, and they continued to lose vehicles (and units) to my meltas and flamers.

The game went a full seven turns, and the Imperial Guard were able to keep one Leman Russ, and one unit of Veterans in a Chimera, alive by circling them around to my deployment zone (taking pot-shots at my Brother-Captain in the process), but lost everything else. I had lost about half my vehicles and their contents (all four Chimeras and two of the Guard units, 3 Immolators and their squads – Celestian, Dominion, and Storm Trooper), plus my Brother Captain to a lucky plasma-gun shot, but despite their lousy shooting the first two turns, it turned into a rather decisive victory for the sisters.

Turning the Tables
The Imperial Guard did three things in this game that really hurt them: one in the deployment phase, one in the movement phase of the first turn, and one in the movement phase of turns two and three.

Deployment: why are you spread out? With a giant LOS-blocking piece of (effectively to vehicles) impassable terrain in the middle of the table, spreading out in your deployment zone means that you are chopping your army in half. Your opponent hasn’t deployed yet and will absolutely take advantage of the fact that your army is split in two. MY army list does not have a ton of long-range vehicle-killing firepower. Pick one corner or other and castle up, and make me have to come in and deal with EVERYONE at once. On a related note, why are you choosing to out-flank with your Sentinels? They should be on the table right away, trying to blast away at my transports before they get to your lines.

Movement (turn 1): why are you moving toward me? No, honestly, why? I have no long-range firepower, and am a nasty, nasty army at close range… so why are you moving CLOSER to me instead of sitting back and shooting for two turns? Even your Hellhounds have an effective range of about 18 inches (about 20 inches maximum) without including movement, so there’s no reason to get close to me. Have everything else sit back and shoot, and when I get close, use the Veterans with meltaguns as a mobile screen (they melta something, their ride blocks my movement). Then flame the snot out of me with Hellhounds, acting as cruisers on the flanks. Create layers of transports protecting your heavy-hitters in the back (your Leman Russes) and keep the triggers on your guns completely depressed.

On a related note, why is your HQ Chimera busy hiding behind a building for virtually the entire game? You told me yourself that the squad inside has no value apart from the Astropath – so why are you trying to keep them alive, and incidentally denying yourself the use of the guns on the transport?

Movement (turns 2/3): why is half of your army concentrating on taking out one or two Chimeras full of useless guys? Why are they not hitting the accelerator and immediately rushing to help out the other half of your army, and taking advantage of the fact that the Sisters apparently forgot which end of their weapons is the “boom boom” side? Why are you wasting two turns of movement and shooting on a couple units that I clearly am throwing at you just to distract you, and which are stuck in vehicles you have already immobilized in the middle of an open field, and who thus can be dealt with at your leisure?

As it was, the Guard were unable to take advantage of my two (!!) lousy shooting phases, with half the army concentrating on wiping out my “distraction” force of two Chimeras and an Immolator. By the time they realized that help was needed, my units had figured out what they were supposed to be doing, and Steve’s other flank had completely collapsed.

20 February 2010 Inner Circle High Stakes Jamboree and Pancake Breakfast (Game 2)

2010-03-05T10:04:00.000-08:00

Opponent: M (Sisters of Battle). I shall call him simply “M”, because there’s no point in calling out someone by their real name on the Internet if you’ve got nothing nice to say. Indeed, this was a thoroughly unpleasant game against a thoroughly unpleasant individual, and easily one of the least enjoyable games I have played in years. And I had gone into the game with such high hopes for an interesting Sisters-vs-Sisters matchup.

Army: (2000 pts)

Canoness with Mantle, Book, Cloak, Blessed Weapon, 6x Celestian Retinue, Veteran with Eviscerator, and Priest with Eviscerator
Junior Inquisitor with 2 Mystics and a Land Raider transport
2x 10 Battle Sisters with 2 Meltas and Veteran Sister, in Rhino (no upgrades)
2x 9 Dominion Sisters with 4 Meltas and Veteran Sister, in Rhino (no upgrades)
2x5 Imperial Storm Troops, with 2 Plasmas
3x Exorcists

Mission: Dawn of War, Seize Ground. 4th-edition style Victory Points were also to be recorded, to help determine the overall tournament victor.

Terrain: After terrain placement, the left side of M’s deployment zone (my right) had a sprawling low ruins where he placed his objective marker. On my side, a blocky ruin in the far left corner, and some woods on the right, where I deployed my objective marker. Between our 2 objective markers were two rows of trees and a low hill; another row of trees were neatly granting cover saves on the far center left of the table. In all, excellent cover saves from nearly every angle for nearly anything being shot at long range.

What happened?
M deployed his Storm Troopers around his objective, and during the top of the first turn, moved his army onto the table in two groups: a smaller wing consisting of one unit of Battle Sisters, screening an Exorcist, on the left (my right) of the ruins his objective was in, and a larger wing consisting of his other vehicles, spread out across the rest of his deployment zone.

I moved on and felt comfortable enough about the heavy terrain and M’s lack of significant vehicle-stopping firepower to split into two wings myself, sending half my Chimeras and several units of Immolators (with Storm Troopers) to challenge his smaller ‘wing’ and seize the objective, and the rest to delay and harass the other side of the table and keep M’s other units off my objective – held by my last two Chimeras.

In short, my plan succeeded – M failed to really stop any of my units, he failed to concentrate fire on any of my vehicles before they got to him (shooting mostly at the Chimeras on my objective, rather than the transports rushing toward him), he failed to keep away from the nasty Immolator madness (particularly around his objective, which he was trying to hold with T3 guys in 4+ armor… and all my Immolators with a S5 AP4 weapon) and his one nasty hitter squad was isolated and overwhelmed in detail, managing to kill only one squad and several transports before going down hard.

Okay, what really happened?
The game started with M insisting that any units I deployed in woods (= agreed as area terrain) would have to shoot through woods to hit his vehicles, thus his vehicles would gain cover saves (= not true). He also insisted that since transports count as units (= true), that my HQ would HAVE to start on foot at the start of the game (= not true). I placed it in reserve instead, still in the transport. He contested LOS constantly from my vantage point, insisting that the trees I was deployed in would individually block LOS to his units (= true in general, but not in this case). When I pointed out to him that his arguments were not only illogical, but not supported by the rules, he babbled on about something new. But you know, whatever, right? Sometimes people just don’t know what they’re doing. Sometimes it’s not malicious.

Then, at the start of turn one, it became crystal clear what sort of player M was. His transports and Exorcists zipped on, moving an inch or so further than they normally could have. When called on this, a jockeying match with tape measures ensued, and vehicles ended up being moved and replaced and repositioned ad nauseum. However, none of them moved more than 12 inches from his table edge, so I was mildly satisfied. I consoled myself by reminding myself that M didn’t have any blast weapons (imagine the “fun” playing someone with a floating tape measure when there are blast templates involved).

Then I blasted his Land Raider (carrying his heavy-hitter Canoness unit) to pieces with meltaguns on the bottom of turn 2 – after having a rather lengthy discussion with M about how far units were allowed to deploy from transports, and showing him the specific rule. I later overheard him double-checking this with a more rules-competent acquaintance. Because after all, you never know if your opponent showed you a fake rulebook or something to prove his point, right?

The insanity continued – M never bothered to explain what he was doing, and would argue (!) instead of explain when I asked him to do so. If I didn’t already know what his units could do, his actions would have been completely opaque to me. He blathered nonstop and blatantly tried to pressure me into making all sorts of bad decisions, and insisted that I reroll “cocked” dice that were no such thing – but of course, only those “cocked” dice that favored me. He used dice with a variety of different custom faces, but never bothered to explain the value of any of those faces. He conspicuously lied about his rolls on at least two occasions (treating rolls of “2” as rolls of “3’, for example), and had a habit of quickly snatching up his ‘successful’ to-hit rolls to roll again for wounds, rather than pausing to show his opponent (me) what the outcomes were. On one occasion, he ‘forgot’ to roll for wounds, simply telling me that the hits he had rolled were wounds.

The breaking point was (I believe) on Turn 3 when M failed a morale check with a unit of his Battle Sisters, who fell back more than enough to flee off the table given where they were. M tried to flee them at a diagonal angle instead, “around” one of his nearby Exorcists, to keep them barely on the table. I had to point out twice (!) that the actual location of the Exorcist model physically did not prevent his unit from moving directly back and off the table. In other words, even WITH the Exorcist nearby, there was a shorter and perfectly clear line of retreat off the table. With poor humor and even poorer grace, M removed his unit. “Fine, if that’s the way you want to play it,” he grumped.

Oh, bucko, you have no f’in clue.

For those who don’t know me, I spent ten years in the Ivory Tower of Academia before I got tired of the vile toxicity and left. In case you have don’t know what that entails, let me explain. Being a practicing research academic means being a professional asshole, at a level that most people cannot possibly conceive. It means knowing a hundred different stupid rhetorical tricks to make the target of your righteous (or not) wrath feel like a complete moron, and a hundred more stupid tricks for cutting them off at the knees and destroying their logic, their argument, their reason, and their ability to keep speaking. It’s been a long time since I was in practice being that scale of asshole, but it’s not like the skills just vanished when I left the Ninth Circle of Hell to get a job in the Real World.

With a grim vindictiveness, I proceeded to give M what I sincerely hope was one of the worst games of 40K in his life. I cut him off constantly, attacked his credibility and knowledge of the rules, created multiple fake confrontations which I then readily won, consistently fought his every interpretation of the rules, and refused to let him get away with any more shenanigans, point blank. When he “nudged” a Rhino into a better firing position, I moved it back for him, chiding him like a recalcitrant child. When he moved a unit too far, I moved them back to the proper location, explaining the movement rules to him like he were an idiot. When he tried to fast-play, I conspicuously slow-played, forcing him to change his pace to match mine. When he asked about rules questions, I made him look them up himself. When he challenged anything I did, I made him prove that I couldn’t – and kept playing and making moves while he tried to find the relevant rules in the book. When he blathered, I shut him up with a scathing retort.

In short, I completely subordinated M’s personality and authority to mine, in a very blatant and vicious manner. Meantime, of course, I took liberal advantage of every move, angle, weapon, rule, and special ability that I had – and stopped bothering to explain what I was doing, either. Given how rusty I was at the task, I probably pulled off what in my prime I would have considered a C- performance in terms of ass-hattery (slightly below mediocre) – I stopped short of ad hominem (personal attacks), and definitely didn’t go full-bore. What can I say, I’m years out of practice. In this case, it was more than sufficient, as M quickly folded like the fake-ass punk he was.

My sad-sack opponent had started the game talking a mile a minute, and by the end was almost completely silent. It probably would have been a victory for my army anyway, but given how thoroughly I took advantage of him, M was almost completely wiped out. I had lost three of my Chimeras, two of my Storm Trooper units, immobilized one Immolator in terrain, and lost one squad of Celestians (nearly all of them lost to a rampaging Canoness and her two pet Eviscerators that would miraculously have been assaulting 13+ inches, had I not been clamping down on M’s stupidity). M had his Inquisitor, one Exorcist, and half a Dominion squad left when he conceded midway through my fifth or sixth turn.

Technically, because he conceded, I should have gotten a full 2000 victory points out of M, but I was too tired after this little jaunt through the sewer of bad sportsmanship to care to push it. I let the little weasel get away with preserving a few victory points, and he slunk off to bother me no more. In hindsight, given that the tournament standings were based on victory points (scored and preserved), I probably should have gone all-in and taken the points, but oh well. Good riddance.

As an Exciting Footnote (tm) to this tale: throughout the game, such as it was, I had taken notes for this report on the back of an extra army list M had provided me before the game. After this game, I cleaned up the table a bit, stacked my papers and notes under my miniatures, and went out to grab dinner. When I came back from dinner to get ready for game three, those game notes (and the army list they had been written on) had vanished. Gee, how mysterious. I wonder what could have happened to them?

Turning the Tables
Lesson one: don’t be a dick. M clearly did not enjoy the game he played with me. Surprise, moron. That’s what other people experience when they play YOU. I’m positive, because I double-checked. What, you didn’t think that your tournament opponents would talk to each other?

Oh, I’m sorry, you didn’t like being on the receiving end? Then stop doing it. Because here’s lesson two:

Lesson two: there is ALWAYS a bigger asshole than you out there. I’ve no idea why M plays like he does. I’ve no idea if it’s just something he brings out at tournaments, or against people he doesn’t know, or what. I’ve no idea if this is the way his entire circle of friends plays, cultivating the bad sportsmanship like a rare-blooming carrion flower. But being this kind of gamer is a dead-end road. Eventually you WILL run into someone who can make you his/her whipping boy, and I’m not just talking about game-wise, or tactics-wise. I gave you a really unpleasant two hours, and this wasn’t even the most unpleasant I can be – and there are plenty of people that I’ve met, that I guarantee can make my worst efforts feel like a wonderful and rejuvenating day at the spa in comparison with what THEY can bring. And when you provoke THAT expert in douche-baggery, are you really going to be having all that much fun?

Lesson three: stop cheating. There are ways to be successful at dickishness. Being an obvious cheat is not one of them. Not only do you have much less leverage in a “rules” confrontation if you’re totally making shit up, but when you make honest mistakes in the game, as nearly everyone does, it will just look like you’re cheating some more.

Lesson four: concentrate fire. This is the only piece of tactical advice I can really give, for three reasons. First, M’s tactics were pretty bad: he split his forces and his firepower and got overwhelmed in detail – he should have concentrated both his forces and his firepower. The fact that he didn’t is why I figured I would probably have won the game anyway. Second, most of my notes from the battle “mysteriously” vanished, and I had to recreate what happened from memory – and honestly, what happened in the game is not what I remember most clearly here. Finally, why am I going to bother giving useful game advice to someone I don’t respect, and intensely dislike?

20 February 2010 Inner Circle High Stakes Jamboree and Pancake Breakfast (Game 3)

2010-03-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

Opponent: Brett A (Eldar). An extremely pleasant and earnest fellow with a bit of wry wit about him, Brett was fielding a beautifully painted Eldar army, which he apologized for as it was not (quite) fully painted. See, as a long-time Eldar player and fanatic, Brett was still in the process of repainting one of his Dire Avenger squads, and thus the color scheme didn’t match the rest of his forces. Unlike my army, of course, which was a more-or-less uniform shade of grey spray primer…

Army: (2000 pts)

2 Farseers (Fortune only) and 10 Warlocks, all with Witchblades, in a Shuricannon Waveserpent with Spiritstones
2x10 Dire Avengers including Exarch with Bladestorm in Brightlance Waveserpent with Spiritstones
3x6 Fire Dragons in Scatterlaser Waveserpent with Spiritstones
2x5 units of Rangers

Mission: Spearhead, Secure and Control (3 objectives). 4th-edition style Victory Points were also to be recorded, to help determine the overall tournament victor.

Terrain: After terrain placement, one corner (my deployment zone) had a mess of tall terrain: a large fortified bunker on the left, and a very high hill on the right. Otherwise, a largely open ruin was in the corner to my right, a spindly tower and low hill in the corner to my left, and a low hill in the far corner (Brett’s deployment zone). In all, an open killing-zone – and we placed all three objectives in a tight triangle right in the middle of that killing field.

What happened?
Both Brett and I knew that this game was going to be a mess – and it would pretty much come down to the efforts of the Seer council. Accordingly, we each made our Clever Plans.

I knew that the Eldar would want to go second (it’s an objective-based mission, after all), and that I really wanted to control where on the table most of the smackity happened. If it happened in an area clogged with difficult and impassable terrain, that would really favor the fast skimmer army. If it happened in the middle of an open field, then I’d have a better shot at really hurting him.

Brett, on the other hand, fixated on killing the one unit that could really throw a wrench into his plans: the Brother-Captain with the Incinerator. His plan was simple: start everything on the table as far back as possible (as I had very limited long-range firepower), and not rely on having his units enter the table piecemeal from Reserve. He placed his Rangers into the tower in one of the ‘neutral’ corners, in position to snipe at my units all game (they ended up doing nothing of interest, as we each expected).

In my first turn, I rumbled forward with a mobile castle of AV11 transports, popping smoke in the front and flanks. Brett responded by moving forward 24” with most of his transports, creating a solid wall of skimmers in front of my mobile castle, and neatly blocking up my ability to get around the wall (and block up his exit hatches). In doing so, however, the Eldar had ended up only inches from my lines – meaning that none of my units really had to disembark in order to get off shots. I cheerfully shifted my units around 6 inches, making room for as many as possible, and opened fire on everything EXCEPT the already Fortune'd Seer Council – no point in forcing them to disembark if there was a possibility that they might choose not to next turn.

My shooting phase was spectacular, about twice as effective as I could have expected. Two Fire Dragon Wave Serpents were destroyed, and a third lost its weaponry. One unit of disembarking Fire Dragons was pinned, and I simply immolated the other with nearby immolators. Brett was appalled.

He responded by isolating the Chimera holding my Brother Captain, which I had foolishly (stupidly!) placed in the front line, and on the far left-hand side of my transport wall. Foolish, foolish me. The Seer Council and a unit of Dire Avengers disembarked and three Wave Serpents proved just enough to crack open the Chimera my Incinerator-wielding Trump Card was hiding in. One Bladestorm later, and the Incinerator was gone, and with it any hope I might have of an easy game.

The Seer Council then rushed to assault as many transports as they could – which meant two, at this point.

The next two turns saw me kill two more Wave Serpents and wipe out the last two Fire Dragon units, flaming them both into oblivion. The Seer Council took a half-dozen flamer templates to the face two turns in a row, but four of them still survived, and the Dire Avengers sought safety in close combat with my Sisters. I had one model survive the initial assault in turn 3, and ended up having to turn the assault into a giant swirling mess in the middle of the table, simply to prevent the Dire Avengers from re-embarking on a Wave Serpent and flying off to capture objectives later in the game.

Had the game gone longer, there’s no telling what might have happened. I had killed a significant portion of Brett’s forces, crippled his mobility (he had just two mobile transports left, and only one Eldar unit still above half-strength), and was busy turning his Seer Council into flambé – but was also running out of units and transports myself. The Seer Council was no joke, taking down an average of two transports a turn, and without the mobility and flamer templates, my odds of dropping the Council were diminishing every turn.

However, all the maneuvering and careful strategery meant that we ran out of time, hitting the two-hour mark toward the middle of the fourth turn. With the knowledge that he controlled the last turn, Brett did the smart thing – he ran Wave Serpents onto two objectives (one with Dire Avengers inside) and with the Dire Avengers in melee combat near the third objective, it was a victory for him: two contested (the giant melee, and the empty Serpent next to some Stormtroopers of mine), and one controlled (the Serpent with Avengers, and the only unit of mine close enough to contest having been tank-shocked off the objective).

It had been one of the most entertaining and fun games I’d played in a long time, and Brett was a top-caliber opponent, both in terms of game-mechanics and sportsmanship. True to form, Brett was genuinely apologetic about how he had won the game, but honestly: it’s mechanized Eldar. That’s how you’re supposed to play it, no?

Turning the Tables
This was a good game against a really good opponent, and he won by taking advantage of a few small mistakes that I made.

First, I put my Incinerator – my “trump card” against the Seer Council – in an extremely exposed location. I should have put the Chimera transporting him in a much more secure location – in my back line, for example, or at least toward the center of my transport wall. Even if this meant that the Seer Council chose not to assault immediately in turn 2, but chose to wait for an additional turn to guarantee not getting Incinerated, this would have played in my favor by giving me an additional turn to really put the hurt on the rest of his forces.

Second, I chose to use the benefits of cover AND to use Faith Points when one of my Celestian units was shot and assaulted by the Dire Avengers – without even thinking. I had drawn shooting casualties from models out of cover (a wrecked vehicle), and again without thinking I chose to burn Faith Points to potentially cause more damage. That was a double brain-fart. There’s no way at all that I should have risked winning the combat – I absolutely wanted to lose the melee and get run down by the Dire Avengers, so that they would be Immolator-bait the following turn. That, more than anything, lost me the game right there. Instead, I miraculously pulled off a Hammerhand, and between the extra wounds as a result of wounding on 2+, and striking first because of being in cover, I ended up in a drawn combat instead of losing comfortably by two (or more).

As a result, I now had seven or eight Dire Avengers sitting on top of an objective, a giant melee blocking movement in the middle of the field, a still-mobile Wave Serpent nearby that could pick them up if they wanted to (or the option to Bladestorm or assault again if they wanted to) after they inevitably beat down the sole surviving Celestian, and a series of bad choices to make about what to assault and how to get around the damn melee to flame the Seer Council. Ick. Given my druthers, I would have just assaulted the Seer Council and tar-pitted them the rest of the game, and let the Dire Avengers try to do what they could against vehicles with armor value and Immolator templates. Brett, being a good player, made sure I never had that option.

Finally, I failed to keep track of the time. Better time-management might have resulted in more objectives contested, and a tie game instead of a loss. After all, while Wave Serpents are great for tank-shocking units on foot off of objectives, they can only contest if another vehicle is already on the objective.

20 February 2010 Inner Circle High Stakes Jamboree and Pancake Breakfast (Postscript)

2010-03-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

Well, one good game to start, one great game to end, and one godawful nightmare of a game that I at least took control of, in the middle. The tournament format also awarded prizes to players who won games (at all) during the format, so despite the fact that I only placed, and didn’t win anything of consequence, I still ended up with some gift certificates. I immediately put them to good use, purchasing the new Tyranid codex (know thy enemy) and some Gale Force 9 vehicle condition markers (extremely useful for an army list like this, as I have discovered!)

The tournament was very well attended, with 30 gamers, and no less than four (!) Sisters of Battle players. I placed 7th overall, which I’m fairly happy with – although I do kick myself a little for letting my second opponent M get away with points that should have been mine, it’s not like it would have mattered that much in the final rankings. A good mix of lists participated, with a decent amount of mechanization – a good thing in 5th edition, of course. I actually faced three non-Marine armies, but this wasn’t that unusual, as the make-up of the army lists was quite variable:

2x Chaos Daemons
2x Chaos Marines
3x Eldar
5x Imperial Guard
1x Orks
4x Sisters
13x Space Marines (all varieties, mostly Dark Angels)

Interestingly, not a single Tyranid army at this tournament, despite the sexy new codex. Also interesting was the power breakdown of the army lists; Marines were all over the board, of course, but Guard, Daemons, Sisters, and Eldar all did extremely well in terms of win/loss records, as well as by victory points – three IG lists, three Sisters lists, and two Eldar lists were in the top twelve. Perhaps that’s a reflection more of the players than the lists, of course, but still very interesting to see the final spreads.

At any rate, I’ve been invited down by the kind fellows of FrAG (Frederick Area Gamers) to the next 40k tournament at Games & Stuff. Unlike the Pancake Jamboree, this next tournament features a painting score (which is, of course, a polite way of asking that gamers show up with pretty painted armies), so I’ll probably be taking my Slann/Tau army list. I’ve come up with some modifications to make it a bit punchier, and far less dependent on Fire Warriors than previously, so it’ll be interesting to see how I fare.

Philosophical Musings:
In all, a pretty good tournament experience, although I remain a bit astounded at just how nasty this particular variation of the Sisters Immolator Spam army list can be. With all the vehicles and bodies flying around, and the Ballistic Skill and firepower to badly cripple most armies in a single turn or two, this is really quite a nasty army. My challenges if I keep using this list will be threefold: tactical, sportsmanship, and modeling.

On the tactics front, it’s quite a bit harder than I had anticipated (and I hadn’t been thinking it would be easy) to keep track of all those transports running amok. With a mobile army list, particularly one that’s short-ranged and not terribly fast comparatively, it’s important to be able to think ahead several potential moves, and as a gamer I’m far more comfortable with target priority and reacting to my opponent’s moves (and mistakes) – playing a shooty army, in other words. Mastering the Immolator spam will be a challenge, and I’m sure it’ll be quite a few more games before I feel truly comfortable with its capabilities and strengths.

On the sportsmanship front, this is truly a nasty, nasty list. It’s going to be a challenge keeping the game enjoyable and non-threatening for people who play me, especially if I bring the list to non-competitive, non-tournament settings. In part, that’s why I’m hoping that the “Austin Powers” theme of the list will help to mitigate some of its inherent nastiness in game-play. But at the end of the day, a lot of that will depend on me being a sociable, fair-minded fellow who doesn’t try to take undue advantage of opponents during a game.

Finally, on the modeling front, I put together the last few guardsmen (using spare Necromunda Escher models I’ve had for years) and several Chimeras (which had been lying about unassembled for years because the track assembly on the original kit is such a pain in the behind to assemble), and had my army. Now all I have to do is start painting them…. and given that “simple and easy” hippie, VW mini-van, Austin Powers, flower-child theme I’ve got going, that should only take me several thousands of man-hours to complete. And then once painted, I’ll need a better (= more expensive) way to transport the vehicles than stacked on top of each other in a shoebox. Ay, caramba.

At least I’m finally starting to make use of some of the many dozens of models and miniatures I’ve scrounged together over the years. Speaking of which, other 40K army concepts being scrounged together currently include the Tyranid Warrior list. Did you know that I have 21 of the old 2nd-edition plastic Tyranid Warriors? (insert maniacal laughter here)

Retrospective: 17 July 2009 Historicon WAB Medievals (Intro)

2010-02-14T17:03:00.000-08:00

Events had conspired to make it impossible for me to attend the annual historical miniature gamer geekfest known as Historicon for several years, and I had been itching to get back into Warhammer Ancient Battles for a while. I had also been putting the ‘finishing touches’ on an army of Medieval Burgundy for over half-a-dozen years, and this looked like the perfect opportunity to finally finish painting the last few units of my force.

Medieval Burgundy was, at the height of its power in the 1400’s AD, basically the northeastern part of what is now France (Bourgogne and Alsace-Lorraine), plus most of Belgium, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands (and a sliver of what is now the western part of Germany). It was in effect a powerful independent nation that came into regular conflict with France (to whom it was technically a vassal), and even allied with England against France during the Hundred Years’ War.

Like many of the hundreds of small nations of Europe that vanished from the pages of history during and after the Renaissance, it collapsed and was absorbed into other victor-nations (which we know now as “the countries of modern Europe”). In the case of Burgundy, the collapse was largely due to the military failures of its last Duke, Charles the Rash, who bit off quite a lot more than he could chew, and was smashed in several successive battles by the Swiss.

Burgundy was torn apart after Charles’ death in 1477, and the territory remained a source of violent dispute between France and the Hapsburgs (later Prussia and Germany), all the way into the twentieth century, with particularly exciting flare-ups such as the Thirty Years’ War, the Franco-Prussian War, and World War Two.

I’ve been fascinated by medieval Burgundy since I read Mary Gentle’s “The Book of Ash” series back in 2001, and although the series took a very odd turn (to say the least) into some speculative Sci-Fi, the core characters and stories, about the lives of a mercenary company employed by Burgundy, were extremely compelling. The army list for Burgundy in Warhammer Ancients is an excellent way to capture this story – the last duke of Burgundy hired the best military units available in Europe to form his army, which as a result is a combination of some of the most effective and elite units in the medieval period.

Over several years of playing the Burgundians, I have optimized them as much as I can, both for points values and for my own play style. The army list in the “Armies of Chivalry” book is packed with many elite (= expensive) units, and there is always plenty of temptation to be wildly inefficient with one’s points. My own list is centered around a fairly static gunline concept, anchored by as much light artillery as I can field and supported by a number of “shooty” units, specifically crossbows with pavises for protection, and skirmishing longbowmen. Ironically, although Burgundy did use handgunners, and they were some of the first models I painted, the WAB rules are very hard on handgunners, and as a result I use crossbowmen instead.

To ensure that the “gunline” hangs around and keeps shooting, I field a relatively immobile general and army standard, which I’ve stuck into a unit of cut-rate pikemen (possibly the only low-cost unit in the army list!) for protection. And to provide a hard punch and threaten opponents that can outshoot me (a few do exist!), I’ve units of very ‘punchy’ Knights with warhorses, full plate, lances, and the First Charge special rule, bulked up relatively cheaply with the addition of “sergeant” models in the second rank. To protect their flanks, as well as the flanks of my relatively immobile infantry, I also field a small unit of Light Cavalry.

All of this is very characterful, in my mind anyway, and has seen a fair amount of success on the tabletop. For this tournament, I was to bring three different point values, which I’ve outlined below: my 1500-point ‘core’ has the bare essentials only, while the 2000-point list has a second unit of Knights, and a ‘fun’ unit that actually has relatively little benefit in most games apart from terrifying overly cautious opponents (the Multi-Barrel Artillery unit). Finally, for the 2250-point list, I added some handgunners – some of the first units I painted for this army list, but some of the most superfluous in most situations, as in the WAB rules crossbows are more effective in virtually every situation. That said, I didn’t have more crossbows, and I DID have a lot of nicely painted and very characterful handgunners – so in they went!

What did I bring?

1500 points:

General and ASB on foot, both with Full Plate
5 Knights (with Full Plate, Lance, First Charge, and Warhorse with Plate Barding, + 3-man Unit Command upgrade) & 5 Coustilliers (Heavy Armor, Thrusting Spear) in back rank
10 Light Cavalry (Light Armor, Light Crossbow)
22 Lowland Pikemen (Heavy Armor, Pike, + 3-man Unit Command upgrade)
10 Ordnance Longbows (Light Armor, Longbow, Skirmishers)
2x10 Crossbowmen (Light Armor, Crossbow, Pavise)
3xLight Artillery (3 crewmen each plus 1x Master Gunner upgrade)

2000 points:

General gains Double-Handed Weapon
5 Ordnance Gendarmes (WS5 unit with Full Plate, Lance, First Charge, and Warhorse with Plate Barding, + 3-man Unit Command upgrade) & 5 Coustilliers (Heavy Armor, Thrusting Spear) in back rank
10 Ordnance Longbows (Light Armor, Longbow, Skirmishers)
Multi-Barreled Artillery (plus 2 additional crewmen)

2250 points:

2x10 Handgunners (Light Armor, Handgun, Pavise)
Unit Champion upgrade for Light Cavalry

My core strategy is always the same: hold the pikemen back, with a screen of “shooty” units protecting it, and with artillery and crossbows (and handgunners) near enough to the general to take advantage of his leadership. The cavalry go on the wings – either all three on one wing, or split between each wing as the situation and opportunity allows. They either sit back in a defensive posture (against a more dangerous cavalry foe) or ride out very aggressively (against a less dangerous cavalry or infantry foe).

Retrospective: 17 July 2009 Historicon WAB Medievals (Game 1)

2010-02-14T17:00:00.000-08:00

Opponent: Justin Tebo (Low Countries). A soft-spoken and very intense opponent, Justin was fielding a pikeman-heavy force with a credible left and right hook (knights and halberdiers). An actual historically plausible conflict, this set up my Burgundians against a mercenary force of guilders and middle-class townsfolk from what is now the Benelux nations. Bloody rebels, anarchists, and republicans, is what they were, and no well-bred Burgundian nobleman was going to stand for it, I can tell you!

Army: (1500 pts)

1x10 Knights (including General)
2x24 Pikemen
1x16 Heavy Infantry with Halberds
2x10 Skirmishing Handgunners
1x20 Longbowmen
1x Light Cannon (and crew)

Mission: “Running Fight” – both armies start off the table, and bring a unit at a time onto the table. Deployment begins very slowly, with only one unit coming onto the table every two turns, but speeds up after Turn 6. Each player secretly determines in advance the order in which their units enter, and must stick to that sequence. Table quarters do not count for victory points, but the “village” on the table counts for a bonus 400 points.

Terrain: Generally open fields, with a small copse of trees on my table edge, on my far left flank. In the middle of the table (on the left) is a small village of several buildings, and in the middle of the table (on the right) is a rather sizable hill that blocks LOS.

What happened?
Given the mission, a whole lot of nothing happened for the first nine turns of the game, as we each brought on a number of units and carefully maneuvered them at extreme ranges around the existing terrain. Justin tried to move his cannon into firing position and got shot to shreds by my ranged weapons for his effort. Then, in the 10th turn, I stupidly screened my unit of Knights behind a unit of skirmishing bowmen, in a foolish attempt to protect them from Justin’s nearby unit of Knights. See, I was forgetting that in Warhammer Ancient Battles, this simply results in the skirmishers getting shredded and overrun, and the unit behind getting charged with no chance to countercharge. Long story short, I lost my unit of Knights.

I spent the next few turns maneuvering my General (attached to my unit of pikemen) toward the village, screening the flanks of the unit with my ranged support fire, and punched into the village (held by Justin’s heavy infantry halberdiers) with my pikemen on Turn 12. With the general and ASB on my side, and with both units essentially fighting in skirmish formation, the halberdiers were decisively routed, and I had the village… for at least a few turns.

On turn 14, Justin got a bit careless with his knights, and they were annihilated by my cannon (which had just arrived on turn 13) and crossbows, and were wiped out to a man. His general survived, however, and fled to safety on the far side of the hill, out of LOS.

On the 15th turn, Justin finally maneuvered his two large units of pikes into range of the village, and with the numerical advantage on their side, slowly began whittling down my one unit of pikes. I simply didn’t have the units to help out, although I did keep sniping at his other units to keep him honest. With my light cavalry safely out of LOS behind the copse of trees, and with my crossbows behind pavises, I was slowly winning the battle of attrition with his distant longbowmen, but only oh-so-slowly.

On the 17th (and final) turn, my position completely collapsed, and a close game turned into a rout for the Low Countries: my General and ASB were forced to retreat, and I had lost my sole unit of melee infantry. Justin’s two units of pikemen held the village. At the same time, one of my light artillery exploded, and the accompanying panic checks led to the rest of the battery fleeing off the table as well. Final score: 1220 victory points for Justin, and a mere 570 victory points for me.

Turning the Tables
The very slow set-up and maneuver that were part of the mission threw both of us for a loop, but there were several things I should have done that might have changed what my options were. First, there was no reason to challenge the Low Countries knights with my knights; the odds were in Justin’s favor with his general in the unit, and I basically threw my knights away with that stupid “screen with skirmishers” trick that only works in Warhammer Fantasy. I also lost a unit of Skirmishers in the equation. I would have been better off dancing around the village with my Knights, and using them to support my General and Pikemen – and taking advantage of my superior firepower to down his heavier units when I had the opportunity (as came about on turn 14).

Secondly, I set up my guns in a battery, which is stupid and without any benefit in a game of Warhammer Ancients. There are no real benefits, and plenty of disadvantages (as demonstrated by the panic check that sent them scurrying off the table) to doing so, and I should not have set them up in this fashion. Whether this would have made much of a difference in the game anyway is debatable, but it’s still a mistake that I should learn from and fix.

Given how slowly the game developed, and how many bonus points the village was worth, I don’t think it was a mistake for either Justin or I to spend so much effort and energy in trying to capture it – but with two units of pikes AND a unit of halberds on his side, and with so many units in reserve (and thus able to move on at any point on their long table edge), it was going to be difficult for me to get the upper hand on Justin with my superior shooting – his non-shooting units could simply move onto the table somewhere I couldn’t easily shoot, which is exactly what they did. With that in mind, my best option was probably to hold back and kill his knights with my shooting (which I did), and use my own knights to smack around his non-pike units, perhaps keeping one or both units of pikes from moving to take or support the village due to their threat, thus allowing my own pikemen, led by my general and ASB (and thus with the edge one-on-one against any of his infantry units in a village skirmish) to capture the village later in the game.

Instead, I lost my knights early on and Justin was able to leverage his larger number of pikes to his advantage by the end of the game. Defeated by a rabble of bloody plebians! Ah, the ignominy!

Retrospective: 17 July 2009 Historicon WAB Medievals (Game 2)

2010-02-14T16:54:00.000-08:00

Opponent: Tom Eiche (Teutonic Knights). A very cheerful and energetic young gamer with a brightly painted army – the white tunics were nearly blinding! – Tom had a very straight-forward ‘beat face’ strategy that perfectly fit the style of his army list. Playing a crusader order transplanted to the Balkans, and which eventually forms the foundation of the Kingdom of Prussia (and thus, modern Germany), the Teutonic Knights and Burgundians meet on the field of battle in a wonderfully unlikely conflict. Maybe we’re fighting over Denmark or Saxony?

Army: (2000 pts)

1x10 Teutonic Knights (plus General, ASB, and Character)
1x10 Light Cavalry (Lithuanians)
1x13 Medium Cavalry (Turcopoles with Heavy Armor and Spears)
1x18 Heavy Infantry with Halberds
1x10 Skirmishing Handgunners
1x18 Crossbows

Mission: “Collision!” – before the game, each player divides their list into three sections, each worth between 500 and 1000 points. They deploy their armies alternating with the other player, and deploy each section all at once. The 2nd-largest section in terms of point value (“vanguard”) deploys first, then the largest section (“mainguard”), and finally the smallest section (“rearguard”). Deployment takes place in opposite corners, with a 24-inch-wide no-man’s-land running diagonally between the two (this is a common Warhammer Fantasy setup). Table quarters do not count for VP purposes.

Terrain: Tom’s deployment corner was split into two by a rather chunky copse of trees just at the forward edge of his deployment area. I had a small vegetable field set back a small ways in my own corner, but with room enough within for some units to set up in cover behind some low walls.

What happened?
With the copse of trees blocking up a portion of his deployment zone, Tom ended up somewhat crammed into his corner. He set up his Turcopoles (MedCav) on his far right flank, put his Knights in the middle next to his Handgunners, and set up his Halberds and Light Cavalry behind a long line of Crossbows on his left flank.

I responded with a far more defensive set-up. My General and Pikemen held my center, but back a good ways from the forward edge of my deployment zone. A unit of Knights sat to their left, and my three cannon in cover among the cabbages and rutabagas on the right, and they were all screened by a unit of skirmishing Longbows. Two units of Crossbows were in line to the left and the right of my center, with a unit of Knights on my far right flank, and an impromptu cadre of Light Cavalry, skirmishing Longbows, and Multi-barrel artillery on my far left flank.

Tom moved first, and moved up with every one of his units. I responded by moving only my flankers, and opening fire with everything else, aiming first at the very chunky unit of Teutonic Knights. And then again – leaving only the General and Hochmeister character alive after the turn 2 barrage.

Tom responded by panicking, moving his General and Hochmeister into the relative safety of his Turcopoles (Med Cav), and then retreating them all *away* from my light cavalry and skirmishers. On the far side of the field, his halberds maneuvered frantically to protect his crossbowmen from a charge from my Knights, who charged the Halberdiers with gusto. With few other targets, my ranged fire switched to the Lithuanians (Tom’s Light Cav), who quickly crumbled under the massed volley-fire.

With no Teutonic units nearby to help, the halberdiers eventually succumbed to the face-pounding they were receiving from my Knights, and were run down. With the Teutonic General hiding in a unit of Turcopoles, and certainly not nearby, the panic spread throughout the Teutonic lines, and the Crossbows and skirmishing handgunners also turned tail and ran.

In the end, I had lost just one unit of skirmishing archers (“fed” to the Turcopoles to keep them busy), and one Multi-barrel Artillery (which attempted to kill Turcopoles and misfired spectacularly). Tom had lost nearly his entire army. Final score: Burgundians 1608 victory points, and Teutonics 170 VPs.

Turning the Tables
Charging up the middle of the table with his sole nasty cavalry unit, with no screening units what-so-ever, was a recipe for disaster. It was only sheer luck that kept Tom from losing all three of his characters along with his unit of Teutonic Knights, and with his biggest threat out of the game, and the rest of his units out of position as a result, I was able to beat up the rest of his army with almost literally one arm behind my back (my pikemen and second unit of Knights sat around and simply picked their noses – er, drank fine Burgundy Pinot Noir, I mean – all game long).

Tom also chose to retreat with his unit of Medium Cavalry, rather than try to move them up to smash into my left flank – something he could easily have done once his General and Hochmeister joined the unit. Facing them was “merely” two units of skirmishers, and a multi-barrel artillery piece, and half my shooting would not have had an arc-of-fire had he approached at the appropriate angle. Instead, Tom chose to retreat, leaving his light cavalry to eat the brunt of my shooting, and leaving his infantry completely exposed to my Knights (who essentially ate all three units of his infantry in short order).

Given that a unit of my Pikemen AND a unit of Knights was waiting in the backfield for him should his Turcopoles ‘punch through’ my left flank, I see why Tom felt the odds were a bit long. But that said, his Turcopoles were nothing to sneeze at, particularly backed by two strong melee characters, and retreating simply meant that he had taken himself out of the game.

Retrospective: 17 July 2009 Historicon WAB Medievals (Game 3)

2010-02-14T16:49:00.000-08:00

Opponent: John Eiche (Imperial Ottomans). Sardonic and delightfully sly, John had seen some of what had happened to his son Tom’s army in the previous game, had heard even more details about the wrath of the Burgundian gunline, and was confident that nothing similar would happen to his elite janissary corps, consisting of the crème de la crème of the Ottoman Turkish military. That said, it’s difficult to see what the Burgundians and Ottomans would be doing facing each other on the field of battle. It’s a bit anachronistic given the fact that the Burgundian military reforms that my army is based on, all happened after the major European Crusades against the Turks, and shortly afterward Burgundy ceased to exist anyway – but anachronism is the name of the game in WAB, so full steam ahead!

Army: (2250 pts)

1x10 Drilled Medium Cavalry (plus General, ASB, and Meterhane)
1x10 Allied Knights (with Lances, Full Plate, and First Charge)
1x8 Drilled Medium Cavalry
1x8 Medium Cavalry
1x8 Light Cavalry (Nomadic Bowmen)
1x10 Janissary Infantry Halberds
1x24 Janissary Bowmen
1x10 Janissary Handgunners
2x Light Artillery and crew

Mission: “Pitched Battle” – standard 12” deployment zones, with two variations. First, both sides deploy in secret, setting up all forces with a screen dividing the table. Second, both sides may deploy all the way to either short table edge, given the larger point values being fielded. Table quarters do not count for VP purposes.

Terrain: The table was essentially wide open, with just a small field of crops and a nearby grain silo in the middle of the table (on my right flank), and a farmhouse and attached hedgerows in my deployment zone, toward my left flank.

What happened?
Expecting John to have a rather conservative deployment, with infantry in the center, cavalry in the wings, and spread across most of the table, I decided to try a heavy flank set-up on my side. I put my three light artillery in and around the farmhouse, and anchored my lines with my Pikemen and General, just to the right of the farmhouse, with a screen of skirmishing archers in front. I crammed two units of “shooty”, backed by Knights, in the twelve inches to the left of the farmhouse, and packed the remaining three units of “shooty”, backed by Knights, Light Cavalry, and a Multi-Barrel, to the right. My entire deployment took up only half of my entire available frontage on the tabletop, with my General and ASB positioned to grant leadership bonuses to all but one formed unit of shooty, and with decent LOS and inter-unit support to the left flank, and **spectacular** LOS and inter-unit support to the center and right flanks.

As I had anticipated, John had a far more conventional deployment, with his two artillery pieces in his center, with his janissary infantry spread to both sides. He did have a somewhat unweighted deployment by putting all his medium cavalry on his left flank (my right flank), and his allied Knights and nomadic cavalry on his right flank (my left, facing my entire army), but his General and ASB were on the far flank, well out of support range of the rest of his forces. This meant that, at the start of the game, two of his MedCav units, including the one with his three characters, were entirely out of position and unlikely to do much for a few turns at least.

I put my deployment to good use, and marched out with both units of cavalry on my right flank in a very aggressive fashion. I destroyed two units of Ottoman cavalry on my first turn of shooting (the Light Cavalry directly across from me, and the Medium Cavalry closest to my lines), sent the surviving crews of both Turkish artillery pieces scurrying for safety, and had so much firepower left that I was able to badly hurt the other two units of Medium Cavalry with long-range cannon fire, as well. I followed up by blowing away another unit of Medium Cavalry in turn two, and baiting the last unit of Medium Cavalry (now badly damaged) into charging my unit of Knights, who simply counter-charged and wiped out the last of the Ottoman cavalry, killing the General, ASB, and Meterhane in the process.

The Janissaries proved how l33t they were by refusing to fail the subsequent “Ohmygodthegeneralisdead!!!11!!11!” tests, but it was still a bad turn of events for the Turks. Yet even had I lost that combat, the victorious Ottoman characters would have ended up in full view of no less than three units of my “shootiness”, backed up by artillery – and very likely would have been dead from shooting half a turn later. All in all, a very bad set of potential outcomes for the Ottomans.

At any rate, by the start of Turn 3, John had just one unit of cavalry left: his allied Knights. He also had a lot of Janissary guns and bows that were doing very little to my shooting units (between the Pavises and skirmishing), and who didn’t have range or LOS to my Knights, and no cannons left to threaten me with. The next four turns were fairly anticlimactic, as I became a great deal more cautious, but with a unit of my Knights rampaging around his backfield, things went very badly for the Ottomans. The only bright spot for the beleaguered Turks was when John’s badly shot-up allied Knights managed to win combat against my charging Gendarmes (my WS5 Knights!) and chased them off the table.

But that was the sole bright spot, as only three of John’s allied Knights survived the battle, and largely by virtue of being off the table for a turn – literally every other model in the Turkish army was lost. By contrast, the Burgundians lost two units to Ottoman shooting (Archers and Gunners), three artillery pieces to misfires, and the Gendarmes Knights to bad fortune. Final score: 2165 Burgundy, and 835 Ottomans.

Turning the Tables
The battle was basically decided during the deployment phase. John chose to spread out far too much, and by doing so, conceded the initiative to his opponent. He put his leadership-bonus-granting models well out of range of the rest of his army at the start of the game, and had a very “thin” center that was not well suited to rapid redeployments or supporting elements that were in danger of being overwhelmed.

By contrast, my deployment was a bit of a gamble, but its only glaring weakness would have been in the face of a heavy right-flank deployment by John, which might have overwhelmed my under-supported left flank if (a) John had moved first, and (b) I had a turn of bad shooting trying to stop him.

John also was fielding an army filled with elite (= expensive) units, between his two units of Drilled Janissary Med Cav, and his three units of Janissary infantry. Spreading out such an elite force across the tabletop simply ensured that they would be overwhelmed at whatever point I chose to concentrate – and indeed, most opponents would probably have been able to outnumber the individual Janissaries units, as spread out as they were. Clustering up a bit more would have been far more effective for the Turks in this case, wherever they chose to do so.

That said, once the game started, John made relatively few glaring tactical errors. The only decision he made that I might have suggested doing differently would have been taking the “bait”, as it were, and charging my unit of Knights with his Janissary Med Cav. Even with his characters in the unit, the odds were not promising for him, as I had dropped his numbers with shooting in the previous turns, and even had the Turks won, they would have ended up completely exposed to another turn of my fire. The highly maneuverable Ottoman cavalry would have been better off remaining out of LOS of my shooting, and sending the characters off in relatively safety (as solo models) to bolster and support the Janissary infantry in the center. Instead, the unit charged in, and a few minutes later, the Ottomans had only some allied Knights left for cavalry… and a dead General and ASB.

Retrospective: 17 July 2009 Historicon WAB Medievals (Postscript)

2010-02-14T16:46:00.000-08:00

After several years’ hiatus, I was happy to return to Historicon and historical miniatures gaming, and enjoyed myself quite thoroughly at the event. I have gotten quite a bit more immersed in history since the last event (in part because of a career change), and that plus a better sleep schedule in my daily life, and fewer stresses in my work life, meant that I had far more fun in ’09 than I have had previously. I’m sure I was also a good deal more fun to face and play against, as well.

Although initially Historicon 2010 was to be located in Baltimore, MD (a decision I thought was particularly awful), widespread dissatisfaction from club members and conference regulars forced a change to Valley Forge, PA – actually even easier to get to than previously, from New York City. As a result, I expect I will be attending the 2010 Historicon and participating in the WAB tournament this coming July 8-11.

Warmonger Charity WAB Tournament: 30 January 2010 (Intro)

2010-02-14T16:38:00.000-08:00

Organized by local Warhammer Ancients fanatic and condottiero John Bianchi, and run by Warmonger Club President-for-Life Jim Keleher himself, the Warmonger Charity tournament on 30 January 2010 was the second annual tournament, and put together to benefit the American Cancer Society. It was also an excuse for historical WAB gamers to travel to New York City and gather for a day at the Compleat Strategist basement – on what turned out to be one of the coldest days of the winter. With a beautiful array of armies from almost every period in the WAB game, this was going to be an entertaining series of ahistorical battles.

Although I’ve many grandiose plans, I’ve currently only two WAB armies, and by far prefer my Burgundians to my Dacians – thus it was my Burgundians that showed up that day. It’s an army list that I’ve had a good deal of practice with, and was I was feeling fairly confident about how they would do that day.

What did I bring?
My Burgundian army has been basically complete and in its final form since Historicon in August 2009. Below are the units I brought for both 1500 points, and the additional units to bring the total cost up to 2000 points (technically, to 1999 points).

1500 points:

General and ASB on foot, both with Full Plate
5 Knights (with Full Plate, Lance, First Charge, and Warhorse with Plate Barding, + 3-man Unit Command upgrade) & 5 Coustilliers (Heavy Armor, Thrusting Spear) in back rank
10 Light Cavalry (Light Armor, Light Crossbow)
22 Lowland Pikemen (Heavy Armor, Pike, + 3-man Unit Command upgrade)
10 Ordnance Longbows (Light Armor, Longbow, Skirmishers)
2x10 Crossbowmen (Light Armor, Crossbow, Pavise)
3xLight Artillery (3 crewmen each plus 1x Master Gunner upgrade)

2000 points:

General gains Double-Handed Weapon
5 Ordnance Gendarmes (WS5 unit with Full Plate, Lance, First Charge, and Warhorse with Plate Barding, + 3-man Unit Command upgrade) & 5 Coustilliers (Heavy Armor, Thrusting Spear) in back rank
10 Ordnance Longbows (Light Armor, Longbow, Skirmishers)
Multi-Barreled Artillery (plus 2 additional crewmen)

Warmonger Charity WAB Tournament: 30 January 2010 (Game 1)

2010-02-14T16:16:00.000-08:00

Opponent: Bob Rioux (Teutonic Knights). A marvelously wry and subdued gamer with a killer army list, Bob was fielding a Teutonic army with a several metric tons of Knights (not even including horses!), backed by two big blocks of infantry warbands, and supported by a smattering of some missile fire. In all, it was a collection of units that would absorb almost any opponent’s assault, then annihilate it with warbands and First Charges in the following turn, and I was very happy at the fact that I was fielding a medieval gun-line when I saw what Bob had.

Army: (2000 pts)

General, ASB, and Hero operating solo on horseback
1x12 Knights & Turcopoles (Sergeants in back ranks)
1x10 Knights & Turcopoles (Sergeants in back ranks)
1x9 Allied Latin Knights
2x30 Warbands with mixed weapons
1x15 Crossbows with Pavise
1x14 Skirmishing Handgunners

Mission: “Collision!” – before the game, each player divides their list into three sections, each worth between 500 and 1000 points. They deploy their armies alternating with the other player, and deploy each section all at once. The 2nd-largest section in terms of point value (“vanguard”) deploys first, then the largest section (“mainguard”), and finally the smallest section (“rearguard”). Deployment takes place in opposite corners, with a 24-inch-wide no-man’s-land running diagonally between the two (this is a common Warhammer Fantasy setup). Table quarters do not count for VP purposes.

Terrain: Bob’s deployment zone was really awkward for him, with two large woods pieces right at the forward edge of his deployment zone, breaking up his potential lines of advance into three small breaks in the treeline. My deployment zone also had some woods, but far back in one corner, giving me nearly free reign to setup. The diagonal zone between us had three sizable hills, neatly blocking LOS from most angles – this meant that the battle would pretty much come down to Bob picking one approach, and being forced more-or-less to stick with it, given the combination of trees and hills between him and I. It also meant that I would have trouble bringing the bulk of my firepower to bear on him in any one turn.

What happened?
Bob moved first, and chose to move nearly everything to his right (my left flank). Although this meant that half my firepower was out of LOS of his units, it also meant that he was going to be coming at me piecemeal, and what’s more, my artillery had a great shot, which they immediately took. When the smoke cleared, Bob had lost over half a unit of Teutonic Knights, and a second turn of fire nearly wiped out the survivors.

However, with my limited firepower due to all the hills blocking my LOS, I was having difficulty wiping out whole units of Knights. Bob had one survivor to that first, doomed unit, who promptly slipped into the backfield and hid behind some terrain. I was going to have to jump into with melee units to “clean up” after the ranged damage I was inflicting. Accordingly, I knocked his big unit of Knights (slowly creeping up the center of the table, unable to march because of nearby Light Cavalry) down a few models, and then charged in with my WS5 Gendarmes. I went in with one point of combat resolution, plus the charge and higher WS, but learned after the crushing victory in the initial assault (+4 total combat resolution) that Teutonic Knights were Stubborn, and thus would not be running. Yuck. Eventually two of Bob’s three characters got involved, but the combat was two full turns (four combat rounds) of bloody stalemate, what with the 2+ armor saves and subsequent S3 attacks.

On the left flank, a badly battered unit of Knights smashed apart my Multibarrel Artillery, chased off my nearby unit of Crossbows, and then got jumped by a fresh unit of my Burgundian Knights… but of course, the sole Teutonic survivor after that lance charge was stubborn.

After five turns of maneuver, the game was a draw – Bob had managed to kill just one unit of mine (the Multi-Barrel Artillery), and I had managed to shoot up and chase off his one unit of Crossbows (in large part because of two successive shots with the Multi-Barrel Artillery, plus some firepower from my light cavalry). I had managed to destroy nearly all his cavalry forces, but the units were still technically alive. And, had we gone another turn, it’s relatively likely that the Teutonics would have pulled out a victory – the two infantry Warbands were getting into position to Mess My Knights Up, in large part because the stubborn Teutonic Knights refused to run from combat. Yeesh!

Turning the Tables
My efforts on my left flank worked marvelously, and I even had a bit of good fortune, with my unit of Crossbows on that flank managing to successfully flee from enemy cavalry and avoid destruction. Between my pikemen and unit of Knights, I had some very tough reserve units, but I really was out of position to “deal with” that large infantry warband backing up Bob’s late charge. Had the game gone another turn, my knights would almost certainly have been eaten by the warband, forcing my pikemen to handle them alone – some better positioning in the previous two turns would have negated the threat. Of course, the whole reason I hadn’t done this was sheer overconfidence, as I hadn’t realized that Teutonic Knights were stubborn, and hadn’t bothered to take that into account in my maneuvering and late-game setup.

Similarly, the brutal grind in the middle of the table, between my WS5 Burgundian Gendarmes and Bob’s Knights (later supported by his characters, and then backed up by his second infantry warband) was completely unnecessary – I had initiated the combat by charging in, and had I known that the Teutonic Knights were stubborn, I would have been far better off hanging back with my own Burgudian Knights and instead shooting for another turn or two with my missile troops on that flank. By charging into combat, I effectively took my missiles units on the right flank out of the battle entirely. Shooting for another two turns would have removed an average of three more models from the Teutonic Knights unit, and forced them to either move into a disadvantageous position in LOS of my cannon to threaten my units, or to stand still and keep sucking up damage, or (even better) to back away entirely and stay out of the battle.

As it stands, I was lucky to pull out a tie, with the game ending on Turn 5 instead of continuing another turn. Clearly, this is exactly the sort of thing that happens when you misunderestimate your opponent’s units.

Warmonger Charity WAB Tournament: 30 January 2010 (Game 2)

2010-02-14T16:13:00.000-08:00

Opponent: Paul Georgian (Thematic Byzantines). A cheerfully pessimistic fellow from Boston, Paul and Bob (from my previous game) were long-time friends who were both quite enthusiastic about the possibility that their friend might get pummeled by Burgundians. I had been unable to decisively put down the Teutonic Knights, but Paul was gloomily convinced that the anachronistic match-up would heavily favor my artillery over his medium cavalry, and predicted a horrifically lopsided Burgundian victory.

Army: (1500 pts)

General and ASB on horse, operating solo
2x9 Medium Cavalry with w/Kontos and Bows
1x10 Nomadic Cavalry
1x30 Medium Infantry with Spears and back ranks of Bows
2x10 Skirmishing Infantry (one unit of bows, one of slings)

Mission: “Delayed Reserves” – before the game, each player places two non-light formed units (infantry and/or cavalry) into Reserve. The remainder are deployed as per Pitched Battle, with the proviso that all skirmishers and war machines set up FIRST. Reserves enter the table on a 4+ on turn one, or automatically on turn two regardless. Games last strictly 6 turns, maximum, and neither table quarters nor standards count for VP purposes.

Terrain: Paul chose to deploy on the table edge where three hills and a large woods piece formed a shallow arc (concave side toward me), very nicely blocking LOS from my side of the table to both of his corners. I had just one terrain piece in my deployment zone, a hill centered along my long table edge. The center of the table, between my hill and in front of Paul’s “arc” of terrain, was a rather large and barren killing zone.

What happened?
Paul used his pre-game Special Movement to move his Nomadic Cavalry into position to make a first-turn charge on my artillery, which I didn’t have quite enough bodies to screen, be they crossbowmen or skirmishers. As Paul dolefully predicted, the aggressive action was ultimately futile, as I won the roll-off to go first, and blew away his Nomadic Cavalry with a combination of artillery, crossbows, and light cavalry bowfire.

Having taken what was apparently the one risk he was going to take in the battle, Paul immediately changed strategies, shifting his skirmishers to his right (my left flank), and moving his units in from reserve and directly into hiding, behind the massive wall of trees on that side of the table. Paul was playing for a tie game. If I was going to win this battle, I was going to have to go “dig” him out of his corner.

It took several turns for my units to come in from reserve and move to that side of the table, and not until Turn 5 was I able to charge my sole unit of Knights (because I only fielded one unit at 1500 points) into his unit of Spearmen; a risky move considering I was starting down +2 combat resolution, but ultimately worth it. They fell back in good order after losing the combat, and my Knights slammed into a unit of Skirmishing Archers standing just behind. Likely to lose on points if he lost the Archers, Paul charged in one of his two units of Medium Cavalry, frantically reforming units to try and get as much support into the very cramped space as possible. However, even with the charge of his Themata Kavallaroi (medium cavalry), the combat was going to go poorly – I simply poured all my attacks into the very lightly armored skirmishers, and won the combat overwhelmingly.

The Medium Cavalry and archers fled the combat and were ridden down, and the Knights slammed into the Spearmen again, now bolstered by the Byzantine General and ASB. This was a very bad scene, however – with the ASB on his side, Paul’s Byzantines started the combat with +3 combat resolution, and with hard-hitting characters in the front ranks. I was able to win the initial charge, but the infantry refused to break, and the subsequent grind (now at S3 for myself) led to my Knights losing combat on the bottom of the last turn, and running for the hills.

The loss of my Knights meant that the game was actually extremely close: 696 points for the Burgundians, and 315 points for the Byzantines. It was a Burgundian victory by just 6 points! (the margin for a victory being 375 VPs). What swung the game in my favor was not just the actions of the proud Burgundian Knights, but also the continued sniping at extreme range by my artillery (and archers) against his skirmishing slingers, who finally fled off the table in Turn 5, giving me just enough points to make up for the loss of the Knights.

Turning the Tables
Paul’s initial maneuver with his light cavalry was very risky, not only as it meant that his nomads would be caught in the open if I won the roll-off to move first, but also because he would only be able to attack one cannon at a time – I had not deployed them in battery, and they were well away from each other. I would also have been able to “box” his nomads in with my reserves, when they entered, and odds were very high that they would have had serious difficulty escaping from what would (for them) have been a complete suicide mission. Really, this was a gamble not only that his nomads would move first, but also that they would be able to successfully charge, that my reserve units would not come on immediately, and that his nomads would have been able to turn around and again successfully charge a second time. That’s really pushing the odds.

However, assuming that was Paul’s intention, that would probably have left me with at least one operational cannon still surviving, my two reserve units out of position, and a turn or three for his reserve units and infantry to move forward and threaten my position, possibly via a flank move. But with his infantry effectively trapped into one approach, having started the game behind the line of trees on his right flank (my left), Paul was either forcing a sizable delay in engagement, by moving along the very cramped right flank of the table, or promising to move his cavalry up the center of the board completely unsupported – both rather suboptimal situations given how his cavalry matched up with either my Knights, or my pikemen.

All in all, I think Paul was rather over-dramatically concerned by my cannons, to the point where he set up in a very conservative, defensive position, and played the game not to win, but to rather to play to a draw. I think he also set up his infantry in exactly the wrong place if he was going to give himself the option to be aggressive – he would have been better off using the ‘screen’ of hills on his left flank (on my right flank) to threaten my lines. Not only would his units have been able to move over the hills at any point, instead of being ‘trapped’ behind trees on the other flank, but the hills were actually closer to my deployment, and would have forced my own reserves to either commit to that flank, and a fight in the hills, or deploy on the other flank and get ‘trapped’ as Paul had been by the trees on that side.