40k 6th Edition Bandwagoning

So everywhere in gaming geekland there has been a bit of a buzz around the release of the new rules for Warhammer 40k.  I've not bought them, nor do I plan on, I'll pick up the box set when it drops in 3 months time.

But getting in on that buzz I did get tempted to pick up a few space marines which I'd never finished up to include in my army of old.  I'd started work on one of these guys but never got as far as highlighting him up.  The rest of the unit was just undercoated and sprayed a bone colour.  So I dug them out (discovered I'd lost one of the shield arms annoyingly) and finished them off.

Also got a few more figs kicking about, 4 guys with power weapons which were designed to be a combat command squad and a landspeeder which are in various states of preperation so might try and get them all done up too.  From the sounds of it my somewhat less mechanised army isn't too bad under the new ruleset so hopefully can enjoy this edition a bit more than last.

Realise I forgot to attach the picture to the end of that last article too, so here's a quick shot of the pump wagon in its final splendor.



Also up to 30 savage orcs painted now, just need to buy the final 10 and then I can have the unit complete, but plenty to be doing in the meantime as received my trolls from reaper miniatures, so can get to work on them along with the multitude of chariots and warmachines I've still got to do.

Scratchbuilding

This last couple of weeks have been a bit manic for me at work so not really found time to sit down and paint, I ended up working all weekend so didn't really have time to finish off the savage orcs I'm currently working on.  But because of the nature of the work I was doing I did have some downtime as things were getting pinged back and forward with a client so I put that to use constructing a pump wagon for my O&G army.

GW have only really made 2 pump wagon models, the current one which is all big spikes and massive wheels and doesn't really make any sense to me and the old 3rd ed one whith the spikey roller and 2 stories (though you could get it as just 1 level) of wooden platform.  I much prefer that model as it seems far more likely that it'd be something snotters could actually construct, it doesn't rely on anything particularly complex unlike the new one which looks like a serious bit of engineering.

The decision to scratchbuild was largely driven by the prices on EBay, the old style pump wagons kept consistently rising about £10 which given the simplicity of the model felt a little bit excessive for me.  So I pulled out some plasticard and some balsawood and started bashing one together.  A quick raid of my bits box turned up a number of wheels and I slapped these on the side and then went looking for bits to make up some shielding for the crew and also some stabby bits.  This brought me to my savage orc sprues I'd got a load off as part of some purchase (just the spares not actually any models) So I took the head of the big stabba as a nice large pointy ram and a couple of the spear heads as assitional blades.  These also have the benefit of being made of stone so felt more appropriate for the model again.  For protection there are a nice bunch of wooden shields which don't have any parts of the arms attached so I used a load of these off 2-3 sprues worth to add some protection all round the lower level of the wagon leaving the top deck open for the snotters to throw stuff off.  Possibly it could have done with a bit of something up there but this was in keeping with the origial model which was bare up top.

Yup the woodies came back out for a bit of a scrap this weekend.  As you'd expect with woodies under 8th edition there was the standard filth as follows:

Treeman Ancient, lvl 4 Life - scroll
Noble BSB MR3, Noble on Eagle 3+ ward vs non magical, dragonhelm, LA, Shield and Spear, branchwraith
3 x 5 glade riders - Musos
2 x 8 dryads
10 archers, muso
8 wardancers
2 treemen.

As I said, standard netlist filth...

What does the army do, basically runs about a lot and hides if there is any sensible terrain on the board. 

Event was a 1 dayer up in Dunfermiline with some heavy comp restrictions as follows:
You get a look out sir versus dwellers etc and if you fail it's still only 1 wound.
Battleline scenario used for all 3 games.

Yeah that's it for restrictions.

So what did I face?

G1 Russell GIfford - Empire.
Russell is a relatively new player, I faced him at his first ever tournament in November last year when he was also using Empire, but has a new book now.

His list
lvl 4 fire, lvl 2 death
3 x 11 Knights, FC all with a warrior priest in them (varying armaments)
3 x 6 pistoliers
2 cannons
1 steam tank

So basically a  wall of 1+ armour, ideal when you've got a small amount of S3 shooting...  Thankfully terrain gave me a great big hill to hide behind, so I obliged. with 2 treemen and the third was put out as cannonball bait (nowhere left to hide him)  Everything else did the skirmishy/vanguardy thing to threaten his cannons and avoid the tank.

He got T1 and pushed it forwards, 2 x 5+ ward saves later I'd taken no wounds from the cannons and nothing else did owt (fireball & something else at treemen did no wounds and dispelled one of them).

My T1 because I'd vanguarded forwards but went second 1 unit of glade riders charged some pistoliers, took zero wounds on S&S and butchered them, running the last couple down.  Magic I 6 diced dwellers on a unit of knights killing half but losing 3 levels in the process leaving me with awakening of the woods... Not so good. But the knights failed their LD 8 test and ran off (winner!).  Shooting killed another unit of pistoliers through concentrated fire.

T2 his tank misfired and lost all steam points which was a bonus (1/6 failed so perfectly average this game).  Knights failed to rally and ran to the table edge (1/2" on but I had an eagle rider in charge range so just shepparded him off in my turn. Mage did no wounds to treeman with medium fireball and I let off flame cage on a unit of dryads (needed to move them but worried about the death magic) cannons did 3 wounds to a treeman but that was all.

My 2 I charged 1 cannon and ran the knight unit off, dryads pushed up to threaten the other cannon but I knew they'd never make it due to a looming knight unit.  Moved my dryads only for him to roll 4+ on all 8 dice for flamecage and take the unit off!  With 1 cannon down I pulled out the 2 other treemen to threaten, magic was a double 6 phase so I did some treesinging!

T3 he faced one unit of knights at the remaining dryads and the other failed a swift reform allowing me to get a treeman in front of them to block his advance.  Magic he double 6'd bhuna on the branchwraith followed by a 3 on the 2d6 for zero wounds and took a wound of 1 priest and both mages. cannon wounded another treeman but only 1 wound.

I put 2 glade rider units into threaten his cannon and charged the dryads into the knights to kill the death mage.  3 treemen setup to trap the knight unit that failed it's reform the turn before if he charged in.  Kill the mage but nowt else and flee

T4 he charged the wounded treeman, did 2 wounds but couldn't finish him off.  I clobbered the warrior priest in return and passed the break test on my bsb reroll.  other knights ran the dryads & branchwraith off the board.

both glade riders fail their charge on the cannon only needing a 9 & 8 but both treemen charge the knights in combat with 1 tree.  I smash his lvl 4 and then he passes 7 of 8 armour saves but the unit was still testing on a 3 because he was in a wood so not steadfast.  He passed of course.

T5 tank tries to countercharge the treeman ancient but rolls 6 on the 3 dice and I get away with it.  pistoliers shoot off 1 unit of glade riders, finally the knights break from combat and I run them down.

I charge the cannon with the last unit of glade riders and everything else runs away to hide from the tank.  Kill the cannon and overrun but still in range of pistoliers who shoot them all dead in T6.

My T6, I do nothing and game ends with a 14-6 to me (200pts brackets in this event)

Really hard work with all that armour but I took the easy points where I could and suckered him into exposing his knight units piecemeal so I could deal with them (though the dwellers helped massively here).

G 2 Lizardmen - Trev Moffat (who I play all the time)

Light slann - loremaster, ruminating, becalming, cupped hands
Temple guard
2 x skrox
Engine of the gods
2 x 1 salamanders
2 x 5 chameleons
2 x 10 skinks

Think that was about it.

Basically game was 4 large parts of impassable terrain in each quarter, I was able to dance up one side and turn the game into battle for the pass!  Treemen went into the engine and I forgot one was the ancient so he challgenged and the 2nd one couldn't fight.  Light magic buffs went off but counterbalanced by my rehealing wounds with lifebloom and regrowth so eventually I won the grind.  He killed archers and 2 x units of glade riders with zaps and rocks.  I got 2 x chamos with a treeman, a unit of dons and the engine in T6.

11-9 to me.

Game 3 Tim Gronneberg - Dark Elves
Basically he had my army but better because it's DE.  Dragon, pendant BSB on Peg, noble on Peg, 3 x 6 dark riders, 2 x 6 shades, 1x5 shades, 20 ish spears, 2 x 5 harpies, hydra and a RBT.

I got my setup a bit wrong and he was able to pressure me early, I lost T1 and he shot off 2 units of glade riders and I knew I was out the shooting battle.  I then proceeded to fail pretty much every break test for the rest of the game and his dragon got into my mage bunker as a result.  Should have been pinned by T6 dryads who were stubborn in a wood but failed the test so he got right through.  Treeman ancient killed the pendant BSB over 2 rounds of combat (1 wound already taken) but then broke because of dark riders in his rear and failled his stubborn test.  I was left with only my noble on eagle who was fighting his other peggy rider in a chumpfest both down to 1 wound but couldn't kill each other!

Big loss of 19-2 (weird scottish thing that you get an extra point at 19 and 20, unless you conceed you don't score zero).

So overall 2-1 win record but only good enough for 22nd place out of 30ish due to that last result. And annoyingly the other wood elf player was on the exact same points as me but more vps having played on the bottom tables game 3 and smashed a lizards player at his first event so was bottom WE too.

But that said Trev and Tim were probably two of the better players at the event so not as though I chumped my way through it and really happy with how I played on the whole.  Could have possibly done better versus Tim if I'd been more conservative but not really much chance due to his shooting being so much better than mine. (more shots for less points and higher BS with the shades).

ETC 6 Nations 2012

And so comes to a close my stint as captain of the Scottish ETC team in any meaningful manner, from now on I'm just an admin junkie to help the guys get out there, though to be honest pretty much everything is in place.

The 6 nations was over in Northern Ireland and was one of the most fantastically well organised events I've ever been to. Similar to the EDGT which pash put on there were free drinks & snacks throughout, there was an all you can eat chinese dinner and a few other bits.  All for the cost of £29 which is cheaper than most normal UK events which won't include free drinks, nibbles and dinner.

The event itself was a great laugh, plenty of the guys have been on the teams for years and know the ropes by now so were over early on the Friday and found propping up various bars.  We caught up with the welsh & Irish on Friday evening and carried on the merriment!

Saturday saw the 'serious' side of the event kick off, though in reality it was still a pretty relaxed atmosphere.  We had the traditional favourites of England up first which was a bit disappointing as traditionally it had been us and them for 1st & 2nd so felt like the decider came too early going into the event, boy did that prove to be wrong!  We did reasonably well out the matchup process and the games were going to plann barring a couple of disasterous results we were exactly where we'd aimed for.  The disasters unfortunatley were partly due to experience and were leasons learnt in the harshest of environments.  Overall the round ended a 72-88 loss, but it was a pretty good score as I've a feeling they expected to win bigger.

Next up was Northern Ireland, the hosts with some interesting lists, but not ones we thought were that good.  This turned out to be the case as only one of our matchups was unfavourable on our pre round scoring and we ended up wining this with a maximum score 100-60.  I was the biggest loser of the round going down to a dwarf list 5-15.  It was annoying as I really felt I played it right and it was dice that cost me but thankfully not the team, at the end of the game I'd killed a master engineer and a cannon (both killed by a single terradon), his organ gun had survived an onslaught from most of my army and lived to tell the tale with a single crewman holding off several of my units.

Finally came Ireland, historically a bunch of drunken chumps but seeming to build into a good team the last couple of years they were leading the event at this stage.  Here the pairings went badly, ireland were slow to get started and that put a bit of pressure on me and think it got to me, also not helped by a very drunk team member generally shouting down the room.  So we got a middlish set of matchups but still overall probably just favourable.  Unfortunately it didn't come through in the results, 2 big disappointments lead to us giving up the round 72-88.
After that all rivalries were forgotten and off to the chinese buffet we went before then heading back to the pub for a quiet half before bed...

Day 2 opened with France.  Now France have what we all consider the most unusual lists, simply their style is slightly different to the UK, they design them to work for the ETC and play them to death.  Overall they're all very good lists with good players behind them, just 'different'.  Our pairings went really well here, we had 1 unfavourable matchup, 3 close and 4 favourable per our pre event scoring.  Then the dice started.  This round saw everything that could go wrong happen.  There were two mirror matches - daemons vs Daemons and Lizards lizards.  The daemon off saw our player pressing as he had the better list in that match, the keeper of secrets got the siren song on the thirster and lost combat by 1 (about average), this was then followed up by double 11'ing his breaktest when he had a unit to charge in the flank next turn.  Gutting.  The lizard off saw a T6 failed LoS to a purple sun and dropped down a pit, our skaven player triple 6'd his bell and blew up and a string of other disasters were described.  This resulted in giving france the full 100 (uncapped the score was 101-59 making my T6 disaster all the more galling) and catapulting them into the lead.

Finally we had Wales.  Of the lot this was some of the toughest pairings, we had to sacrifice a couple of lists to get the good matchups.  Overall it worked out and we won the round 88-72 but there were a few touch and go games which could have put it back at a draw and also a mistake by the welsh TK player which resulted in him probably swinging the results by something like 10pts on the round.  Annoying to miss out due to a rules error but I wasn't about to get on a high horse over it and just accepted the game score, could have pushed for an adjustment if we'd really cared but as we won the round I just accepted it.

Overall we came 5th as a result which was rather disappointing, giving up the 100 to both France and Ireland didn't feel like justice for how we paired them up and the relative strengths on the teams but it's a dice game at the end of the day and them's the breaks.

It was a great fun weekend and it was my pleasure to captain the team through it.

Finally got back to painting something other than warhammer this week with a lovely little figure for Malifaux.  Which brough an interesting point up for me.  I'd only ever seen the model online (something that's true of every Malifaux model I've bought except my very first box) and to be honest I thought it was a bit rubbish but I went ahead and bought it because it was in a 25% off sale and the other alternative option wasn't available.  When it arrived I warmed to the figure a little, I still thought the pose was odd but with the model in hand it started to make more sense and not look quite as odd as I'd previously thought.

The figure in particular I'm talking about is the female Desperate Mercenary, the pose is an unsual one where she looks like she's just finished attacking with her sword, but at that angle you'd assume she's either missed and is dodging a blow or must have severed straight through something, so it's dynamic but without the interaction with another model it looks a bit odd.

So this lead me to wondering about the challenges facing a sculptor.  The obvious pose is to just be standing there and wielding weapons for most wargames and this is a pretty standard thing, but then people start to complain that it's not dynamic enough, there's no movement etc etc (you'll have seen it a load online particularly thrown at GW models).  So instead this sculptor has done something that is rather dynamic and when you see the model in front of you it pretty much makes sense, but seeing it in photos online I thought it was utter rubbish and the pose didn't work at all.

So I wonder how much that comes into play, there are regularly models which on release are derided for just not looking 'right' and I imagine unless their rules make them an obvious choice result in some beautiful scuplts being overlooked.  I wonder if there is a way around this, obviously photos from multiple angles help,otherwise we run the danger of models becoming quite samey because everyone goes for poses which are safe rather than something a bit out the ordinary that doesn't photograph well.

In other news I've contined to paint up the O&G army and a few more additions to other armies too. 

Lizardmen - Slann (old edition model)

Skaven - Doomwheel and Warpfire Thrower

O&G

 With that the O&G are starting to come together as an army, still need to do a load more models but I'm starting to get the feel for them with a big unit of gobbos, a couple of war machines and a chariot I think I've got my Orc and Gobbo look sorted out and settled on a consistent feel for things like the wood, fur and similar parts of their attire.

O&g update

With the gobbo scheme locked down I pushed on with a full unit of 20 to get the army started.

That was then followed by some more Orc tests. Blue tinge skin wasn't right so went more traditional and liked the look so now that's the orcs sorted too.

Enjoying painting this stuff at the moment so wanting to crack on with units before momentum dies.

Day 2

And I continued my seesaw journey!

Game 4 - rob farmer wood elves
Strange build with eternal guard, 2x5 treekin. I played it all wrong and overestimated 2 sphinx into the treekin, they killed 2 over 4 turns of combat. Should have put all 3 into the eternal guard and just ridden out the treekin counter charges. Lost 0-20

Game 5 -Joel Smith Dark Elves
Nice dragon list & cold one bus. Did my usual thing and necrosphinx goes for the Bsb and other 2 sphinx front stuff up. Chariots on shooting duty for dark riders. Basically get a bit lucky when I killed the hydra and the dragon panicked. Necrosphinx also fought of flank & rear charge from xbows and spears with a big thunder stomp followed by 2 failed break tests. Over the rest the dragon comes back and gets into the character bunker but WS10 & shems lead to a fluffed turn and the dragon flees again with me 1" behind and my turn next. I run him down for 800pts swing. I was very lucky and he wasn't being the real difference. I won 18-2

Game 6 - James knight daemons
The dice gods turned back on this one and I didn't get a stomp above 2 and the key turn he hit 6 of 9 wards for the blood letters to survive which cost my chariots and heirotitan. Then it all collapsed from there, fun game though for 1-19 in the end. Snakes surprised him when they chomped 5 fiends in 3 rounds of combat but I botched the reform and let him escape a counter charge. But snakes have done that for me every time they play fiends, so knew it was in my favour.

Overall 58/120 was disappointing as thought 60 was achievable and but for some bad play would have been a reality.

Great fun event and a nice one to finish up my month of play with.

Unless I have to play 6 nations that's me done for the year and probably going to focus on building and painting the next few armies I want.

SCGT

My TK made the big trip down and have enjoyed much Zappa fun through day 1, lots of nice squishy targets presented themselves and obligingly jumped under my sphinxes feet!

Game 1 - Dave Meechan with dark elves (17-3)
Game 2 - Matt Lee Daemons (5-15)
Game 3 - Danny Pegg high elves (17-3)

The daemons was a great unclean one who I just couldn't fight as bale sword just chopped through all my big constructs and my Mage miscast and fell down a pit to remove my last chance of doing anything.

The elves were both subject to magic missile barrages and the shooting had plenty of good targets which forces them to commit and the sphinxes started to smash things up.

Day 2 beckons.

Orcs & Goblins Progress

I'm working off second hand models (ebay for mucho cheapness),so whilst it's 'painted' in the starting pic none of the original paint remains on the finished model.

Quite happy with how the test skull pass gobbos came out, then set them aside for a while to basically have a month off painting whilst did some real life stuff and play lots of tournaments.  Now finally getting back to them and to get myself inspired I decided to do something a bit fun first.  So I cleaned the mould lines off 80 night gobbo that were in various stages of being painted but none had the lines removed first (typical 2nd hand cheapo figs).
 

That got me a bit bored so I dug out something slightly better to start with in the form of a doom diver picked up in a bit of a state, so I'd ripped it apart and removed all the excess glue and mould lines then just stuck it back together again.  Fortunately the paint on it was actually quite thin so I didn't feel the need to strip it.

And my finish point:



 


Again happy with how my scheme came out, was pretty quick to paint and I think looks nice for the level of effort. 

Of course having just listened to the latest heelanhammer episode I'm singled out as someone that just churns out armies as a basecoat & dip merchant, slightly hurtful given the fact my armies usually look better than the majority of those at tournaments, but agree that obviously no effort for those 'best painted' awards.  What I have always said I'd do is get to the point where I can put any army of my choice on the table at an event and then I'll sit down and set about improving what I've got.  Only being 32 I reckon I can achieve this quite comfortably before my eyesight goes so will have plenty of time to improve the standard of these armies at my leisure.

Edinburgh GT

Generic write up for a few forums so some blindingly obvious details in here, but will just post it all as is.

So I slightly tweaked my list again for another tournament, but largely unchanged. For the comp junkies this was UK SCGT comp which basically caps your additional power dice at +d3 (or two) plus channels. 90 shot cap and that's about it. The important thing is it's 6 battleline (so I have zero standards in the army) and a 20-0 scoring system with +150vps steps per point. (so 1500vps up = 20-0)

2 lvl 4's nehek&light, lvl 1 light - Scroll & sceptre of stability (+1d6 to a failed dispel roll)
10 archer, champ & muso
20 archers, muso
7 chariots, muso
4 snakes - champion
2 x sphinx - fiery roar
necrosphinx
heirotitan
casket


G1 John Harper (DE)
Lord – Cold One, +2S sword, pendant
BSB – ASF (maybe the unit? Dunno banner costs)
Lvl 4 shadow, lvl 2 metal, lvl 2 fire – stabby dagger, scroll +1 DD
2x10 xbows, 20xbows, 5 harpies, 2x5 dark riders.
8 CO - +1Attack banner, muso
Hydra

John is on a challenge to play a different army at every tournament and took the opportunity for a round 1 grudge with someone he knew to try and learn the DE which he’d picked out a hat! Not an entirely standard DE list but plenty of common themes, I’d actually suggested the knight bus to him (so only myself to blame!). My only tactic vs the bus was delay it and hope I could get lucky and kill off the rest of his army before it killed mine. So I threw a necrosphinx at it early to try and kill the bsb for some points early on (he failed only doing 1 wound) and let my snakes go after his archmage’s archer block. The hydra got pinned by a sphinx and they both chumped it up for ages until finally I got 1 wound to his zero and a breaktest worked out! Eventually I manged to do what I’d set out and killed off everything but the knight bus, pendant lord and 1 unit of archers but lost a fair amount of mine in return netting a 14-6.

G2 Owen Bell (Empire)
Pope, Lvl 4 fire, BSB, Engineer
48 halberds, 6 archers, 10 huntsmen,
2x5 knights, 2x5 pistoliers
2 cannons, Mortar, Steam tank

Oh dear, cannons. Actually was looking ok, I got some decent matchups in deployment, got lucky on some terror and magic early to clear out the huntsmen and a pistolier unit early. Unfortunately Owens T1 he dropped a mortar on my heirophants head and I failed the look out sir roll. 3 wound later I started my crumble tests. At that point I knew I had to commit so everything went forwards, necrosphinx at the lvl 4 in the halberds and everything else forwards. Casket decided to blow up turn 2 taking out a sphinx that had been cannoned already, then other sphinx got cannoned and necrosphinx died to combat res. Rest killed as much as they could but everything bar 2 chariots died in the end. 2-18 loss.


G3 Annie Norman (VC)
Necro lvl 4, necro lvl 2, wraith, banshee
3 x 20something zombies, 30 ghouls, 30 grave guard
2 x 6 crypt horrors, 3 x2 bats, spirit host
Mortis engine

Mega T1 magic phase saw me blow the grave guard down to 5 models, unfortunately also blew up my lvl 4 on light who fell down a pit. Stopped as much raising as I could then put the necrosphinx into the graveguard with 2 ethereals in it. After all the attacks and crumbles left the banshee on 1 wound as the only thing remaining so the sphinx was pinned, 1 more wound and that was an overrun into the lords bunker, ohhh so near! Another sphinx had gone for the combo charge and failed so it got pinned by a spirit host. So now I was in real trouble as I could do nothing about those two. Necrosnakes went on a rampage but unfortunately so did annies second unit of crypt horrors so we both ended up smashing off our respective mage bunkers but annie had split her 2 characters by then so not much crumbled end of the game I’d killed a few units of zombies, the grave guard, lvl 4 necromancer and some crypt horrors but lost most of my army with just 2 sphinxes hanging around on a couple of wounds and the snakes I could only hold on for a 6-14 loss.

G4 Jay Knight
Grey seer on bell, BSB, chieftain, warlock eng (doomrocket)
40 stormvermin
3 x 40 clanrats, 2 PWMs
2 doomwheels

Jay was hungover to hell and his army was a bad matchup against mine for him, this was further made difficult when I killed a doomwheel turn 1 with the casket. That was the start of the end really as he’d gone with plague and as a result had nothing really to deal with the sphinxes apart from an 11-12 result on the bell (he never rolled above a 7 on three dice). The snakes got into the 2nd doomwheel due to a bad distance roll putting it a bit too close and -1S&T followed by WS10 meant they chopped it up. My whole army then piled into his blocks and the stormvermin eventually killed one sphinx with blessed with filth but the rest stomped all over his army leading to a T5 concession before I could declare 3-4 charges into the bell unit. 20-0

G5 Trev Moffat (WoC)
Disc Lord, bsb horse, mage horse
18 HW&S Tzeench Warriors – rapt standard, 12 Halberd Warriors Banner of Rage
12 marauders, flails, 2x5 dogs
2 chariots, 7 knights
Hellcannon, Warshrine

Typical game between me and trev, a bit close, we’ve played countless practice games in the run up so both knew each others armies. I think trev stuffed up his deployment a bit compared to normal and isolated his knights. Therefore I went for the big risky charge with my necroserpents and a sphinx only to get a rather lucky failed fear test from the sphinx making them WS1. The knights then butchered a few and ran them down, on the otherside of the board trev was failing charges every turn despite small numbers needed so I managed to delay everything enough that my lvl 4 on light could do a runner and only had to immolate a chariot in order to get to some safety (well relative safety given he had to suck up a 2d6 S4 burning gaze on the final turn, true to form trev fluffed his dice and left me on 1 wound). I also got jammy to kill the chaos lord, he took 1 wound from the casket spell, then was in combat, but he overran into my casket who got WS10, I10 and -1 to hit on them so a guard survived to chip a wound off before dying and the explosion of the casket killed the lord! So basically I diced him up good and proper to not lose about 500vps in the last turn! 10-10

G6 Marco
Prince, lvl 4 shadow, lvl 2 high, BSB
28 Seaguard, 2 x 10 archers
5 shadow warriors, 18 white lions, 14 sword masters
2 bolt throwers

Marco should have realised this game was going to go wrong when he won the roll for the first turn (he’d not done it all tournament). 5 spells on shadow and no pit saw me a happy man! A bit of shuffling, magic (not much) some shooting and a couple of my chariots died. In return I removed 1 bolt thrower with the casket and 10 archers with banishment followed by some shooting. Marco’s dice went down from there. The lvl 4 miscast on 2 dice, blew himself up and took most of the sword masters out as he went just as they charged a sphinx which was chomping the white lions. They did enough to kill it but then got a necrosphinx in to them with only 4 guys and a bsb left. He ate the bsb, stomped the unit and overran into the 6 remaining white lions. From there it was just clean up. Apparently I cast in the region of 30 spells without miscasting (admittedly most on 2 dice, and several on 1). Again dice helped me out but it was always a reasonable matchup for me as I play the HE often and the best thing against sphinxes is lots of magic missiles which he lacked. 19-1


Overall I came 7th (of 28) tied for TPs with 6th but behind on BPs. I was 4th most vps scored at the event showing the 'smash em up' nature of the list.