(I copy/pasted this from the ordo fanaticus website...)
TSHFT!
Another TSHFT down, and another great weekend of Warhammer. This marked the 4th Fantasy TSHFT and I believe it has been steadily getting better and better. We had a lot of out-of-towners (the Canadians, Warhamsters, OCC folks, and some folks from the Tri-Cities); which was great. I'm sad that the Fire and Sword crew didn't do as well as I'd've liked (Mikio did do fairly well though with his Dark Elves, including beating Veskit!); but I'll be takin' care of business in May, now that I got the Fantasy bug again (too much 40k is my excuse!
); I'll be getting my rats into shape and getting enough reps in to do better.
Like I said in a previous thread, I had more fun with this tournament than the previous ones, almost entirely from not giving to craps about my standings. Going into the tournament I had had nothing but spectacular failure with my Skaven (lots of bad dice and just a bunch of poor-list writing), so I was just hoping to get a single win and could laugh off the antics of my silly, misfire-prone weapons. WEEEEEE!
My list is thus...
Queek
Warlock: Doomrocket, Warp Energy Condenser, pistol
Warlock: Death Globes, Dispell Scroll, pistol
Warlock: 2 scrolls, pistol
4x29 clanrats (FC, spears, shields)
2 warpfire throwers, 2 ratling guns
2x30 slaves (I know 3x20 would be better, but I'd have to make _base_s for it...)
7 poison wind globadiers
8 poison wind globadiers
2x5 Jezzails
2 Warp Lightning Cannons
I'm going to be making some significant changes to it, while retaining the Skryre theme (speaking of which, Veskit, we should chat about swapping rat ogres for poison wind globadiers...if you're still interested...).
Game 1: vs Kilker and his VC of DOOOOOM!
Kilker won the last Fantasy TSHFT Best General with his RPS spectacular VC army.
It consisted of roughly...
Casting Vamp Lord
2x Vamp casters
Wight BSB with Regen Banner
1 block of 25ish skeletons (all characters in here!)
2 blocks of zombies
3 corpse carts with the -1 to cast thingy.
10 cairn wraiths with banshee 8O
So, it's a deathstar summoning army. Yeeehaw! Well, at first I was thinking, all my shooting is magical, so those wraiths are in trouble, and I have enough units to take down his littler units without getting stuck in with the death star... HOWEVER, we were playing a special scenario in which
I had come up with the special rules for. Basically, LoS is only 36" to start on turn 1, and then gets reduced by 6" every turn... I completely forgot about that when I set up, and basically, my WLCs and Jezzails almost had NO opportunity to shoot at the wraiths. (brilliant...) And the one turn in which they had LoS and good chance to do significant damage, I rolled misfires across the board and lost my ability to do damage.
My PWGs went about and got quarters and a death-frenzied unit of slaves took out zombies and one corpse cart, but I lost so much stuff (all my blocks of troops...) that my surviving guns and PWGs didn't make a difference: Massacre to Kilker.
If we played this again without the special rules, I would've probably beaten the tar out of his army, so I was a bit peeved that I only had myself to blame for the crappy scenario!
Game 2: vs Riley and his Beasts fo DOOOOOM!
Ok, so Riley decided to bring his masterful Beasts army of madness and CHARIOTS. Had this been early 7th edition or late 6th edition, I'd've dinked him HARD on his army comp; but with so much unbreakable, fear-causing crap out there, it's not surprising he didn't do too well in the tournament with it; though I still think this is a crazy powerful army.
Doombull
2 scroll caddies
4 units of Minotaurs with GWs
8 Chariots
2 Giants
2 or 3 units of dogs
EEP!
Considering I DON'T cause fear and I'm not unbreakable; this looked like a pile of pain and another beat down. However, the terrain helped me by forcing him to break up his army, and I was able to mitigate enough of it with shooting and fleeing and such to take down different arms of his force before he overwhelmed me. Basically, I went heavy left, destroyed his right flank; but watched my right flank crumble and my center crumble. I made a STUPID mistake on the bottom of 6 when I could've finished off the doombull with my Jezzails, but instead took a chance against a Giant with a banner. Had I killed the doombull, it would've still been a draw, but I would've gotten another VP for the tournament; oh well.
Result: Draw.
Game 3: vs Kiel and his Empire
Kiel admitted to not having a lot of experience with Empire, and it showed in various ways. I applaud him for the effort; but Empire is one of those armies that really takes a bit of list tinkering and down-right devious tactics to succeed with. His list was basically:
Arch lector on foot with Mace of Helstrum
2 level 2s
BSB
2 BIG units of swordsmen (like 30) with big detachments of archers and 9 strong halberdiers.
1 unit of 5 knights with champion
2 units of 5 pistoliers
2 cannons
2 helblasters
1 unit of flagellants (15 strong IIRC)
The terrain on this table did him no favors either as he had to deploy either behind a hill or trees with a lot of his stuff. I was able to send one unit of clanrats with engineer on either flank; globadiers through trees at the knights; and Queek and slaves straight up the gut at him all while my cannons blasted his lines...
Kiel made a series of errors in deployment and his list was just not optimal IMO. I was able to get most of my spells off and shut his down; I was able to essentially double-envelop him with clanrats (including a pursuit into the flank of his arch-lector's unit on turn 4, which saw him get cut down). We called it on turn 4 when he only had a detachment of archers left on the table...
I tried to give Kiel as much advice as I could in regards to Empire as he was in need (he ended up winning the "Pat on the Back" award for having the lowest battlepoints; apparently he does better in 40k).
Result: Massacre for the skaven!
So, the first day ended with me at 1-1-1; not too shabby IMO, though I feel like my one win was kinda lame. Oh well. We followed this up with some late-night race for the galaxy (finally won a few games!).
Day Two dawned with Michalius treating me to IHOP (thanks again, man!) and then me trying to wake up Trehern for the games. Ended up being late for my first game! >
Game 4: Dustin and Skaven of DOOOOOM!
You know how there are certain things that you know are good, and you can math-hammer 'em and figure out how powerful they are; but until you actually see them in action, you don't really get it... Well, this is the game that introduced me to what an abomination can do... Egads! Dustin's list consisted of:
Grey Seer on Bell
Plague Priest with flail
BSB
20 Stormvermin (pushing Bell)
25 or 30 clanrats with poison wind catapult
2 x 20 slaves
25 plague monks
6 censer bearers
1 Warp Lightning Cannon
1 Abomination
20 night runners with warp grinder
MVP of this game is NO doubt the abomination. I felt that Dustin misplayed it by leaving it WELL away from his army in the center of the board and left it far to his left (my right). With his pitifully low unit count, I was able to position my PWGs to deal with it as well as a unit of Clanrats (static CR usually holds up monsters!) and a ratling gun. However, that proved to be wrong as it singlehandedly killed all of that and then ran pell mell to the center (he never rolled less than a 14 for movement...) where it saved his center and won him the game... It killed three units of clanrats, two engineers, 15 poison wind globadiers, 5 jezzails, a ratling gun, and a warpfire thrower... Uh... yikes.
I felt that I had this game in hand when on turn one, I dropped my doomrocket (new favorite wargear EVER) on the bell and killed all but 6 stormvermin! Then I hit the bell and took off 2 wounds quickly. I also got death frenzy off on a unit of slaves. With my higher unit count I was able to dictate combats in the center and killed his slave units and the clanrats and was set to take on the bell unit (now just the banner bearer and musician!); but the abomination showed up too early and I had to rush in; which lost me Queek to some censer bearers and then the charging plague monks.
Also, the tunnelling team took care of my cannons (full disclosure, prior to them getting charged, the one warplightning cannon misfired and blew up the other one... awesome) and survived a charge from my jezzails to eventually kill them as well.
This game irritated me because I felt I had it in hand, but lost to luck in some regards (though I did get lucky with the rocket...). I seriously can't believe how stupidly ridiculous the Abomination is. On the first charge of the game it hit my clanrats and did 12 wounds! 12!?!!?! Monsters shouldn't be able to overwhelm static res by that degree! Anyway, get ready to meet Mr Doomwheel, stupid Abominations!
Result: Tabled by the skaven!
Game 5: James and his very pretty Empire
James brought a more tourney-worthy Empire list than Kiel, and he also had a bit more experience. However, his army was almost tailor-made as one I could just plain beat the pants off and I was smelling blood in the water here and salivating to taking it apart! >
Arch Lector on horse with Van Horstman's and sword of might
Level 2 with rod of power
BSB
Warrior priest with armor of meteoric iron
1 unit of 25 swordsmen with 9 halberdiers and 5 archers
1 unit of 20 greatswords with 9 halberdiers and 5 archers
1 unit of regular knights 7 strong with full command
1 unit of 10 crossbowmen
1 unit of 6 pistoliers
2 cannons
1 helblaster
Steam Tank
I wasn't even remotely worried about the steam tank, and everything else wasn't really geared towards taking out big blocks of troops, so I figured I had a pretty big edge. Also, James was really bunched in the center and his archer screen was in his own way, keeping him from being able to charge with his knights for 3 full turns while I shot the steam tank into worthlessness, whittled his knight unit and controlled the flanks with two units of clanrats. My guns wheren't even working very well on the first two turns and I was still feeling alright; except then he cannon-sniped Queek (ugh) and now I was forced to just sit back and shoot him. Turn 3 went spectacularly for me; the doomrocket killed 22 of 25 guys in the swordsman unit; the warplightning cannon killed 12 of 20 greatswords; and my poison wind globadiers killed all but two of the knights. The Steamtank was down to 2 wounds left and worthless.
However, this is where luck kicked into overdrive for James. His unit of knights charged my poison wind globadiers, and I stand and shot; but failed to kill the one that would've both forced a panic check and made it impossible for them to break ranks. He killed the globadiers, and barely clipped my unit of clanrats on the far flank in the flank with a LOOONG overrun through forest. I quickly lost that unit and its banner and engineer...
Then his helblaster started to go berserk; and blew up my unit of clanrats on my left flank over three turns, then blew up a warplightning cannon as his other cannon took out my other cannon and his crossbowmen systematically picked off weapons teams. He only misfired once in the whole game (including bounces...) and it didn't have any effect when it did...
So, while I was able to kill most of his army; it still ended up being a draw, because he was able to return in kind. All told, his two cannons killed Queek, his unit, a unit of jezzails, a unit of poison wind globadiers, and a warplightning cannon... UGH.
Result: Draw
Despite what I felt was poor luck in Games 4 and 5, I had a COMPLETE blast with the skaven, and I'm looking forward to working the kinks out and winning some games. I know a bunch of Ordos won free tickets to the May event, so I expect to see you all there! C'mon, what ELSE are you going to do on Memorial Day weekend!??!!!?
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