Finished my first day at Tanelorn today; I have to say it was really good. The standard of competition was much higher than that at Conflict: London, and the guys from the club had laid on a buffet lunch. Everything worked very well, and the atmosphere was very friendly.

I’m going to give a report on the tournament, over today and tomorrow: as well as being reading matter for those who are bored, it should also be an interesting look at the WPS card system in practice.


I turned up at 8:30, having trekked in from the other side of London and seriously wondering whether it was worth the arduous Central Line journey to get there. I met a couple of other tournie-goers outside the station, and managed to find the venue alright: when I got there, I found out that they clearly hadn’t been able to read my handwriting, as I was listed as “Pip Asker Hanulton”. They had managed to spell my opponent’s name right, however: he was called Steve Fase, and he had a fairly typical Empire army, with a Lvl 3 mage, 8 IC knights, 10 Handgunners, 2 cannon, 25 Swordsmen, 20-odd flagellants, 2 units of 6 pistoliers, 5 huntsmen, 2 Warrior Priests, and a captain (1 priest and a captain leading the knights) He played Magic Flux to my Marshland, and so the game began: I had a damn good spell selection, having rolled both of the “blindy” light spells plus a nice range of damagey spells from Life anf Fire (Master of the Wood, Father of the Thorn, Fireball).

He fell for the Slann’s “honey trap” around turn 2: the kerniggets charged head-on to the Temple Guard, who predictably failed to budge an inch, allowing my Kroxigor to brutalise the blinded knights in the next turn. Despite some good fleeing and rally rolls, I managed to mop up the majority of his army, with the JSOD and Terries keeping his mage and firepower on the back foot for the majority of the game and my Slann’s repeated blindy spells spelling the end for the knights. The Salamanders managed to wipe out the Swordsmen and the Huntsmen in a protracted game of cat and mouse, and the only real casualties I suffered were my JSOD (who, perhaps rather predictably, fell to a knight’s dobbin), my Skink Priest (who got on the wrong end of a huntmsan’s long-range arrow…) and one unit of Kroxigor, who I sacrificed to hold up the Pistoliers on my weaker flank. The highlights of the game were definitely my JSOD surviving a direct cannon hit, and Chili himself disembowelling 3 Flagellants in the last turns of the game with his awesome ninja combat skills.

With a solid Massacre under my belt, I faced the next round: the Swiss pairing system hadn’t kicked in yet, so I was still facing a random opponent. As it turned out, I drew a guy called Rob Mitchell: he had a combined Slaanesh and Nurgle Daemon Legion, which I knew from the outset would be a challenge. His army consisted of a strong core of Nurgle troops – 20-odd Plaguebearers with a BSB Herald, and 3 Plagueriders – with a periphery of nasty Slaanesh stuff. The pink part of his army consisted of a Slaanesh chariot, 2 units of 6 Pleasureseekers, 2 units of 10 Daemonettes, and a Daemon Prince (although the DP was actually undivided). I played Capture the Flag, and he played… surprise surprise… Magic Flux.

To be honest, I simply misjudged my opponent’s army: I have only played Tzeentch Daemon Legion before, and this was a very different experience. By heroic and cunning exertions, I managed to fend off the fast part of his army using my peripherals, splatting his Daemon Prince, the chariot, half the daemonettes and two thirds of the Pleasureseekers. However, I severely underestimated the Plagueriders, who munched through all my TG in four phases of combat and ran down Chili himself. With the Slann gone, there was no way it wasn’t going to be a massacre; however, I fought to the bitter end, and managed to shred around half his army before the final turn. I also got a very poor spell selection, with a couple of useless spells from Light taking up valuable space, and mediocre damaging spells consuming all my other slots; against the uber-hard combat Daemons, I could really have used either Howler Wind, Dazzling Brightness or Blinding Light. As it was, he was free to race across the board on Turn 1 and engage on Turn 2 with clear superiority in numbers and quality.

So, I now had one Massacre either way on my record: however, the net effect still left me ahead, as the high points score I’d racked up in the second game left me well-established in tournament points. The third and final game of the day rolled round, and I ended up against a High Elf player, Marc Parrott. With a very even spread, he had around 10-12 power dice tied up in a Banner of Sorcery, and Archmage and a Mage, a couple of RBTs and a unit of archers, 6 Silver Helms, 6 Dragon Princes, 16 Spearmen, 5 Shadow Warriors and 20-odd Swordmasters led by a S7 Commander (Armour of the Gods, Great Weapon). Apart from having no chariots, it seemed quite a potent army: to my surprise, he played Magic Flux, and I pulled out my High Winds card to try and scupper his shooting.

The game was pretty close right up until about Turn 4, when he attempted to destroy the RBT-depleted TG with a combined charge from his infantry units. I still had enough lizards left to absorb the charge, and so he fell right into the honey trap: the JSOD and Sallies countercharged, and left the remnants of the Swordsies fighting Chili’s unit to the front and the Sallies to the rear as the JSOD chased down their Spearman friends – the Swordsies already having been whittled down to a single rank of men by Sallie fire and magic. He tried to batter off my Krox with his cavalry, but I had kept them close enough to Chili to hold the charges, and in subsequent rounds the big lads annihilated the two cav units with a great deal of ease.

With all his combat units folded, it only remained to mop up the remnants of his army in the last couple of turns: with his mages and missile fire still in play, the massacre was in the balance until the final turn, when Chili swung out of combat with the finally deceased Commander and swivelled round to deftly barbecue both the mage and the Archmage. In the end, I had scored 600pts of bonuses, plus around 1800 of his actual troops, so I scored the maximum possible generalship score for tournament points. That gave me a nice, solid tournament point base on which to end the day.

CHILI’S KILL TOTAL FOR THE FIRST DAY:
3 Swordsmen
3 Flagellants
4 Pistoliers
(plus he caused the untimely death of 8 IC knights, a warrior priest and a captain by giving them severe cataracts when they were trying to dodge Krox axes)
8 Daemonettes
1 Pleasureseeker
5 Swordmasters
2 Shadow Warriors
1 Archmage
1 Mage


More to come tomorrow...

Sounds good, except for the fact you got magic fluxed quite a lot. ^_^ I'm surprised at that high elf player though; with that many dice he could have easily shut down chili with drain magics (just like magic flux) and left himself to control the magic phase.

Could you go into more detail of how how you ended up coping with magic flux? I read your strategy on it, but how did the "hammer" stuff work in practice? It's just I'm thinking of going to a WPS run tourney in Pompey next year with DLJ and anyone else who wants to come, and they run with a similar card system apparantly.

Congrats on the good start Chili. Shame you got magic fluxed so much, but you're still pulling off the wins, I see. The cards aren't making as much of an impact as you expected are they? Or are you just being lucky? :P

Purely out of interest, are there any guys from Battleforce Pompey (probs BFP on the scoresheet) playing? If they are, wish them luck from Turkey for me!

And yeah, Pompey Pillage June 2006 people. w00t!

Cheers,
DLJ

How many of Chilli's kills were due to 'skinky's leet ninja skilz'?

If Chili had a skink assistant, then that would be the three flagellants. As it is, I use the old model, so it was Chili himself that did the smiting.

I finished the tournie today! Only two games were left to go when I arrived at 9:30, a somewhat more forgiving start time...

My first game was against a guy called Nick Roberts, with a Chaos Mortals army: he had a mounted Chaos Lord in a unit of 5 Knights, 16 Chosen Warriors, 20 Tzeentch Warriors, 18 Beastmen in a herd, 8 Centigor with command, 5 Chaos Hounds, 3 Screamers, an Exalted Champ. of Tzeentch on disc, and a Chaos Sorcerer.

Unsurprisingly, he Flux'd me; I finally played my Joker, to reduce the effect, and it worked nicely. With a bit of deployment dummying, I managed to get him to deploy his Tzeentchian warriors right on the far end of the battlefield, deploying everything else in a refused flank on the other side and effectively put them out of the game. The honey trap worked perfectly, leading to the Kroxigor-flanked annihilation of the knights, lord and chosen. The Salamanders and skinks held up and roasted both Beasts units.

With a third Massacre, I was up from table 4 to table 2 for the last game, and against a bloke called Ross McCarroll from Northern Ireland, and his Eshin army... which didn't have the Brass Orb.

Knowing this from earlier, I was rubbing my hands together and chuckling as the words "Salamanders" and "No Magic Flux" flashed before my eyes. I deployed in a strong, coherent formation, with the Terries hanging back as a rearguard to jump on troublesome tunnel teams.

I made a small mistake in the card I played: we both ended up playing "mutinous dogs", the combined effect of which penalised my BSB-dependent army while leaving his completely untouched... I forgot that Assassins couldn't broadcast leadership. It wasn't a major booboo, and I was still feeling pretty confident as he let him have the first turn - I wanted as many rounds of salamandery goodness as possible, which meant letting him come forwards first, as far as I was concerned.

HOWEVER... in his turn 1, his two puny level 2 wizards managed to irresistably Skitterleap his master assassin into the Sallies, destroying them and panicking the Terries off the table before the poor dears could even fire a shot. In retaliation, I nuked the MA with magic, turning him into a small, scorched, black-robed smear, but the damage was done: none of my anti-skirmish units remained in existence. I was reduced to rat-chasing with kroxigor and pelting the rodents with magic... another flukey irresistable skitterleap managed to send an Assassin into my skink priest, and the same assassin's charmed life allowed him to escape the pursuit of the TG in which the skink had been sheltering, survive multiple Father of the Thorn castings and finish off my JSOD with warpstone throwing stars, before Chili finally smote him.

My spell rolls were poor: I took all four on Life, but managed to roll up both Rain Lord and Mistress of the Marsh, leaving Master of the Wood and so giving me only two "killy" spells. Consequentially, I took longer to wear down his scrolls, which allowed him a long period of unpanicked shooting and manouvreing, in which general points-evasion missile/skirmish tactics allowed him to whittle down the TG and Kroxigor. In the last few turns, Chili made up for his inablity to prevent the skitterleaps, having ground through the guy's 4 scrolls at last: in a firestorm of Masters of Stone and Fathers of Thorn, he wiped out both Triads, the Assassin, and an Eshin sorcer, as well as panicking two units of night runners in the process. In the end, all I could manage was a draw; it was a shame, as if 'twere not for all his IFs, I would have felt reasonably confident of a major victory if not a massacre.


CHILI'S KILL LIST: Second day

2 Chosen Warriors (Undivided)
2 Screamers of Tzeentch
2 Centigor
7 Skaven Assassins
1 Master Assassin
1 Eshin Sorcerer

In the end, I finished 8th out of 36 (to conclude the bitter grumble above: if I had won, I would have finished 3rd, and more importantly, knocked Rob Mitchell [my least favourite opponent] off the top 3).

I really enjoyed myself across the course of the weekend, and I would recommend similar events to anyone considering going. As to your question, Xarhain: PLAN worked admirably, allowing me to drive throughj about 3 spells a turn - after all, most people hadn't loaded up on magic defence, knowing the advantages the card gave them, and since I was casting on values of about 11 to 21 for each spell, they only had a chance of stopping 1 with their dispel dice.

Chilli,

glad to here you enjoyed the weekend, we but strive to put on a reasonable event each year. Hopefully next year you'll bring along a few more of the Palacites and maybe pick up a trophy or two.

Kel

Congrats on doing well Chili, it's nice for a list with saurii in to do well instead of the endless skink hordes. You've clearly got the list working well and at some point I hope to face it.

Kel, I'm going next year with a varient of the 2k list you can find in my evolution thread in Lesser races army lists. (Yes I know it's a shameless plug)

Cal look forward to seeing you there.

As to Chilli saurii he'd only got the TG's not what I'd call a lot of saurii. :thumb:

Well done, Chili. I might have to "borrow" the Temple Guard honey trap tactic myself one of these days . . . . :ph43r:
On a side note, though, I've been reading a lot of tourney reports as of late: don't you find it weird that tere is almost ALWAYS an Army of Sylvania, Daemonic Legion and Slaaneshi Beastman army present at a big tournament? Weird.

LOTNC,

there's a simple reason for the popularity of the armies you mention they are all very good in a tournament environment in terms of both acquiring game play points and soft scoring through nice conversions/painting etc.

I disagree, I can't see any reason those armies would have conversions any more than standard armies of the same type. Sylvanian armies are basically just undead, and slaanesh beastmen are just goats with breasts (a sight I am glad I have not yet been exposed to, thus requiring my young mind to be erased).
:D

I suppose the new demon cavalry and chariots have resulted in some nice conversions.

I think it must just be a trend, people still messing around with the SoC lists.