Ryan G. ToFG: CCG's 2,500 Pt. Tourney

Okay, so here is my take on yesterdays 2500 pt tourney.

The list:

Slaughtermaster - lvl 4, Lore of Maw, Sword of swift slaying, Dispel Scroll, Talisman of Preservation, and Ironcurse Icon

Bruiser - BSB, Armour of Silvered Steel, Luckstone

8 Ironguts - Standard of Discipline

8 Ogres

7 Ogres

Stonehorn

Giant

Sabertusk

Sabertusk

4 Leadbelchers

Gorger

Gorger

Scraplauncher

Game 1!

For my first game I was up against "The" Paul Vinton and his Dark Elves in a battle line scenario.

He had a Cauldron BSB, Dreadlord on Pegasus, lvl 3 Shadow Mage, and lvl 2 Metal Mage. His main unit was a horde of 30 Witchelves, but also had a RXB, Chariot, 30 Warriors, 11 Dark Riders, Hydra, and 6 Shades.

Paul and I have been playing against each other for many years now, and we generally go back and forth on wins and loses. Paul is very experienced and well knowledgeable at this game and in my opinion one of the tougher players in this area, so any time I can do well against him, I consider it a hard fought victory. This game was very weird though dice wise for me. He pretty much deployed all of his things on his board edge and made me come to him. His metal wizard was of no use at all this game. His two spells were not worth casting towards me and so he never even really tried. When it came to charging, my dice were horrible. I only got off one charge the entire game, and it was one that he stuck his shades in front of my stuff to redirect them. That being said, he got to decide when and what charged where. Once he got into combat though, his dice urned on him, and mine caught fire. My hitting and wounding were about normal, but I was making armor saves left and right. In the end, the final result was a draw. 1554 for him, and 1504 for me. Great game, and great opponent.

Game 2!

For game 2 I got John W. and his Lizardmen which had a Shadow Slann, Heaven Priest, 2 Chiefs on Terradons, and Scar Vet on Cold One. Troops he had 20 Saurus, 25 Saurus, 16 Skinks, 16 Skinks, 5 Cav, 2 Sally's, Ancient Steg, 5 Cam Skinks, and 5 Cam Skinks.

This game was dawn attack, and we both got screwed by the random deployment. His stuff was very spread out along the flanks, and very little in the center. I did ok, except that my BSB ended up on my right flank with no unit to join. Turn one his priest irresistibly cast a comet that on my turn killed more points worth of his stuff than mine. Things were working well for me until turn two, when his ancient Stegadon charged my Ironguts containing the Slaughtermaster and they failed their leadership 9 terror check and fled from the steg. The Stegadon ended up rolling higher than me, and wiped out the entire unit without a single attack being made. 900 points gone right there. After that, his Slann had magic dominance, and was able to use shadow effectively to reduce my stats and make sure his troops won combat. I still managed to get quite a few victory points, but not nearly enough. John won a major victory 1907 - 996. Again, a great opponent and a great game.

Game 3!

For the final game I faced off against Chip E and his Warriors of Chaos containing a lvl 3 Nurgle Wizard, and Khorne Lord, and Khorne BSB. Also 2, 20 man Khorne Warrior blocks, 10 Khorn Knights, 15 Khorne Marauders, and Hellcannon.

Chip is a good friend of mine, and we regularly play against one another in my basement. I knew right away I was in for a fun but tough game. This was the meeting engagement scenario, and his Hellcannon had to start in reserves. I started out taking the Stonehorn into a unit of warriors, and did pretty good damage to them, but not enough to take away their steadfast. Turn 2 his Hellcannon dropped a direct hit on my ogres and caused that unit to fail 2 LD 8 tests (BSB was in the unit) and flee. That turn my stonehorn also failed a LD 9 stubborn break test and ran away also. At one point, all of my block units were running, but he could not run any of them down. The Giant slowed down the knights, and even managed to kill 3 of them. This bought me enough time to rally everything, and hit his knights in the front and both flanks. He still held on and won combat that round, but steadfast kept both of the flanking units in combat. The knights finally broke the next turn, and that sealed the deal for me. I had a victory 1500ish points to 714. Once again, Chip did not let me down and we had a great game even though I was getting a bit tired and probably was not as fun of an opponent as usual.

Overall take-away?

Overall, I learned quite a bit. Scraplaunchers suck! I did not kill a single thing with it, so I spent most games just using it as a chariot. I knew that the Giant would not be the best choice, but I was hoping it would draw some fire power away from the Stonehorn, which it did. Neither the Giant nor Stonehorn lived till the end of any game, but that was more my fault with the Stonehorn. It was the first time I got to play with it, and kept putting it in bad situations, just to get it in combat.

I was not that impressed with the Gorgers either. I like them, and think they are fun, but they didn't really do that much. Best case scenario, they can not even get into combat till turn 3. I think I will probably try other things in place of these and see what happens.

The Giant and Scraplauncher will also be replaced for tournament games. I have 4 Mournfang and 1 Ironblaster boxes, and just got to get them put together and painted. I also picked up my 3rd Maneater yesterday, so I look forward to testing them also. 

Overall, I had a great time and managed to win best sportsman out of 16 people. I am very proud of that because sportsmanship is something that I have been working on. I do not think I am a bad player to play against, but I don't hide disappointment or frustration well on my face, and when things go badly it shows. I try very hard to make sure my opponent has a good time as well, no matter what the final score.

Thanks to everyone that showed up and made it a great tourney.

Cheers,

Ryan G

Joe F. ToFG: 2,500 Tournament

So yesterday, on the 25th of February my army rolled out for its first three 2,500 point games in a small 1 day 3 round tournament event here at my local gamestore.  All told, 16 players drug themselves out for it giving me a nice sized field to test the list against for the final month of our list building.  Quite convenient that the tournament coincided with the end of our building of the armies.  Ryan also played with his Ogres (although they aren't finished) and hopefully I'll talk him into posting some reports about his experiences.

The list:
Greyseer - General, Earthing Rod, Talisman of Preservation
Chieftan - BSB, Shield, Stormbanner
Warlock Engineer - Doom Rocket
Warlock Engineer - Brass Orb
Plague Priest - Flail, Plague Furnace, Ironcurse Icon, Dispel Scroll, level 2

3 Units of 5 Giant Rats and 1 Packmaster
40 Slaves - Musician, Shields
35 Clanrats - FC, Shields, Plague Wind Mortar
30 Stormvermin - FC, Shields, Doomflayer

30 Plague Monks - FC, Plague Banner
2 Units of 5 Gutter Runners - Poison, Slings

2 Warp Lightning Cannons
Hellpit Abomination - Warpstone Spikes

Game 1!

For my first game I was strung up against John Wanger and his Dark Elves!

He was toting a horde of Executioners and Black Guard along with some Spears, RXB's, Hydra, Cauldron and other small stuff.

I know John from the northern Illinois tournament scene and I've seen this list before.  It is effective to say the least.  I have no clue how it works overall, the little intricacies of it, but I knew it wouldn't be easy.  I also have no idea how to run my Skaven list while John has been running this one for quite a while.  It boils down in the end to superior knowledge, play and strategy on John's part.  I couldn't get things where I wanted and John knew exactly what he was doing.  My dice were pretty poor in this game which didn't help.  After 4 rounds of combat with the Hydra I had only done 1 wound which is a god awful amount of regen saves on the Hydra.  My magic was negligible having never really gotten a phase with better than 5 dice and my WLC literally never hitting a single damned thing.  John smashed my face in 2,100 to 200.  It was brutal.

I'm not sure what I could've done better either which is the sad part.  In most places things in this game just didn't work.  Doom Rocket missed, Brass Orb deviated, like I said WLC's couldn't hit and magic did nothing.  Just a rough game.  I did learn a few things about his list though such as to avoid the damned Executioner block because of the combo's he runs in the list.

Game 2!
For game 2 I went for Kevin Flemmings Vampire Counts!

Kevin as well as another VC player were toting quite a bit of the new stuff, here were 6 Crypt Horrors, some Dogs, Zombies, Ghouls, Skeletons, Spirit Hosts, basically a mixed bag of everything.

We played Dawn Attack.  I won.  That should be enough said, but basically Kevin's General ended up on the far left of his zone.  While most of his stuff was with it the stuff that ended up on the far right was basically lost the whole game attempting to do its 4" march.  This game, most things went right.  The WLC's still did nothing but kill a single Banshee and I never got a chance to throw the Brass Orb, but the Doom Rocket killed a Crypt Horror and the Abomination slaughtered a lot!  It killed Wolves, overran into Spirit Hosts (Yay warpstone upgrade), then overran into Crypt Horrors.  Finally it turned around and him along with my Plague Furnace unit smashed into his Generals Skeleton bunker doing enough combat resolution to completely pop it all.  At that point we called it.  This time I delivered the smashing at 2,500 to 195.

Game 3!
For the final game I face off against Jeff Tupper and his High Elves!

Tupper had a pretty magic-centric list.  A level 4, level 2, Banner of Sorcery, a couple Archer units, Sea Guard.  He went for Lore of Life but for my luck he did not get either Flesh to Stone or Regrowth which were the two spells that he really wanted.

This was the corner deploy scenario and I feel like I had Tupper on the back foot most of the game.  The Storm Banner activated on the 2nd half of turn 1 and literally kept on humming along through the bottom of Turn 4 almost completely negating all of Tuppers shooting through almost the whole game.  He miscast with his level 2 losing his levels and I put heavy pressure onto everything else.  The Abomination amazingly survived considering he never moved over 9 inches the entire game.  I 13'th spelled a unit of Swordmasters into Clanrats and did a lot of damage over time through my magic.  The Doom Rocket/Orb did nothing and the WLC's again failed me utterly.  Tupper upon realizing the game was lost began to flee from charges and preserve points.  The game ended in a draw with a single Swordmaster preserving 100 points and 4 models left out of a Phoenix Guard unit holding down about 300 points.  I was severely disappointed with my inability to catch them and seal the deal.  Points we're like 870 to 815 or so.  What did I learn?  I'm not even sure.

Overall take-away?
Overall, I've learned that the Weapons Teams really are just crap.  Yes, they tend to take your opponents attention for a turn of shooting which is nice, but for the points they just don't do enough to justify there cost.  The Giant Rats seem to nearly be a waste of points but they did a couple of times cause some re-direction and for only 23 points its not a big expenditure.

I think the Brass Orb may be too situational.  I literally only used it once and in 2 of my games it was basically nullified by playing against Elves and their brutally high initiative.

The net lists prose the blessings of multiple large (40ish and up) Slave blocks.  I wanted to avoid that, but I have to admit I see the point now.  I had 4 blocks but with an inability of them to win combats because of lackluster stats the more blocks means that its more likely for you to get the flanks or continually tar pit things.  It makes me sad.

I think the obvious drop swill be the Weapons Teams and probably Brass Orb.  From there I can perhaps turn the Stormvermin into Clanrats.  With the scrapped points I will look at putting in some other units that might be useful.  I still hate to look into more Slaves (mostly because of not wanting to assemble/paint another 100+ rats).  I think the first things I'll look at is probably Rat Ogres (I know there a poor choice, but I'd like to try 'em) and then probably Jezzail's just to give me a bit of shooting to try and finish off those little units of 1 or 4 guys preserving their points at the end of the game.  Certainly their long range should help in this respect.

I need to learn how to best utilize the Plague Furnace unit.  I have no idea how to set up ideal match-ups and its so large that its unwieldy to get to where you want it without some serious for-thought.  The Skaven are strong, particularly when there stuff works (sadly only like 1/2 the time) but they definitely are not a point/click/win army.

The Waaaghcast! Cup - End Week 3

 

Wow!  If you thought week 2 was bad, week 3 see's the most Deaths sustained thus far with 3 players being killed, and 2 having been apothecaried from the grim reaper himself.  Poor Josh from The Deployment Zone who lost a Witch Elf in his 1st game has been saving up to buy it back only to lose his second in this weeks game.

I played a hard fought game this week against Eric whom as far as I can tell was a much better player than myself.  His defense play was superb and I attribute my first victory of the league only to the attrition as I put a severe beating on his team.  I believe by the end he was down to probably 6-7 players, none seriously demolished, but still.

So without further adieu, the week 3 Newsletter!

Week 3 Newsletter

The Waaaghcast! Cup - End Week 2

So ends week 2 in the first Waaaghcast! Cup on-line league.  This week ended with a HUGE list of casualties inflicted on players, but still only a single death.  Amazing!  A big congratulations goes out to all the players!

This round I had to play the other 1/2 of Garagehammer Chris Barnette.  It was a great game ending ina  2-0 loss to me.  I just couldn't catch the elves no matter how hard I tried and feel that I was pretty much outplayed all the way.  Chris is a great player.

That said, here is the 2nd weeks newsletter.

Week 2 Newsletter

Joe ToFG: End Game

I've finished! Well, that is I've finished my initial goal for my Skaven army. They are, for all intents and purposes done for our Tale of Four Gamers articles. I completed my Plague Furnace tonight thus finishing up my 2500 points of Skaven.

 

 I've also completed my Plague Priest (who actually was done a while ago, but now I have a good
picture).

There it is. Of course I have plenty of other stuff I could paint and will eventually, but now my goal is to get the movement trays completed as well as building my display board. Its unfortunate that the others couldn't stick with it, but I know that Ryan is still working and Chuck's army was complete some time ago honestly, so 2 and 1/2 out of 4 isn't bad right? Thanks for following the articles. There is a tournament at the end of February at 2,500 points (talk about timing) which Ryan, Chuck and I will be participating in. We'll throw some battle reports of how the armies we built performed at it and other than future posts about the display boards this nearly wraps up the ToFG. I appreciate all those of you who stuck around to read 'em. Thanks!

Chuck ToFG: 2,500 pts. Ogre List

Well I may as well post my February Tournament list.  2500 pts.  I plan on taking this to the CCGS Springfield Tournament at the end of the month.  We should have several players there including Dark Elves x2, Ogres x2, Vampire counts x2, beastmen, and potentially another lizardmen.  If Joe shows up he will bring his full skaven horde.  So there will be several competitive builds to play against.  With the list it is a sit back for a couple turns and shoot and sweep with the flank.  The Sabretusks act as chaff and there should be enough offensive magic and augments to help out during the entire game.

2500 Pts - Ogre Kingdoms Roster

Total Roster Cost: 2496

Slaughtermaster
   1 Slaughtermaster, Level 4 Upgrade 35 + Ironfist 3)
      1 Biting Blade
      1 Talisman of Endurance

Firebelly
   1 Firebelly, 1Level 2 Upgrade 35 + Great Weapon 9)

Bruiser (1#, 148 pts)
   1 Bruiser (Battle Standard Bearer),Ironfist 4 + Heavy Armour 4 + Battle Standard Bearer
      1 Banner of Eternal Flame, 10 pts

Ogres
   11 Ogres ironfist Bellower Mus 10 + Standard Bearer Std 10 + Lookout Gnoblar x1 5
      1 Crusher,

Leadbelchers
   8 Leadbelchers,  Bellower Mus 10

3 Sabretusks

Ironblaster
   1 Ironblaster

Maneaters
   3 Maneaters, Bellower Mus 10 + Standard Bearer Std 10 + Brace of Ogre Pistols

Mournfang Cavalry
   3 Ogre Mournfang Cavalry
      1 Banner of Swiftness

Ironguts
   7 Ironguts,  Bellower Mus Standard Bearer, 1 Gutlord,

Gnoblars
   10 Gnoblar,

Composition Report:
Points of Lords: 328 (0 - 625)
Points of Heroes: 312 (0 - 625)
Points of Core: 818 (625 - Unlimited)
Points of Special: 868 (0 - 1250)
Points of Rare: 170 (0 - 625)

Created with Army Builder® - Try it for free at http://www.wolflair.com

The Waaaghcast! Cup - End Week 1

So week 1 in the first Waaaghcast! Cup on-line league has ended with some fantastic matches.  Even mroe astounding is all of the games were completed on time and without hardly any encouragement from myself to do so.  A big congratulations goes out to all the players!

Dave Witek (from Garagehammer) and I were matched up for the first round and we tried to record the game as if we were doing play by play announcement for a football game over the radio.  The recording turned out pretty bad though because we were chit chatting too much.  I will try to get a recording like that done at some point for people to listen to.  Hopefully you'll see that next game perhaps.

As an aside I plan on putting out a newsletter every week chronicling a bit of our Blood Bowl campagin.  The newsletter will be mailed out to all the participants as well as available for download on the webpage when I publish it.

All that said, here is the first newsletter.  Read it and I hope you enjoy.

Week 1 Newsletter

Joe F. ToFG: Feb. 2,500 Points (Home Stretch)

So we're in the home stretch now for our Tale of Four Gamers set of articles.  Unfortunately Dave and Ryan have both re-started their college coursework and due to the load have both fallen behind to the point of knowing they will not finish their goals.

That however doesn't mean Chuck and I are down.  We're still pounding away at it all just getting in the time when we can.  In fact, since February is the last month of work on our 2,500 point armies and I saved all of my big toys until the very end of this shindig I don't have a lot left to paint.  For February I only have to paint 2 things.  Mind you one is huge and a multi-part model (the Plague Furnace).

Its going to be a long rough plod through this piece as intricate as it is, but luckily it can be painted before assembly which with these large fancy models is a must.  I did the same thing with my Warp Lightning Cannon's so that even though you don't see much of the underside I know in my own head that it is as nice as the rest of the model.

All this said, here is my list for the month of February and the concluding 2,500 points of my Skaven army that I've been working on for the last 5 months.

Greysser
Chieftan - BSB
Warlock Engineer
Warlock Engineer
Plague Priest - Plague Furnace
Assassin

40 Slaves - Shields, Musician
35 Clanrats - Shields, FC
30 Stormvermin - Shields, FC, Doomflayer
3x6 Giant Rats

30 Plague Monks - FC
2x5 Gutter Runners - Poison, Slings

2 Warp Lightning Cannons
Hellpit Abomination

This of course isn't 2,500 points on its own.  I've left all the magical equipment/banners, etc... off of the list to fill in as that leaves me a lot of options on how to run things but you get the point.  I've achieved a lot of stuff throughout the building of this army and am proud of myself for not only sticking to my goals but knowing that I will complete them.

March will see posts on the construction of my Display Board and painting of my movement trays and I'll have the whole shebang with me at Adepticon (even though I'm only using the Skaven in a 1k tournament).  So that's it.  Thanks for reading and keep your eyes on the blog as I'll still be putting things up.  Starting in May I'll probably be working on my long awaited Empire army.

Hooray!

Chuck ToFG: 2k Battle Report

Turn 1 after my move, he has slaves, doomwheel, slaves, PlaugeFurnace, clanrats and move slats.  2 Cannons in the back

After first turn the Bulls went through his horde of clanrats, and we called it at turn 3

This was a continuous fight as the kitty cats stare down the rats, they just want to play!

Well we finally won one after being dry the last 3 games.  Played battle-line and used adepticon type lists.  I had the misfortune of having his storm-banner on me for the first 2 rounds of the game though enough firepower to destroy his Plague Furnace on turn 2.  My Ogre bulls charged his clanrats turn 2 because he moved very close allowing me to charge, break them, and run through.  The sabre-tusks held up units where they needed to and other units delayed what i needed.  I think that after he played Ogres for the first time he would be better the second shooting and getting rid of the cats first and focusing both Laser Cannons on the big block of Ogre Bulls.  His Storm-banner didn't allow him to fire one turn also so thats a gamble.

Next month I will have 2500pts battle reports ready from our Local games store in Springfield during their tournament.  Hard to decide a list too.

Are You Ready!?!?

Are you ready for some Blood Bowl!!!!

 

So a short time ago I finally purchased Blood Bowl for the PC.  Honestly I'd been wanting to do this since the game came out way back in 09 but held off due to the myriad of other things I do constantly in the hobby.  Getting engrossed into another video game didn't seem like a good idea.

That said, I'm really quite pleased I waited.  Since the original release there have been numerous updates to the system, least of which is the update for the LRB 6.0 rules system.  To get the most up-to-date version your going to have to go PC instead of console and you'll have to go after the Legendary Edition.

This version of the game is available for download directly from the Cyanide games website for it or from Steam.  Both links are provided here:

From Cyanide Studio's 

From Steam

Both are viable places to get the game and for the same price.  Steam requires the download and installation of an extra application to run everything through but Steam also will put the game on sale every couple of months for around $8.99 USD.  Let me tell you, best $8.99 ever!

The Legendary Edition contains every GW Blood Bowl team except for Chaos Dwarf's for who knows what reason.  It runs the LRB 6.0 Competition Rules.  Its amazing.

I've had the game for less than a week and I've played more games in the last 3 days than in the last year previous.  Not only that; but it took me all of 2 days to form up a special interest 10 player league for on-line play.

Clearly, I am excited.  Expect to hear more about Blood Bowl in the coming months.

Chuck ToFG: Ogres!

The ironblaster in WiP stage.  Partially painted and I was still deciding on what to put where.

Painted but not fully.  Partially Assembled base in background. Gnoblars must still be added.

Ironblaster base, 2 foam parts, upper and lower, with standard sand and wood glue.

The finished product, it is brighter but lighting doesn't help the highlights. Soon pics of Ironblaster 

Pretty much complete.  Maybe a few bolts to dot or that gnoblars arms to glue back on but here you go Aconers!


For more pictures go to www.chuckbret.blogspot.com