tvandyke:
I attended the SAWS Challenge Tournament this past weekend and thought I’d give you a summarized battle report and give you some obverservations of the army.
The tournament ended up with 64 participants. First off, here’s what I took.
1 Sorcerer-Prophet
General; Lore of Hashut; Magic Level 4; Show Lore of Hashut; Blood of
Hashut; Darkforged Weapon; Blackshard Armour
Enchanted Shield
Talisman of Preservation
Crown of Command
1 Bull Centaur Taur’ruk
Heavy Armour
Dragonhelm
Golden Sigil Sword
Dawn Stone
1 Daemonsmith Sorcerer
Lore of Fire; Magic Level 1; Ensorcelled Hand Weapons; Blackshard Armour
Dispel Scroll
1 Dark Castellan
Blackshard Armour; Battle Standard
The Mask of the Furnace
Biting Blade
24 Chaos Dwarf Inferal Guard
Blackshard Armour; Shield; Standard; Musician
23 Chaos Dwarf Inferal Guard
Blackshard Armour; Shield; Standard; Musician
1 Deathmask
Blackshard Armour
5 Bull Centaurs Renders
Heavy Armour; Shields; Standard
1 Deathshrieker Rocket Launcher
1 Deathshrieker Rocket Launcher
1 Magma Cannon (Hellbound)
1 K’daai Destroyer
Game #1: Vampire Counts
His army consisted of 1 big block of zombies, 1 big block of skeletons, 1 big block of Ghouls, Mortis Engine, 3 Vargheists (with Varghulf), 2 spirit hosts, a necromancer and one big Black Knight Bus that had his fighty Vampire Lord, White king and Manfred the Acolyte (this tourney allowed hero level Special Characters). The scenario this game was the one where you set up on the long board edge (forget the name). Regardless, I was happy since I was scared to death that my destroyer would get held up by a spirit host and that the Vargheists would get to my war machines. The scenario allowed me to set up my whole army on the back board edge and give me a few turns of shooting and magic before he could reach me. I needed my big guns available to deal with that Knight bus.
He got first turn and moved everything up. His Vargheists moving much too fast for my comfort level, but at least they got within range of my Magma Cannon.My first turn, I move my Destroyer away from his Spirit hosts and towards his Varghiests and my Bulls towards the Spirit hosts (I figured I’d charge the Taur’ruk out by himself the kill the things), I kill one Varguist, wound another with the Cannon. I put both of my Deathshriekers on his Mortis Engine. 1st was a direct hit and wound but he makes his Regen roll. Second one misses, but I use my Deamonsmith re-roll and get another direct hit, but roll a one to wound.
His second turn, he moves everything up again and builds a new unit of zombies near my Bulls, not much else happens that I can remember. On my second turn I charge the remaining Varghiests with my Destroyer, killed them all, and overran really close to his big unit of ghouls. I used my Magma Cannon to take out a Spirit host (hellbound came in handy, I also used Ash Storm to make it Flammable so double wounds). I moved my Taur’ruk out of the unit to block the new zombie unit from screwing up my battle line. I used both my deathshreikers again on the Mortis Engine. 1st one, miss, re-roll, direct hit, wound, failed regen, 3 wounds. 2nd one, direct hit, wound, failed regen, 5 wounds and dead Mortis Engine (Awesome).
Turns 3-6: He charges the destroyer with ghouls and they get eaten in 2 or 3 combat turns. On turns 4 and 5 I failed my Toughness test and had one 1 wound left going into turn 6 (thankfully, I didn’t fail again). The Taur’ruk ended getting charged by the new zombies (which kept getting bigger) so I eventually had to bring in the rest of my Bulls. He finally got his big Knight bus into the fray and charged the Taur’ruk (He should have brought that nasty unit into my warrior block with the prophet). He won the combat, but didn’t kill the Taur’ruk, I broke, but he didn’t catch anything. This meant he spent the rest of the game killing off the Bulls and Taur’ruk (about 450 points total) with his 1000+ point unit (didn’t break my heart). On the last turn, I got off Flames or Azgorh on hist Knight Unit. The template landed right on top of Manfred, he failed his look out sir and then his toughness test. Big win for Chaos Dwarfs.
Game #2: Dwarfs.
His army consisted of 4 units of Thunderers, 2 Cannons, 1 Organ Gun, 2 nasty Bolt Throwers (one was S8, the other S7) and the Anvil. We ended up with a board that had 4 big buildings right in the middle (it was a town). There were no hills within my deployment zone so I was kind of screwed. There was basically no where I could set up where the buildings wouldn’t block my line of site unless my opponent decided to set up right across from me. He didn’t of course. He had more drops than I did, so all his important stuff got set up in the opposit corner from mine. I took out one of his cannons with a deathshrieker direct hit and wiped out half of one of his thunderer units, but he hid that unit behind a hill. I spent the rest of the game just trying to move somewhere where I could get a line of site to his stuff (which meant literaly spending turns moving my war machines). My magic suffered the same fate. I basically had a choice. Hide my stuff in my corner and just take the draw or throw everything I had at him. I chose the latter since I’m actually one of these crazy people that actually try to have fun while playing a game. Crazy I know. Anyway, my Destroyer and Bull Centaurs (including the Taur’ruk) died from cannon, bolt throwers and the anvil. The Destroyer had a chance to smash his entire corner. I was making an absurd amount ward saves from his cannons and Bolt Throwers but he was throwing an anvil spell at me that only caused D6 S4 hits, but he kept managing to roll 6’s and on those I couldn’t make a ward save. Too add insult to injury, this also caused the destroyer to move at half speed. In the end, we played 6 turns in about 30 minutes since there was hardly anything for me to do in my turn and he didn’t have magic. Loss for the Chaos Dwarfs.
Game #3: Orc and Goblins.
His army consisted of a huge unit of trolls (10 of them I think), a big unit of savage orcs, unit of Black Orcs, big unit of night goblins, two doom divers, two chariots, two mangler squigs, a giant, a small unit of wolf riders, level 4 goblin shaman and a few other orc characters. This was the scenario where you have to roll for each unit to see where they can be deployed (left, right, center or wherever you want). I rolled center for everything. Lovely. A hill was on my right flank and useless to me. This game was over pretty quickly (I think we played 3 turns). I have never played against Mangler Squiqs before and my opponent explained how they work, but I just didn’t fathom how much damage they can do in a single turn. I’ll get to that in a minute. He had his mangler squiqs on my left flank (where my destroyer and bulls were) and his giant and chariots on my right flank (where my war machines were. Technically, they were in the center, but were as far right as I could get them due to the scenario) This game started out wonderfully for me. I took out his giant in the first turn with my Deathshriekers (these things are freekin awesome). Also in the first turn, I got off Ash Storm on his trolls, then followed it up with Flames of Azgorh and rolling a hit. With double damage, I ended up killing 7 trolls. On his first turn, his wolf riders failed animosity and the result was that they had to charge the nearest friendly unit which just happened to be one of his mangler squigs. He made the charge and both the wolf riders and squig were dead (I guess charging a mangler kills it, but the charger takes 3d6 S6 hits in the process). So, with the first turn overwith, things were going great. Now, I had two chariots threatening my war machines, a mangler on my left and the rest of his army bearing down the center. I had to choose, do I take out the mangler with war machines and magic, finish off the trolls or get rid of those pesky chariots. With an 18" charge, I knew I had to do something with the chariots or all my war machines would be toast. I felt the mangler was too far away (3d6 variable move distance, he could roll poorly, right?) to be as an immediate threat as the chariots. So I focused my attention on the chariots, killed one and put 2 wounds on the other. I also moved my destroyer in position to charge his savage orcs and put my Bulls in postion to support either the destroyer or my infantry blocks. His Black orcs and remaining trolls were in position to charge in a turn or two. I also made a major mistake by lining up my troops in a way that would allow his mangler to hit every one of them. For some reason, I just wasn’t thinking his mangler could hit more than one unit at a time. It also looked like the thing was 20" away. Anyways, on his turn he rolled 17" (2 6’s and a 5). He just reached my destroyer, then bounced through my Bulls and both units of IG. He caused 4 wounds to the destroyer, wiped out half the Bulls, and about 1/3 of each of the IG units. Wow. That Mangler basically moved about 40" in one turn. To add insult to injury, he made his charge with chariot on one of the Deathshriekers and killed it. Apparently once a mangler hits a target it moves randomly after that. What were the odds it would be able to move exactly in the opposite direction it came? I decided to maintain my battle line instead of charging. I felt I needed another round of magic and shooting to even the odds (those huge blocks of Savage and Black orcs didn’t seem so easy anymore). I honestly can’t remember doing much in my turn and braced for the charge of pretty much his whole army, however, he still had the compulsary move with the mangler. He rolled the perfect direction and it went right back through my battle line again, leaving about 8 dwarfs in each IG unit, my Taur’ruk and a bull with a single wound in the bull unit and finishing off the Destroyer. Game over. I’ll never make that mistake again. Big loss for the Chaos Dwarfs.
I’ll send you my results for Day 2 in another thread.
