Sunday, March 4, 2012

WHFB Tournament - Tau4eva takes 3rd place!


Mike and I attended the WHFB Adepticon primer tournament at GS this past weekend. There were a total of twelve players including a few that are planning to play in Chicago for the upcoming fantasy tournament at Adepticon - sounds like a lot of fun. I would love to make the trip next year. Hopefully by then I will meet the fully painted army requirement. Saturday's tournament used scenarios from the 2011 tournament with a 2200 point army limit. Here's the Dark Elf list I brought:


2200 Pt Dark Elf Army
2200pt Dark Elf Roster
Lords (530 pts)

    Dreadlord
    General, Cold One Mount, Sword of Might, Pendant of Khaeleth, Crown of Command
    Supreme Sorceress
    Level 4, Lore of Shadow

Heroes (300pts)
    Sorceress
    Level 2, Dispel Scroll, Lore of Darkness
    Death Hag
    Battle Standard Bearer, Manbane

Core (555pts)

    24x Dark Elf Warriors
    Lordling, musician, standard bearer
    16x Dark Elf Repeater Crossbowmen
    Musician, Guardmaster
    16x Dark Elf Repeater Crossbowmen
    Musician, Guardmaster

Special (462pts)
    9x Cold One Knights
    Musician, Standard Bearer, Banner of Eternal Flame
    17x Witch Elves
    Musician, Standard bearer

Rare (350pts)

    War Hydra
    War Hydra

I was a bit concerned going into the tournament that I had too many points spent on my Lords. I have gotten used to playing at 2500 pts and found it difficult to make a list at 2200 pts now. It turned out the list worked pretty well. I ended up going 2-1 and ended up in third place. That is my best finish so far in the three tournaments that I have played in. Mike also did well going 2-1 with his Beastmen army and ended up in second, one battle point ahead of me! First place was taken by Rhellion and his awesome Skaven army. I did manage to remember to take a few pictures. Here are some highlights from my three games.  

Game 1- Dark Elves versus Chaos Warriors
My first game was against a really nicely painted Chaos Warrior army. This army was really well done and won best painted for the day. I have not played against Chaos much, so this was going to be learning on the fly for me.

I was a bit fortunate this scenario had a shooting nerf in effect for the first two turns. This helped me close the distance without getting hammered by his chaos cannon. The big combat in this game was when I got a dual charge off with my Cold One Knights and a War Hydra against his Chaos warriors. I managed to break them and run them down allowing my units to avoid the counter charges from his Chaos knights and trolls. The game went well for me from that point and I managed win 17-5 on battle points. My opponent was a great sport and I really enjoyed the battle we had.
Key Moment - Hydra and COK rout the Chaos warriors and charge into the cannon

The Generals did meet in battle, but the Chaos Lord and his wizard lived to fight another day
Game 2 - Dark Elves versus Empire 
My second game was against a former Dark Elf player who brought an Empire list with lots of cannons (is there any other kind?) and a Steam Tank! As a former Dark Elf player, he knew my army very well. I unfortunately had only played against Empire once before. I made a huge mistake in this game by thinking my Witch Elves would somehow be able to deal with the Steam Tank.

As I learned later, it counts as a chariot, but since you auto hit it, there is no chance for poison hits. I learned it has a 1+ armor save anyway, so I probably needed a better plan involving Mindrazor or such. 

This was a bloody battle.  His cannons were very effective and I lost one hydra very quickly. I managed to crawl back and started hammering on his horde of halberdiers.   In the end, I was able to beat his horde formation and the attached characters including his general which scored me a lot of VP. We ended up tied on victory points (I had less than 100 pts over him) but I lost on the bonus battle points. He won 15-14, what a game! 
 
Lining up against Empire guns
lesson learned - Steam Tanks are tough and cannons hurt
Game 3 - Dark Elves versus Dark Elves 
For my final game, I played against another Dark Elf player. He also brought two Hydras, how cheesy!  Besides the hydras, we had fairly different army lists. I knew this was going to be interesting. For this scenario, we were setup very close and diagonally from each other. Thankfully, I won the roll to go first and managed to charge right into this lines on turn one.

To summarize this game, we had one continuous multi-regiment battle in the center for the whole game. It went back and forth with additional units charging into the fray. Both of us tried similar magic strategies with Shadow to get debuffs off into the swirling mass combat.

The decisive moment game when I got a really good debuff off on one of his hydras and killed it with fire breath from one of my own hydras. That turned the tide, and I managed to put a hurt on his army. I ended up winning 20-5 on battle points, but it could easily have gone against me. It was a fun game to end the day on.
Up close on personal - Both armies deploy
My hydras were able to beat his hydras thanks to successful spell debuffs
My MVPs of the day, the Hydras of course. Honorary mention goes to my General with the unit of Cold One Knights. The Witch Elves underperformed and next time I will probably go back to the Blackguard for my elite troops.
Chaos Warriors - Best Painted Army of the day
It was very cool to see old school minis on the table...
...that traveled in a very old school case!

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations on placing! Your DE army is looking great.

    How do you transport the army?

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    Replies
    1. A lot of the DE models are metal. I still use my BF bag and some leftover foam. Even so, my models are still getting dinked up from use...

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