Wow, work really threw me for a loop this week!
Last weekend, I got to participate in a 14 player Warhammer Fantasy Tournament at Sci Fi Genre in Durham, NC. While it wasn't Blood in the Sun (which also happened that weekend, but I couldn't make the trip), it was a well run tournament and was a ton of fun. And *spoilerth* my Beastmen ran away with the top prize. While I didn't take notes or pictures for full battle reports, here's a quick rundown of my games.
I was especially pleased with my day as I had brought what I consider to be an extremely soft Beastman list, which consisted of:
Wooly Bull, a Doombull with Sword of Swift Slaying, Talisman of Preservation, Ramhorn Helm, Gnarled Hide, Heavy Armor and Shield
Shambo, a Level 4 Great Bray Shaman with a Talisman of Endurance and the Lore of Shadow
Hordor, a Wargor BSB with Armor of Destiny and a Great Weapon
Shamalama, a Level 2 Bray Shaman with Lore of Beasts and a Dispel Scroll
45 Gor with Full Command and Additional Hand Weapons
Two Units of Ten Ungor
Two Units of Five Ungor Raiders
Tuskgor Chariot
24 Bestigor with Full Command the Flaming Banner
5 Minotaur with Additional Hand Weapons
Ricky the Razorgor
Robby the Razorgor
Percival the Giant
Game One
In my first game, I drew Ben H., who has a very nicely painted Skaven army that is almost finished. I've played him before and he is a great opponent who seems to really enjoy playing. He had a Grey Seer, Level 2 Plague Priest, Two Warlock Engineers, a BSB, 4-5 big units of Clanrats/Slaves, 40+ Stormvermin, 40+ Plague Monks, 6 Rat Ogres, 2 Doomwheels, and a Hell Pit Abomination.
What he didn't have was any shooting. Since my Minotaurs generally die to light shooting, they breathed a sigh of relief. I was still worried about the combined power of the Plague Monks, who I guessed had the scary banner which allows them to reroll hits and wounds for one round, and the Stormvermin who had a Skavenbrew character to make them extra mean. Fortunately, Ben H.'s dice helped me out. The Skavenbrew rolled a 1, so it killed a few rats instead of helping them.
I managed to get a Pit of Shades off on the Plague Monks, and took off 15 or so of them. In his first turn, Ben H. then miscast with his Plague Priest and ended up removing it from the game and having to place a large Blast Template over his Plague Monks. In the end, eight of them remained. Meanwhile, I had managed to ambush some Ungor, and was using them to steer his Hell Pit Abomination off in the opposite direction of his fighting.
This allowed me to concentrate my Bestigor and Minotaurs into his Stormvermin / Chaff, and in the first round of combat my Minotaurs rewarded me by doing twenty-one wounds all on their own to the Stormvermin.
After that, it was a matter of mopping up. Ben H.'s Grey Seer had been hiding in a unit behind the Plague Monks, and the Gor finished the Monks and then had the Seer for dessert. The HPA was contained long enough so that when it got into the fight, it had to do so against flaming Bestigors. A good game, and a massacre for the Beasts.
Game Two
My good friend Tom was my second round opponent, and was also rocking Skaven. This one will be brief, as it really comes down to Tom's dice not working. He fired Warp Lightning Cannons, nasty Skaven Spells, and general scariness at me, and everything either missed or didn't go off. He did have a Plague Furnace, which I had to redirect using my Giant of all things in order to whittle down his other units first. At the end of the day, Tom's dice handed me a massacre.
Game Three
At the top table, I drew Mark and his Chaos Warriors. Mark had a roughly 1700 point unit consisting of 35+ Chaos Tzeentch Warriors, four mages (Level Four Death, Two Level One Shadows, and Level Two Tzeentch), his General and BSB). He also had a unit of 20 Chaos Warriors, Two Warshrines, and Five Marauder Horsemen. His general goal that day had been to give the big block of Tzeentch Warriors a 3++ Ward Save (I hear it's the new black) and mow down everything in the opposing army. His first two opponents had obliged him in combat, and had been mowed down.
Since Mark's army was so small, I held everything out of ambush and simply deployed my inexpensive junk units (Ungor, Razorgor, Chariot) while he had to deploy his whole army. Once his giant block was down, I deployed my expensive stuff as far away as possible, on the same side of the board as the rest of his army. Long story short, I then proceeded to put Ungor Raiders and Razorgors in the way of his giant unit while using my army to kill off the rest of his army. At the end of the game, Mark had managed to kill 160 points, while I had 450 or so for the win, and I think he might have learned
an important lesson about Death Stars. Wait, not the one in the link, the one about eggs in baskets.
So the Beastmen won first place, with second going to Rob's High Elves, third going to Mark's Chaos Warriors, and fourth going to Ben H.'s Skaven. I had a bit of a lucky draw on my day, as there was very little shooting to really hurt me, and my army performed well against its opponents. I'm comfortably achieving my goal of being the southeast United States
Mark Wildman, striking fear into the hearts of my opponents with a subpar army book.
