Thinking ahead.

Has this ever happened to you guys. I'm sitting around looking at all my minis and going... meh. Some just because I am worn out on them, some because I just don't at all like the history attached to them ( Mine not the games. ) And your just left wondering, well what now?

This is kind of where I am. I like the two armies I have. But am just not in love with them. I am constantly looking for "that one" army that will reinvigorate me to the hobby, not just the game. Warriors did it for awhile. But, just like every other time, I am let lacking with them. Coolest minis out there, in my opinion, but not an "all phases" army. I really need something that can compete in a well rounded environment. I need fighting, magic and shooting to be really satisfied with an army. And warriors doesn't tick the checkboxes. A beast in combat but not really overwhelming in magic or shooting. So I am left sitting back and scanning.

The new dark elves look very promising. But I am going to hold off on anything until I see the new Dwarfs as well. I am very excited about them. Granted they have no magic. But have in the past had something to fill that phase. If this is still the case. And if the anti-magic holds, it may be a good new book. Time will tell.

Even if not, I can totally see me putting everything I own on Ebay right now. And would if not for the fact that would leave me unable to participate in the next few tournaments upcoming. If all else fails. Empire always did me well, and is still in my opinion one of the best tactical armies ever made for warhammer.

Just have to wait and see.

Posting, Finally.

Posting for the first time in a long time.

Practicing for the upcoming Shiloh Slaughter event in Fayetteville.  I think the last time I posted was right before Bayou Battles, and was saying that if i went 3 and 2 at Bayou I'd be thrilled. I did, in the end, go 3 and 2. And was happy with the list overall. But when the scores finally hit I was really disappointed with my paint scores. It really took a lot of my enthusiasm away for a long stretch.

But now I am back at it. Using a slightly modified  version of the warriors list I took to Bayou. Basically I took out the dogs, and added another Chimera. Nothing has breath weapons now, and the chariots are core. VS. The awesome Gorebeast counterparts. The Gorebeast Chariots are amazing. But their low movement is leaving them behind to my foot soldiers and fouling up my line. Using the core versions instead gives me a more unified front. And lets me run less actual warriors. 22 vs. 28. And I get to run a mage to help clear chaff.

I am going to test this some more in the next few days. And will get back ith a full breakdown then.

Coming Along

Only 1 more unit left to paint. The whole army is nearly done and it will be just in time. I have my warriors left to paint for Bayou Battles. There are still 25 of them. BUT they go pretty quickly. The paint scheme is fairly simple but effective. So I should be able to get them done and to a good enough standard that they will mesh well with the rest of the army.

Gonna be a good tourney. If I can go 3 and 2, I will feel really good about myself afterwards. But really I've got smashed every game before and still had a lot of fun .

Bayou Battles Army Breakdown.

Heres the lists for Bayou, some are from reserve list, and some from guys that have posted two armies. I guess they haven't finalized which they are taking yet. The breakdown looks like this..

Beatsmen:  3

Bretts: 1

Chaos Dwarfs: 0

Daemons: 7

Dark Elves: 3

Dwarfs:  9

Empire:  5

High Elves: 6

Lizardmen: 3

Orcs: 3

Ogres: 1

Skaven: 6

Tomb: 6

Vampire: 7

Wood Elfs: 3

Warriors of Chaos: 10

So, warriors are the front runner with 10 entry's.  Dwarfs a surprising 2nd. Then VC and Daemons pulling up the 3rd. I am not keen to be facing so many gun lines. But I am sure not many are keen to be facing so many warriors either, so there we go. 

Surprising is the lack of Ogres in the field. It is a really strong, balanced book. Is it a case of people learning how to deal with them so not many people taking them? Or maybe the polish is wearing off and people are abandoning the bandwagon? Maybe just a case of new shiny, WoC DoC and Elves stealing their thunder. Maybe its just a fluke and next tournament will have 1000 of them. I am anxious to see. Really if they are few and far between again I may pick them back up. I loved the book, but didn't love the thought of there being 2 million of them out and about. 

Steelspine takes the field

Finally got Joey out to the house for a game. He limped up the the table in good spirits as always, and laid out a Skaven list to challenge the Nurgle filth.

His rats put up the fight, but had some really bad luck. Skaven style rolls kicked in and his dice killed no less than 3 of his units. His cannon blew up, and off the board turn 1. One unit of slaves fled 11 inches, right off the board, and another fled and didn't stop. So that was 2 units of slaves, 2 casters in them, and a cannon I didn't have to deal with. Add to that 2 consecutive misfires with his remaining cannon, and the dice didn't go his way.

All that said though, it was a really close game. The ending score was me pulling his whole army off the table, and him taking about 800 points off of me, out of 2500. BUT, even though that sounds really lopsided it wasn't. One of my Chimeras only had 1 wound left, and the daemon prince only had 2 left also. That would have been another 700+ points. And his shooting could easily have done it. It was a dice game, I really think that a few good rolls in his direction would have shown me with my tail between my legs.

I know now to look out for smaller hard shooting units. They can make a mess, quickly.

Things are going well in the quest for the broken Nurgle list. My list for Bayou Battles was accepted. So Now I can go full tilt and not worry about wasting time making this conversion or that, because my list might get bounced. So that's empowering. I have finished both of the chimeras now. And both my banner bearers. And 4 other RnF warriors.  And of course the Daemon prince. So I am well underway. My deadline may be tight, but it is obtainable. I will have to schedule in time to do a display board too. That may be rough.

So the only part of this list I am really dreading is these 15 hounds. I loved the models, as I am using the old metal ones. Until i really looked at them. Now I am finding I can muster almost  -0- enthusiasm to paint these guys. I am dying here. Oh well, gotta do what we gotta do.

4.5 Games with chaos

OK, so I ( mostly ) have my Bayou list sorted out. And have played 4 full games with it. And one half.  I feel I have mostly Ironed out the kinks in it. And it should be solid enough to win a few games at Bayou. If it gets accepted, that is. We will see shortly.

My first game was against my buddy from Jacksonville ( Arkansas not Florida ) Xavier. He came up for a game on the one time we had the same day off. Before I get to the game, however, I would like to mention that one day when me and him were talking/texting at work I mentioned how I used to play Empire, and that I really regretted selling them. Even though I sold them for the right reason. I still wished I hadn't. So when Xavier showed up. He brought me some empire guys. Like, his whole army. Around 5k points worth of them. An awesome gift and I can't thank him enough.

So on the our game. 

This was my list. 

He was playing wood elves. He had not put them on the table before so was really learning as he went. We had talked for a long while about what to take. In the end he went with a few medium sized units of archers. LvL 4 on beasts. Fighty general, some warhawk riders, wildriders, way watchers, 3 tree kin, dryads o' plenty and likely a few other things I've forgotten. 

Now, Xavier was at Shiloh Slaughter. And will, hopefully, be riding and rooming with us to Texas. He won best sportsman at Shiloh. And in my few games with him I can see why. I really think he is the kind that views the whole game as one giant movie. Much more interested in how things pan out, than whether he wins or loses. He is really enthusiastic about the game and has a really high energy about the game through good times and bad. It would be interesting to put him, Joey and Casey in the same mix and see who won best sports out of the three. 

Here was us settting up. 

And after his first move.

It was a battle line game, which was kind of an uphill fight for him. As wood elves are very maneuverable and shooty, but if I get to him its over. 

He got the first turn. And put it to pretty good use. Using his massive amounts of bow fire, and the amber spear, to blast off all 3 units of dogs and one of the chimera right out of the gate. Putting me down around 360 points before I even got to move off the line. It was a rough start. 

You have FAILED ME! To the dead pile of SHAME!

I went pretty standard after that. Me shuffling forward, and him trying to figure out how to stop my block of warriors, and not get eaten by the remaining chimera. 

He wasn't having much luck really. His treekin attacked my warriors, and put a dent in them. But in the end the 3 of them just didn't have the beef to stop 30 warriors. 

The most fun part of our game was in this picture here. On the far end. 

Its a bit hard to see here. But in the far right corner my chimera is in trouble. He has just set p a charge against it with 2 units of waywatchers, his 3 warhawk riders, and his wildriders. That's a lot of guys. This chimera has not pulled out one regen save all game and is literally on one wound left. 

My turn comes and I decide I need to thin the field. And declare a charge against his waywatchers. Which wanted to stand and shoot but threw a 10 for leadership and fled, right off the table. 1 down, so I try and redirect my charge using my stellar leadership of 4 or 5. And roll a 3. Redirecting to the other unit of waywatchers. These guy are also scared to death and throw an 11 or 12 and also flee off the table. Bad luck there. We were both cussing them. Now my chimera has no where to go. And in the next turn takes a flank and rear charge.

A bit of shooting and unit redirecting later, on to combat. Both his units fail their terror test. That's 4 in a row with leadership 8 and better. He goes first against my initiative 2. And predictably flops his rolls to hit. But actually does get one through. And WOUNDS!, my poor chimera. Its all done for now, except. Yup. You guessed it. This is the one time I made my regen and he lived. Smashing the snot out of the guys left fighting him and winning combat by 1 or 2. They hold and we move on next round. And Xavier heads outside to be sick over the bad luck.

Wait, how many attacks does a chimera have?!

The Chimera ended up pulling it out again next turn. And actually surviving the game in the end. Apparently he was super pissed about the death of his brother. 

It was a really fun game, and he enjoyed the wood elves, despite the bad luck. 

My next opponent, Von Grimm himself Mr. ID Brown. 

ID had his new High Elf book in tow and was ready to put it to good use.

He was using something like, a huge block of Sea Guard, a 21 block of swordmasters, a small unit of sisters of the flaming bow ( or whatever they are called ) a flying, shooting chariot, a fire phoenix, a block of archers that had a big pretty banner that said mage bunker, a mage in a chariot, a lion chariot, another mage in the archers and a loremaster. 

This game was a case of new-shiny-book-itis. He threw all the new stuff in a list to see what floats. And we banged it out.  He is a long time high elf player. But the subtle changes to things ( Like swordmasters not getting a reroll ) were a bit off-putting. 

His magic did really, really well. One spell in particular, Fiery Convocation, blew away around half of my warriors, despite my efforts to save them. High elves now having a +1 to cast on top of other bonuses. And the book of Hoeth allowing him to re-roll any one casting or dispel dice every casting. Their magic is immense.  My list isn't rocking a dispel scroll, so I was on the back foot magic wise, and he really clubbed me with it. 

In this game he was pretty aggressive with the chariots and the swordmasters. Trying hard to get them into combat and ginsuing up some warriors. The thing that really got him, was the chimeras. I threw them up hard and fast on my left, his right, flank. He had his big unit of spears there to hold them. But in the end those were not going to hold for long, and his line was stretched far forward to try and stop the warrior block. Despite his 40 bajillion bow shots, in the end he just couldn't beat the toughness and armor enough to hold the front and flank. His magic was doing its job. But he just couldn't pull the punch to finish the job. It was aggravating for him. And a case of new book syndrome. 

We re-racked and he changed a few things in his list. Taking out the mage in a chariot, who was really not worth it. And adding more sisters and a bolt thrower. A really good call, I thought. 

The next game went better for him. His magic was still immense. And this time the bolt thrower and sisters added a lot more punch to the magic. And he flew his skycutter chariot and Phoenix around my flank, just like I did to him in the first game putting me on the defensive. 

His plan this game was sit back and shoot, and let me come to him. And it was working for the most part. He shot off one chariot, and a chimera. The sisters in the middle of the board make for a really big no fly zone for regenerating monsters. But his flank attack got stalled out. The phoenix and chariot came up against Mr. Daemon prince. Mr. Daemon Prince, with his 2 up ward vs. flaming attacks, loves him so Phoenix dinner. And the other chimera got downrange close enough to blow 15 or so of the 21 swordmasters off the table with a breath template. Leaving his mage bunker to fight the daemon prince. 

He was a lot closer to the mark this time. His magic is still terrible for me. But if I can weather it. I can live. I think once he gets the list tuned up, and the rules kinks ironed out, he will have a stupidly powerful army under his belt to wreck some hobby with.

A game and a half with the bald man.

Me and Tony got in a half game about a month ago. And it was CLOSE. We had to stop turn 4. Had it gone all the way there's no telling how it would have ended. He had taken off most of my toys, but I had gotten his too. 

This one was a bit more, decisive. 

In usual Tony style he had set up a unit of 50ish skeletons with 3 characters in it. The Special Character Ramhotep, to give the unit frenzy and hatred, and prince for punch, and a mage. It was a skelly deathstar. He also ran his casket, catapult, 4 chariots, some Tomb guard, carrion and some archers. But most of it got ignored. This game was fast and furious. Turns 1 and 2 were pretty standard. He used his casket and catapult, and some archers to take off 2 units of my dogs. My gorebeast chariot charged in and smashed his chariots to pieces. And his casket beat the hell out of my cannon. But didn't kill it.  

But he left my chimera's and daemon prince mostly alone. And they got to charge the death star. And the phrase that deifnes our game. From Tony, "Well, at least you cant kill them all in one turn." Challenge accepted.

All 3 of them had breath weapons, and thunderstomps. And between the three of them they had 20 attacks. So 14 dead to thunderstomps, 15 to breath weapons, and 11 more to attacks. His counter attacks, all 40 of them or so. Pulling 2 wounds off of the chimeras. And hes down by 39 for combat resolution and his unit falls apart around him. Game over. 

So ya, I am enjoying my warriors. This list isn't quite as fun as I would like. But its fairly effective. So I will be able to win a few at Bayou.