Well Tournament time was here! The day started with the night before's pizza for breakfast (the Breakfast of Champions) and then a walk down to the Wargames (via Asda to pick up a rather fetching tray - another post to follow!).
I was a little nervous as an awful lot comes down to the actual draw, with quite a wide variety of skill levels in the room I hoped not to be drawn versus one of the favorites in the first round. As it was I got drawn against the same Circle player who had smashed me with both Kromac2 and Morvahna2 recently.
Grand Exemplar Kreoss vs. Krueger the Stormlord (Circle Orboros)
Win: Assassination (0/2 on scenario)
So having been beaten in the last 2 out of 3 games I was a little nervous. The only benefit being that it was against Krueger2 who he wasn't very familiar with. So as is standard with Hordes I dropped my Kreoss2 list hoping to weather the storm before smashing the exemplar hammer down and hopefully killing enough to win.
Turn one was pretty standard, the Circle moved up and dropped a screen of clouds in front of their lines. I ran forward and feated the Zealots in charge range hoping that they'd get in the way.
In turn 2 things got interesting, I hadn't realised how bad Kruegers feat was versus this list. He jumped forward and pushed back my entire army 3 inches, this doesn't sound much but the second part is what caused the issue. A 2" movement penalty on my moves next turn whilst also stopping running and charging left most of my guys at the end of turn 2 either in the same position as the end of turn 1 or further away! In several javelins found their mark and wiped out half the Errants. The only good thing being that as the rest of the circle advanced it brought them into melee range of my Zealots (who couldn't firebomb without causing more risk to my guys then the oppostion). The Zealots wandered into base to base, more to cause an irritation rather than kill anything.
Now that the after effects of Kruegers feat were done with turn three was back to game time. I lost a few Zealots and a few more Errants to combat actions but really this was light as the Zealots had trapped the Circle beasts behind the Circle infantry at the back where they couldn't really cause much destruction. My turn three was feat turn and resulted in the destruction of all the circle infantry in my way. There was also an Argus pinning the Reckoner that was killed by the Errant Senschal to release the Reckoner to smash a Feral Warpwolf.
And then into the final turn, with only three stones, two heavies and Krueger left the scenario win was pretty much off the table. The only thing left was an asssassination run on Kreoss. This all went swimmingly by moving various pieces out of the way with Telekinesis. The next bit seemed simple and involved killing a single Bastion, however due to Sanguine bond this effectively gave the Bastion 40 hit boxes. Whilst he had a good go, having thrown everything at him the unit was still all alive with 8 boxes remaining. Having realised that he'd lost the last thing was to kill a few Zealots to drop them below half strength.
In my turn all that remained was the Reckoner turning around into combat with Krueger and smashing him in the face with his bat.
Grand Exemplar Kreoss vs. Absylonia, Daughter of Everblight (Legion of Everblight)
Loss: Assassination (2/0 on scenario)
This game turned out to be a mirror match of the first time I'd beaten Legion a few weeks ago. With regards to lists I knew that my Severius list would never stand a chance against the beast heavy list so the only option was to play Kreoss again and be list locked in the final round.
A standard deployment later and turn 1 went as expected, I ran forward behind the Zealots screen and mini-feated. The next turn I received some long range pot shots that set a few Zealots on fire who would no doubt die the following turn.
Turn two and I continued my advance, jamming the remaining Zealots into a few beasts as always more to cause irritation than damage. My hope was that these would pin things back ready for a turn 3/4 smash to remove as many heavies as possible. I then remembered the scenario was killbox and moved Kreoss as far forward to keep him safe. This was my critical mistake, I decided that behind the Bastions was safe from tramples and so chose to put him in a pocket a little further forward to avoid Killbox, had I put him in the other pocket he would have been tucked up nice and safe.
Well Mark rarely misses an opportunity to assassinate and I'd left a screamer on for him. Whilst he was immune to trample he wasn't immune to shooting and the only thing that was blocking LOS was a Zealot and Raek. However the solution was simple, the Raek leapt out of the way and into the Zealot. I short attack later and the line of sight could be drawn.
Up stepped a pair of everyones favourite assassination beasts (Ravagores) and some spits headed inbound to Kreoss. I thought I'd got away with it as at 14/19 Kreoss survived the two blasts but like a pro Mark had left a few millmitres between the bases so up stepped the Blightbringer. Not taking chances everything was boosted and the Blightbreath flattened Kreoss (and with only 50 minutes of the 2 hour game time gone).
Grand Scrutator Severius vs. Kommander Zoktavir, The Butcher Unleashed (Khador)
Win: Assassination (0/2 on scenario)
The third and final game which was essentially for 3rd place overall. I was list locked with Severius (although against Khador this wasn't neccesarily a problem) and Mark dropped Butcher3.
Having both been assassinated fairly quickly in the previous round we were both in good humour and no rush to finish the game in under an hour so we took it at a nice sedate pace. Chris even posed for a photo (note I'd forgotten about the photo after deployment so this was taken after I'd run the Vessel forward):
Turn two and the Flameguard split in to and ran at the Winterguard and Widowmakers (more to stop them shooting than anything) as well as creating a screen across the front of the Vessel of Judgement. I then opened up on the Behemoth with everything I could (including using it as a target for Ashes to Ashes and the Vessels gun). Whilst the Behemoth like a champ took the punishment everything around it wasn't so lucky. Butcher lost both Argus' and his wardog and the pikemen took a beating. Too late however I realised that due to poor positioning (and having been forced into taking the first turn) Severius was in the killbox so I was going to gift to CP's to Chris.
In the bottom of turn 2 Chris had clearly decided to claim his friendly zone to put him on 3/0 and force me to chase the scenario. For killing his dogs Butcher got a free move up, he then charged the screening Flameguard and dragged them and Blessing of Vengeance into combat. Destroying all the Flameguard with two flashing blades (whilst the Blessings shield knocked him 2" closer to the zone) he then feat'd and did the same again, finishing of 8/12 Flameguard and Blessing over the course of the turn. He then camped on ARM22 in the zone. Luckily the Widowmakers couldn't hit the last 2 Flameguard in combat and so they were left to contest the zone.
The final move was the pikemen on my left charging the Avatar - and here's where it got a little dodgy and I felt a little like a cheat. Chris forgot to do the attacks on the Avatar after moving them all up. My turn started and I managed to roll high on focus for the Avatar. At this point Chris remembered he hadn't attacked (but didn't request that he do them now). Treating this as an honest mistake I offered for him to do the attack now if he wished, he took me up on the offer and took some points from the Avatar. However being enlivened the Avatar then skipped away towards a relatively unprotected Butcher. In my defence I was going to charge the Avatar out of combat anyway across into Butcher, taking a free strike in the process. And to a point the combat action was not to dissimilar from what the freestrike would have been, however it all felt a little dirty that I'd tricked him into enabling the enliven move (although though hand on heart this wasn't the case).
So back to my turn three, I was now sat with a really opportune assassination in front of me. Butcher was there camping focus up to ARM22 but I now had the Vessel and Avatar in range of causing damage. Taking my own advise from previous I stopped and properly had a thought about what I would do and just checking I'd not missed something obvious. The threats to butcher were, the Vessels Gun, 2 x Ashes to Ashes fired at the (fire immune) Vessel (again a trick I'd learnt from experience) to then bounce onto Butcher and finally the Avatar causing straight damage with its MAT11 and POW22 sword. I ran through the idiot sheet (focus, choir, hierophant) and then began the run. The Vessel blasted Butcher for a few points of damage, Ashes to Ashes blasted him twice again for a few points but nothing too significant - ARM22 is pretty dam tough! Last but not least was the Avatar, having rolled full focus for him and hitting on anything but double 1 I was hoping that he would be enough. By this point Butcher was on around 15 boxes and assuming everything hit i was looking at 8d6 - 6 worth of damage from the Avatar. Whilst the odds were still in my favour for this, rolling a total of 21 on 8 dice was still not a given kill (according to http://rumkin.com/reference/dnd/diestats.php a 14% chance of failure).
Anyway in the end the negative spike didn't happen and I managed to get my second (although slightly dirty) win of the day.
Results
After all the games had finished I ended up 3rd which I was very happy with, I genuinely hoped I might get a win but never did I think I'd end up 3rd - a very happy chappy!
Lessons Learnt -
- Its very easy to give away assassinations against shooting forces, take the time to think about each caster move. Don't just shift it where it looks vaguely ok!
- When someone forgets something, highlight the whole situation so they are making an informed decision.
- The two lists are fairly solid but if the tournament is only three rounds getting list locked is very easy.
- I did quite a bit of prep for this tournament, clearly it helped so keep doing it!
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