5 replies to this topic

[Akumakaji]

Hello my fellow Longbeards,

 

after a super long hiatus from WHFB (about 8 years), during the lockdown I started refurbishing my old models, and even painted some up, and a friend of mine surprisingly was also a former player. So naturally we decided to fight each other, using the 6th edition rules.

 

I have never played against High Elves before, but I look forward to it and pull their ears I don't know what my friend will be fielding, but I suspect witchery at play. But we won't be playing too competitive or anything, so I want to field a somewhat "normal" looking army, no meta stuff of multiple minimum size units or whatever. Here is what I came up with:

 

Characters 600pts

Dwarf Lord 265pts

- Masterrune of Swiftness

- Rune of Snorri Spanglehelm

- Rune of Cleaving

- Masterrune of Gromril 

- Oathstone

 

Thane 190pts

- Army Standard Bearer

- Masterrune of Valaya

 

Runesmith 145pts

- Masterrune of Balance

- Rune of Spellbreaking

 

 

Core 520pts

10 Thunderers 140pts

10 Thunderers 140pts

 

25 Warriors 240pts

- Shields

- Champion+Musican (the Thane will join this unit)

 

 

Specials 555pts

20 Ironbreakers 315

- full command

- Rune of Battle

 

Bolt Thrower 95pts

- Engineerer

- Rune of Penetration

 

Grudge Thrower 145pts

- Engineerer

- Rune of Accuracy

- Rune of Penetration

 

 

Rare

20 Long Drong Slayer Pirates 300pts

- full command

1975pts

 

In the past I always had great success with this dwarfen lord, who often blunted even charges by cavalry by killing a lot of the attackers; this should hold true doubly for pesky longears with their T3 all around.

 

Same with the Grudge Thrower with its S5 wounding everything on 2+ and the Bolt Thrower that could instagib a chariot.

 

I am pretty all in on anti magic. If my friend fields a strong magic force, thats great, if not, then I wasted a good extra unit on the field, but thats the thing with war, eh?

 

The slayer pirates are a sort of unit that I hold close and dear, they never disappointed me, but also never did anything spectacular. Still, I owe the models and I love them, so in my list they go.

 

I still have 25pts to spend and could either give one of my characters a handgun, inscribe a Rune of Skewering onto the Boltthrower, to harass some elfes in the 1st turn or give my Thunderers shields.

 

What are your thoughts?

[Thunderförge]

I’d use the spare points on shields for the thunderers, but if it was me I’d use crossbows instead. I prefer the range over the armour penetration.
Would be good to see the Knife Ears’ army list, and the battle report.

[Akumakaji]

Thanks for the reply. Yeah, back in the day I was always hellbend on using handguns because "omg, guns!", nowadays I can totally see the benefit of that extra range of the crossbows.

That being said, the 6th edition gave the handguns thr rule of "superior technology", which gives them +1 to hit, and this ability alone makes them more desirable then the crossbows, in my eyes.

[Akumakaji]

Hello my fellow Longbeards,

 

so, we had our first Warhammer battle in years, and I lost pretty spectacular Without any hard feelings, my High Elves friend believes that regiments don't work and played a rather meta list, that I wasn't prepared for in the slightest. In the past I never played any competitions and I was used to the more conservative playstyle of my old gaming riends, ie big regimental blocks manuvering, while being supported by archers, cavalry and some warmachines, so this was a good learning experience.

 

The High Elf host fieldes 4 Tiranoc chariots, two units of 6 cavalry without upgrades, 4 volley bolt throwers, 10 archers and one unit of 16 swordmasters, six models wide. His hero section sported one prince with deathblow and swordmaster honors on a horse and two lvl 2 mages on foot, both lore of heaven.

 

We both had one hill and one wood in our deployment zone. I set up one unit of my thunderers on the hill, plus my bolt thrower, set up my iron breakers and darf warriors in a hammer and anvil deployment in the middle, with the grude thrower nestled between the two and had my slayer pirates and second thunderers guarding my right flank.

 

The first round was uneventful, my grude thrower scored a perfect guess on the sword masters, like in the rulebook example, but sadly it deviated 8", even with a reroll, and only killed one bolt throwers crewman. My bolt thrower destroyed one of the chariots comming down the left flank, and here I commited my biggest tactical error. My thunderers on the hill tried to shoot the swordmasters, instead of reforming and facing the other flank, where the chariot and cavalry came galloping up. The elf shot a lot, killed a few dwarfs and I managed to dispell everything, even though the elfs had 13(!) power dice. 

 

Second round I scored a sounding hit on the sword masters, killed 9 of them and even send them fleeing, but no other units turned tail, and they easily rallied with their Ld of 10 on the beginning of the next turn. On the right flank, the chariots were somewhat affright of the slayer pirats and didn't dare attacking them. In the shooting and magic phase about half the slayers died, so they would finally be brave enough to charge in turn 3. The cavalry, though, charged my remaining 6 thunderers, I declared a stand and shoot order, hit 5 (yeah) and wounded ... none. Yikes, that was very unfortunate, and the thunderers were broken and overrun. 

 

On the left flank, my thunderers where charged by the remaining chariot and the cavalry, and unsurprisingly broke. The chariot overrun them and charged stright into the bolt thrower, while the cavalry restraint themselves and galoped further down my rear. 

 

On the third round I had to do something desperate and reformed my ironbreakers and moved them towards the chariot and a into the way of the cavalry, while the dwarf warriors tried to engage the sword masters. The slayers were assaulted by two chariots and the cavalry and killed just a few elves, while dying in throves, and here I commited my second mistake: I forgot the slayer pirats rules of their stinky breath giving the enemies -1 to hit. Way fewer slayers would otherwise have died and I am pretty sure they would have survived till the end of the game. This way they were wiped out in turn 4.

 

Everything culminated in turn 5: my two remaining regimental blocks where assaulted from all sides. My dwarf lord jumped on his oath stone and issued a challenge, but there was not even a champion to reply to it, and because he stood on the stone he couldn`t even move into contact with the attackers in the flank and rear. Sad. Well, I resigned without fighting that last combat, because it was a totally lost cause.

 

Besides my two errors (not reforming the thunderers on the left flank and forgetting the slayer pirates rules) I didn't do much wrong, but I was totally outmaneuvered by the pasky elfen cavalry and chariots with their movement of 9, and I should have sticked to my first list, which had 4 bolt throwers with mostly S7 ... but I decided against it because I wanted to play a more "normal" looking dwarf throng with some nice, deep regiments. And while probably not game breaking, the fumble of my thunderers on the right flank (five hits, zero wounds) could also have changed things up a bit.

 

But I am not bitter, this was the first game in a lot of years and well, this is the kind of experiences that you have to make in order to git gud, right? 

[Thunderförge]

Ouch, four chariots and four bolt throwers!

You would have thought an Oathstone would help rather than hinder when attacked on all four sides, but I guess it has it’s drawbacks.

Will you get a rematch?

Thanks for posting the report!

[Akumakaji]

My thoughts exactly ^^ 

 

Yeah, we both had a lot of fun, laughed our butt off at the "friendly hate" that developed during the course of the game (the snark remarks that we threw back and forth, while still remaining respectful at each other). We also both caught the WHFB bug and are eager to play again, but we might both change our armies. I think I will try my Khorn deamons next, and I think my friend will field his ogre kingdoms. I never played them before, so I will mostly go in blind. And while its always fun to field a Bloodthirster, it seldom makes it into melee, but so often gets shot down.