I played a local tournament today. It was a single day event, so three games. I didn't take pics or anything, but I'll give a rundown.

My List -

Lord, Shieldbearers, Iron 2, Warding 3, Great Weapon
BSB, Iron 2, MR of Gromril, Great Weapon
Runesmith, Spell Breaker, Stone and Shield
Runesmith, Spell Eater, Stone and Shield

24 Warriors, Shields
39 Warriors, Great Weapons
29 Hammerers, Groth, 2 Speed and one Fire on the Keeper of the Gate

Gyrocopter
Cannon, Forge, Fire
Cannon, Forge,
Organ Gun, Forge and Accuracy
Organ Gun, Accuracy

Game 1 - Warriors of Chaos.

One of our top local players brought his usual Troll based warrior list. He had -

Nurgle Deamon Prince, all the fixings, Death Level 4
BSB on a Deamonic Mount, Stuff.
Throgg

Two units of 8 trolls or so.
2 Chariots
2 Chimeras
Hell Cannon

I think that's it?

Anyway, the board we get has this massive house in the dead center of the board. Deployment is battle line. I deploy on the left hand side, casteling up because I don't feel confident against those trolls and the monster mash he's got. Not to mention the chariots. My shields are on the left edge (more or less), hammerers in the center, and great weapons to the right. Artillery is lined up on a good hill behind them.

He deploys conservatively, which may have been a mistake. He uses the Wal Mart of the Old World to conceal many of his monsters, though the Deamon Prince is vulnerable (but screened by trolls) to cannon fire. I use a hill to put my cannons into a good firing position around the bigass building as best I can, and then send my Organ Guns out right to help cover that approach.

Things are pretty tame throughout. I'm back against the wall, so combat isn't happening until he gets to me. On turn one, I use the flaming cannon to pick the Charmed Shield off the Nurgle Prince, but the other cannon comes up short. He moves trolls behind the building and up a bit towards my left flank.

He is pretty careful about movement. My gyro gets into his backfield and starts harassing his Chariot there (sadly, the bomb failed to get the job done). I kill a couple trolls with shooting. Eventually he exposes both Chimerae and the Deamon prince on my right, all three of them threatening my Great Weapons (who are stubborn from Groth, but can't withstand more than a turn or two from all three. Luckily, on my turn, shooting goes gonzo. I one shot both the Deamon Prince and one of the Chimerae.

From there, he basically hides to preserve points. His Hell Cannon scatters wide every turn, and with his only wizard down, he can't get any Purple Suns off. I win without losing any units.

Game 2 - Skaven.

He had -

Seer on a Bell
2 Warp Lightning Cannons
2 Doom Wheels
Unit of Clan Rats
Unit of Storm Vermin
Unit of Clan Rats
A crap load of wizards
Doom Rocket guy
Weapon Teams
Storm Banner
Night Runners

The Scenario was Dawn Attack. We rolled for deployment. His forces were spread out pretty wide between center, right, and left. I wound up having everything either center or right. I deployed my infantry forward, knowing that I needed to get to the Bell and it's unit directly across from me, and wanting good lines of fire on the various must-kill targets for my cannons, once the Storm Banner went down. It took until Turn 4 for the damn banner to come down, but I did manage some shots regardless.

Early on, he IF'd the Dreaded 13th on my Hammerers, killing 10. He did it again the following turn. He then hammered them with warp lightning and Scorch over the course of the game, killing them to a man and leaving the Lord and BSB without a retinue. One Doom Wheel charged my Shields, who killed it in combat (it had taken some wounds from Organ Gun fire). My Great Weapons and Lord+BSB charged the Bell unit and wiped it out, killing the bell. Cannon fire had previously slain the Grey Seer. Terrain gummed up his other units. He did manage to get his Night Runners into an Organ Gun, killing it. They were, however, panicked away by the other Organ Gun on the following turn. Cannons killed the Warp Lightning cannons over time.

The 6 wound lord made his runic allotment worth every penny, however, when the last remaining warp lightning cannon hit with a blast and did 5 wounds! He lived, barely.

With another large victory for the dwarfs, it was time to try for first place !

Game 3 - High Elves.

This opponent is probably San Antonio's best general. I knew I was in for it. He had -

6 units of 10 Archers
30 or So White Lions with the banner.
24 or so Phoenix Guard
The Level 2 Caster who gets the base spell from each lore, book of hoeth, and some other magic gear.
2 Eagles
4 Bolt Throwers.
2 units of 6 Sisters of Avalorn
Prince with the big bow and a potion of Strength.

His MO for the tournament was shoot the crap out of things and then clean up with the elite elf units. And it had worked well for him.

We were back on the table with the damn Wal Mart! The Scenario was Meeting Engagement, and sadly I won the roll to deploy. This sucked, because I had to put my whole army down without knowing where he'd go. His whole Archery battery could then deploy well away from Organ Gun range and wreak havok. If I deployed too close to the line, I would be dealing with High Elf elites in a counter charge early on. That probably would have been wiser, since I had more total bodies and solid hitting power, and Stubborn. But the White Lions were totally immune to my war machines. I had but one Gyro, and I assumed that he wouldn't live long enough to do a number on the lions without getting gunned down by Bolt Throwers.

The game wasn't terribly exciting for either of us. I wound up shifting the Organ Guns into range of his archers. His Archers and magic focused on my Great Weapons, burning them down heavily. He used his Great Eagles to block my hammerers from jumping into the huge building (which they could then use to cover a lot of ground and get into his archery units). My Gyro ran one archer group off the board before finally falling to a hail of fire.

Everything was actually going well for me. I hadn't lost much in terms of units yet, and had managed to kill a couple archer units, two bolt throwers, and an eagle.

Then my super reliable artillery decided to double misfire and die two bloody times in a row. Lost a cannon and an Organ Gun to double misfire and a 1 or 2 on the result. Sigh. Double sigh. So frustrating. A couple of flee reactions later, and he wound up on top by about 250 points or so. I was ahead until then.

So, even with all the bells and whistles of our new artillery, they can still give their points up. One nice thing - I do painting for my last opponent on commission quite a bit. He picked up a Gyro kit with some of his prize support and used it as a payment on a commission I'm working on. So, I'll have another.

Thoughts -

So, why did I take the list I took?

I'm really struggling with playing an army without a proper general. Every time I build a list I look at my Bugman's king and say "but...he's so cool!" and I wind up taking him. He had very little impact on the tournament to be honest, really only bringing home the bacon in game two against skaven against the Bell. We need a real general, and weak runesmith just doesn't cut it for me. I may have to go with a thane, but there's not enough runic allotment to make a thane worth it. Ah well.

I took rune up Organ Guns because I wanted to see how they worked in tandem. I must say, they rock. I know I blew a lot of points on them, but they were awesome (until the one with forging self detonated....ugh).

Two cannons are still two cannons. Solid, reliable, good at what they do (and also happy to disappoint from time to time).

My hammerers never once saw combat all day. Game one, I never got close. Game two, they were wiped out by IF'd magic. Game three, they never got close (too much shooting, etc). Sad, but they did provide stubborn. Then again, I never lost a combat (I really only had two or three close combats of consequence all day, though).

I didn't take Gungni on the banner and paid for it. I need to just get over the notion that I need a Tanky BSB and take the damn rune. I hate it, because I have no hero that can really fight, and that's irritating on an aesthetic level. However, Grugni would have saved me a lot of pain in game three. I could have stayed castled up, forced him to shoot through more bodies and would have made more saves against his shots.

Groth One Eye is excellent until you are forced to deploy strangely. Meeting engagement can screw it up, as can Dawn Attack. Just a thought.

Magic is SOOOOO irritating. I feel mostly helpless in the magic phase now, knowing full well my dispel runes are even more precious than they ever were. Opponents now get 1-2 spells a turn where they used to fight to get one. It's annoying because I still skip that phase in my own turn.

And, I'm a little bored with my play style, and need to just get aggressive. I don't know how I'll make it work, but I need to. I want to go fight, instead of shoot and wait. Vanguard here I come, I guess.