Hello, and welcome to another episode of Relentless. This was my third game of the day (see the other two summarized briefly here), and it was a bit rushed, so photos will be in short supply. However, for reasons I’ll mention afterwards, I thought I’d write this one up properly.

This was a run-in with my old nemesis, Geist. After some rough early games against his VC, I’d had a pretty good run against his Dark Elves back in 7th, but this was our first meeting in 8th, and my first matchup in 8th against the DE. Let’s take a look at what he had:

Dreadlord: Whip of Agony, Pendant of Khaleth, Blood Armor, Shield, Sea Dragon Cloak, Pencil-thin facial hair
Supreme Sorcererss: Lvl 4, You’ll Never Guess which Lore, 4+ Ward, Power Scroll, high vocal register
Master: Sword of Might, 2 Null stones, pants with the seat cut out
Master BSB: 1+ re-rollable save, Ruffled man-blouse
Death Hag: Cauldron, Rune of Khaine, Manbane, raspberry beret
30 Warriors w/Repeater Crossbows, shields, full command, abundantly styled locks
4 x 5 Little Red Corvette riders, spears, repeater crossbows
2 x War Hydras, trenchcoat/speedo combo

The concept here is a main block with enough characters to make things uncomfortable for any chargers (and the dreadlord to challenge out anything hitty), dark riders to go get war machines, and hydras and sorceress to run loose and do damage. The cauldron buffs as needed.

I was running the same list as I have been, acknowledging that it has short comings, but wanting to work through those as best I could. You can take a gander here:

Dwarf Lord, Great weapon, shield bearers, Rune of Resistance, Stone, Preservation, MR of Spite - 266 points
Runesmith, Shield, Rune of Stone, Spellbreaker x 2 - 127
Thane, BSB, Strollaz, Rune of Guarding - 175
Thane, Great Weapon, Rune of Stone, MR of Challenge - 99
Dragonslayer - 50
25 Dwarf warriors, shields, full command - 250
25 Dwarf warriors, shields, full command - 250
19 Longbeards, shields, full command, rune of battle - 278
10 Rangers (warrior variety), veteran, musician, great weapons - 125
19 Hammerers, shields, full command, MR of Grungni - 327
12 Slayers - 132
Grudgethrower, engineer, rune of accuracy, burning, and penetration - 150
Cannon, engineer, rune of forging -140
Organ Gun - 120
Gyrocopter - 140

We diced up the scenario and got Dawn Assault. Deployment wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t great either. Geist rolled every unit as a “you pick it” or center, so had no splitting up issues to deal with. I ended up with slayers and one block of warriors about 15” away from my main force on my far left, and everything else in the middle.

Here’s how things were looking:

Don’t I usually have more units than this?

Oh, there they are.

The Dark Elves rolled up Purple Sun (booooooo!), Spirit Leech, Soulblight, and Doom & Darkness.

My plan was to hurt or cripple the hydras with shooting, then push through to the crossbows with multiple units and res them out. Simple, but should do the trick. I was also happy to counter the 5 shades with a defensive placement with my rangers, protecting my artillery.

Turn Strollaz/Vanguard

I rolled forward and Dark Riders came rocketing back at me.

First turn was to the Dark Elves on anything but a 6 and they nabbed it.

Turn One

The main unit holds in position since I’ve advanced into range with Strollaz, while both hydras run forward, and the suicide Level 4 runs out on his own too. One unit of dark riders is able to slip through to get into easy 2nd turn charge range of my organ gun, and on the right the shades and another set of riders are ready to pepper my grudgethrower over the heads of my rangers.

Next up is, as we all know, The Purple Sun phase. The lone Dark Elf on foot starting singing something.

“I always wanted to cause you lots of sorrow.
I always wanted to make you up and run.
I only wanted to see you standing,
I only wanted to see you standing in the…”

PURPLE SUN!!!!

Using the Dark Elf ability to use as many dice as you want, and combined with a power scroll, he got an automatic irresistible top-tier purple sun right off the bat with his 7 pool dice. Mercifully, it misfired, and the drift barely missed one of the hydras. The miscast was deflected by the 4+ ward.

50 dark rider and shade shots killed one artillery crew, though the main unit dropped 6 hammerers with some impressive marksmanship.

All in all, though? Got off really, really easy.

You’re in for it now, you androgynous pop stars!

I started things by charging rangers into the 5 shades, who killed two with stand and shoot. Otherwise I pushed up with blocks to keep the pressure on, knock down some hydras and get through to the big money prize (I felt confident I could break the unit in the back and chase them off the board).

Unfortunately the shooting phase was horrible- the grudgethrower misfired, and the cannon undershot, leaving both hydras unscathed. I had set up the gyro to block the riders from charging my organ gun, but got lured by the soft target and blasted them anyways, wiping them out.

The rangers lost two men to the shades, but killed 4, breaking the last one. Unfortunately a 4” overrun fell just short of the dark riders, and I had to worry about them moving free next turn.

A disappointing first round, but I’d gotten off light in the first turn, so I should still be good, right?

Turn 2

Wrong.

I used MR of Challenge to keep the hydra out of my general’s flank (though this would have been relatively okay in retrospect). This meant I took a fully healthy hydra into my hammerers and longbeards. Dark riders continued to skim around to get shots at my artillery, with one unit slipping around my rangers to point blank with my grudgethrower. The Dark Elf formerly known as Prince shimmied around for an encore of his hit single.

Fortunately, his mic had burned out, and there weren’t enough power dice to fire it off irresistibly, so a spellbreaker stopped things nicely.

Shooting was pretty lax as well, with scattered casualties.

That left the combat phase, where I learned that hydras (particularly unwounded hydras) had only gotten better. Between thunderstomp and breath weapon, my hammerers were wiped out, while my longbeards were reduced to only 12 models. The hammerers got 3 wounds through, and the longbeards landed one, but it was small consolation. The hydra on my left zoomed past any potential counter charge and headed for my organ gun.

Things were now officially bad, but I still thought I could recover. The exposed hydra had already taken 3 wounds and I had 3 war machines available to shoot it down. My lord’s unit was still very healthy and might be able to do enough damage to the main Dark Elf unit to pull things back.

So away I went in to my Turn 2. Rangers swift reformed to come back after the dark riders that had slipped past, and my units on the left both chased off the other two stacks of dark riders, but failed charges made it less and less likely that they’d get a chance to get involved. The gyro whipped around to block the dark riders from getting into my GT, while my dragonslayer stepped into the path of the rampaging hydra in case shooting proved ineffective.

Then shooting proved ineffective. The grudgethrower missed by a mile, and the cannon failed to wound. Disappointed to not be able to blast away the dark riders in my back field and turned the organ gun on the hydra, blowing myself sky-high. That’ll show him.

Combat was a little more reasonable now that the hydra lacked a breath weapon and hatred, so we traded wounds back and forth, though it looked like the longbeards would probably end up dead before they could get the hydra.

Turn 3

Dark riders charged my gyro, and the hydra charged the dragonslayer (here’s hoping…). Otherwise, fast cav did their fast cav thing, and the Artist crawled seductively around my lord’s block while birds flew through the frame in slow motion.

The little man pulled nine dice for the magic phase and threw them all at the big purple sun again, getting another IF. This one didn’t do me the courtesy of misfiring, and ran through my Lord’s warriors, the longbeards, and the hydra.

Without the protection of the Hammerer’s MR of Grungni, the hammerers took a few more casualties from repeater fire, while the dark Elves sang about “winning like they were up by 1999”.

My longbeards no longer had combat to worry about, though they were also in no state to actually fight anyone. The gyro took a wound for its efforts, failed to cause any back and couldn’t get the 7 to stay in the fight, allowing an overrun into my GT. The dragonslayer couldn’t find his groove. He needed an unlikely 2 wounds to drop the beast, but only scored one, and that was regenerated. The hydra took its post combat reform to face the flank of my warriors still trying to get back in the fight.

Here’s a picture of this train wreck:

Okaaay. Now we might be done for.

I didn’t concede, but new I was just fighting to not get massacred at this point. Rangers managed to chase off dark riders to allow another misfire from the GT at the hydra. The cannon couldn’t save itself with a grapeshot, killing only one dark rider before getting overrun. Up the middle I tried charging the free-roaming Purple Sun machine, but he just fled and then cast again (and again and again) nearly wiping out my last warrior unit (with another IF Purple Sun) while they were getting charged by a hydra. In the end, I was down to a few slayers trying to score the last wound off the cauldron, and a couple rangers in the opposite corner.

Massacre to the Dark Elves

Uuuugh. Post game thoughts-

Unit of the match: Um. Rangers? They got the shades, and kept the artillery alive and shooting (ineffectively)
Chump of the match: Collectively earned by the war machines

Observations:

Felt obliged to write this one up- I've been detailing a lot of victories lately, and feel obliged to point out that it's not all coming up roses in Relentless land. This vaporized a 7 game winning streak, and was my worst loss in a long, long time.
Learned in 7th not to advance against double hydras until I was sure I had one down. Thought that in 8th I might be beefy enough to drop them- but I was plenty wrong. First round of combat an unwounded hydra with breath weapon is devastation.
Probably need to make the cannon flaming. I’ve relied on the GT in the past, but the cannon is a more reliable (usually) opening shot.
Definitely, definitely needed to deal with the Purple Sun man. Maybe set up a charge with the gyro to keep him from fleeing. Dark Elves and their casting rules make IF much more likely.
Also need to take another look at a flaming great weapon on my lord. The magic attacks and flames would have given me another tool.
Should have considered MR of Challenge on the caster- it would have bought me at least one turn of no magic…