Cancon 2015 Report - Part 7

This is the final part of my Cancon report. You can find the previous game here.

Game 8 - Battle Line
Sarah Mathews, Wood Elves

• Glade Lord on Forest Dragon with Armour of Silvered Steel, Talisman of Preservation, Ironcurse Icon, Starfire Shafts, Asrai Spear, Asrai Longbow
• The Sisters of Twilight on Ceithin-Har (Forest Dragon)
• 6 Glade Riders with Musician, Standard Bearer, Spears, Longbows, Starfire Shafts
• 6 Glade Riders with Musician, Standard Bearer, Spears, Longbows, Hagbane Tips
• 6 Glade Riders with Musician, Standard Bearer, Spears, Longbows, Hagbane Tips
• 6 Glade Riders with Musician, Standard Bearer, Spears, Longbows, Trueflight Arrows
• 6 Wild Riders with Standard, Banner of Swiftness
• 6 Wild Riders with Standard, Banner of Eternal Flame
• 6 Wild Riders with Standard
• 3 Warhawk Riders
• Great Eagle

Swedish Score: 14.7

Wood Elves. Wood Elves with no glade guard and no magic. Oh, and 2 dragons! How awesome is that? Of course, this meant another list with no BSB and (in this case) no magic at all. I guess when you’re spending all your character allowance on a couple of big monsters, sacrifices have to be made…

No dragons for the first 2 days, and then 3 in the final 2 games?

With all those ambushing glade riders, Sarah didn’t have any core troops to deploy at the start of the game. It messes with your head a little wondering where all those units are going to appear, but I took it as a positive. If I could get the first turn, I would have 2 turns to take advantage of an under-strength enemy. Of course, she had the bonus on the roll-off for having finished deployment first, but somehow I won the roll anyway. An excellent start!

Deployment after vanguards.

Some of those wild riders moved up a little bit.

Aww, it's not so far. Just don't trip on the gigantic pen!

I then demonstrated my apparent mastery of dice rolling by charging the fiends into some wild riders who had vanguarded to within 21”. Yes, I rolled an 11. But I had swiftstride, so it was totally average. Totally.

Moving on up. The keeper may be looking for trouble a bit.

The fiends dealt pretty handily with the wild riders (they’re not that scary when they’re not charging and you’re fiends) and overran into an eagle behind them.

Tally ho! 1 wild rider unit down, 2 more to go.

The fiends were promptly flanked by one of the remaining wild rider units, whilst the other charged the front of my keeper, who was standing on the hill right in front of them, looking to force things to happen before all the glade riders turned up. The fiends wore the counter-charge pretty well and held their position (though they let the eagle live for some reason), but the keeper suffered worse. I figured I might take a couple of wounds, but expected my WS and toughness to keep it to a minimum, and basically fight them to a draw. Instead I took 4 wounds after break tests, and only killed 2 of them. Not really an inspiring performance at all.

We got this.

Oww! I thought I had this too.

Could be worse. Only 1 dragon made it. Those warhawks hurt, though.

There were other charges in turn 1. In fact, everything Sarah had on the table charged. The bloodletters had moved up fairly quickly, and this drew the attention of the warhawk riders and both dragons! Fortunately the lord’s dragon failed the charge, leaving the Sisters of Twilight and the warhawks to work it out for themselves. And they did plenty of damage. My unit took 8 wounds, despite my champion challenging the dragon. Fortunately I was still steadfast, and then (for the only time in the tournament) I rolled a double 1 for the break test! So all the dead bloodletters got back up, including my dead champion. Mad skillz.

Ow, 3 warhawks are good for 7 bloodletters? Really?

Ha! Double 1 bogusness! We're baaaack...

My keeper was in trouble, though things were otherwise going pretty well. I charged the beasts into the flank of the wild riders flanking my fiends, I put the daemonettes into the flank of the wild riders killing the keeper, and the soul grinder went into the flank of the Twilight Twins whilst the seekers hit the flank of the warhawks.

All in.

Before the keeper died (because this seemed a real danger), I figured it should really contribute. So it finally killed something with Pit of Shades - the lord’s dragon. Man, it was so easy. Why didn’t it work like that in other games? I also dropped the strength of the Sisters of Twilight by 3 using the Enfeebling Foe.

As it turned out the keeper didn’t die that turn. Without the charge bonuses, the wild riders couldn’t finish it off. Both units of wild riders perished, as did the eagle. The soul grinder messed up trying to kill the dragon though, and the bloodletters still got a bit smashed up by the low-strength dragon. 

Rescued! But still mostly dead.

This rescue is less convincing. Not challenging so I could have a go with the soul grinder really hurt my combat res.

In the following round the seekers remembered why they were there and suddenly scythed down the warhawk riders whilst the soul grinder continued to mess about and fail to kill the dragon. Unfortunately the crippled keeper didn’t make it - the glade riders all turned up at once, and mowed it down with many fancy arrows. Dead again. Boo!

Where did my greater daemon go this time?

In my turn I decided the soul grinder was showing no interest in taking care of business, and sent the daemonettes in alongside. Over the next few rounds I kept killing one sister and failing to kill the other one (at various times they were both dead, but not at the same time) before the dice finally got it right and killed them both at once. This was when the dragon admitted defeat and broke, but it barely outran me and I got the next turn, running it down with the charge. Unfortunately my bloodletters perished due to the tardiness of my dice working out how to kill the Sisters.

The daemonettes arrive to help, but take their time getting the job done.

Yeah, you better run!

The wood elf lord pranced around a bit near Sarah’s table edge, and my first efforts to scare him off with seekers didn’t work (my unit kind of shamed itself and got thrashed). The one to land the telling blow was the soul grinder, which scurried in and stomped him to death.

The seekers decide a lord who is only waving a spear around is worth a crack. Especially when he's worth about 700 victory points.

The rest of the game was a dance as some of my units tried to get to the glade riders before admitting it was hopeless, and the horrors did absolutely nothing with repeated castings of Blue Fire of Tzeentch. They did more damage to themselves with a miscast, and were very nearly shot to death at the end. 

I messed about for a while trying to trap or magic those glade riders, but they were too hard to catch.

I had killed all the fancy stuff, but couldn’t lay a claw on the core units. My keeper was dead (again), and the seekers didn’t make it. But all in all it was a good effort.

Result: 14-6

In the end I finished the game on 4 wins and 4 losses, with 83/160 battle points. It was pretty much the definition of breaking even, without in any way distinguishing myself. Given where I had been standing at the start of day 3 however, it felt like a lucky escape. I enjoyed the tournament, but don’t think I’ll be borrowing daemons again in the near future. Certainly not with a keeper of secrets, anyway.

Thanks to all my opponents and the TOs, and thanks for reading.