This is the second part of my Cancon report. You can find the first part here.
Game 2 - Break Point
Nick Kylling - Warriors of Chaos
- Chaos Lord with Full plate armour, Shield, Chaos Steed, Mark of Chaos Undivided, Ogre Blade, 2x Favour of the Gods, Enchanting Aura
- Sorcerer Lord (Level 4, Battle Magic) with Heavy armour, Chaos Steed, Mark of Tzeentch, Spell Familiar, Infernal Puppet, Ruby Ring of Ruin
- Sorcerer Lord (Level 4, Daemonology) with Heavy armour, Chaos Steed, Mark of Tzeentch, Rod Of The Damned, Lore Familiar
- Aspiring Champion (Battle Standard Bearer) with Lance, Heavy armour, Shield, Chaos Steed, War Banner, Favour of the Gods
- 10 Chaos Knights with Lances, Shields, Heavy armour, Mark of Chaos Undivided, Full Command, Banner of the Dark Powers
- 7 Chaos Knights with Lances, Shields, Heavy armour, Mark of Tzeentch, Champion
- 5 Chaos Warhounds
- 6 Chosen Chaos Knights with Lances, Shields, Full plate armour, Mark of Chaos Undivided, Drilled, Standard Bearer, Champion with Brazen Collar
- Dragon Ogre with Great weapon, Heavy armour
- Dragon Ogre with Great weapon, Heavy armour
- Dragon Ogre with Great weapon, Heavy armour
- Gigantic Spawn of Nurgle
So I was only one game into the tournament, and I was already too high up on the tables. Nick had devised a far more competent list than mine, and it didn't look like a great match-up for my army. The Bloodthirster was still scary and the Daemon Prince was good at armoured targets, but my units... Also Nick's army was absolutely loaded with anti-magic tricks, so that was likely to interfere with anything I might be able to do there. I celebrated this by rolling the worst spells I possibly could for my backup wizard, and off we went.
We were both setting up in a pretty cagey fashion, but I then made use of vanguard as much as I dared.
I lost the roll-off for the first turn and the Dragon Ogre hurried forward as quickly as he could to block any cheeky advance by the Fleshhounds.
The line moved up a bit and then the magic missiles started to hammer away. My Daemon Prince did a fair job of intercepting the worst of it. That's a Pillar of Fire working its way past the house near the centre.
There was another Dragon Ogre lurking over on my left flank.
I think Nick had deliberately sat at extreme range for the charge of my Bloodcrushers, which made them take an impetuous test. I'm pretty sure they failed to restrain, but then made the charge.
The Fleshhounds had little choice but to flank the Dragon Ogre and hope to do enough damage that they forced a break test. The Furies managed to march up out of the arc of the Chosen Knights. Nick had forgotten that you can't march block flying units - he was relying on them having terrible leadership.
I decided that messing around with the Bloodthirster would be counterproductive. He needed to get involved, and quickly. The second Sorcerer Lord was lurking in that Tzeentch Chaos Knight unit up the back, so that was the target.
The Flamers tried and failed to make themselves useful against the Spawn, which of course meant they were getting dangerously close.
The Bloodcrushers made Nick take a ton of armour saves thanks to their impact hits, but unfortunately those don't have a save modifier and he passed them all. They brought down a few Knights with their other attacks, but then got pretty savaged in return (mainly thanks to the Chaos Lord). I actually thought they might get wiped out, but a single model managed to survive and get shoved back.
The Fleshhound gamble failed. They rolled poorly, resulting in a single wound. They took a few in return, and were now badly exposed to the Chosen Knights.
The Flamers immediately paid the price for trying to make themselves at all useful in the game. The Spawn went straight through them.
The Chaos Knights had lances, so had restrained pursuit so that they could immediately charge the remaining Bloodcrusher. The Herald nearly died to magic (I suspect it was the Pillar of Fire managing to skip through multiple targets), but then he was not long for this world anyway with the Chaos Lord bearing down on him...
Well, that was predictable.
This was the one thing I had managed to make tougher for Nick to figure out. In the end the Sorcerer Lord decided to bail from the unit and head into his backlines whilst the Chaos Knights marched forward to get out of the Bloodthirster's arc. Maybe I could have avoided that with better angles, but I might have given him an escape out to the left, which would have been worse. At least this way, the Bloodletters would get into the game a bit.
The Bloodletters did indeed charge the Knights, despite the Dragon Ogre bearing down behind them. The Daemon Prince went into the flank, because I was not at all sure the Bloodletters would get the job done.
The Flamers had perished on the charge and the Spawn was now into the Fiends. I cheated by casting Gift of Mutation into combat to drop its toughness. I only realised after this game (or it might have been part way through it) that most of my potentially useful spells have no range and can't be cast into combat. Don't worry, my cheating didn't help me. I couldn't kill the Spawn - just dent and scare it a bit. The Bloodcrusher of course perished, and the Knights carried on into the waiting Herald. At this point he was basically there to buy me time. Same as the last Fury blocking the Chosen Knights, given the rest of the unit had been fried with magic. Note the absence of the Fleshhounds, who no doubt at this point were in a better place...
The flank was looking pretty grim.
The Herald speedbump did me little good - about the best I could have hoped for was the enemy unit failing to restrain an overrun test and heading way out of position. That didn't happen, so they were free to line me up for their turn. The Tzeentch Knights were gone, I think run down by the Daemon Prince. I had forgotten how the pursuit rules worked and rather pointlessly chased with the Bloodletters too. They were now out of position (although being in position to face the charge wouldn't have been much better).
The one consolation I had was that the Bloodthirster was right there, making the whole experience a lot more scary for Nick. He couldn't be avoided. The Bloodletters died in a single round of combat. The Knights restrained the overrun (again) and the Dragon Ogre carried on into the Bloodthirster to waste his time. Stoopid Dragon Ogre!
The right flank crumbled at about this point. The Fiends got close to killing the Spawn, but only because of my highly illegal use of magic.
I can't actually remember what happened here. Obviously the Bloodthirster obliterated the Dragon Ogre, but it doesn't look like Nick charged the Knights into him. Maybe he was trying to weaken him with magic first, or looking to roll something convenient on the Eye of the Gods table (I know the Chaos Lord was +2 Strength by the time they fought). The Furies are in the flank, so possibly I stopped him charging. But how the Furies were still there when the Chaos Lord could have shoved through and ended them... I don't know. There's no way we won combat there.
Nick had been trying to knock the Daemon Prince off the table with magic missiles, but it wasn't working. I sent him over to scare the hell out of the reinforcements Nick was about to get from the flank.
Go on, I dare you... He didn't dare. The Spawn was blocking the Chosen Knights from charging, and it itself didn't fancy a go at him. He might have done if I hadn't knocked so many wounds off with the Fiends.
At that point everything else in the game kind of ceased to matter, because the Chaos Lord led his Knights into the Bloodthister and the great duel we had been waiting for was upon us. The Bloodthirster bellowed a challenge, but the Lord's kinky aura meant he was swinging first. He swung his Strength 9 Ogre Blade, but could only manage 5 wounds of the Bloodthirster's total of 6. In return the daemon hammered him, Nick failed a ton of saves, and he took 8 wounds out of his total of 4... The Lord was dead!
The Chaos Knights failed to get the message about what had happened to their Lord, and stayed where they were. I then spun the Daemon Prince around and hit them in the rear. He was well qualified to carve up cavalry, but rolled poorly and only dropped a couple. The Bloodthirster thought all sorts of exciting thoughts about splitting attacks and killing everyone, but I realised the BSB had to go, and didn't trust the dice to do the job. In the end all of the attacks went into the BSB. But because I had decided not to challenge at the start, the Sorcerer Lord was still able to fight back. He failed to cast his assailment spell, but then managed to use his hand weapon to knock off the Bloodthirster's last wound. An ignominious end, all things considered.
The Knights and Sorcerer Lord then fled, outrunning the pursuit of the Daemon Prince, failed to rally (needing double 1s), and just when it looked like I'd get them, the other Sorcerer Lord finally worked out how to throw Fireballs properly and he incinerated the Daemon Prince where he stood. That was it - I had nothing left.
It was a weird game. It was apparently pretty early on that I was not well equipped to take down Nick's units with mine, and his magic (both offensively and defensively) was really stacked. The Bloodthirster was my real ace in the hole, but knowing he could just die without attacking when he caught up to the Chaos Lord made things a bit scary. I struggled to help manage the situation with my rapidly dwindling units (the Flamers were entirely my fault. I should have been content to keep them out of harm's way as much as possible, but I was trying to push things because I felt like I was struggling uphill).
Having said all that, I nearly pulled a more respectable result out of the fire at the end. When the Chaos Lord fell, I was a real chance to kill Nick's most expensive unit and 3 of his 4 characters. The Bloodthirster not challenging was a dumb mistake, but at that point I was still thinking my 2 models would basically carve up most of what was left in a single round. I only really thought properly about the saves on Nick's characters a bit later, and lost my nerve. It was a bit unlucky to lose the Bloodthirster the way I did, and for the Daemon Prince to die instead of getting to grips with all those fleeing points. All things being equal, it probably should have been the badly wounded Bloodthirster finally succumbing to magic at the death.
The Break Point scenario was a bit dumb and didn't help the result - it pushed a loss into a worse loss, without Nick having to do a thing differently. It meant the final tally was 3200-1246 against me, which was a thumping.
It blows my mind that one can field 3 Lords (two of which level 4 sorcerers), a Battle standard bearer, 23 Chaos Knights and three Dragon Ogres, plus whatever the spawn is, under 3000 points. Was his list the same points as yours? Maybe I'm missing something, sorry.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is generally expected that armies in tournaments are of the same point level :)
DeleteNick's list was no doubt stacked heavily in characters. He stretched things like the dragon ogres by having multiple units of one, rather than bigger units. There were not a lot of wasted points in his list - it was far more carefully tuned than the list I had.