Big Old Grudges Aftermath - Part 5

This is the fifth part of my account of the recent Big Old Grudges tournament. You can find the previous part here, or go back to the start here.

Round 5: Encirclement (Strategic Locations 4; Baggage Train)
Tim Stewart - Skaven

• Grey Seer (General; Level 4, Elementalism) on Screaming Bell with Warp Condenser
• Plague Priest (Level 1, Battle Magic) on Plague Furnace with Plague Censer, Warpstone Amulet
• Skaven Warlord with Halberd, Heavy Armour, Shield, Skavenbrew
• Skaven Chieftain Battle Standard Bearer with Halberd, Heavy Armour, Shield, Banner of Verminous Scurrying
• Warlock Engineer (Level 1, Elementalism) with Warplock Musket
• 23 Stormvermin with Halberds, Heavy Armour, Shields, Full Command, Grand Banner of Superiority
• Weapon Team (Ratling Gun)
• 24 Clanrats with Light Armour, Shields, Full Command
• Weapon Team (Ratling Gun)
• 24 Clanrats with Light Armour, Shields, Full Command
• Weapon Team (Ratling Gun)
• 10 Giant Rats
• 10 Giant Rats
• 6 Warplock Jezzails
• Doomwheel
• Hell Pit Abomination
• Warp Lightning Cannon

Tim and I had travelled up from Melbourne together, and both of us had looked at some of the lists the night before the tournament and realised that we might have brought spoons to a gun fight. So it seemed inevitable that we would meet sooner or later. As it turned out, it was not on the bottom table as we might have suspected. Tim was on his way down the tables after a strong start, whereas I was working my way up after I struggled early. Happily I hadn't really run into any of those nastier lists on my way here, so things were going OK.

Mine was a pretty basic deployment. Cavalry on the flanks, infantry in the centre, huge lumbering monster aimed to squeeze through the gap next to the tower before the Bulls closed it off. You can't quite see it here, but the Hunter and his Sabretusks were out on my right flank, near the centre of the table.

Cancon 2023 - Game 4

This is the final part of my report of the recent tournament at Cancon 2023. You can find the previous part here.

We came now to the last game of the event, with it being a very relaxed schedule of 4 games over 2 days. Somehow I was undefeated up until this point, but now I would be playing the only Skaven player in the field. I remember games against Skaven being pretty rough...

Game 4 - Pitched Battle

Alex Johnston - Skaven

I'll be honest, I can't for the life of me work out where Alex spent his points. He had one million units, and I had finished deploying, gone to the bathroom and had a nap before he placed anything meaningful down on his side of the table. It was a very unusual army, and felt like it had made a lot of concessions in order to be palatable to the TOs. Just the one Ratling Gun, only a sensible amount of Warp Lightning... It's entirely possible the army was hundreds of points underweight, really. Anyway, this is what I remember, can guess, or can see from the photos...

• Warlord with Weeping Blade, Bands of Power, Heavy Armour, Enchanted Shield (probably - maybe he even had a hobo ward save)
• Chieftain with Battle Standard and not much else
• Warlock Engineer with Warp Energy Condenser, Supercharged Accumulator, Warp Blades, Storm Daemon, maybe a Dispel Scroll
• Warlock Engineer with Warp Energy Condenser, Supercharged Accumulator, Warp Blades, maybe a Dispel Scroll or two
• 20 Clanrats with Light Armour, Shields, Full Command, Ratling Gun
• 20 Clanrats with Light Armour, Shields, Full Command, Warpfire Thrower
• 20 Clanrats with Light Armour, Shields, Full Command, Warpfire Thrower
• 20 Skavenslaves
• 20 Skavenslaves
• 20 Skavenslaves
• 10 Night Runners
• 9 Night Runners
• Giant Rat Pack (6 rats and one packmaster)
• Giant Rat Pack (6 rats and one packmaster)
• Giant Rat Pack (6 rats and one packmaster)
• 6 Poison Wind Globadiers
• 2 Poison Wind Globadiers
• 2 Poison Wind Globadiers
• 5 Jezzails
• Warp-Lightning Cannon

Another table with no meaningful terrain, unfortunately. A river cutting the table apart, which was likely to be an impossible barrier for me to cross, but no trees and very little in the way of cover.

Lores of Magic: Skaven Spells of Plague

Yesterday we did a quick walk-through of the Skaven Spells of Ruin. Now it's time to discuss the other Lore in the Skaven book – the Spells of Plague.

As with the Spells of Ruin, there are no Lore Attributes, boosted casting costs or clear spell types to work with due to the book harking back to 7^th edition.

The Spells of Plague are the only ones available to Plague Priests, whilst Grey Seers and Vermin Lords can select them if they wish.

Lores of Magic: Skaven Spells of Ruin

OK, so the Skaven book has been around since 7^th edition, and I still haven't gotten around to talking about the Lores contained therein. Maybe I am lazy. Maybe I am forgetful. Maybe I am a perfect storm of both. Anyway, time to rectify that.

The Spells of Ruin are one of two separate Lores that can be found in the Skaven army book. It is the only Lore available to Warlock Engineers, whilst Grey Seers and Vermin Lords are able to take a mix of spells from the Spells of Ruin and Plague.

Being an old spell Lore, there is no such thing as boosted casting values for these spells. There is also no Lore Attribute, as this was another concept introduced with 8^th edition. Nor is there the clear distinction between spell types such as Augments or Direct Damage. This has caused confusion in the past, especially given that the general rules applying to all spells shifted slightly when the editions changed. So just bear with me...

Duelling Paintbrushes 2 - the violent finale

When we commenced Duelling Paintbrushes last month, it was suggested that at the end, participants would bring their painted 1000 point armies along and use them against each other in a game. This idea was not abandoned, and on the weekend we got the chance to follow through on that plan. Thus was born Duelcon, which would consist of a round-robin event between Owen (of Terrain for Hippos), Drew (of Back in Drew's Day) and me - the only people that successfully painted at least 1000 points of Warhammer Fantasy during the challenge.

Owen got a little carried away and even devised a player pack of sorts for our little event, which you can see here (spoiler alert: it also contains the results). Note that the points limit was increased to 1150 points at Drew's request, because true to form he only read half of the original Duelling Paintbrushes terms and it didn't occur to him at the time that he might want magic items and the like for when he played with the finished 1000 point force.

Epic contest that this promised to be, we figured we would take some photos. I'm not going to go into a proper battle report for the games, but I'll let you know what was going on in the captions.

Here are the final lists:

Me: Empire Stirland

• Wizard Lord (Level 4, Lore of Fire) with Talisman of Preservation, Dispel Scroll
• Warrior Priest with Great Weapon, Armour of Meteoric Iron
• Captain with Great Weapon, Full Plate Armour, Dragonhelm, Obsidian Trinket
• 41 Halberdiers with Standard, Musician (the Champion got sucked off to act as a Captain to help fill out the extra 150 points)
• 16 Crossbowmen with Standard
• 5 Pistoliers with Champion with Repeater Pistol
• Great Cannon

Drew: Orcs and Goblins (who fancy themselves as Wood Elves)

• Goblin Great Shaman (Level 3) with Dispel Scroll
• Black Orc BSB on Boar with Shield
• 30 Orc Arrer Boyz with Standard, Musician
• 20 Night Goblin Archers with Full Command, 3 Fanatics, Nets
• 6 Trolls
• Giant

Owen: Skaven of Clan Skitterclaw

• Warlord on Great Pox Rat with Talisman of Preservation, Weeping Blade
• Warlock Engineer (Level 1)
• 25 Clanrats with Spears, Shields, Full Command, Warpfire Thrower
• 25 Clanrats with Shields, Full Command, Poisoned Wind Mortar
• 20 Stormvermin with Shields, Full Command
• 3 Rat Ogres with 1 Packmaster
• Doomwheel

Game 1: Empire vs Orcs and Goblins

Game 1 deployment. The Pistoliers used Vanguard to move past the forest before the game commenced

When battle reports go wrong...

You sometimes hear people talking about the battle reports in White Dwarf, and how they have to play the games multiple times in order to get a game worth talking about. I used to think this sounded like poor planning - surely there are plenty of games that are close enough to be worthy of a report. A decent match-up of players and armies should ensure you don't have too many blow-outs, right? Well...

This report was going to be for the benefit of those who like to see a more competitive game. Chris Cousens and Ben Leopold are both currently in the top 10 of the national rankings, and they were using tournament-strength armies. So far so good, right? Apparently not. After setting everything up and preparing for a game worth talking about, the wheels came off Chris' wagon early on and there was no recovering. Chris tells me his army is a bit hit-and-miss. If that is the case, this game definitely goes into the "miss" basket.

Chris will be banned from battle reports until he promises to put in a better showing than he did here. Shame, shame, shame...