well, I suppose there are 2 distinct positives to your mom having a spontanious brain bleed. The first is that spontanious brain bleeds, while super scary, don't kill you, but the experience certainly leaves you and your family with a healthy dose of realism about the fragility of life, and preciousness of time together with those you love and care about. The second positive is that if you have siblings living overseas, these type of events tend to bring them back unexpectantly, and if things go well, as they did in this case, once the immediate family crisis has passed, the additional time they have in the States is bonus time you get to hang out with them. Thus did these events transpire to allow me the privlidge and honor of playing my Brother Joe [of "roll 'em up, roll 'em, em' up Jojo" and "thats just where we're at Brother Joe" fame]. Joe is here a short time, so this will probably be our only battle.
I was fielding my combat oriented dark elves that I posted here a while back. I am still learning how to use the new book effectively, and i have recently replaced my bolt throwers for mobile artillery in the form of two level 2 mages. Joe was fielding, for the first time, his Angelic Host Warriors of Chaos army. Obviously this army has a lot to still be done on it, so it was heavily proxied. Joe has posted many versions of that army on here, but this was the one with BA Chaos Lord on Disc, BSB on Disc with Banner of the Gods (125 pts) and 2 level 1 sorcerors. We were both excited to see how this army would play, and Joe was especially excited to get a little experience with the army prior to hillbilly.
The game got off to a great start by going absolutly old school, like 1998 old school, by taking place in the infamous Nietzel Dinning Room. we had 4 buildings, a nice forest, and a bridge to absolutly nowhere. the buildings were placed to my right in a diamond pattern sort of breaking up the right side of the board. The lone forest was to the left, in the middle of the battlefield. I won deployment, and joe started placing first. He planted a solid center from left to right of Mauraders, WarShrine, Dragon Ogres, Maruaders. Behind this was his BSB on disc, making this solid center stubborn. He misplaced his warriors and they ended up behind the marauders, and out of the main fighting action. His flank to my left had Knights, hounds, and sort of the left out warriors. To my right he had knights and hounds. His cheese dick move of the game in my opinion was starting his general perched on a chimney of the dwarf forge so that he could see the whole battle field with his flying movment. This guy was between the stubborn center and right side knights/hounds. I went for classic ben nietzel deployment of the warriors (with wizards) and blackguard in center, backed up by my chariot mounted BSB... which is really a unit i love. I kept my Cold One Knights in the center to support this group as a respone to his stubborn center placement, and the fact that the forest and buildings made a pocket in the middle that looked to be the crux of the fighting. To my left I placed some dark riders and chariot, and to my right i placed double dark riders out wide, my favorite. My harpies went behind my line. I plunked my shades behind building near his deployment on the right, so i could pop out and smoke his hounds, thus isolating his knights. I also dropped my general with my fast cav out right to put pressure on his general and/or the chaos knights out there. My dick cheese move of deployment was to pick up my knights to see if they could fit in a gap between the buildings. It was dumb, but i didn't place the terrain and was curious if they'd fit, i don't think it was very sporting on my part.
The game started with some jockeying. I went first and moved up to position myself for a big turn two. My two highlights were the shades popping out and making the hounds wish they'd come across michael vick on a bad day instead. I smoked them all. My sac dagger shadow mage also dropped pit of shades on Joe's Dragon Ogres killing one. Joe's turn he moved right into my face, with his only action being a crazy ass charge of his general right at my cold one knights. I had mistakenly told him I didn't have a banner, but oops, I had a banner and warbanner. However, we didn't count them as he wouldn't have charged knowing that. Despite that, he didn't do enough wounds (it was a dumb charge unsupported) and I won by doing a wound and outnumbering. He undeservedly failed a morale test, and fled. The first of many. In my turn I charged like a banshee. I sent a dark rider unit into his hounds, that were in front of his knights, and another into his other knight unit. Here's a fun tip, Chaos knights apparently get 2 attacks each and a 1+ save, so even if your fast cav with Str 4 on the charge, hatred, and a +2 CR from a rear charge can get them, pass on that. Especially if that unit has a Warbanner. [interesting rules question here. If unit A is charged by unit b in the rear, and unit A still manages to wipe unit B out to the man, at the end of combat, which was is unit A facing???] My other riders smoked the dogs, who fled into the knights, causing them to panic (yes they failed their reroll) but in hte interest of having a fun game, we ignored that panic. Anyway, my general and harpies also charged his mauraders to try to take out his fleeing general. It almost worked, but he stayed on the board by 2 inches, and set up an epic general on general battle in round 3.
The top of Round three saw all of our units in the center arrive for battle. I flank charged his Stubborn (I didn't know) Dragon Ogres who had been given the ultimate Shrine roll (4+ ward and stubborn) with my black guard and front charged them with my assasin. Poor placement of my assasin would give joe a chance to smoke my assasin, and prevent my warriors from charging later... dumb! Anyway, I did some wounds, but did not break the stubborn with a reroll DO's who had the BSB right behind them. The general v general fight went bad for me as my Lord's 6 Str 7 attacks only did 1 wound, and his flaming sword of multpilying wounds made a mockery of my regneration armor defense. I was scared of the sword, but knew his 20 inch range meant he'd find me sooner or later, so i figured the charge gave me the best chance of living. I lived, but the bottom of round three was gonna be all she wrote. I was killed. In the bottom of three he charged my Black Guard/Assasin with the Shrine (a real beast) in the flank, and had his maruaders hit my rear. My ASF BG and Assasin did well, but lost by 2. Luckily they held with their stubborn selves. Joe made a big mistake of moving his BSB behind my lurking warriors units to terror bomb them.
At top of 4, i passed all terror checks. My BSB chariot hit the mauraders in teh flank, my Cold Ones, who had been facing a builidng after repeling the general charged his DO's in the flank, and my warriors with sorceresses turned to face the lone BSB. In the magic phase I fried the BSB, and it was goodbye stubborn. In the combat phase, ASF, impact hits, and massive charges ended with a CR of 22-2 in favor of the elves. This blew the game open. I couldn't hurt his Shrine, he was still in the flank of the BG, but my 4 units overran him, and destroyed him. The overrun took my BSB into contact with teh warriors who were still struggling to make contact. They ended up smoking the warriors, especially in the top of turn 5 with help from the assassin. My BG ran close to joe's general, and he charged. He smoke the champ in the bottom four but they held with stubborn. With no one to challange in turn 5, my weight of attacks took their toll and finished him off. Meanwhile my harpies flew to strand his knights on teh left who chewed up my poorly spaced chariot, but this ensured they'd never play another role in the game. My remaining dark riders did the same to his knights on teh right, who would later fall prey to a 3D6 Str 1 no armor save magic missle that killed 3. In the end, I think joe finished with 7 knights still on the board.
It was a fun game, and much closer than the final tally showed. I think 3 things made a huge differnece for me:
1 - Joe had never played the WoC before and made some blunders in deployment and usage that he is sure to not make a second time. Nothing huge, but its tough to use an army for the first time, especially against a good book like the DE's
2 - My army is geared to fight an army like joe's. I am a combat army, he is a combat army. Virtually no shooting was done all game. Combat WoC is a really nice match-up for my dark elves. My experience with the army made me better able to take advantage of the combat heavy game we played.
3 - three key dice rolls went my way. I'm not saying all three were lucky, one was super lucky, one was sorta lucky, and one was as it should have been
a - super lucky - my harpies getting hit by a fireball that i should have scrolled in mid game. it killed 2 of 6, and I luckily passed the leadership test. This allowed me to fly behind his knights next turn and crush his spirit by march blocking them for the next 3 turns so they could play no further roll
b - sorta lucky - his general bouncing on my knights and fleeing. He probably shouldn't have fled since he was testing on an 8, but it was a stupid move for a general designed to kill big things and characters, so it was probably just desserts. still, this put his general out of the way for basically the rest of the game b/c i pressured the fleeing general.
c - expected - my black guard passing their stubborn leadership test after getting flank and rear charged. Elves should pass that, and they did, but if I fail that, my center collapses and he runs riot on me. In passing it, my BSB and CO Knights get in next round and that's all she wrote for his whole center.
sorry, kinda long. Ton's of fun though. Super glad we got to play.
