Cancon 2015 Preparation

The combination of it being approximately one million years since I last updated my blog and me having a lot of spare time in the holiday season, I thought I’d do a little write up about how things are going in preparation for my next tournament.

Cancon is an event run by the Canberra Games Society at Exhibition Park in Canberra (EPIC). At the event, there are tournaments held for a whole host of different systems.The details of the Warhammer Fantasy event are here. In short, it’s a 3-day, 8 game, 2400 point Swedish comp. event over the Australia Day long weekend. The name of the venue certainly seems appropriate.

Despite my distaste for Swedish comp., my current job necessitates frequent trips to Canberra from my home city of Adelaide and so it seemed silly not to make the effort to attend Australia’s biggest Warhammer Fantasy tournament.

Frankly I think it’s a bit of a shame that the event is not making use of any of the End Times rules that have recently come out but there’s certainly a trade off between the competitive integrity of a known and tested system as we have in Swedish comp. versus the potential options available with the End Times armies. I hope that we see more End Times events in the coming months and I am interested to see where things go once all these End Times released have settled. Is it heralding 9th edition as people have pre-supposed?

Anyway. On to my list. The tournament is running a 10-16 range of comp. scores. That means that you cannot submit a list that would be lower (stronger) than a 10 and if you submit a list higher (weaker) than a 16, it will be treated as a 16. At the end of each game, the difference in comp scores is multiplied by 150 and the higher scored (weaker) army will be awarded that many Victory Points. This is to try and encourage people to bring more varied and less powerful lists. This also means that potentially 900 points are available to the much softer lists so if they can stem the bleeding of their own army, it’s feasible that you could do quite well over all if you got paired against harder armies and didn’t lose by very much.

My principle gripe with Swedish is that it encourages bringing softer options but for relatively new but moderately players like myself, it’s unlikely that you own the weaker units. Longer standing players may have these weaker units from a time when they were more powerful and less competitive players may have these weaker units because they like the way they look or think they are cool or what have you. Wanting to bring my High Elves (as the only army that I really have the majority of it painted to a reasonable standard) I am limited in a couple of key ways. The first is that in the Core section of the army, I own lots of Archers, several Ellyrian Reavers and a relatively large unit of Silver Helms. I also have about 20 Lothern Seaguard but own no Spearmen. From a Swedish point of view, there is a rule that says that a High Elf army must expend 1 point per model with a longbow over 50. Essentially soft-capping the army at that many units armed with longbows. This count however also includes Eagle Claw Bolt Throwers (counting them for 8) and also counts bows for ½. This means that my Seaguard become expensive in the system and likewise if I arm the Ellyrian Reavers with bows.


This restriction limited the number of Eagle Claw Bolt Throwers I wanted to take, the number of units of Archers I wanted to take and effectively made Seaguard unplayable if I did take the Archers and Bolt Throwers. I therefore had to bring some Silverhelms. Silverhelms are relatively resilient against the right targets but they are also not particularly capable of winning a combat after the first turn and even on the first turn often had to get lucky. This led me to want to bring a mounted character to put with them so I could reliable kill things on the charge.

For the other character choices, I worked out long ago that a Dragon Mage is one of the best ratios comparing Swedish expenditure to army points. This is likely because it’s a ~400 point Toughness 5 liability. It’s too weak to do much in combat, dies to any form of concentrated or powerful shooting and cannot even really provide a strong magical threat. I also wanted to bring the Dragon because I’d just assembled and painted it. My original lists were written using the model as a Prince on Star Dragon but it quickly became apparent that I would not be able to fit that model in the same army as a Frostheart Phoenix. Another must-take model because it’s my most substantial and impressive conversion to-date.

So to recap, I have a mounted Prince well-equipped to do some damage being escorted by a lance of Silverhelms and a Frostheart Phoenix as combat threats, a unit of Archers, two Bolt Throwers a couple of units of Ellyrian Reavers as light shooting and redirectors and a Dragon Mage as a concession to the composition system.

The next few choices were obvious. I wanted some Magic power in addition to the Dragon Mage but Archmages are too expensive in Swedish. The last Swedish tournament I attended, I brought Eltharion and while he is quite handy, he’s also very vulnerable. Knowing that I was likely to be cutting it closer to a 10 than a 16, I reasoned that close to 1,000 points of not particularly tough flying monsters was likely suicide. I decided on one of my favourite models and units, the Loremaster of Hoeth. It wasn’t even that much of a comp. hit to take him with the Book of Hoeth, meaning that I get to reroll a single dice from each casting or dispel attempt. The utility that this guy brings is great and I am really looking forward to playing with him again.

After the Loremaster, the next auto-include in any High Elf list is a Battle Standard Bearer of some kind. I decided to go for a simply equipped Noble on foot rather than any of my other options.

The last choice was an interesting one. I wanted to bring one of my big infantry blocks to put the Loremaster and the Noble in. My initial thought was to bring Swordmasters of Hoeth. They look great, particularly with the Loremaster and they’re relatively good in the right fights. The only problem is that they are really, really not resilient to any light shooting and I suspect that there will be many, many elf armies at the event. I took another big comp. hit and instead opted for White Lions of Chrace.

So all told, here’s the list as I intend to submit it. Apologies for the dark images, I built my own lightbox but I only have one good lamp for it at the moment:

Prince with Dragon Armour, Giant Blade, Enchanted Shield and the Dawnstone riding an Elven Steed with Ithilmar Barding

Loremaster of Hoeth with Talisman of Preservation and the Book of Hoeth

Dragon Mage of Caledor Level 2 Wizard with Dragon Armour and Charmed Shield

Noble Battle Standard Bearer with Dragon Armour, Shield of the Merwyrm, Golden Crown of Atrazar and Ironcurse Icon

15 Archers including Musician and Standard Bearer

6 Ellyrian Reavers with Bows and Spears

8 Silver Helms with Shields, including Champion, Musician and Standard Bearer


























18 White Lions of Chrace including Champion, Musician and Standard Bearer.

Frostheart Phoenix




























Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower


Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower
























Total Roster Cost: 2396