Tasmanian
\nState Championships 2013 was my second ever Warhammer tournament. It was a
\n2,500 point, 5 round, basically no comp. event. To put that into context for
\nthe non-playing readers, it was a fairly large army event with no
\nrestrictions on what models people could bring and very few rules alterations
\nor clarifications. This opened up the field for \u201cfilth\u201d or \u201ccheese\u201d, as
\nparticularly competitive lists get known, but for my games and it seemed for
\nmost of the event, no one particularly abused this and I believe there were
\nonly a couple of disputes throughout the day; likely more due to personality
\nclashes.<\/p>\n
Before I get on to a summary and some highlights from each
\ngame, I’ll just put a note in here to explain the scoring. Each person has a
\n2500 point army and at the end of the game you add up how many points each
\nplayer has destroyed of their opponent\u2019s. In this tournament, units below 25%
\nof their starting model-count or fleeing at the end of the game counted for
\nfull victory points. Then players would add in a few bonuses; 100 for killing
\nthe general, 100 for killing the battle standard and 25 for killing regular
\nstandard bearers and a little clause about champions killing characters which
\nhas literally never come up in a game I\u2019ve played. Then you compare each player\u2019s
\nvictory points and look up that difference is on a chart that converts it to a
\nsum of 20 points across the players. ie. 20-0 is getting wrecked, 15-5 is being
\nbeaten solidly, 10-10 is a draw. From here on in, things can get pretty dense
\nso if you get confused, feel free to post questions or comments.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll touch on my list to begin with as it will help bring
\ncontext. I had a lot of shooting and magic, some really good defensive combat
\nunits in the Phoenixes and then my unit of Swordmasters as something really killy<\/i>. The seasoned players will
\nprobably question my choice of Swordmasters over Phoenix Guard or White Lions
\nof Chrace and you are right to do so. It came down to model availability. This
\nis what I owned and was painted. Swordmasters are particularly weak to shooting
\nand magic, though the Banner of the World Dragon sorted out the magic problem.<\/p>\n
Archmage<\/b>:
\nBook of Hoeth; Talisman of Endurance; Level 4 Wizard; Lore of Shadow. 305<\/i>
\nLoremaster of Hoeth<\/b>: Talisman of Preservation; Dispel Scroll. 300<\/i>
\n
\nNoble<\/b>: Shield of the Merwym; Dawnstone; Dragon Armour; Battle Standard. 145<\/i>
\nNoble<\/b>: The Reaver Bow; Potion of Strength; Enchanted Shield; Heavy Armour. 124<\/i>
\n
\n28 Archers<\/b>: Hawkeye; musician; standard bearer. 310<\/i>
\n5 Ellyrian Reavers<\/b>: musician; Bow. 105<\/i>
\n5 Ellyrian Reavers<\/b>: musician; Bow. 105<\/i>
\n5 Ellyrian Reavers<\/b>: musician; Bow. 105<\/i>
\n
\n23 Swordmasters of Hoeth<\/b>: Bladelord; musician; standard bearer (Banner of
\nThe World Dragon). 379<\/i><\/p>\n
Frostheart Phoenix <\/b>240<\/i>
\nFrostheart Phoenix <\/b>240<\/i>
\nEagle Claw Bolt Thrower<\/b> 70<\/i>
\nEagle Claw Bolt Thrower<\/b> 70<\/i><\/p>\n
2498 points.<\/i><\/p>\n
First round I played against Damien Harper and his Skaven; a
\nself-confessed hobby gamer with a great looking army focused on magic and
\nshooting. I managed to roll up first turn and I think I out-deployed him in
\nthis game, managing to get my Ellyrian Reavers (Fast Cavalry) around his flank
\nto take out his Warplock Jezzails (light artillery troops). We each had one
\nscary unit this game, for me it was, rather obviously, my Loremaster of Hoeth
\nin the unit of Swordmasters of Hoeth and for him, it was his Grey Seer atop a
\nScreaming Bell pushed by Clanrats. The Banner of the World Dragon worked
\novertime this game; all Skaven shooting counts as Magical Attacks <\/i>meaning that I would have a 2+ ward save against
\nany of his shooting or magic so was effectively guaranteed to get this unit
\ninto combat unscathed where they could cause some real problems. The first turn
\nof combat when I charged his bell, I managed to Cast Occam\u2019s Mindrazor allowing
\nmy Elves to use their Leadership statistic as their Strength so suddenly
\ninstead of being Strength 3 with +2 for Great Weapons, I was Strength 9 with +2
\nfor Great Weapons, capped at Strength 10. Hitting with my attacks on 3s and
\nwounding on 2s with no armour save, I killed his caster and mowed through a
\ntonne of rats. I was unable to kill the bell that turn and so the rats still
\nhad the Unbreakable special rule which meant, despite killing a bunch of them,
\nthey didn\u2019t run away. In hindsight, perhaps killing the bell before the Seer
\nwould have made more sense.<\/p>\n
On his following turn, he shot his Warp Lightning Cannon into
\nmy Archers and sconed them. He killed 11 of them, more than 25% and enough to
\ntake a panic check. I had to roll on or below a 9 on two dice and rolled a 10
\nso they ran away 2D6 inches. On or below a 6 would’ve been ok but they ran 8
\nand ran off the back of the table. The problem was that my Archmage and second
\nNoble were also in that unit. 739 points gone with one cannon shot. Later that
\nturn, we continued the combat with my Swordmasters and I had to take a fear
\ncheck because the bell is big and scary and again had to roll on or below a 9
\non two dice. This time though, I got to reroll a failed attempt. I Failed
\ntwice. That meant that instead of hitting him with my attacks of rolls of 3 or
\nhigher, I was hitting on 5 or higher and he was hitting me on 3s. I missed a
\nbunch, lost the combat, ran away and got chased down and killed; another 679
\npoints down. So in one turn I lost more than half of my army in points value. I
\nended up losing 18-2. Damien still had a couple of other problem units but I
\nfelt that if I\u2019d not been so unlucky with those rolls, it would have been a
\nmuch closer game. He went on to come second overall, shooting down High Elves
\nall day.<\/p>\n
The second game I played against Chris Paine and his Empire. He brought two
\nSteam Tanks, a big block of Heavy Cavalry with his General, Battle Standard and
\na Warrior Priest, some Demigryph Knights, a Level 4 Light Wizard, a Hellbaster
\nVolley Cannon and a few other bits and pieces. I knew that on the charge his
\ncalvary were particularly scary, so I tried to take the fight to him. This was
\nprobably my downfall as his Hellbaster Volley Cannon rolled up 28 shots and
\nkilled more than half of my unit of Swordmasters in one hit. I think I forgot<\/p>\n
my 6+ chance to parry this shooting but it wouldn\u2019t have made the difference. I
\ngot to charge his Cavalry the next turn and still got chopped to pieces in
\ncombat. I did hold on a roll of a double 1 though which was pretty incredibly. He
\nthen proceeded to run over everything and I lost 16-4 or 17-3. I managed to
\nkill a couple of his things and keep a couple of mine alive but I think I
\nprobably lose this match up 99 times out of a 100. His heavy cavalry are just
\ntoo hard for my army to deal with. I did have a funny situation where my
\nPhoenix was in combat with his Steam Tank and Demigryph Knights and failing to
\ndo any wounds. I charged him in the flank of the Demigryphs with my Ellyrian
\nReavers and dealt a wound which was enough to win the combat and he broke
\nunluckily. It\u2019s one of the times where I laugh at how Warhammer plays out. Five
\nElves on Horses chased down four battle-hardened humans on the back of
\nGryphons.<\/p>\n
On the last game on Saturday, I played against All the games were fun but the first was the best. I’d played The first game on the second day, I brought Polly, my fianc\u00e9e At this point, I was either at the bottom of the standings or Overall I had an awesome weekend and look forward to playing Tasmanian State Championships 2013 was my second ever Warhammer tournament. It was a 2,500 point, 5 round, basically no comp. event. To put that into context for the non-playing readers, it was a fairly large army event with no restrictions on what models people could bring and very few rules alterations or clarifications. This opened […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93,"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gigeo.sainsbury.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhis High Elves. His list was quite different to mine, running a group of
\nPhoenix Guard instead of the Swordmasters, a huge block of Lothern Seaguard
\ninstead of the Archers and Reavers. I tried to flank him with one of my
\nPhoenixes and the Reavers but they all just got shot down which was
\ndisappointing. I managed to hold back enough of my points to keep it at a 14-6.
\nCloser but still a loss. When we came to the end of the game, we weren\u2019t sure
\nif it had been five or six turns but it didn\u2019t matter that much. I might have
\nkilled more of his stuff but he\u2019d have killed just as much, if not more, of
\nmine. He was coming off a frustrating game the round earlier but was a good
\nopponent. We got into a couple of rules discussions but nothing too animated. I\u2019m
\nthe sort of player who, if I don\u2019t know a rule, would like it to be shown to me
\nrather than just told that that\u2019s how it is and I can imagine it would be
\nfrustrating to play against in a tournament due to the time constraints.<\/p>\n
\nChris before in a tournament and enjoyed that game and played my High Elf opponent a couple times
\nin just a friendly practice game and they’re each a bit more competitive than I
\nand so there were a few rules “debates”. Nothing bad, just some discussions
\nneeding clarification but it always raises the tension a little bit.<\/p>\n
\nin with me to show her some of the impressive armies I\u2019d seen before as I knew
\nshe\u2019d appreciate the painting. We had to start quite soon after as we\u2019d been
\nrunning a bit late though and so Polly sat and watched what was one of the most
\nenjoyable games of Warhammer I\u2019ve ever played. I played against Mark Richardson
\nand his Ogre Kingdoms army. To begin with, his army looked incredible. He had
\nobviously spent dozens of hours (and hundreds of dollars!) converting his Ogres
\nto be Lustrian themed with his Mournfang mounted on Carnosaurs, his
\nIronblasters on Stegadons, his Sabretusks painted as Jaguars and his
\nLeadbelchers holding Salamanders and Lizardmen-esque iconography throughout.
\nThat\u2019s not to mention his high standard of painting or the fact that he was a
\nreally nice guy. This game come down to the wire and the ending victory point
\ndifference was a mere 53 with over 1800 points dead on each side. We had an
\nepic combat with his huge unit of Ogres against my Phoenixes and Swordmasters, my
\nArchers chasing down a dinosaur, a bolt thrower wounding and killing an
\nIronblaster on the final turn. Right at the end my Phoenix failed a break test
\nand, as was the theme for the tournament, only needing to roll on or below a 9 on two dice, fled giving him the slight
\nedge but the game was still a 10-10 and we\u2019d each had our fair share of luck,
\nthough probably more on my side! Mark got both my choice for best opponent and
\nbest army.<\/p>\n
\nthe lowest player that hadn’t yet played the Bye-Buster which was basically one
\nof the judges who stepped in in the case of an odd number of players. The
\ntournament uses the swiss pairing system. I played against Sarah Matthews\u2019 Orc
\nand Goblins (but most Orc) army, wielded by someone whose name I didn\u2019t catch
\n(apologies if you\u2019re reading!). He was pretty new to the 8th<\/sup> edition
\nand I got quite lucky. My archers beat down on his Savage Orcs (with the help
\nfrom the Phoenix\u2019s Blizzard Aura) and later in the game I finally got what was
\nleft of my Swordmasters (after a Mangler Squig killed 11 of them!) into combat
\nwith his Savage Orc Big\u2019uns. I successfully cast The Withering and he threw all
\nhis dice to dispel but managed a measly 15 on 5 dice. This reduced the Orcs\u2019
\nStrength to 1! I then had free reign with the rest of my magic phase and cast
\nIceshard Blizzard so that he was hitting me on 5s and, hilariously, miscast
\nEarthblood on two dice giving me a 5+ ward and blowing a huge hole in both
\nunits. The Banner of the World Dragon doing some serious work here, I lost only
\n1 Swordmasters to his 7 Orcs. I won the game pretty convincingly despite not
\ngetting points for killing that larger unit as we ran out of time. When all was
\ndone and dusted, it was 13-7. If we’d kept going, it probably would have been
\nmore like a 16-4 for me as he still had a few scary things but I don\u2019t think he\u2019d
\nhave killed much more of my stuff. This guy was really friendly too.<\/p>\n
\nagain next year! I also met a load of new people who I hope to have some
\nfriendly games with in the future. Stay tuned for an update with some photos and standings! My goal for next year is to bring a fully
\npainted army and get at least two wins. Baby steps. Baby steps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"