Alright, back from the motherland with batreps ahoy. first up a big thanks to the two petes for getting the place and running the event, smooth as silk and i think we started most rounds early? nice one.
as you're probably aware, the event was taking out by those dastardly aussies - the team with the guy, so big congrats to Messrs Hoen, Greenfield, Morgan and Brett, who were miles ahead of the pack from the beginning of day 2. dont say i didnt warn the rest of you!
as for shirts off, we had a fucking great time, and a good mix of armies and generals. james milners denially mounted helves, my chaff flood/waaghtillery ong, mal patels skink cloud, and our breadwinner of the weekend, sam whitt's slaanesh woc. well done to sammy for best painted too, clearly deserved matey, beautiful army and great conversion work. with james wearing the captains hat, we drew grumpy old men for the first round, and i was facing aaron's ogres. he was neither grumpy, nor an old man. we played battleline all 6 games, and sammy and i did what the captain and first mate mal told us
this ogre list would be a great match up if he didnt have a runemaw, aarons packing 3 kitties, 2x2 mournfang, a blaster. 8 stubborn maneaters, and two units of guts, one with heavens slaughtermaster and bsb with runemaw. no hellheart tho, and aaron goes first, lining up an ironblaster through a mangler and doom diver, but falls short and i thank my lucky stars. too many drops! i scroll a comet and its my t1
one spiderboss charges a centre kitty, aiming to chaff up after. its either this turn or next i lobba off the ironblaster. i think i do something silly early on and lose foot on a miscast, either that or i had it on the l1 and i couldnt get it off, but it doesnt feature much in this game. i start doom divering mournfang and try to stop a kittie chaffing my savages
he gets a comet, killing a mangler and a doom diver. i chaff up the place and fail a charge with savages into lone mournfang. cant recall how i killed the other pair, but likely the other doom diver
eventually the savages get their mournfang as i hand the trukk away and run out of chaff lol. you can see all my trolls and spiders poised, ready to chaff. had units posititioned to try pick up the smaller guts late game, but wasnt able to
was a 8-12 against in the end, didnt really want to commit to any big combats that would decide the game and thats how it played out in the end. the rest of shirts off did ok though, mal getting a 20 against delves, and sammy getting a 20 vs lizo. killing blowed a lone slaan with a gorebeast chariot lol. james had some bad luck in a high elf mirror match though, going down 15-5, but we won the round, coming out with 53 in the end.
next round was against last years title holders, the mighty von trapp dunnasty. poor ol mal got thrown under the bus against the big cheese and his skaven, but i somehow wound up against cousin joe and his woc. good times. now joe is a very capable player and former etc team member, but hasnt been playing very much in the last 12 months, and at his own admission wasnt too familiar with the new woc book.
it was beer oclock and left to right hes running some sandman marauders on foot, lots of 5 man slaanesh horsemen and chariots, 3 crushers and a chim that looks like a manticore in the ruins, then 10 slaanesh knights in a line with l4 on mount and tz bsb - totally didnt pick that up till he died midgame, and im 100% it was an honest mistake so no probs - 3 more crushers, and more fast cav
i won the roll off and he scrolls a foot, but i hand a mangler up in front of his knights. shooting does little, maybe killing a crusher and onto woc t1.
hes moves up cautiously and suicides some horsemen onto a mangler. gets off hysterical frenzy on the right hand chariot. my turn that chariot charges his crushers and he wisely ends it. mangler goes the required 15" and halves the knights and pops a unit of fast cav behind. then in the magic phase i get a repeat footing, and between that and shooting take out all the knights and wound both characters
here he bails l4 in last unit of fast cav and crushers reform to dissuade a lurking spiderboss from a flank charge, and charge chukka. its either this turn or last he gets a slicing shards on a doom diver and eventually kills it
much bloodshed in my turn, savages wiping out crushers on the right, i doom diver the bsb, and cause the chim to panic. i foot and shoot off his last cav unit with l4, and hand of gork the trukk around to tailgate some chaffed crushers.
all goes to plan, and im shooting at chariots now. chim rallies on the board edge only to get shot, and i keep shooting and panicking his sand marauders. in the end he has them left and a rampaging, chukka murdering chariot is shot off.
suffice to say, i went upstairs and got joe a beer after that. 20-0 to me, and some smoking hot artillery dice ftw. sammy got a 20-0 from tom's doc, james eeked out an 11-9 draw hammer game vs jacks delves, and mal was thrown under the bell, getting his slann d13th'ed off to get 4 pts from pete. forshadowing, as it turned out, but a good tickling for the von trapps and 55 pts for shirts off warhammer
last game of day 1 and we were playing one of the aussies teams; panel comp, headed by skilto i believe. this time it was my turn under the bus, and i took the opportunity to complain all game about it to ben lol. yes, i was playing mr leopold's skaven, and while he had no bell or furnace, it was a tough list with queef beefeater in a horde of stormvermin, a seer, two engineers, and two assassins, couple units of slaves, a hpa and doomwheel, cannon, rat dart and 2x gutter runners
he goes first and wastes no time 6 dicing d13th, but fortunately doesnt get it off. he does get a perfect doomrocket, wasting half the trukk, and huzzah for exploding warp lightning cannon. my t1 and the storm banner goes up, and i dont get much done, cept get his scroll out. does flee from a chariot charge with the hpa though, but rallies in his turn boo
he moves up, some grunners come on and begin killing war machines. panics off spider boss and riders off to the left. no d13th this turn either, aww.
here ive mangled and foot off half his stormvermin, while a troll tussles with doomwheel. all the characters bail into the savages and i set up the remnants of the trukk all wrong. here you can see 40 slaves about to go into spiderboss. at this point i declare spiderboss will grind out 40 slaves behind the righthand building, and after a plague bounces onto em, i do in two rounds lolol
spiderboss then charges the flank of his hellpit as my savage bunker bails into the building. warmachines get picked off, and i try hand the leftover trukk out the way. hes been doing damage to his bunker with miscasts all the while, and spiderboss take a wound per turn for two turns from the hellpit, and thanks to a support charge by chariot manages to slay him, and the rats that appear after he dies. d13th kills 2/3rds of the savages
last turn he ifs another d13th and picks up a tonne of pts. even if id split the characters up and scattered em around he had enough shooting and magic to pick em off, but boo. chariot slams into seer bunker and finishes off the unit, but its not enough to swing it back
so in the end went down 20-0. ben told me after that i had the most models left on the table against him so far, with a total of one tough guy spiderboss left alive lolol. in the end we won the round with 46 pts, sammy getting another 20-0, mal getting a 14 against skiltos empire, and james squeezing out a 12 against tims flying circus woc. we knew what this meant for the morning though, a round against the team with the guys
so after an early night, thats whats on the menu. and joy upon absolute joy, im on jerk duty.
hes got 30 driders, 7 warlox, 2 rbts, 29shades, cloaky pegman, l3 on death on steed, and two steed masters. i get to go first, and we can see once and for all who has the bigger coke. lolol
i get a foot scrolled and target the warlock bunker with doom divers, to the point where greg bails all of them out into driders after killing 4. he then gets my scroll with a purple sun and caress's off a couple wounds on l4.
i then lose all the manglers to shooting, but at leasts it draws all the fire away from other stuff, which is why i put em both on a flank. doom divers continue to earn their keep and kill enough driders so theres no more look out mr president for the l3, and with a cry of 'take it off!' i snipe out his mage with a rock. might do a wound to pegman too
we miss a bit here, but i get a foot that kills 8/10 driders from one unit, sending em panicking, 9/10 from another who hides behind a hill and i shoot later, and a few shades, then i think i cascade. he sends his characters and warlocks after some chaff and runs/flees away when i counter
greg ifs through a 6 dice doombolt and kills the rest of the trukk, but both characters survive and jump into the savages.
that late game addition of 240 pts helped swing the 15-5 his way, but at least it was a lot more of a game than last time we played. sam and mal managed 10's, and james went down 16-4 to another helf army commanded by hoen, who got two 12" turn 1 charges. its a dice game right? so our first loss, and it was looking more and more unlikely someone was going to stop them from winning.
round 5 against stonefall massive, and i get the empire. i told em joel had double stanks, but the lists mal had printed out only had one. well he did have two, and lets see how it goes. now joel was another member of the shirts off family that was playing with another team, and it was great to throw dice with him again.
hes got a cannon off to the left, vanilla knights, 4 demis, archer detachment, halberd block with light council, archer detachment, 4 more demis, and the aforementioned pair of stanks. joel goes first and proceeds to target manglers and waaghtillery, picking all of em off during the game bar a pair of chukkas on the left
halberds go straight in the building and he begins the laborious process of self destructing one of his stanks through misfiring all game. i charge a spiderboss into an archer det and then the foot comes down, picking on the lefthand demis and leaving one alive on one wound, only to be sniped off by a gobbo chariot hitting on 7's lolol. i do cascade and drop myself down the hole, along with a half the trukk
a turn or two later joel is laughing at the savages snake eyeing a charge into the building. troll fights another detachment, and stank one finishes the self destruct protocol. other stank keeps taking wounds from chukkas (!) and a 2" hit indirect shot from a lobba, leaving it on 3 wounds. joel wisely chooses to not use it anymore. spiders charge knights on cannon duty and get thrashed, later charging into chariot. other vanilla knights go wide and start taking out other waaghtillery
spiderboss gets into a cannon, and savages get into halberds in building and kill 2/3rds. remaining demis get chaffed by trolls for the rest of the game
he moves the hals out and savages go in. get a eadbutt through from l1 and snipe out his l4
savages follow the hals out the building and he throws a l1 out in t6 to redirect charging savages
ends up a 10-10 in the end. always a good time, and a lot of laughs. for the round, james purple sunned his way through ogres for a 20-0, mal got a 13 out of ryans warriors, but sammy's woc finally met their doc match and got 15-5'd. all up a 48 for the round, so 1st place aside, it was looking good for shirts off going into the last round
last round was against the league of extraordinary nerdymen, and it was good to put some faces to names. i was up against mikes vc meatwall. he had more chaff than me! 4x5 hounds, 2x2 bats, 2x30 zombos, 30 skellies with swiftness banner, 2x8 horrors, a l4 vlord, 2xl2 deaths, a wight bsb, and 2 banshees. felt ok about the match up, the plan as always was to blast the bunker with everything till i could target the vamp. hell of a plan huh?
i go first and foot inevitably gets scrolled. as above, all the shooting goes into skellies and starts hacking away.
his first turn sees the demise of both manglers, and our second lines of chaff reposition. a low magic phase sees me stop his invocating. my phase i move back, if a foot and then roll a 1, both of which taking huge chunks out of the trukk. i either cascaded my l4 again here, or forgot foot, im not too sure. but either way dont have it anymore. shooting saw the skellies reduced to two ranks
so in my opponents turn 3 of course he bails em out into a nearby zombie unit. not enough turns left to shoot em all again, no foot, and ive got these 16 crypt horrors bearing down on me. hmm. i guess the only way i can kill that vamp is through telekinesis. and sure enough that very magic phase, mike puts 4 dice into an invocation, ifs, and cascades down the hole. to make matters worse, he had moved both his banshees out of their respective zombo units that turn and they both crumbled, along with a few of each of the crypt horrors. hats of to mike to who took it on the chin like a champ there
so here both chaff trolls get crypt horrored to the face, but the left hand one reforms in such a way to give my savages the flank. some fell bats that had scooted up to try get waaghtillery get wolf chariotted, who joins in the crypt horror combat. win by 13 and pop the unit in a round. meanwhile spiders of all sizes were circling zombos or getting stuck in. at this point i sent all the waaghtillery crew home early, as aside from from a halved unit of crypt horrors, there was nothing really to shoot at, i dont think idve killed them all, and i ran the risk of misfiring. so aside from a poor chukka that got dick moved up in front the remaining horrors, that was the end of that phase
the last couple rounds end with my charging everything and crisscrossing about. savages went into the front of the zombie bunker and a spiderboss in the flank, chariots and spiders into remaining blocks, and a troll chaffing the horrors.
in the end, got everything bar the horrors, who were fed a chariot in the last round. a very fortuituous 20-0 to me. overall a 58 for the team, sammy got a 20 out of a brett army, mal going up 11-9 against double stank empire, and james once again going down against helves to the tune of 7-13, although his lone death mage went round collecting all the points lol
so in the end our 289 pts was enough for the 2nd place spot! shirts off! huzzah!
still miles away from those nerd gods team with the guy on 315, but the rest of the pack was fairly tight:
also hats of to sam and ben for first equal on 95 battle pts apiece. very nice.
so thats the nztc, fucking good times, all great opponents - even the jerk was on his best behaviour, great venue, nicely run, and im sure youll see shirts off there in 2015!
off to canada and the us on monday for crossroads, will try squeeze in a post before then with my list, army and thoughts, but after that its a three week radio silence from shirts off before im back bristling with batreps. until then - take it off
