2000p dwarves vs Dark Elves - Meeting Engagement

[Auere]

I was at one of my friends appartment yesterday for a 2000p game against his dwarves. We both agree that dwarves are really on top of things here in 8th, so it was going to be interesting to see how the former king of hill, Dark Elves, would hold up against them in the new edition.


Pre-battle

Our lists were something like:

Dwarves:
Runelord w Anvil (2xrune of spellbreaking)
Thane BSB (rerollable 1+ as, immune to KB) - with ironbreakers
35 Warriors (HA, Shields, GW, full command)
10 Quarellers (Shields, musician)
25 Ironbreakers (Full command)
15 miners (full command and stuff)
2 grudge throwers (Rune of Accuracy, Rune of Penetration and more nastyness)

Dark Elves:
Dreadlord (Shield, sea dragon cloak, cold one, Crown of Command, Whip of Agony, Armour of Eternal Servitude, Dragonbane Gem) - with CoKs1
Death Hag (BSB, Cauldron of Blood)
Sorceress (Level 2: Lore of Death, Dark Pegasus, Pendant of Khaeleth, Tome of Furion)
31 x Spearmen (Standard, musician)
30 x Spearmen (Standard, musician)
16 x Corsairs (Musician)
5 x Harpies
6 x Cold one Knights (Musician)
6 x Cold one Knights (Musician)
5 x Shades (Extra hw)
5 x Shades (Extra hw)
5 x Shades (Extra hw)


We rolled for scenarios and got Meeting Engagement.

Terrain included a number of interesting pieces granting different bonuses to nearby units. Only two of them came into play: An altar of khaine [AoK] and an elven waystone [EW].

We rolled off, and I was the one to pick table quarter, set up first but also have a strong shot at getting the first turn. Considering I had three units of scouts to compensate for his deployment, I was pretty satisfied with that turnout.

Now came the rolls for reserves ! But I was lucky at this point. I only rolled a one for my most insignificant unit: the Harpies :-) My opponent also rolled well for his reserves, with only one of the grudge throwers being held in reserve.

Deployment looked something like this: (from my side along the table diagonal)

-------------------------------------------Anvil----Grudge Thrower
-(miners)-----(grudge thrower)------------------------------------
-----------Warriors-----Ironbreakers--[EW]-----Quarellers------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------Shades-Shades-Shades
-------[AoK]---------------------------------------------------------
Corsairs-Spears-Spears--Cauld---CoKs1---CoKs-----------------
---------------------------------Sorceress--------------------------
---------------------------------------------(harpies)---------------

I do not roll a 6, and therefore get the first turn! My sorceress DOES NOT get the Purple Sun, but gets Fate of Bjuna and Soulblight!


The Battle


Turn 1: DE general advance all over. Sorceress fly up to Elven Waystone and shades move up agressively and kill 5 quarellers with shooting. Harpies also come in behind the CoKs. Quarellers attack the middle shade unit, but get beaten down to the man by the shades over a couple of rounds. Anvil kills two shades in the leftmost unit and grudge thrower kills 7 in the leftmost spearman unit.

Turn 2: CoKs with dreadlord charge ironbreakers, and will be locked in combat with them for the rest of the game. Other CoKs move around the EW and are now looking at the Anvil. Leftmost depleted shades charge grudge thrower. Other units general advance. Soulblight goes of irrisistable against the dwarf warriors. Second Grudge thrower misfires. Anvil tries ancient power but fails, both taking no damage. Miners fail to come on the board which leaves the warriors very isolated. They choose to charge depleted leftmost spearmen and beat them and run them down despite -1S&T.

Turn 3: Harpies charge the leftmost grudge thrower and kills it over two turns. CoKs charge the anvil with blessing. Rightmost Spearmen and corsairs charge warriors - corsairs coming from the rear. They beat the warriors and break them, BUT the warriors roll 11 and miraciously GET AWAY from both spearmen and corsairs. (I had the game there, if I had just managed to catch those stupid dwarves! :-)) Rightmost grudge thrower crew beats and breaks the shades, which allows him in his turn to shoot at my spearmen, but luckily it scatters off. Dwarf warriors rally and reform and miners come in looking at the corsairs flank.

Turn 4: My last shade unit charges the rightmost grudge thrower and whacks it, and my CoKs finally kill the anvil (I had them blessed +1A all the time). My spearmen and corsairs and harpies charge the dwarf warriors, but cant break them. He countercharges with the miners and wins the combat and breaks the corsairs, who get away.

Turn 5: My shades and corsairs rally on the right side of the Elven Waystone and will play no further part. CoKs turn around to look at the rear of the ironbreakers. Miners charge the flank of the spearmen and everything on the left flank breaks. Both spearmen and harpies get run down (stupid fast-running dwarves).

Turn 6: CoKs charge the rear of the ironbreakers with +1A blessing. I only need to kill 4 of them with 10 hatred S6 attacks and 11 S 4 attacks to get steadfast of them and break them for sure. But I roll simply horrible... like 75% 1s and 2s! And only kill three!!! And in his turn he then countercharges with his warriors but everything holds. And that is the game.

Dwarves: 610 VP
Dark Elves: 908 VP

Result: Victory for the Dark Elves.


Post-battle

Magic: You may have noticed that my sorceress did not have much impact? That was because I rolled "3" for winds of magic three times this game, and I also forgot to use magic in a critical turn. Stupid me. I really like the peg sorceress build though. Once you roll just the average 7 and throws all dice at a single spell, irrisistable is bound to happen alot, and with 3 wounds and PoK, she doesnt really care! She is also really hard to kill with shooting, so she preserves points well.

Dreadlord vs Dwarf BSB combat: Okay so my stupid dreadlord was in a challenge with the dwarf BSB in 9 turns of combat and didnt manage to put a SINGLE WOUND on him!!!! I thought that was kinda funny. The model is going to be sacrificed to khaine once I get home.

Shades: People who have lost belief in shades, really need to pull themselves together. Shades are better than ever with the new scouting and march+shoot rules! 3x5 shades is REALLY a menace. Try it out!

Ridicoules dice rolling: This is why you roll the dice, ladies and gents! Everything in this game just went completely against all statistics! I would roll 3 hits with 10 hatred attacks and afterwards take like 10 3+ saves without missing a single one. He would over the course of the game generally roll better than me, but both fail and make vital rolls completely against all stats! The miners not coming in to support and both grudge thrower and anvil not going off at vital points in the game was not lucky, but his flee and pusuit rolls were completely outrageous :-)


Funny game non the less! Hope you enjoyd the report!

[Calisson]

Thanks for the report.

"corsairs coming from the rear. They beat the warriors and break them, BUT the warriors roll 11"
didn't the corsair use their slavery rule?

[Auere]

"corsairs coming from the rear. They beat the warriors and break them, BUT the warriors roll 11"
didn't the corsair use their slavery rule?

Slavery only works against opponents with swiftstride now. Dammit!!!

[Jl177]

The way I read it, the FAQ says "Add: Against opponents with Swiftstride...."

So, slavery should still work as it used to along with the addition of the Swiftstride clarification.

[Auere]

Ohh my God - what a break I missed there! Anyway - the game really got much more close and exiting when I did not catch the warrriors, so it was actually just fine...

[Gramnir]

Im the dwarf player Auere played against.

I agree completely that the dice were extremely funny in this game, I think I had to make 10-15 4+ AS, and only in the last round of combat did my reroll on armour come into play! plus I made a ridiculous amount of 6+ saves.

Im sorry to hear that we missed a rule, but I think the game was more fun with my warriors surviving, and you still got the win (wich btw. was 100 pts more than we calculated, I forgot the bonus for killing my general, sorry about that)

I made a pretty crucial mistake in deployment, as I deployed my blocks too far forward. I should have kept them back and made a safe corner for my warmachines, as they could draw LoS over my blocks, but I was too eager to test my blocks in combat.
Had I kept back a bit more, I might have had 1 more round of shooting (as Auere had little shooting, and deployed first, I should have realised my advantage there) plus my miners would have come in at a perfect time, but whatever

Anyway, it was a great game, and really fun to try out all the new rules.
thanks for a great game

Edit: put up a link to this report on bugmans, as I was too lazy to write a report myself (and couldn't have done it better anyway )
heres the link, theres some evaluation of my units there if your curious: http://www.bugmansbrewery.com/topic/301 ... 3967dfdf35

[Calisson]

Welcome JL177 in D.net!

Hi, Gramnir, have a XXXXXX on my account!
Thank your for participating to the overall growth of DE tactical knowledge!