Battlereport: 2000 - Tournament Shadestar

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Omnichron
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Battlereport: 2000 - Tournament Shadestar

Post by Omnichron »

When I said I would post the battlereport soon(ish) in the army lists part of this forum, I guess the focus should be on the ish or the word soon should have been changed to late. Anyways, this is the battlerep for this list:

http://druchii.net/viewtopic.php?t=71104

This is going to be a quite long battlereport though, so I'll split the posts a bit and try to get some of the pictures in at the right spots. Sorry for the lack of pictures on the first match, but I was so sleepy in the start of the day as I had been painint 13 shades that night and got 4 hours of sleep... also my memory of this battle is kinda vague! ;)


Battle 1, Skaven:
He had two or three units of slaves, quite small, a grey seer in a big(ish) unit of clanrats. 2 units of gutter runners, a horde of plague monks, abomination, doomwheel and warp lighning cannon... oh, and he had some other shooters which missed on their shots and died very early, don't remember what it was :p

In this scenario, we could dig for gold, allowing us to have one unit stand their ground so we could roll a d6, and on a 4+ we got 100 VP. I forgot this in the start, and so did he until I remembered... after that I used my harpies to dig gold and we got an even amount in the end, so it didn't matter that much for the battle.

In my deployment, I had the shades in the forest on my left, the cauldron all the way at the back, and the warriors to the right and left side of the shades. I hid my assassins amongst the warriors with the flaming banner, and moved up closer with the warriors. I got soulblight in on the greyseer unit, and doom & darkness, but fail to kill enough of the unit to have him run off with my shooting shades.

In his turn, he moved his scouts closer, although a bit far from the chariot as he didn't really want to get charged by it. The rest of his forces moved slightly forward. In his magic phase, he tried to use plague, which I dispelled, and then used a power scroll to get dreaded 13 on my shades... which I immediately scrolled without even thinking about it when he got it through. He shot down my chariot with the cannon, leaving my right wing exposed to his scouts, and my cauldron suddenly looked like a nice target for him. Fortunately, he hadn't dared to move close enough withthem as the chariot had treatened that very area, so he only shot some warriors.

I revealed the assassins, my spear elves on the left charged into the slaves, while the spear elves on the right with the assassins moved forth. I kept my shades standing so they could continue their shots on the grey seer unit. The magic phase wasn't much to brag about. I tried to snipe his grey seer, but failed at that, and used my shooting from the shades to windle more down on the clanrats. My assassins wounded the abonimation a lot and even though I didn't kill him in the first turn, I did kill him off when he got into close combat together with the plaguebearers. As he had the item to reroll attacks and to wound, my spear elves to the right took a bad beating. Thankfully, I killed a lot from him as well and kept my steadfast, barely. In return, I immediately crushed the slaves to the left, which went on a killing spree and killed several small units, a lot of stormvermin, and his small shooters. The cannon still lived.

The next rounds of battle is a big vague to me. I continued my run into his lines with the warriors to the left, killing almost everything he had on that flank (Except the cannon), even the stormvermin, and getting into the greyseer squad (finally). It was tiny by now as I had shot it down to a much more managable size. As I also had failed my sniping spells, I was happy that the spear elves did such a good job, although at the final battle, he got his dreaded 13 through, and managed to take out 15! of my spear elves at once. As I lost so many and failed to hit and wound, I ended up losing that final battle with the spear elves (that was on a killing spree!)

My shadestar decided it was best to stay back and not get dreaded 13 on them, so I killed his scouts instead and saved my cauldron. It was an alright move at that time, but I guess I should have been more on the offense and made sure I'd wipe him instead. My cauldron would have done fine... Oh, and even shades sucks at taking down skirmishers. It took them forever to get rid of those rats.

Finally my assassin spearelves did quite well, except that the normal spear elves more or less got wiped. I managed to break his unit of pleagebearers, but failed to catch his forces twice (I actually failed to catch him 5 of 6 times when he fled! Curses!). As I got really greedy, I took my chances when the spear elves died and the assassins was left, and kept up moving forth. I lost one due to my greed, and didn't manage to kill the unit. Even though I did soooo well, I failed in the very end when it really mattered.

Result: Victory 14 - 6.

I was quite happy with the battle, even though I wish I had been better payed in points. My greed got the better of me though, and even though the rewards had been great if I had succeeded, I ended up loosing my assassin and could have lost the second. However, I had got a nice start and I was happy to be amongst the top tables for my second battle.[/u]
Personal quote: "It's better to do little damage and lose nothing than to do lots of damage and lose everything."
Final tournament score for 7th DE book in 8th edition - W/D/L: 25/5/10
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Omnichron
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Post by Omnichron »

Battle 2: Warriors of Chaos

After a nice start, I was kind of happy to meet Warriors of Chaos. The reason isn’t that it’s a particular good matchup for me as my RxBs don’t kill as much of them, and his heroes/lords are some of the toughest things for me to take down. Now, this guy is a warhammer fantasy veteran, with several high positions and good matches in the past, so it wasn’t going to be an easy match in any ways. However I have played plenty of matches against Warriors of Chaos, and knew more or less what I was up against. He had a unit of 20 marauders with great weapons (Khorne I think), 18 chaos warriors with halberds (khorne), a unit of 7 knights, a BSB with the knights, Chaos Sorcerer on foot with his warriors, and a disc hero.

Now, this scenario was really one that I looked forward to trying out. It was “Vendetta”, and the text said that I could choose to use this at any time to reroll “to hit” and “to wound” rolls once… and yes, this was for a round of shooting as well. It was time for my shades to make mincemeat out of a unit!

This is the setup we ended with:
Image

The idea was to bring my shades up on the left with one unit of warriors, and hope that I could bait at least the knights to come after that one warrior unit to the right. That way I could deal with one side at a time and sacrifice my warriors so I’d only lose about 300-400 pts. while I took out the rest of his army and would get a solid victory… well, that was the plan, so it was just to try and execute.

I won the roll to start, and after a handshake, I started out moving my shades in maximum and had the two characters join them. My spears to the right, went up against the woods and stood ready at the edge for whatever would come out of the forest. The ones at the left moved up together with my chariot as a backup to the shades. In the magic phase, I didn’t get my sniping spells through as he dispelled it, which enabled me to get soulblight through on the chaos warriors. Finally I tried to get more PD with power of darkness, but got a 2 on one dice… in which he went “I’m using black tongue” and I suddenly got a very bad feeling. Rolling on the miscast table, I immediately managed to get such a great roll of 3… so not only would a lot of my shades die due to the large strength 10 blast, but it was a 50% chance that my sorceress lord would die. I lost lots of shades even with 5+ ward, so my shooting phase wouldn’t be as good, and rolled for my sorceress… the dice was rolling around wildly… and landed… on a… 5! YES!!!

Having survived the magic phase, it was time for my unit to shoot down some warriors of chaos. I moved up my shades to get close enough to his chaos warriors, and moved the spear elves in the middle while the ones on my right moved slightly up towards a forest. In the magic phase, I got Soulblight through on the chaos warriors, managed to get spirit leech onto his exalted hero and rolled a 6 against his 3! I waited for him to roll 3+ or 4+ ward saves but he had only 6+, and the hero died! The start of the battle was going very well for me. He didn’t seem very happy when I announced I would use “Vendetta” with my shades in the shooting phase. Even though I had lost some of my firepower, the rest of my shades killed 15 warriors of chaos in that shooting phase alone. A giant impact on his forces and only 3 warriors and the sorcerer lord was left on his side.

On his turn, he backed up a bit and moved his sorcerer lord into the marauders. On my right flank, he moved the giant and knights (with bsb) into charge range of my spear elves to the most right. He tried to get the traitor spell on my shadestar (which forces me to do an attack from each of my models on my own unit) which I immediately dispelled with all dices. When he went for gateway on the same unit, I decided I didn’t want to risk losing them all to a strength of 11-12, so I scrolled it (even though I had 2+ wards on my shades now).

My turn, and everything was going according to plan. I moved my shades closer to the marauders, outside any good charge range from both the marauders and the chaos warriors. My spear elves in the middle was placed so they could charge to either left or right where I’d need them, and my chariot was at the left of the unit.

On his round, he charged into my spear elves with the exalted hero, knights and giant… my 40 spear elves was doomed. As planned ;) He didn’t move much with his marauders or warriors, and instead used his spells to do the talking. He quickly used his traitor spell on my mid spear elf unit, forcing me to choose what to dispel. I let the warriors hit themselves once, and let about 25% of them die. When he rolled gateway, he got irresistible force and the gateway got few hits of high strength! Str 9 wasn’t enough to wipe me though, and I managed my ward saves. In close combat, my spear elves lost high numbers, but not enough to break them. As they stood their ground, I was feeling more confident, but I quickly realized I could have had my spear elves and chariot facing the right wing better, because the giant and knights was outside their line of vision. Still, my plan was to clean out the other part of his army, so I stuck to the plan.

I moved my shades in closer and moved the spear elves so they would threaten the rest of the marauders and chaos warriors. The chariot followed and I kept moving my cauldron up to the left… farther away from the knights. In the magic phase, I tried to snipe his lord, which didn’t work very well due to his 3+ ward and soulblight got dispelled. I shot some of his marauders, but not as much as I should have on average. My spear elves on the right kept fighting, and I was starting to see the end of their numbers. Luckily they were steadfast for yet another turn (And I was happy I had 40 of them to begin with!).

(Sorry for bad picture)
Image


His turn, and he charged in with the marauders as well as his chaos warriors! I was a bit surprised about that, but he had to do something as I was massacring his unit with my shooting. I killed his marauders and warriors very quickly, but his lord stood his ground due to the crown of command. My spear elves still stood their ground as well, showing what the word resilience meant.
My round and I couldn’t get in with my spear elves or chariot into his lord. I moved them further up, so he wouldn’t be able to get close to these units with his giant and knights. In close combat, I managed to get a wound on his lord, although he stood his ground and even killed one assassin. The spear elves finally broke, and he moved after to wipe them completely. He was too far off to get into close combat at least, so I felt somehow safe. In his turn, he turned and got closer with his giant and knights, while I was starting to fear that his lord would survive the whole fight… until finally he failed his LD and fled. As I caught him with a higher pursuit roll, I knew I had the victory in my hand. Now, I just had to go from an aggressive mindset to a defensive… which isn’t my strongest side.

To shorten the story, he moves his knights and giant up closer to be able to charge in, and keeps outside my vision of my chariot. I try to stay away with most of my units, and decide I’ll use my chariot to block him so he can’t charge into my shadestar. In the very last round, I do several big mistakes. First off, I forget that the chariot is ItP, so I can’t flee really flee, but decide that if I flee I will save 100 pts. His knights are quite far away, and I could flee through my shades and out of his reach. Of course, it’s a bit risky, but a reroll of LD 9 isn’t too bad for the panic either. He needs 11 to reach the shades afterwards, so I thought I’d take my chances. Anyways, I do this… choose flee with chariot (Which I can’t do), I don’t flee far enough and end up just 5 from where I stood. He chooses to redirect to get the shades and gets a… 11. F*****CK!

As he moves his unit forward, the second mistake is done as he says he charges through the chariot and therefore kills it. As he has played a lot more than me in 8th edition, I didn’t check that rule when it happened and thought that one was lost as well! In close combat, I manage to kill his BSB with the use of my own BSB, while I lose my sorceress (And tons of points). I lose the battle, but stand my ground with a LD check of 6.

After that mistake (and lots of mistakes regarding rules), I was kind of happy I hadn’t lost all the points I was ahead. He only had the giant and knights left, but I was somewhat angry on myself for getting greedy and not playing it safe.

Result: Victory 15 – 5.
Last edited by Omnichron on Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Personal quote: "It's better to do little damage and lose nothing than to do lots of damage and lose everything."
Final tournament score for 7th DE book in 8th edition - W/D/L: 25/5/10
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Omnichron
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Post by Omnichron »

Battle 3: Warriors of Chaos

This time, I was going up against someone I knew well. He is the one I’ve been practicing most against in 8th edition, so I knew him very well and also knew his list in every detail… especially as I had won with shadestars against him 4 times in a row, where two of those was against this very list.
He fielded a chaos lord on disc with 3+ ward, breath weapon and crown of command as well as the warrior bane, then he had BSB with dawnstone, armor that made him immune to KB on a chaos steed, chaos sorcerer lvl 2 on steed, being immune to death lore, had a third eye of tzeentch , dispel scroll and charmed shield. As core he had 18 chaos warriors of khorne with halberds and shield and 45 Chaos marauders of khorne with great weapons. On top of that he had 10 chaos knights of tzeentch with the blasted standard and 3x5 chaos warhounds.

When we rolled for terrain, I noticed that we had a natural bottleneck between two impassable terrains, so when we started setting out our armies, I decided to use it as part of my strategy. I started out setting my warriors, harpies and chariot in the middle before I set the last warrior unit to the left. I let my characters get into the middle and he wasn’t very surprised when I finally put all my shades out in the middle and in the forest. When we roll for who would start, he actually won the roll for once, and he was suddenly very confident as he could lash out against my shades before I even got my defenses up. Me on the other hand wasn’t that concerned about the magic, but more about whether I could get my strategy done when he got the first turn…

On his first turn, he moved his dogs up max, his marauders following closely while his warriors and knights came up behind on each side… perfect for me. His sorcerer and lord moves into the big marauder unit, which means I could get into my KB tactic with my spear elves if I played things out right. He quickly moved into his magic phase where I dispelled his gateway and let his flames of tzeentch get through. I lose a couple of shades and shrug at the result, knowing that I have several more left and two spear units where they could be at if need be.

Image

On my first turn, I decide to do my best about closing that gap. I charge my warriors on the left into the dogs, getting a nice flanking situation (although I actually wanted a front charge) while my characters moved into the shade unit. My other warriors move up fully with the chariot and harpies following and threatening his unit of dogs. I don’t manage to do much with my magic as my sniping of his lord is dispelled and he manages all his wardsaves. My shooting does just a few wounds on his marauder unit. I also fail at killing his dogs, and decide to follow pursuit in the hopes of both taking them out and smashing into the marauders… it was a risky move and when I failed the pursuit, I ended up in front of the marauders with my flank against him… Not the best round, but my plan would still succeed.

On his round two, he decided to charge with his marauder unit and tried to charge with his warriors as well. As his big unit of marauders blocked the path for his warriors, he got a failed charge with them, while the marauders got in quite easily. His dogs move up around my flanks, which is a bit of concern for my warriors if they would lose enough ranks, but I was prepared to sacrifice them. In the magic phase, he tried his gateway to kill my unit of shades, but I decide I don’t want to risk it and scroll it at once (As a strength roll of 11 or 12 would kill my unit outright). He doesn’t manage to get any more spell through, and so we end up with a close combat where I lost lots of warriors, but managed to keep my steadfast and also turned around to face them. My turn!

I quickly give my unengaged warriors KB and immediately charge them into his unit of marauders. As he had done a bit of reform, I was potentially vulnerable at my right flank after the charge, so I decided to bring my harpies in there to prevent any good movements and charges after close combat. My chariot moves up and is ready to countercharge or charge into his marauder unit if need be, while my shades moves maximum up to the left. I reveal my assassins in the unit and go into magic phase. Once more I don’t get as many spells through as he dispels my sniping. I get soulblight through against his marauders though, and in the shooting phase, I kill a few warriors with the shooting (Even though my assassins had forgot how to throw those rending stars as they killed just a few of them).

Image

Image

In close combat my warriors to the left kill a bit of marauders, while I fail to kill his characters with KB. As he had reformed and had more ranks than my left warrior unit, he breaks the unit. I flee (as I had thought I would), although one of my shades barely gets clipped by the fleeing unit, and I have to do a panic test. I roll once for my 83,5% chance of success but fail with an 11. No worries, I reroll due to BSB and get a… 11. F******CK!

I flee… through my already fleeing warriors, through his dogs and end up 1 inch in front of them. His turn and he charges my shadestar with 5 dogs. I have to flee again… I lose the whole unit. I was angry.

Image

The rest of the battle goes downhill very quickly. I try to get KB through, but fail that as well as getting my chariot blasted once my lvl 4 is gone. I quickly decide it’s no more point in playing the game out as I couldn't take anything with what I had left, so I gave him a 20 – 0 victory… I wasn't very happy with how my day ended.

Result: Loss 0 - 20
Last edited by Omnichron on Mon Dec 10, 2012 10:22 am, edited 4 times in total.
Personal quote: "It's better to do little damage and lose nothing than to do lots of damage and lose everything."
Final tournament score for 7th DE book in 8th edition - W/D/L: 25/5/10
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Post by Omnichron »

Still feeling a bit down after my bitter loss, I came to the second day of the tournament with the thoughts of 2x 20 – 0 being the only way I could get to the very top. However I decided I would think less about results and just have much more fun with my last two battles. I could still get to top 10 if I played alright and was looking forward to see who my opponents would be.

Battle 4: Warriors of Chaos:

I had thought my WoC days as opponents was over, but for a third time in the row, I would meet warriors of chaos. Even though the matchup wasn’t the best for me, I was kind of happy that I’d meet an army I knew so much about, and from what I could see, his list was weaker against me than the others I’ve met thus far (although his army looked very good! He even won best painted competition!).

I don’t remember his exact list, although he had 2 sorcerers where one was level 1 or two of fire, and the other was lvl 1 of slaanesh and on a steed of slaanesh. He also had a BSB with 5+ ward on a chaos steed. His core was made up from one horde of khorne marauders with great weapons and another big unit of them of slaanesh where his sorcerer went into. He also fielded two small units of marauders horsemen with throwing axes, a warshrine and a shitload of trolls! (8 of them!).. oh and he had some war dogs as well, which I hated immensely by now.

I went for my usual setup, although due to his trolls, I set my warriors without the flaming banner to the left and then the flaming banner one to the middle of the table (Where I hid my assassins). I then continued deploying several things on the back to the left, close to a hill I had at my side. To my big surprise, he put almost everything but his fastest units to the right, which was kind of clumped together and hard to move about with that setup. It also meant that my flaming banner warriors were out of position, which meant I couldn’t actually get my plan through as easily as I wanted. My shadestar went all the way to the left on the hills, where I could get a lot of shooting done on his money unit, the trolls and BSB.

In my first turn, I quickly moved my non-flaming spear elves max forward and slightly to the right, with the chariot beside it. I move my shades up closer to get within shooting range of the trolls, and do a swift reform with my flaming warriors, moving them towards the left as far as I can. In my magic phase, I don’t get much spells through, but I do get one wound off the BSB by spirit leech as he managed one of his ward saves. In my shooting phase, I shot down those damned dogs, killing only a few and the two last runs off towards the table edge.

Image

In his round, he moves up closer to my shades with his trolls, with the intention to get a good charge on my shades. Other than that, he does a swift reform on his khorne maraudes to get them out of the cramped up position, and moves his horsemen closer on the middle with the war shrine, and moves his slaanesh sorcerer and horsemen far on the right flank. In his magic phase, he uses most of his dice on a fireball on my shades, which has 2+ ward against that by now. As he is kind of far from my forces with his other sorcerers, I decide I can just try to dispel with all my dice, and manage that as well. My turn!

I move back 10 with my shades and sorceress and move the flaming warriors fully left once more. Since they are still far away, I didn’t reveal them at the start of my round, and I move my chariot and spear elves closer to his shrine to threaten both of them (although being a bit afraid of those marauders). In my magic phase, I get more sniping spells off, but he manages his 3 ward saves! He was already starting to get his value out of that ward! I shot more of his trolls, but as he had dispelled my soulblight, I only wounded one of them… Still, I felt confident that things would change a bit the next turn.

He moved his fast moving units on the right towards my table edge, getting a good flanking position, even though I had no easy targets there. He couldn’t charge me with his trolls, so he moved closer as well as moving his marauders into position for any potential charges. As I had no easy targets for them and kept my harpies at the back, he didn’t move them very much, and just threw some axes against my warriors in the middle with no success. His fireball got through as he got irresistible force this time, and my 2+ ward meant that I lost only one shade… my first casualty of the day. He lost a couple of marauders from the miscast and it was my turn.

Image

I revealed my assassins quickly, moving the unit up close enough to fire my flaming rending stars, and kept my shades in position. On the middle grounds, I turned my chariot to face the oncoming horsemen as he had been a bit careful with his great weapon marauders (afraid of a combined charge from my spear elves and chariot). I moved my spear elves slowly backwards and moved my harpies 1 inch from his trolls to make sure he couldn’t charge me (and hadn’t got as good chance of overrunning out of the table). In my magic phase I continued my sniping of his BSB, although I made sure I got the soulblight through this time. He failed the spirit leech dispel as he was a bit unlucky, but managed 2 more wards!! I was wondering whether I’d ever manage to get these guys by now. In the shooting phase however, I shot with my assassins first, revealing that I had rending stars on them as well as being flaming… he was looking very nervous about his chances with this unit by then, and after dropping two trolls (one which was already wounded) with the assassins, all the shades let go and killed 2 more trolls after a bit of misfiring.

In his turn, he charged the harpies with the trolls. He had also split the slaanesh sorcerer from the marauder horsemen unit, and charged into the chariot with the horsemen, but failed the rather long charge with the shrine… as I had hoped! His other marauder horsemen moved in front of the spear elves with assassins to prevent them from moving closer and make it harder for them to move. He also moved his marauders closer now, but I was quite far away with my spear elves still. He moved his slaanesh sorcerer close now, and tried to get the spell through which meant I couldn’t move with my unit (I think he tried it against the shades). In the close combat phase, my harpies got wiped, and he held his position, reforming so that he could possibly stay out of my assassins range. My chariots chewed through his horsemen easily and he fled… and I chose to hold and reformed to face the sorcerer close by!

When my turn came the earthquake hit my side, I charged with my warriors against his shrine (I got a flank on him) and my chariot charged the sorcere. He fled with the latter and as he rolled a very high roll, and as I was unlucky and the earthquake affected my chariot, I couldn’t catch up. The flaming warriors did a swift reform, and I managed to get within 12 with the assassins by going a quite wide line formation and still was hidden behind the hill so that I couldn’t get charged by any great weapon marauders at my flank. My shades stood still for another turn, and this time I managed to finally snipe that BSB with 5-6 spirit leech wounds on this round. My shooting did the job quite well, killing all of the trolls. In close combat, my spear elves lost a couple of men, but I won the close combat still and caught him when he fled...

The rest of the battle was quite quick, where he tried to save some of his losses while I kept my pressure up. I lost only the harpies in this game and he lost quite a lot of his costly units, giving me a nice victory.

Result: Victory 19 – 1
Last edited by Omnichron on Sat Oct 20, 2012 1:51 am, edited 2 times in total.
Personal quote: "It's better to do little damage and lose nothing than to do lots of damage and lose everything."
Final tournament score for 7th DE book in 8th edition - W/D/L: 25/5/10
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Post by Omnichron »

Battle 5: Empire

So, after all those battles I was finally up on the top 10 part of the list again. I was feeling happier about the tournament by now and a top 5 position was within reach… except that I met a good player and a very interesting empire list. In this scenario each magic phase we would roll our PD and DD and for every 1 you’d get, the opponent would receive that dice to his pool. Quite interesting and mostly good for the one dispelling (on average).

I don’t remember his exact list, but he had his general on a chariot, a magician with life and two level 1 magicians with life as well. He had 2 small units of knights with 1+ armor, a bigger unit of knights with with less armor… not sure which ones those were ;) Anyways, he also had the steam tank, and the Hurricanum (or Luminark… not sure which is which). He also had a BSB on horse with rthe bigger unit of knights, as well as a war priest on horse with them. As for troops, he had some small units of bowmen (two skirmish of 5 and one of 10), flagellants and halberdiers.

As I hadn’t met the steam tank in 8th edition and knew little of what the different chariots could do, I was a bit unsure how it’d go. My opponent thought he would struggle very much against my list, but I wasn’t so sure as I knew my assassins did little armor penetration against T3, and I only had my BSB with more than 5 in strength… I had to keep his knights off and make sure I pick the points with death magic… as well as getting some wounds on that steam tank!

I was quickly finished with my deployment, but kept my shades further to the back as I was terrified of getting banishment and burning gazes on my shades before I could get my magic protection on. I was very happy I did so, as he won the roll off and began. He was quick to move all of his units straight for my lines, not able to get his spells through on my shades, he only killed a couple of spear elves and his shooting phase was a quite short one with no hits.

My turn, and I used a LOT of time considering what to do! Wherever I went with my shades, I’d get multiple charges on me from knight units that would hurt me a lot (especially as manbane wouldn’t be that good against T3 and 1+ AS). I decided I would have to take take out what I absolutely wouldn’t get charged by (the steam tank) and make it hard for anything else to charge me. I aligned the shade unit so that the sorceress was just within 24 for death spells. My spear elves moved up on the left side, ready to charge in from the side if anything got in close to the sorceress… unfortunately, a forest was there, so I knew my spear elves could struggle if I wasn’t careful. I kept my chariot far back so that I wouldn’t get charged by his knights and his arcane chariot thingy, or at least so that it was really little chance of that. In my magic phase, I was kinda happy I got few PD, and he even lost one of his DD. I got spirit leech through on his steam tank and took it down to 2 wounds…. And felt a huge relief. My shooting wasn’t much to speak about, killing a few flagellants.

His turn, and the charges came. To my surprise he also decided to try and get a charge on my chariot with one unit of knights and that chariot, as well as having multiple charges against my shades. I decided not to stand and shoot against the first two knight units (one of them being the big one) as I had the feeling he’d run in with the General-chariot and/or flagellants. Of course, he didn’t when I still had my stand and shoot. Luckily, he only got in with his smallest knight unit, and I felt rather happy that I could take care of the units one by one. Unfortunately, that was my only luck on his turn, because he manage to get into my chariot with both his unit, which meant I couldn’t do any countercharge. Other than that, the steam tank didn’t do much, and his archers went in to block my spear elves. His magic phase didn’t do much this time either, as I managed to steal one of his dices and had more DD than his PD. In close combat, my shades and assassins managed to kill 1 knight!!! I lost the battle as he killed a couple of shades, but at least I held my ground. My chariot somehow managed to stay after losing only two wounds by his charges, and did a wound on his chariot.

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I charged into his archers that block me with one of the spear elves block, and rather quickly get to my magic phase with just a little more movements of the other units ( I don’t remember exactly how I moved those spear elves at this point, but it was probably some fancy movements! :p). In the magic phase, I managed to steal dices from him again, and even though he scrolls my spirit leech on his steam tank this time, I manage to snipe hos general and BSB with my two other sniping spells!! But I wasn’t finished with that either! As I noticed his flagellants would get into the shades whether I won the close combat with the knights or not, I one diced for PoD, and got two dices for soulblight, a spell I also got through! 5/5 spells through! I was feeling a bit more confident again when I went to close combat and my shadestar managed to kill… 1 knight :o Luckily he didn’t kill many shades either, and again I managed to stand my ground as he won with musician. His archers went down rather quickly, but I was part in the forest and needed to overrun a bit to avoid being in there when he would come in with his steamtank/big knight unit/halberdiers. I failed of course, and knew I’d lose my spear elf unit the next turn. My chariot managed to hold his ground still, and the close combat between them ended in a draw… which means he won because of musician, but he didn’t run off.

His turn, and he charged my spear elves as I thought… with both the knights and halberdiers. I thought about fleeing, but as the distance was so little and his knights had an extra d6 to catch me, I decided I’d just stand my ground and let him kill them. However my shades got charged by flagellants this turn… not good. His magic phase was over rather quickly, and his shooting did some damage on my spear elves actually, killing 6-7 of them! Not bad for such few archer, but it was in close combat this fight would be won or lost. My spear elves lost more than the halberdiers and knights, so I had to flee. He followed and got the spear elves, but didn’t get into the shade unit with any of those units to join the fray. As the flagellants got in close, the combat got more interesting. I managed to kill plenty of those and finally chopped down all but one knight. He fled with the knight while the flagellants was left. I reformed and had a full round of hurt to unleash upon him. Before that though, my chariot won the combat against the knights and chariot, making the latter break while the knights stood their ground. To my happiness, the chariot ran off the table as well… our chariots rock!

In my turn, I decided that enough was enough, immediately giving +1 attack on the shades and had my spear elves killing even more blocking archers. My magic phase didn’t do much this time as I lost some of my PDs for once. The close combat came almost at once, where my shades utterly smashed the flagellants altogether, showing why it should be feared in close combat even without the extra close combat characters I tend to have at 2400 pts. Yet again the chariot managed to stand his ground, even though I knew I wouldn’t manage to kill much of his knights. It was the chariot that made me able to wound him. I aligned the shades as much as I could to get a stand and shoot reaction on his halberdiers that would surely charge the unit together with the big knight unit… It was so close that we had to decide whether I was within their movement or not by tossing a d6 and 4+ meant I could get a stand and shoot. I ended up getting it.


Of course, the charge came and I wasn’t feeling that optimistic about the coming battle. However with +1 attack, I knew I could really hurt him, and as he would have to get as many models into close combat with me as he could, I knew I could manage to kill several of them off. My shooting did well enough, taking out 7 of them. He also charged his lord chariot on my spear elves, and almost forgot that he had terror on (which I didn’t know). I rolled LD on my remaining spear elf block, failed, fled and got overrun…

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In close combat, I also lost my chariot as I didn’t manage to wound him and ran off with his knights following when I failed the LD test. Both ran off the table, and this meant I only had the cauldron and shades left. By now I only had 5 shades left, and the assassins, BSB and sorceress to do the rest of the work. The close combat began, and I started out with those striking the halberdiers with both my assassins against them. As it was a new round of combat, I got to reroll my hits as well, ending with 1 strike missing and wounding on everything… I wiped them. Against the knights, I had my master and two shades that needed to do a lot of work if I was to break the steadfast on them. And they did their work very well, ending with 4 knights left! I won the combat even though I lost some shades and took a wound on my BSB! I ran after his knights, catching them when they fled.

It was the last turn of the game as time was running out. The steam tank hadn’t done much at all and sat there with 2 wounds left, his lvl 1 mages wasn’t in any units and stood not far away from me and the chariot for the general was too far away from me to kill. It was time to pick the last points to get my victory. I moved my shades up so they could shoot one of the mages, and had my assassins looking at both the steam tank and the closes mage. My sorceress could get her sniping off the lord chariot as I moved her within 24 of it. As I failed all my magics this turn, I knew those points for the general was gone. My first assassin shot at the steam tank, taking off one wound… a bit unlucky but at least my second would kill it… not. Feeling the luck turning in the very last round I would at least manage to shoot down a mage with my remaining shades and master… except that I didn’t and the whole last turn was an utter fail.

Still, as I hadn’t lost any character and the shades were still somewhat remaining, I had only lost about 800 VP, and he had lost more even when I had failed killing off anything in the last turn.

Result: Victory 12 – 8

As this was the first tournament I used a shadestar, and it was quite weak because it lacked a lot of things I’d have in a 2400 pts tournament, the result was very good and I ended up at an alright 10th place (With lots of people having a score close to mine and the victor being way ahead of everyone). I wish I had gotten a better score in the first two matches and of course that I didn’t totally flop on the panic test on battle 3, but 4 victories out of 5 was quite satisfying.
Personal quote: "It's better to do little damage and lose nothing than to do lots of damage and lose everything."
Final tournament score for 7th DE book in 8th edition - W/D/L: 25/5/10
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xFallenx
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Post by xFallenx »

Gratz on the good finish, and thanks for the read.
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Noodi
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Post by Noodi »

One of the best read in a long time!
Great to see someone uses shadestar tact in tournament!
Coz of you, I am now going to use it in my league games :)
Il send you a PM with some questions about build :)
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Tyrannus deathbringer
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Post by Tyrannus deathbringer »

Thanks for the write up, Omni, and congratulations on the results.

The photos improve the viewing experience of your battle reports. (Battle chronicler or somesuch would improve them even more)

It's good to read about actual competitive play and I liked the way your plan was often one step ahead of your opponent's:

"All war is deception"
- Master Sun
"All who surrender will be enslaved; whoever does not surrender but opposes with struggle and dissension, shall be annihilated."
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Omnichron
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Post by Omnichron »

Thanks for the kind words!

I have the battlechronicler, but in tournament settings I am so focused on the next steps that I kinda forget the past... So making the battlereport with the chronicler will lack a lot of actual detail. And when there's 5 battles, I don't have the patience to make all of them.

As for the battles themselves, I found the shadestar and spear elves to be very stable (Except that one unlucky battle). Of course, it's very important to rememeber that a nice little doom & darkness and hellcannon might be game over in round one with this shadestar...

I might add 1 report instead of 5 from the tournament I got home from 1 hour ago though. :P
Personal quote: "It's better to do little damage and lose nothing than to do lots of damage and lose everything."
Final tournament score for 7th DE book in 8th edition - W/D/L: 25/5/10
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