Tournament Tactics based on new book

Matras · Post by **Matras** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 8:31 pm

I posted this here since I would like to hear some input before actually devising a list. The tournament will be on the 16th of August, well after the release of the new book. Unfortunately (and this is the main reason I need help), the guy organizing the tournament listed a number of house rules. These are:

1.No dragons, Greater Demons, Deathbringers (Sundragons for HE are allowed)
2. No mercenaries, unless in merc army, no special characters (as far as I understand it, that does include the new Champion-Level SCs)
3. No Core more than three times
4. No Special more than twice
5. No Rare twice
6. 9 Powerdice at the most - generating not a problem, first bound spell each turn counts as one PD, second and following as two
7. no more than 10 Dispel - Magic resistance not counting, first scroll each phase counts as one DD, following as 2
8. No more than 3 chariots or chariot units (including characters taking them as mounts)
9. 4 warmachines max
10. no more than 3 hovering/flying units
11. 5 units of cavalry max (of which three at the most may have AS4+) includes characters on mounts or flying cav. Should the char or the monster have S5 or more, it would count against the limit of three 4+AS.

There are additional rules for the different races - no regeneration banner for vampires for instance, and so on.

Points: 2250

Guys and gals, by the way, are rules like these normal? I've only just started playing at tournaments, seems a bit silly to me, even though I can understand part of them.

What would you base your army on? I got some ideas, but would love some input.

Lakissov · Post by **Lakissov** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 8:49 pm

These look like a batch of rules based off ETC standard, with the inclusion some further restrictions, to limit big flying nasties, flyers in general and cavalry. They are a tad too restrictive I'd say, e.g. for bretonnians, but nothing too bad.

As for the druchii, I'd advise go for infantry-based army with characters on foot supporting the core infantry center, but also with two mobile elements: light mobile would consist of harpies and dark riders, and heavy mobile of hydra, shades and COK.

Given the restrictions on all armies, you would have no difficulty in outmanoeuvring other armies with such setup.

Master of arneim · Post by **Master of arneim** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 10:15 pm

What about this one:

Dreadlord on dark steed, crimson death, potion of strenght, pendant, Ha, Sdc 260

lvl 2 sorc with 2 scrolls 185

lvl 2 sorc with darkstar cloak and seal of Ghrond 185

20 spears full command and shields 155

2x10 Xbows with shields and one champion 230

2x6 harpies 132

14 Bg with asf banner and champion with ring of hotek 257

12 executioners with champion 156

6 coks with warbanner 205

6 shades with Gw 108

2 Rbt 200

Hydra 175

2248 if I'm right.

You get a hard hitting hero, many arrows, a solid centre, 2 skirmishing units (I consider the Hydra a skirmisher) and a bunch of nasty harpies. Then you still get 7 pd to gain an interesting magic phase and are quite covered by the ring and 2 scrolls.

Post by **Dark Alliance** » Sun Jun 29, 2008 11:06 pm

Lakissov wrote:These look like a batch of rules based off ETC standard, with the inclusion some further restrictions, to limit big flying nasties, flyers in general and cavalry. .

Looks like Asger's handiwork...

Matras · Post by **Matras** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 3:49 am

Brets don't have the cav limit - would be unfair for them, too.

Jankiel · Post by **Jankiel** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:21 am

With this CS I think you should leave sorceresses at home. We can generate a lot of additional dices, which is useless with limit of 9 PD per turn. And accidentaly it can happen, that dices generated by power of darkness have numbers 10 and 11 that turn => dead sorceress. One caddy and ring of hotek should be enough.

Matras · Post by **Matras** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:43 am

As far as I understood it, generated dice don't count against that limit, just bound spells, stored dice, Powerstone-like items and normal PD do.

Ehakir · Post by **Ehakir** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 9:45 am

Whoops, double post :oops:

Ehakir · Post by **Ehakir** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 9:46 am

That is reaally nice for the new DE:

Dreadlord on Manti, Inverse WSv, Seal

Master on Manticore, SDC with halve str.

Scroll Caddy

3 Units of DR's, RXB, Mus

1 Unit of Harpies

Assasin, manbane, shurikens, add hw (touch of death, maybe)

14 Black Guard, FC, Ring of hotek, ASF banner

5 Shades

2 RBT's

Hydra

Dunno if you have the points but you could add another assasin or an unit of warriors ^^. Nice, especially against low magic and low warmachine stuff :twisted:

Matras · Post by **Matras** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 11:45 am

No dragons allowed, otherwise, this would definitely been one of my potential lists.

Ansob. · Post by **Ansob.** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 11:50 am

The real pain is characters counting against the number of mounted units. Otherwise, 3*DR, 2*CoK, 3*harpies, a block of spears, one or two units of MSU corsairs, a couple of chariots, a hydra, a scroll caddie and a couple of nobles on DR, and you'd be good to go. As it is, the rest still makes for a good base, from what we know of the new book.

Jankiel · Post by **Jankiel** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 12:40 pm

As far as I understood it, generated dice don't count against that limit

Wonderful. And what about dices generated by sacrifical dagger? If they also don't count take three sorceresses and absolutely dominate magic phase - enemy won't be able to stop 3 x rule of burning iron followed by spirit of the forge targeted at his beloved 15 BK with drakenhoff banner. The rest of army will be less important

, you can take highborn on foot with executioners axe or hydra sword+potion of strenght for difficult combats or cauldron of blood wiith two units of COK, and of course 3xDR and 3xharpies.

Xerasi · Post by **Xerasi** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 1:29 pm

I think the mount part counts only in the context of ridden monsters, though may be wrong.

My idea given the rules:

Dreadlord on manti with pendant, AoD, potion of strength, lance (or halberd)
Master BSB in chariot, HA lance, sdc, enchanyed shield, SoG
sorc lvl 2, scroll dsc
sorc lvl 2, tome, powerstone

2x5 DR, rxb
2x10 rxb elves
2x5 harpies

5 CoK, champ, ring of hotek
2x6 shades, gw
chariot no 2

Hydra

lots of punch, with a decent magic phase and shooting.

Matras · Post by **Matras** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 4:40 pm

Ha! No Drakenhoffbanner for VC, either!

Guys, thanks a lot, these are wonderful ideas, I will try to test them one after the other. The one I like best so far is Ehakirs Double-Manti list. Hmmmm....pondering....

Deep one · Post by **Deep one** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 5:43 pm

Matras wrote:Guys and gals, by the way, are rules like these normal? I've only just started playing at tournaments, seems a bit silly to me, even though I can understand part of them.

At first sight, I was thinking you are posting fropm Germany. Tournaments limited in the way you described are the norm, rather than the exception, over here. The reason for this, AFAIC, is that Germany's tournament scene is highly competitive and most players claim to like the tactics aspect of WFB. Unfortunately, as most of them also like the tactics aspect best when fielded in *other* players' armies, a lot of regulations have been put in place to safeguard against double treeman/double stank/... kinds of lists. As the process of regulating-down army books takes quite some time, this also means lists drawn from the most recent ABs tend to be even more powerful than they should be as opponents lack the means to counter their novel abilities.

Matras · Post by **Matras** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:05 pm

Good guess. Yes, I am from Germany.

Deep one · Post by **Deep one** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 6:21 pm

Matras wrote:Good guess. Yes, I am from Germany.

I checked on T3 and couldn't find a tournament on that date so I concluded Akito's restrictions had spread to an international level by now and went on to type up my lecture. Oh well, good luck and tell us how it went! !smile!

Matras · Post by **Matras** » Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:54 pm

It is in Nuremberg in August - should be easy to find. And I certainly will try to get the DE back into the black. Don't get your hope up, though, I am rather rusty...

Matras · Post by **Matras** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:13 am

Okay, I started churning out a first candidate of a list heavily based on your proposals and on my own wishes. Point-costs are "reliable guesswork", one might say. I have no idea whatsoever if this idea is a complete idiocy, so I would like to have your opinion.

Dreadlord (SDC, Shield, AoES, Inverse Ward, Whip of Agony - that is this new beastmaster weapon).

Hag+Cauldron, Manbane, RoKhaine

Sorceress Lvl 1, SoGhrond, Scroll, Steed

2 Assassins with Manbane, additional Handweapon+RoKhaine

2x 5 Harpies

3x5 Dark Riders with Xbows and Musicians

7 Shades with GW

13 Execs with AP-Banner

18 Blackguard with ASF-Banner and Ring

Hydra

The basic idea is to have a strong center which is still mobile enough for manoevering, supported by a fast core which can pop up anywhere. The assassins will be hidden whereever it is most useful, usually Shades and Execs. I didn't take the Bound Steed since I don't think I will get any opponent to exhaust his DD. The core of the army, BG's and Execs, will be stubborn and testing against Ld 10, since I will try to keep them close to each other and the General has to stay in the BG - giving him a chance to use their ASF and the additional attack I will bestow upon them with the Cauldron. My guess is that many opponents will bring between 2-3 warmachines, and the magic-heavy armies will make use of that - namely VC's, since they are not allowed to bring their Drakenhoffbanner. Warmachines should be easy to remove with that list. Only thing I don't have is copious amounts of shooting, but I was never lucky in that sector, anyway, so either I take 2-3 units of RXbows or leave them out at all.

Ehakir · Post by **Ehakir** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 8:48 am

Looks good, one comment: I'd definetly (what a word XD) include shurikens on at least one of your assasins... S7 vs chariots = very nice to have

Lord temnir · Post by **Lord temnir** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:11 am

Ehakir wrote:Looks good, one comment: I'd definetly (what a word XD) include shurikens on at least one of your assasins... S7 vs chariots = very nice to have

S7? As far as I come the suriken are S5. S4 ground (if the srenght keeps the old way) and S+1 for suriken. If you meant the manbane-poison to do the improvement on S7 it won't work for poison does not work on charriots and similair warmachines...

Lord temnir · Post by **Lord temnir** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:12 am

Ehakir wrote:Looks good, one comment: I'd definetly (what a word XD) include shurikens on at least one of your assasins... S7 vs chariots = very nice to have

S7? As far as I come the suriken are S5. S4 ground (if the srenght keeps the old way) and S+1 for suriken. If you meant the manbane-poison to do the improvement on S7 it won't work for poison does not work on charriots and similair warmachines...

Zeth · Post by **Zeth** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:42 am

Chariots are not immune to poison.
It even specifically says so on page 96 under 'Poisoned Attacks'

Matras wrote:No more than 3 chariots or chariot units (including characters taking them as mounts)

That really screws a lot of TK options =(

Guys and gals, by the way, are rules like these normal? I've only just started playing at tournaments, seems a bit silly to me, even though I can understand part of them.

Depends on where you live and which group of people you can find to play with. Lots of people try to make up their own comp system, few of them actually do a good job of balancing the game. Most just unbalance the game in a different way.

Most leagues or tournies I go to, or used to organize just banned special characters. Our player base felt it led to a stagnant and boring environment to limit the extremes.

This comp reqs feels a bit overbearing, and screws some army lists very specifically. Or certain armies need to have specific allowances (like it appears Bretts do) which does not actually create a more balanced system at all. This also does nothing to squelch the power of the gunlines that are always so complained about.

Master of arneim · Post by **Master of arneim** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:48 am

@ matras: the list is good but the main weakness is that you can be in trouble vs big targets: why? You can't really take down with shooting the main treath like steams and a bloodthirster (or however it's called) with obsidian armour because you haven't heavy shooting or magic. Also a He dragon could be very painful.

The greater daemon could be even limited, but you've to move very wisely your Drs and shades.

Master of arneim · Post by **Master of arneim** » Tue Jul 01, 2008 9:49 am

Sorry for an inexplicable double posting :?:

Tournament Tactics based on new book

Tournament Tactics based on new book

Re: Tournament Tactics based on new book