Chump Bashed at the ETC

[Dave]

Round 1 - Denmark (last years winners)
Round 2 - Serbia
Round 3 - Croatia
Round 4 - Sweden
Round 5 - Ireland
Round 6 - Wales

To be honest a slightly dissapointing finish to play two of the 6 nations teams in the last 2 rounds, I'd hoped we might pick up a few more teams from further afield, we were on the tables next to Australia and New Zealand when they played round 3 and Latvia/Hungary were kicking about too plus a few others bouncing up and down around the field.

My personal results were a bit meh, though I think the TK did me proud and it mostly comes down to personal failings on a couple of the rounds that cost me points and some bad luck in 1 game which took a draw to a 3-17 loss in the last couple of turns.

Denmark - Daemons 5-15
Serbia - WoC 15-5
Croatia - Daemons 0-20
Sweden - WoC 3-17
Ireland - Lizardmen 12-8
Wales - HE 3-17

Denmark could have been far closer if I'd been strict on my opponent missing something out but I'm not someone to win through my opponent forgetting something pretty basic so I let him away with forgetting his tormentor blade and at the end of combat he remembered after I killed his slanneshi herald. I rolled the LD test, failed and put the herald back on. Probably cost me 2-3pts in the round once you take the knock on impact the rerolls had in further turns. I got the bloodthirster T6 after a sphinx had pinned it for 4 turns and chipped off 4 wounds. Nearly had his nurgle block too when he went for a sphinx with them 2 wide and I thundercrushed his herald then fireybreathed and stomped the unit up. Unfortunatley left them with 1 model above 25% and I'd forgotten a thunderstomp on the unit so probably could have had it.

Serbia vs WoC- My army worked like clockwork, totally controlled where my opponent could attack and I took him apart, some good dice in the right places but mostly think I just played it better than him as he was too scared to engage vs my army so I was able to just keep shooting & magicing his units to bits. Casket killed lvl 2 on disc, 5 knights from a unit of 6 and ate a lot of his dispel dice!

Croatia - S7 bloodthirster killed my entire army basically. T1 had 2 stone thrower shots and a casket attack on him all fail and then he rampaged through my army perfectly leaving every unit on 1 wound at the end of his round of combat so he could reform and charge me in his turn. Also he had Life magic and healed back any wounds I was causing. Only positive for me was killing his nurgle block through a combo charge of 2 sphinx and a necroserpent unit who took the lot off the table in 1 turn but that was the only points I got.

Sweden - 3 disc characters, 2 slanneshi blocks and 3 chariots felt like a pretty decent matchup. But when his first 2 gateways on sphinxes were irresistable on S9 and S10 then a perfect hellcannon shot on the other one for 4 wounds he was able to push up on me. I then proceeded to fail to hit the hellcannon, on 1w from the first turn onwards, with my 2 cattys (misfiring the 2 turns I did roll hits) and then lost my second sphinx to a failed ld test from the tzeench spell. Everything started to go wrong when the hellcannon misfired putting a miscast on all my wizards blowing the level 1 up and dropping the lvl 4 two levels (his puppet never rolled less than 3 over the 7 miscasts in the game so his irresistables were all negated and my lvl 4 (2) then became lvl 0). My only success was the casket killing 2 of the disc characters and my serpents eating a couple of chariots. Had the magic and misfires not rolled so well for him he was never going to get any points from me as he couldn't commit his army.

Ireland - Life lizards are a great matchup for me as lacks the tools to chip away well at my army. Sphinxes need to be held back a little more to protect against being skinked to death but the necroserpents and chariots have the threat range to do this. 5+ to hit shooting combined with casket for anything out the bubble means his chaff is having a really difficult time doing anything and the saurus can't commit to the serpents with the sphinx available to counter charge. I got both scar vets, 1 with catapult after shooting off the charmed shield and the other with a sphinx killing blow after he got stuck on my chariot unit. He charged with the flaming ward and they've the flaming banner but the 12 wounds with standard and near the bsb doesn't crumble quickly as causes 3 wounds a turn avg and I was in range for all my spells to heal and was casting killing blow/5+ ward to keep them up. That would be the first change to my army, the flaming banner makes that unit a liability vs those characters, without it the killing blow on them means with 8 attacks from 2 chariots crew I'm quite likely to get a killing blow in a couple of rounds of combat so the flaming ward is the only thing saving him. My shooting got lots of the skink units down to small sizes and he ran them to the back of the board, slightly better dice rolls (was always below avg on wounds, but generally above on hits!) would have killed a couple more units and netted me enough pts for a bigger win. Could possibly have pushed for a bigger win by committing the sphinxes & necroserpents to his blocks but I didn't want to chance it as hadn't realised we were going down quite so hard in this round (pretty much the one time I asked tim whether I should push or not).

Wales - I was utterly smashed at the start of this round, at the end of the Ireland game was hitting the whisky very hard and also some serbian plum brandy. So should really appologise a little to my opponent Gareth.  Game wise I made a stupid mistake early on by pushing my chariots forward a little too far giving his dragon princes a charge into them. I did put killing blow, extra attack and 5+ ward on them but again because of flaming he had a 2+ ward so went in unscathed. because of the zero wounds I popped in a single turn where I expected to hold (15 attacks, ~13 hits, 8.5 wounds, 5 after wards) but his 3 of res (charge, banner, rank) would have been offset by loss of rank and a wound (or two) plus in my bsb range without the flaming. That would have allowed a next turn sphinx counter charge. But even that was a mistake as I could have positioned the sphinx to be able to counter even had he gone through it in a single turn. To make matters worse the overrun was into my hirophants unit. The game was then effectively over, I did manage to kill both my sphinxes through double 6'ing break test, even with the reroll from the bsb on one of them, in my T5&6. Eventually I killed the dragon princes which is the only reason it wasn't a 0-20. So utter drunken idiocy to blame for the big loss but thankfully it didn't matter for the team score but disappointing behaviour by me 

So having submitted the list with never having played it would I change anything, well obviously yes given the above statements:
1. The flaming banner is gone, this army doesn't need it. It cost me the chariots once and restricted them a couple of times

2. The lvl 1 on Nehek was useful but ultimately I found the casting value of the lore too high for him to be consistently beneficial, I'm thinking light magic would have been far more useful in most of the matchups giving me a cheap to cast magic missile. I particularly noticed in T1 I basically threw 6 dice at the casket and didn't have much use for any remaining dice so something further to zap away with would help.

3. BSB - was useful but if I'm honest wasn't necessary. The reduced crumble was good for the sphinxes but the swift reforms seldom mattered, I suspect I'd probably be better with a 2nd lvl 1 light mage which I'll give a try.

4. Necroserpents vs Chariots - Very had decision this one, the chariots underperformed but mostly due to the flaming banner, the high charge range on both units is key to how the army works, it makes people have to decide between standing off or potentially getting charged very hard by one of those units. I would say the army works well because of having 3 units from these two choices which way around is best very much depended on the matchups. The ability to regrow chariots at D3+1 was excellent but the armour and killing blow on the serpents kept opponents honest in a lot of games. The serpents were excelling against fiends both matchups. 4 serpents vs 7 fiends = 25 attacks from the fiends, 13 hits, 6 wounds, 4 wounds so I got 15 attacks back, 9 with poison wounding on 3's and 6 wounding on 4's . I was consistently winning the grind and being able to put the 5+ ward on them to get a wound back and take less damage really swung it my direction.

Other things to note, the casket is a 1+ for this army, the ability is awesome and the additional power dice is the icing on the cake. It killed 3 disc riding WoC Characters, finished off 1 bloodthirster (with a 2+ ward vs magic), 5 chaos knights and some chaff units over the weekend thoroughly exceeding the pts investment in it by quite some margin also the only thing in a TK list that can harm the steamtank.

[khaosgoblin]

Well sounds like you had a good variety of games & a good social, so do you reckon the TK will be selected for next years ETC?

[fatolaf]

Lore of light on a few lvl1's is a must in the TK, gives you a real good edge vs DoC (especially if you get a S5 banishment), they are now my favourite match up..

Agreed on the flaming banner, having come up against DP's myself, i know the feeling.
With SSC's and Lore of light you simply dont need it...

Just seen this report, nice one buddy...

[Dave]

Hmm, had somehow missed your comment mark.  Answer is it all just depends.  I've always been a fan of picking something to balance the team.  Last year we had 1 defensive shooty army, so I was always going to take a second, it keeps the matchup process honest.  This year, who knows!

Cheers Ol, I quite like some death magic in the lists I've been playing with more recently.  I'm needing to try out my ETC list but with a couple of changes (1. drop lvl 4 and all equipment, not sure about lvl 2 or 3 and then add in a couple of lvl 1/2 mages on light/death (if doing death a prince is a nice addition too).

I've not played about with the points at 2400 so not really sure how I'd set it up.  Also been using a heirotitan & casket recently but at ETC if the comp stays the same then it's pointless.

[fatolaf]

I have never used the titan, casket combo, dont think we need it, frees up points for the Necrosphinx, which is a 1+ IMO..

Been using a death based list in the campaign, using a lvl 4 of death, tomb guard block and 2 SSC's, very defensive but awesome so far, Doom & Darkness combined with casket or -1 hits from the SSC have proved nails...

TG block hit when anything gets too close, with back up from lvl 4 heiro, also deletes most stuff that strays too close...

[Dave]

That's my one wish that they'd done the same with the TK book as the OK one and made it you have to have a Nehek lore but not the requirement that it has to be the highest level wizard would allow a lot more flexibility of builds and increased their competitiveness across a range of styles of play.

[fatolaf]

Agreed, it is annoying, but then we do have some ace spells in that deck, and the healing is vital...

[Dave]

I've barely used the healing and find the deck too high a casting value for me to want to rely on it for multiple spells so I've started going for multiple lower level mages.

One of the latest lists I'm looking at:

4 x lvl 2 mages, 1 x nehek, 3 x light, scroll
2 x 20 archers, muso
2 x 10 archers
4 chariots, std, muso
4 necroserpents, std
3 necroserpents, std
2 x warsphinx, firey roars
SSC, heirotitan, casket

It just feels like it's a few points too many for some of the things so really struggle to get enough combat into the list.  Think I might have to go for the total redesign but can't be arsed painting a load more models for it at the moment.

Also been considering a 8 chariot unit as something a bit different.  4d6 s5 impact hits sounds good and backed up by light and nehek should still grind quite well.

[fatolaf]

Hmm, a lack of a lvl 4 I have found really hurts TK, be interesting to see how you get on with that list.
No Carrion then?
To me they are the best unit on the army, 2 units of 3 are in every list I write...

[Dave]

not tried them yet, too points constrained as it is, no idea what I'd drop to make them fit and I've not gotted round to painting mine yet.