Original Battle Report

So yours truly went to a tournament, expecting to fare a bit better than the last time he showed up there (I got denied last place because I was ‘awarded’ a massacre for not getting to play the third round – There was an uneven number of players and the last in the rankings could not play… Bitter cause last place ‘won’ an army book!)

So I drove to Mutterstadt in the German equivalent of the Reikland (Rheinland Pfalz for my colleagues from good old G), already three tournament points behind for not entering my army list a week ahead. Mail order was slow to deliver my Altar bits so I had to mount my Arch lector on a measly horse on short notice, changing my list accordingly. Morale was high, though, because after a tiring week I was looking forward to play a few games. On to the List!

2250 point Empire list:

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Arch Lector (With the Greatswords)
Barded Warhorse, Armour of Dawn, VHS, Sword Might

Battle Standard Bearer (In the Swordsmen Regiment)
Barded Warhorse, Full Plate, Griffon Banner

Level 2 Battle Wizard (In the Spearmen Regiment)
Warhorse, Rod of Power, Ring of Volans

Level 1 Battle Wizard (Wherever he would annoy me least)
2 Dispel Scrolls

28 Swordsmen, Full Command
9 Swordsmen Detachment
5 Archers Detachment

23 Spearmen, Standard, Musician
10 Crossbows Detachment

6 Knights, Full Command
War Banner

5 Vanilla Knights

16 Greatswords
8 Swords Detachment
5 Archers Detachment

5 Pistoliers, Musician, Champ with repeater pistol

Cannon

Cannon

10 Flagellants

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Game 1
Against *GULP* the Daemonic Hordes…

I did not know a thing about this army, so I was preparing to get beaten pretty badly and braced for bad surprises all around…At least, intense research after the event led to additional intelligence concerning the enemy units, aka their names. My opponent had, from left to right:

Khorne Bloodcrushers
Furies
Nurgle Plaguebearers
Nurgle Plagueriders
Khorne Fleshhounds
Daemon Prince
Khorne Bloodletters
Plaguerider BSB
More Khorne Bloodcrushers
More Khorne Fleshhounds
And even more Khorne Bloodletters

Deployment:

The mission was to destroy the most expensive enemy unit, the Greatswords in my case and the Nurgle plaguerider things in his. Deployment as seen above.

I got first turn and started to blast away at the scary looking Khorne bloodcrushers on my flanks. My Great Cannon was able to send two out of three in the right unit back where they came from, while the left unit was saved by its daemonic ward until they failed a charge against my fleeing crossbows and got flank charged by my lowly spearmen who quite obviously had maneuvered themselves for this poor trap. He fell for it nevertheless and his expensive Khorne thingies vanished! Hooray for my left flank, but they never reached the rest of the battle, with the cannon not able to find LOS to the enemy.

On the right I turned the old ‘deploying-my-frenzied-fast-movers-with-their-arses-to-the-enemy’ on my opponent, for his hounds were blocking charge paths, enabling the pistoliers to take position behind the house where they could get behind enemy lines in the second turn, disrupting his movement and firing on his lone BSB or other targets. Sadly, his daemon prince flew over and panicked them into the hounds. Bye bye pistoliers. The handgunners were able to shoot the hounds dead, however, and proceeded to help whittle down the enemy flankers on the right until they where wiped out by the little flying chaos things – Furies? It took them 4 rounds of combat to die, so that’s not too bad. His prince played flee-and-rally games with the vanillas, so I was happy for him. Sadly the cannon crew was running from the prince’s terrifying 40k conversion presence and was not able to get back to their expensive machine because they were march blocked by the prince… oh well.

The center was where it all happened, however. The Archlectors Greatswords charged the stupid Khorne hounds and got held up by them for 3 rounds of combat! Likewise, the not-quite-hammer unit of knights charged into the Nurgle plaguebearers and won every combat by one or two, but never were able to kill them all and were instead slowly whittled down. My opponent rolled fantastically for break tests with his units in the middle, sometimes needing threes… When the Archlector was finally able to hack the hounds to little chaotic pieces, he charged happily into the Nurgle big base baddies waiting behind them. How bad could those be? I mean, it’s only three models, right? Right. I could not even kill one of them with their clouds of flies making me hit on fives, and they struck first with 1d6+2 hits per model. The Greatswords fell one by one.

In the right center the archer screen baited the center bloodletter 25mm base Khorne thingies so they presented their flank to the griffon banner waving swordsmen. There went the Bloodletters and promptly vanished in a cloud of daemonic surprise!

Endgame:

The game only got to turn five, if I recall correctly. The picture above shows the left flank desperately trying to get back into the game, with the cannon sans LOS to anything. The Knights behind the wood are finally cought by the prince and killed. The fury whots-its-names come back to the table after running down the handgunners. In the middle the flank charging Archlector detachment is finally flank charged itself by the enemy BSB riding yet another one of those terrible Nurgle slimeblobs. The Greatswords break without being able to rally, the Nurgle blobs follow the detachment instead to crash into the already beyond annoying combat between the little knight hammer and the pesky Nurgle daemons. 2d6+4 attacks later this combat is also decided…

Visible at the top is my lvl 2 mage hiding behind trees like a girl after he was stoopid enough to be inside the BSBs charge range. So instead of frying the slimy git with MAHGIC he went running to the scenery… ‘I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately’, my arse. The right centre hides a small gem of micro-tactics: To prevent the frenzied Khorne bad boy from destroying my detachment, I instead turned my parent unit to the right, facing him, and then ran my march-blocked detachment in front of the parent. His turn, he has to charge the detachment, which autodestructs via fleeing-without-being-able-to-rally-since-it’s-last-turn BUT leads the Khorne amok-rider into the waiting griffon unit! Haha, thinks the Monkey, I have you now, my little berserker boy! Then the Monkey wins combat by 5 and watches his opponent roll another three for his break test. Bummer.

Thus, the first game ends with me being beaten. On the bright side, it was only a 8-12 loss, and not so bad for fighting a completely strange army fielded by someone who eventually reached the top ten.

I hope you enjoyed my first report, and look forward to the next installment of: “Powder Monkey’s exciting adventures in Tournament Land!”

Your daemonic Powder Monkey apologizes for the twofold usage of the word ‘Arse’ in this battle report. Make that threefold.