Monday, August 26, 2013

A Fine Day's Gaming

Saturday saw six local (and not so locals) descend on Khandallah for some gaming.

I managed to get one game in and then watched as Charlie had his first Fantasy game for 2.5 years. My game was against Jeff Kent who was running the new Lizards. Jeff is trying out a series of variant lists from the new book which I think is exactly the way to approach things (I know when the new DoC came out people said it was mono-Nurgle + Skullcannon but through my own trials I found Tzeentch isn't so bad either. As a result my current "list" is a collaboration).

In our game Jeff used a COK bus with 4 characters in it - Oldblood, BSB and two other Scar-Vets (one with Crown of Command and one with MR3). This was backed up by Skink Core, a Prest on Beasts, two Ancient Stegs and a Sally. We played Dawn Attack and there were no dramas with deployment. However I seized first turn and was able to inflict first blood. One Steg took four wounds from my cannon while the RoC accounted for most of a Skink cohort. Where the battle was won was that I was able to overwhelm Jeff's right flank by T2, pushing to the edge of his deployment area with my blocks. I got lucky and one-shot the other Steg.  Blue Fire took the last wound off the other Steg.

Blue Fire is one of my favourite spells. It doe D6 Str D6 hits and is cast on a 5+. Generally the caster is +2 to cast so you can get it off very reliably with two dice and it is likely with even a single die. The beauty of the spell is that your opponent waves it through 90% of the time taking the chance that it will do nothing. If they don't then it costs them two dice to reliably stop it. Decisions, decisions.

I managed to Spirit Leech Jeff's Priest taking his last wound and had a flank shot on the bus requiring 4 LOS rolls. Unfortunately the shot fell short. Jeff charged the bus into a BoN that challenged out and held on -3 (IP and BSB). This allowed me to charge with the Was-A-Cannon-Is-Now-A-Chariot inflicting four wounds from six impact hits. From here it was a case of being able to apply my magic dominance, reliably getting off Soulblight every turn as Jeff chose to stop Doom & Darkness. The bus killed the Skullcannon and was then charged by the GUO and eventually the Plague Drones. The Beast went down but at the cost of all the characters bar one and the bus itself.

In the end it was a pretty comprehensive win to the DOC who lost 400 points in the process. Generally things went right (or didn't go wrong) at critical times for the Daemons and the early magic dominance was capitalised on to grind out the win. It was an interesting game and highlighted to me at least that if, with the Bus, you are putting eggs in one basket then you need magic buffs to tip the odds firmly in your favour.


2 comments:

  1. I think since skitterleap 2008 that was only the second game of fantasy I had played, with the last one being that tomb kings vs skaven game we had like 2 and a half years ago.

    Talk about rusty! I think itll take another 30-40 games at least just to shake the cobwebs out. Time to get cracking I think.

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  2. Bus armies are frustrating to play, I much prefer now having threats all over the board rather than so concentrated. I think meta wise most people are prepared to deal with a big bus so makes them less viable that they appear on paper.

    I admit I let blue fire through a lot and hope one of the dice rolled is low, sometimes that can backfire horribly - such is the nature of Tzeentch.

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