Blood Bowl - Karond Kar Pirates

Because I've clearly not got enough unpainted Dark Elves sitting around I'm now starting a Dark Elf Blood Bowl team for the club's upcoming league. It'll be a few weeks before the leagues starts properly, but I managed to get a bit of pre-season play in at the club last night.

The list I'm currently running looks like this:

Fan Factor: 2
Re-Rolls: 2

7 Linesmen
2 Blitzers
1 Witch Elf
1 Runner

Unfortunately my players are still un-named, but I'll get around to that.

After playing around with a few different lists I've settled on this one, that closely follows what comes in the standard Dark Elf box. However the box comes from an earlier version of the Dark Elf list, so comes supplied with a Thrower which no longer exists. On the other hand, the list has a Runner which there's no model for. Easy solution then, use the Thrower as my Runner and I'm sorted!

I'd hoped to have more gold available for an Apothecary, some Cheerleaders and Assistant Coaches, etc. but the Dark Elves are an expensive team. In the end most of my gold went on just getting my basic 11 players. Because of that I'm likely to be spending the earnings of my first few games on those types of extras, starting with an Apothecary to keep my frail elves out of the graveyard!

So I played the list in a practice game last night, playing a half game against a Human team where I managed to pull off a 2-0 win. Won't go into much detail over what happened, but was really stunned at just how fast the Dark Elves can get about the field. At one point I had my Runner boxed in with the ball on one side of the field, but after the Humans broke the front of the box open he managed to rush across the field and hand off to a Blitzer who ran the ball down the other side of the field.

High agility is a fantastic thing, I had players pulling off most moves (picking up the ball, throwing and catching) on 2+ or 3+, which means I can move the ball about even faster than I can run. With agility 4 on the whole team it means that anyone can be used to make passing plays, so there's a lot of adaptability. Although not as physical a team as Orcs or Dwarves, the Witch Elf and Blitzers can hold their own in most situations if supported by runners so I'm still able to land a few blows.

The biggest thing I'm worried about once the season starts is losing players to injury, as I've got no reserves and no spare cash to spend on them, but careful play until I can afford an apothecary should keep me pretty safe. Expect more updates as the league progresses!

Horus Heresy board game

The advantage of having a girlfriend who's a bit of a geek herself is that she's really good at choosing presents. That meant that on Christmas day I opened a copy of Fantasy Flight's Horus Heresy board game.

First impression was that this is a big game. A hefty box, and most of the space inside is used. There's a large board with a map of the area surrounding the Imperial Palace, plastic fortifications for the map, decks of cards and of course a hefty bundle of plastic models.

So box in hand I went along the the club last night with a game lined up. We got the board set up, and mighty impressive it looks too. A few fortifications and areas of the Imperial Palace could barely hold the number of troops they needed, but we managed to squeeze them all in. Rather than drawing side randomly we settled on me playing Traitor while my opponenet took the Loyalists.

Since no one had played it before it was a bit slow to get going, not helped by my head being full of the cold, but we managed to get through the opening phases reasonably easily. Traitors had what look to be fairly average results on both betrayal and bombardment, weakening the Loyalist hold on the outer areas of the board.

While the setup phase was pretty straight forward it took a bit of reading and re-reading sections of the rules to figure out how the core gameplay works. This was particularly the case because Traitor betrayal led to a few battles of coexistance straight off, so we were plunged straight into combat. In one area to the west of the board Traitors outnumbered Loyalists and quickly wiped them out, but over to the east it was a closer match, and both sides struggled to do any damage.

Traitor first turn brought some reinforcements in to one of the spaceports, then the Loyalists took over and decided to try for a decisive strike against Horus himself! The Emperor and his Custodes teleported up to the Vengeful Spirit where they made quick work of the cultists and demons there. Traitors were taken aback by a bold move like this, but with no way to get any reinforcements the Warmaster would have to fend for himself. Meanwhile Mortarion led his Death Guard against the walls of the Imperial Palace, where the Imperial Fists did what Imperial Fists do best - run scared!

To the south two Loyalist titans backed by tanks, White Scar space marines and the Fabricator General attacked Angron and his troops holding the spaceport. However the Traitor forces managed to hold off the Loyalists, and a good draw of combat cards pushed the Imperial initiative marker several spaces ahead allowing the Traitors some breathing room.

At the same time the Emperor was pushing further into the Vengeful Spirit, now attacking the bridge. This time the combat cards seemed to be favouring the Emperor, pushing Horus about half way up the damage track. However while the Warmaster was suffering his troops were fighting strong, and had soon wiped out the Custodes. The combat ended with the Emperor alone against Horus and his troops.

With plenty of initiative to play around with the Traitors carried out four seperate drop pod attacks, focussed mainly on taking and holding the spaceports. However this wasn't much more than a formality as the battle on the Vengeful Spirit was soon over. The Emperor was dead, Horus had triumphed and all that was left was to mop up the remaining Loyalists.

All in all a good fun game. We messed up on a few different things, and probably missed a lot out, but by the end of the game we were getting the hang of the rules and things were moving more quickly. What I've seen so far impressed me, and I'm looking forward to playing some more of this game in future.

Battle Brothers - NidCrons

My local store is running a tournament in a few months time, a doubles tournament called Battle Brothers with players only using the contents of a single battalion/battleforce box plus an HQ. Other than that you've got a free hand to field anything you can manage from that one box.

I'm expecting to see tables full of pairs of Space Wolf players spamming Lone Wolves and Wolf Guard, but that's not really my style. So I'm planning on teaming up with long-time opponent Shrooms to see how much carnage we can cause. As there's no Terminator battleforce it was either more for my Eldar or start something new, and I must admit I'm uninspired by the Eldar box. So, it's time for me to start yet another 40k army to sit next to my almost painted Eldar, unpainted Terminators and partly painted Warhammer Dark Elves.

Back in the day when I was first getting into 40k (some time during 2nd Edition) the Necrons were just being released. I had something like a Lord (metal model), two Destroyers (metal "tricycle" models), a handful of Scarabs (individual metal models) and a couple of dozen Warriors (metal models). How things have changed, modern Necrons have their own codex, and a whole range of some rather nice plastic miniatures.

So I've been reading up on a bit of Necron tactics, mostly from Fritz40k who certainly seems to know what he's doing. There's also rumours of new Necrons soon which really means I should hold off a bit, but probably means I'll forge ahead and end up with a redundant army!

And while I'm sending out my shooty robots what will Shrooms be doing? Well, last we talked he seemed pretty keen on finally getting around to building that Tyranid army he's been meaning to do for years now. This could make quite a nice combination, his swarmy bugs can run up front and get shot leaving my Necrons quite safe. Oh, and I should probably say something sensible about a mix of tactics and style too.

Long, sharp and pointy - Dark Elf spears

A bit of an aside about spears.

When I was picking up Warhammer one of the things I really wanted was an army with loads of spears, pikes or other polearms. I do a bit of medieval re-enactment and use the spear, and I generally think they're pretty cool weapons.

Most obvious choice in that case was High Elves, they've got plenty of spears and are even able to fight in a further extra rank with them. But they're a bit too clean and shiny for my tastes. So eventually I ended up drifting to the Dark Elves instead.

Dark Elf spearmen are cheap and plentiful, which is a good start. A high initiative gives them a good shot at landing plenty of hits before the enemy fights back, and their weapon skill is respectable too. As you'd expect from an Elf the strength and toughness is lacking, but there's ways to get around this with magic if needs be. And while we're on the subject of magic a good leadership combined with Occam's Mindrazor on all those spears will cause some quality pain.

As a unit they're defensive - the spears won't get that extra rank if they charge. This makes for a good anchor unit, a big block of spears to stand in the way and block enemy movement so that a more powerful combat unit can charge the flanks or rear to cause casualties and boost combat resolution. As the spearmen are mostly there to hold the enemy in place you don't actually need to worry too much about causing casualties with them; instead you can reform for extra ranks to remove the enemy unit's steadfast as well as getting a bit of extra combat resolution for extra ranks.

In a Dark Elf army spearmen have another role, as ammunition for the sorceress' sacrificial dagger. If things get desperate then you've got a fantastic pool of potential power dice waiting to be used. Of course with more power dice there's more miscast opportunities, but with spearmen as cheap as they are it's not so big a loss.

All that said, I've not actually got a lot of spearmen in my army. I'm putting a bit of thought to reworking my list and either bulking up the spearmen already there or adding another unit. Coming from 40k I still look at units of 20 or so as a big unit, and really have trouble getting my head around units in the 40-50 model range. I guess it's really the type of thing I'll only get used to with time.

Khainites

The advantage of actually sitting down and getting some painting done (spear block mostly finished now) is that I can put some thought to what's actually in my army, and what else I might need.

When I'd just started the army I was leaning towards a corsair/raiding-party idea with few if any Khainite units. The idea being that this army was concerned more with getting out there and getting rich instead of acting on behalf of anyone else. But this gives a pretty one-dimensional type of Dark Elf force, missing out a huge part of Druchii society.

Executioners

Of all the Khainite units, in fact of most of the Dark Elf range, the Executioners are the nicest models. They look utterly deadly. Although I could probably have made better use of some Black Guard the models just don't do it for me.

So I've now got 10 Executioners waiting to go into my 1500pt force. Against Shrooms' Goblins I'm not expecting huge results here; I'm not bringing many attacks, and striking last. However against tougher foes, particularly those in good armour, this unit will be a great little tin-opener. Tie up a tough unit with a mass of spears, then hit them in the flank or rear with Executioners and they should start to crumble before too long.

Cauldron of Blood

Reading up on tactics at Druchii.net puts the Cauldron of Blood pretty far up the list of awesome units. For a bit over 200 points you're getting a battle standard with multiple wounds, ward save, gives nearby units stubborness and one unit gets a nice buff. Now that I've got other Khainite units in my army (See the Executioners above) I wouldn't feel so bad taking a Cauldron. In fact, I expect the Executioners would be the ones most likely to get the buff from it, particularly the armour boost as striking last with two-handed weapons leaves them a bit vulnerable.

Witch Elves

Longer term I'm giving some thought to a decent sized block of Witch Elves to deal with large units of cheap troops. Frenzy, multiple weapons and poison attacks should carve through anything lightly armoured without too much trouble. And against something like a huge block of Goblins an attack boost from Cauldron of Blood will clear through them in no time.

Synergy

Most of what I'm thinking about here involves pretty heavy synergy between whichever units, the Cauldron, Sorceresses, etc. It's got me thinking that these types of combos may be worth a seperate blog post, so I won't go into them too much here and now. But what I will say here is that's a big thing that's changed moving from 40k to Fantasy, I'm thinking a lot more about how my units will cooperate.

Cold One Knights

I'm still thinking through how I want to set up my Cold One Knights. I've got 10 of them so far, but until I decide what I'm doing with them only five are built.

The original plan was to run a single unit of 9 Cold One Knights, a Battle Standard Bearer and a Sorceress. Or potentially 8 Knights and add a Dreadlord. The danger there is that there's a lot of points tied up in just 11 models; a good hit with a cannon, rock lobber, magic, etc. could make a real mess of things. Throwing in a magic item like Ring of Darkness would help protect from shooting, but I'm just not convinced it would be enough.

I've also considered running two units of five. This way I could have a small unit on either flank which would hopefully be able to clean up any skirmishers or bypass the enemy battle line and pick off war machines and shooty units lurking up the back. The down side here is that both units will suffer Stupidity without the Battle Standard Bearer re-roll, and the Sorceress could only accompany one of them.

Despite the vulnerabilities I'm still liking the idea of the big unit. A Battle Standard Bearer with the Hydra Banner in a unit like this is a devastating charge, and a Shadow Sorceress to debuff the enemy Strength is going to go a long way to help survivability in combat. Alternatively metal magic can boost the units ability to hit (Enchanted Blades) and survivability (Glittering Robe). And let's not forget the BSB reducing the risk of failing Stupidity, taking it from a 17% chance of failing to less than 3%! Add to all that the fact that at two ranks of five they're capable of disrupting flanks and you've got something pretty heavy-hitting to roll down one flank.

Da Boss will see you now...

So far so good. Armed with nothing more than a need for a pint and pay day I went to the GW and got myself De Slag Om Skull Pass because it was cheap (being slightly out of date and Dutch) and gave me both a small number of Gobbo's and Dwarves as I was still undecided which to play.

A check of rule books and a bit of thought later and I went back down for some fanatics aswell!

So I'm off to build my Gobbo's and maybe get some painted before I bother you with pictures.