High Elves, take 2

Time to jump start the army again with brand new army lists.  I busted out my Elves the other day and looked over a vast army of old school figurines.  Since Space Wolves got released, I've been on a big 40K fling.  It doesn't help that my recent fascination with Warmachine's got me playing more of that than anything else.  I figured sure, why not:  Let's give the Elves of Ulthuan a run for their money.

High Elves was the first Fantasy army that I ever got into.  I got into Fantasy when I was in college sometime in '03 and not a lot of people were playing High Elves.  I looked through the book and I liked what I saw:  The book had dragons and a heavy emphasis on magic.  Alright, sold.  It's been 8 years now and the army plays quite different than I remember.  Over the ages, we lost a few things and gained a few things (biggest one being ASF).  Just like any other army book, one has to relearn his army and adjust for new tactics and brutal adversaries.

Enough of the history lesson, let's get down to the army list.  I'll tell you one thing though:  The fellas around here has placed item bans and character bans on a lot of 8th Ed. stuff.  Due to my slightly irregular work schedule and extreme hiatus from 8th Ed. Fantasy, I haven't got a chance to play with these rules yet.  I'll post it here and you guys can tell me what you think:

Ban List is:
Characters: Teclis, Thorek, Shadowblade, Skarsnict, Kairos, Slug Tongue, Villitch, Karl Franz
Items: Power Scroll, Book of Hoath, Cupped Hands

I bolded two of the items on the list because both are in the High Elves army book.  Teclis is obviously banned because people whine and cry that he single-handily destroys armies and there's nothing they can do about it.  Boo-fucking-hoo.  In my old club, I used to bust out Teclis all the time and no one cared.  Maybe because my old club had some serious Fantasy vets and this newer club is slightly more laxed.  Anywho, that was back in 7th Ed and people had ways to deal with him.  He's T2 with no saves of any kind so it's not really hard for opponents to sac a few Fast Cav or fly Eagles into his face.  I guess it's kind of harder now that I can just put him in my 2nd rank of Phoenix Guard if I have 2 characters in the front seat.  The fact that magic turned into one giant rape fest isn't really encouraging either.

With that in mind, I have a new army list.  It's much softer on the comp scores and hopefully isn't too bad for my opponents to play against.  Not having Teclis or Book brings sadness of my heart mainly because the two things I liked about High Elves have been removed.  These two things are:  Dragons, overpriced and hunted to extinction in 8th Ed because of improved warmachines and deadly magic, and Magic, because I can't take my Book or the High Loremaster.

Anyways, the list:

2496

LORDS:
Lv.4 Archmage (Silver Wand) = 270

HEROES:
Noble (BSB, GW, AoC, GP) = 168
Lv.2 Mage (Seerstaff) = 165

CORE:
30x Spears (FC, War Banner) = 315
32x Spears (FC) = 313

SPECIAL:
25x Phoenix Guard (FC, Banner of Sorcery) = 455
25x White Lions (FC, AoL, Banner of Eternal Flame) = 430
2x Lion Chariots = 280

RARE:
2x Great Eagles = 100

My magic phase consists of a Lv.4 and supporting Lv.2.  The Lv.4 will probably hold High Magic since the spells are easy to cast and I'll be able to flood the field with good spells.  That, or Shadow because I like the flexibility to the lore and the fact I have tons of units that can take advantage of the Mindrazor.  As for my Lv.2, he'll take Lore of Metal and will take Enchanted Blades and Glittering Robe.  These two spells, are what I think to be the best augmentation spells High Elves can take in one lore.  Blades gives me +1 to hit and armor piercing (which is amazing with Martial Prowess) and Glittering Robe on top of Heavy Armor or Light Armor/Shield gives my Elves Space Marine saves.

The Eagles are there for warmachine hunting and the cheap flank/rear charge bonus and the Lion Chariots are for lols.  Since I sold off my metal Dragon Princes, I'm still waiting to get my new plastic models.  It's OK, I like Lion Chariots because I think they're badass.

Getting back into WHFB

It's been a long time since I broke out my High Elves and put them on the table.  I have to be honest, I haven't really had much fun with WHFB 8th Ed.  With the huge emphasis on horde-formation units, overly powerful magic spells, pre-measuring and random charges, it's pretty much a different animal from what I enjoyed in 7th Ed.  Don't get me wrong, 7th Ed. was filled with horrible things too.  These things were Daemons, VC and Dark Elves.  What's the difference between the two?  One was army books in the standard codex creep mannerisms that GW is known for and the other is the core rules the govern the entire edition.  It was the army books that caused a lot of the headaches for me, not the actual game rules.  If anything, only the magic rules needed a slight tweak.

What about you guys?  How is Fantasy doing in your area?  What do you like about 8th that's keeping you in the game?  I still have some friends that play, so I'm probably going to throw down next week and see how it goes.

Btw, here's the rankings for SCGT:

PS - I'm still on overtime.. so that's why I haven't been posting.

BR: 35pts eHaley vs. Xerxis

I played a game vs. my friend Skorne tonight and it was pretty educational overall.  It was the first time he played against eHaley and it was not a game that he'll forget in the near future.  This BR will be written in  my classic bullet point format and it will highlight the important plays.  Overall, I wasn't really happy with my performance but it has been a long while since I played Haley.

My list:

Points: 35
Major Victoria Haley (*5pts)
* Thorn (8pts)
* Stormclad (10pts)
* Squire (2pts)
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team (4pts)
Stormblade Infantry (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
* Stormblade Infantry Officer & Standard (3pts)
* 3 Stormblade Infantry Storm Gunner (3pts)
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution (3pts)
Rhupert Carvolo, Piper of Ord (2pts)

His list:

Points: 35
Tyrant Xerxis (*5pts)
* Bronzeback Titan (10pts)
* Titan Gladiator (8pts)
Bloodrunners (Leader and 5 Grunts) (5pts)
Cataphract Cetrati (Leader and 5 Grunts) (11pts)
Paingiver Beast Handlers (Leader and 3 Grunts) (2pts)
Agonizer (2pts)
Orin Midwinter, Rogue Inquisitor (2pts)

• Turn 1 was pretty average.  I made him deploy first since I won the roll and he setup across the table for me in standard castle formation.  Xerxis casted Defender's Ward on the Bloodrunners and they went around flanking my B13 on the left.  Everyone moved up with the block of Cetrati in the middle in Shield Wall, the Bronzeback on his left and the Titan on his right.  Everyone else was behind him.
• Turn 1 for me was just moving all my dudes up.  Lynch lit up a Bloodrunner with Fire Beacon and Ryan dropped a Magestorm on him.  I placed Watts in front of Ryan so she wouldn't be charged next turn.  Thorn ran and arced a Time Bomb into to Cetrati and it didn't scatter too well.  eEiryss flanked his army on the right.
• Turn 2 saw his entire army moving up some more.  He upkept Defender's Ward on his Bloodrunners and they charged Watts.  Only one was in reach to hit him and he missed with his attack.  He had a crap ton of Fury on his Agonizer and that was just short of touching Thorn.  With his army up mid-field, I knew next turn was going to be big.
• Turn 2 my turn saw Haley pop her feat, covering his entire army in a Temporal Shift.  She put Temporal Acceleration on the Stormclad and made the Gladiator turn around with TK.  Haley put 3 focus on the Stormclad and 1 focus on Thorn just in case I needed to get somewhere.  At this point, I was noticing the rust in playing eHaley because I had to constantly look at her cards for a refresher.  I didn't play this as good as I should of, but in the end, the Stormclad charged the Bronzeback and stuck his sword up his spine.  The TK from Thorn (should of been Deadeye) on the Stormblades who assaulted the Cetrati and shot, but missed a few shots.  Even though they failed their charge, they still got their shots off and are in charge range of next round.  Thorn used Reaction Drive to move into charge range of something, but I had no good targets because the Cetrati didn't die as much as I wanted.  The B13 also shot and killed some Bloodrunners and Ryan shot a Magestorm into the Cetrati, but missed, scattering a little on top of the Cetrati a little in front of my Stormblades.  Eiryss moved into position to shoot at Orin but she missed with double 1s.
• Turn 3 for my opponent was really my extra turn.  I moved his army around in ways he didn't like and he couldn't do anything but take a beating next round.  He got in BtB with everything for the most part and then popped his Feat for +2 ARM.  In addition, he casted Defender's Ward on the Cetrati and Shield Walled with them for a ridiculous 24 ARM.  He also casted Inhospitable Ground and that left him with no Fury to transfer to.  His Gladiator also walked into combat with Eiryss, which should of never happened but I got too greedy at killing Orin.
• Turn 4 my turn was more difficult than it should of been.  The B13 killed more things, Ryan shot another shot into the pack of dudes but it didn't do anything.  My Stormclad was in range of his Agonizer and he couldn't be allocated focus.  Thorn was still good but he quite far away from the Stormclad.  I put a focus on Thorn to run and Haley kept everything for herself.  She TA'd the Stormclad through Thorn (who ran into range), arced a Time Bomb into the Cetrati and tried to boost for damage but got no results.  Eiyrss tried to leave combat but got hit by a free strike and died horribly.  The Stormblades assaulted and killed off 2 Cetrati despite their ridiculous armor and the Stormclad moved in range to swing at Xerxis' face for the game.  I rolled really high with the first two sword swings and that was enough.

Normally, I'm pretty good at this game, but in this particular game I think played like fucking sac.  Yes, this is my second game with Cygnar in 5 months, but excuses is for bitches.  I'll go over why I think this here:

• Instead of casting TK on a Gladiator (which was absolutely useless btw), I should of casted Deadeye on my Stormblades and focus fired on the right most Cetrati in front of me.  This would of hopefully produced more damage to take them down and then I could of charged Thorn into that god damn annoying Agonizer.  That would of put my Spear with reach in range of a lot of his models and only one Cetrati would be hitting back.  With that single move, I would of swept away one of his heavies, had another round of full focus on the Stormclad next turn, been in a good flanking position with my Stormblades should he turn his back on me to engage Thorn (the majority won't be able to attack me cause of Feat), and I would of gained a much larger lead.  That would of been the optimal choice of activations, but I went ahead and fucked it up.
• Oh, and I would of never lost Eiryss.  I got greedy, gambled and rolled double 1s.  That's what I get for gambling instead of playing smart.  He would not have Defender's Ward up if she was alive.
• Overall, sloppy ass game.  Even though I still won, I'm still pretty bitter because there was so many mistakes. If I played with the right activations, this game would of been more decisive.

Random thoughts and overtime

It's been a year now since I started WM and I must say that things have changed for the better.  Since I started learning the game, I must say that Warmahordes (Warmachine and Hordes) is just very solid.  In many ways, it takes me back to my Starcraft days where if you mess up, you're done.  The game is very precise on execution amongst other things and the competitive atmosphere is fantastic.  It's basically a game I wished 40K was since I'm not super happy about Steam Punk stuff compared to GW fluff.  I basically only play this game because of the game rules and playstyle is everything a competitive gamer hopes for in a table top.

Speaking of which, there are also rumors of 6th Ed. Warhammer 40K coming out in 2012.  What are some improvements you want to see?  TLoS was the big thing in 5th Ed and I'm almost 100% certain that it's here to stay.  Here are some things I'd like to see for 6th Ed. 40K:

• Cover system tweaked, 4+ cover on everything everywhere is just too generous.
• Remove wound allocation and bring back torrent of fire.
• Maybe a consolidation roll after vehicle kills or bringing back massacre rolls to go back into combat.
• Bring back vehicle destroyed results on the glancing chart.

On another note, I'm doing overtime again, hence why you see very little posting.  What's funnier is that last year, at around the same time I got into Warmachine, overtime hit me in the face too.  Awesome.

Circle and other news

I finally decided to pick up Hordes.  Since there were no Circle players in my group, I'm officially the first Circle player!  This actually means two things:  One, I picked up Circle obviously, and two, I've put my Grey Knights on hold for now.  Many of you are probably wondering why I put my GK on hold and the reason is quite simple:  The new GK book is not the same army I fell in love with those many years ago.  It was a tough choice, but in the end the dudes are going to sit there until I feel the urge to build the entire army up from scratch.  After all, I have Dark Eldar, Blood Angels and Space Wolves to cater to, and some say that's enough armies already!  I'll still play games with the GKs though, I have a ton of friends that started the army as well.  Bandwagoners.

Now that that's out there, let's talk about some other random stuff.  First, I'd like to say that I'm going to be doing a Podcast per week on miniatures gaming.  Most of the time, it will be about 40K but every now and then I'll throw in a Warmachine or WHFB segment.  My friend and I were discussing the finer points of wargaming and we dawned upon something invigorating and fun.   I've seen other videocasts before like Beast of War or some of the battle reports on BoLS and frankly, I'm not too impressed.  Beast of War is too nerdy and loaded with false hope and information and BoLS lacks the tactical acumen that I desire.  That said, I think I'll do my own thing and talk about the finer points of tactics, army lists, metagame and strategy.  I picture this kind of like the Day9 dailies of wargaming, except it'll be weekly, hopefully.

The idea right now is to have a podcast a week and maybe someday expand to video capture where I can show you guys how I play an actual game.  All I do is blog about how to play and why certain things are better than others and I think it'll be awesome if I can actually "show" you guys.  This is the goal, I don't know when that's going to happen, but that's the goal.  Also, keep in mind that I have barely anything painted.  I moved to Cali from Jersey 3 years ago and I've been working ever since.  The job, the wife and the free time I have is dedicated to assembling models and getting them to the table ASAP.  In short, I haven't painted shit in years.  Besides, if you're coming here to see painted models, you're coming here for the wrong reason.

With that said, let's move onto another agenda.  My blog recently hit 300k views and that's pretty bad ass!  I would like to say thank you to all my viewers and I appreciate all the comments and feedback (both negative and positive) so far.  I'm a big fan of honest opinions and I love direct feedback.

I know I'm jumping around a bit here, but some of you may remember that failed blog post I did a while back called "You're Doing It Wrong".  Well, the podcast will be similar to that but with a lot less of me being a dick but a lot more knowledge packed into each session.  I plan for each segment to run 30 minutes or so per episode and it will touch upon everything strategy and tactics related.  This will include how to build a successful army list, how to read your opponent and how to defeat your opponent.  All these things will be good advice for newer players and veterans alike.  Just keep in mind that I can't help but curse sometimes to get my point across.  I view wargames as a man's game and if your virgin ears can't handle it, don't listen to it.  I'm bold, I'm direct and I call it like it is.

Alright, now let's talk about my Circle army really quick.  I plan on running eKaya and my current army list looks like this:

Kaya the Moonhunter & Laris (*3pts)
* Pureblood Warpwolf (9pts)
* Warpwolf Stalker (10pts)
Tharn Bloodtrackers (Leader and 9 Grunts) (8pts)
* Nuala the Huntress (2pts)
Druid Wilder (2pts)
Lord of the Feast (4pts)
Totem Hunter (3pts)

The entire army is stealthed and I have all the tools I need to take down jacks, beasts, infantry and whatever else I want.  The Bloodtrackers can Prey something and do B13-like damage from the same threat range and the Lord of the Feast is just a god in melee vs. packed infantry.  The Totem Hunter shares some love with enemy Eiryss and other solos gets hunted down as well.  Kaya is the big player in my list along side her dogs Laris, Pureblood and the Stalker.  With Forced Evo, the Stalker can reach insane POW20 with 9" charge and 2" reach.  Its DEF16 because of Forced Evo, bringing it on par with most Legion elites.  The Pureblood is in there purely as a toolbox beast since he can give Ghostly to the Stalker or Blessed to its weapons.  Of course, the RNG10 POW14 magical spray is also a very welcome addition.  Either way, I got a Feral just in case I need a beast with MAT7 and I feel like I need more anti-big stuff.

That's all I got for now guys, let me know what you think about the podcast idea.

The truth about Dark Eldar

I love my Dark Eldar, I really do, but one thing has been bugging me about their new codex.  Now I know I go on and on about how Phil Kelly is a master writer and that's true, but something irks me about the new Dark Eldar book.  You know what that is?  How come the masters of surprise attacks, alpha strikes, infiltration and sabotage, have virtually nothing in their rules with Scout, Infiltration or anything of that nature.

No, Vect's 4+ to seize does not count.  And no, the Duke's ability to DS his Raiders and Ravagers do not count either.  What there should of been is Scouting Raiders loaded with troops, infiltrated Venoms or pre-placed WWPs like Servo-skulls are in the GK book.

Am I taking crazy pills here or has this been bothering anyone else?  Oh, and on more eventful news:  My predictions on Dark Eldar being a mediocre tournament army has been proven correct.  It appears they ran hordes of RB/Chimera-spam walls and died horribly at Adepticon despite winning in Battle Points.  Real shocker there.

BR: 35pts eCaine vs. eDenny

First game of Warmachine in a long time and boy do I miss it.  This game was a standard 35pt caster kill game vs. Cryx and overall, I think it went pretty well.  I'll tell you one thing though:  I was definitely pretty rusty.  Let me elaborate on rusty for a second; if you don't a wargame in a while, you start losing some essential things that makes you a good player.  I second judged my ability to guess range, double-checked on multiple activations and played a little slower than I usually do.  These are things you get from playing the game, and I feel bad for not playing my beloved Cygnar for so long.

Anyways, back to the game.  How did this game go?  First, the list:

Points: 35
Captain Allister Caine (*5pts)
* Ol' Rowdy (9pts)
* Squire (2pts)
Arcane Tempest Gun Mages (Leader and 5 Grunts) (6pts)
* Arcane Tempest Gun Mage Officer (2pts)
* * Hunter (6pts)
Black 13th Gun Mage Strike Team (4pts)
Rangers (5pts)
Eiryss, Angel of Retribution (3pts)
Gorman di Wulfe, Rogue Alchemist (2pts)
Reinholdt, Gobber Speculator (1pts)

This is one of my many eCaine lists and this is the one I used today.  I also took the first turn and deployed my forces pretty close to eachother.  Rangers led the way as usual (AD'd), the ATGM stayed by a piece of cover/linear obstacle and Eiryss floated around the left flank.  Caine was deployed pretty offensively next to Ol'Rowdy and the B13 w. Gorman hung out to Caine's left.

My opponent's deployment was Nightmare and Deathjack to my left flank w. Cankerworm and his unit of Bane Thralls and Tartar floated around his right flank.  His infantry units were pretty far away from his jacks and were posted facing my ATGM.

Now for my abridged battle report:

• Both armies moved up towards each other with eDenny sitting in the back in fear of her life.  The Cankerworm peaks his head out a little too much and is in range of a Fire Beacon from Lynch.  With the help of a Ranger, he posts it right on the worm's head and the B13 open fire for some damage.  The Hunter, now seeing his prey, moves up and fire for some solid damage.  To finish the disgusting creature off, Caine puts himself out there and boosts his POW12s for a dead worm.
• I noticed my opponent had his Deathjack and Nightmare in pretty close proximity to each other.  I also noticed my Eiryss was deployed pretty aggressively.  I thought hmm.. why not?  She runs bravely through the terrain and within 5" of both jacks.  Defiantly, she stares them down as they ponder her actions.  After doing this, I ran Ol'Rowdy further up in "optimal" position.
• My power play played off and I baited my opponent's Deathjack into swinging at her.  She and her buddy Ranger goes down but not before I buy myself another round of shooting because no one ran.  Well, her Bane Thralls and Tartar ran, but without the support of their jacks.
• This is the power play that I intended with Eiryss.  She will die, yes, but in doing so it will force his jacks to either engage her and kill her or let me pick at his caster with Eiryss.  If he gets antsy and advances his Thralls without the help of his jacks, it'll be a turkey shoot because I can shift my ranged attention to one direction instead of two.  If my opponent moves up with his DJ to kill her, he will be range of Rowdy's charge next turn.  If he moved up with Denny and try to kill her with spells, but in doing so would risk her life in range of Caine's guns.  Either way, she needs to be dealt with because of her presence and no matter what decision my opponent made, I would of benefited somehow.  The best chance he had would be trying to kill her with Nightmare and then the free focus on DJ to apply pressure with his Thralls.  This didn't happen.
• Next round, I focus all my shooting at his Bane Thralls and stuff dies left and right.  Rowdy gets 3 Focus from Caine and he dismantles the Deathjack after the Hunter boosts damage on his face.  Caine moves over and shoots Tartarsauce in the face and Ryan puts up a Magestorm to block further Thralls from charging forward. More things die on his side and the damage is done and irrecoverable:  More than half the Banes were dead, Caine was completely safe (due to positioning and clouds), he lost both Canker and DJ in exchange for Eiryss, and Tartar was dead with Caine still having Feat.  We call the game here.

Post-game thoughts:

• Power plays are one of those things you do that forces your opponent to scratch his head in a thousand different ways.  He knows that whatever he does, something is going to happen and it's not going to be good.  Move Denny closer and she dies, move DJ and oh god Rowdy's right there, keep your army together and give me another round of shooting, or try to kill Eiryss with Nightmare needing 8s and if you miss, it's another round that you're behind.  I guess in a way, what I did was force a "check" like you do in Chess.  Eiryss and Ol'Rowdy being the key pieces.
• My opponent should of kept his army together and have them support each other.  If the jacks are one direction and the infantry in another, that's already a problem because there's not enough combined threat.  I was able to focus my attention to the left first, dealing with the jacks, before switching attention to the right, to annihilate all the infantry.  If my attention was split at a central force, there would of been a lot more difficult decisions to make.
• Another thing to note here is that if his infantry was closer around his jacks, he could of activated his Thralls to kill Eiryss instead of sacrificing actions on his jacks.
• This game just shows you that if you make one mistake, whether it was deployment or movement, you risk the chance of getting stopped cold in your tracks.  If your opponent is a good one, he will capitalize on your mistake and make you pay dearly for it.