Hello -

I just finished a game (through turn 4 anyway) of 2200 pts with the Dwarves.

I'm posting this as a filler, I'll come back in a few hours and update with more details and a couple of pictures.

Short end of the deal, I played an MSU list as discussed in another thread here in preparation for a Tourney we're attending this fall.

We played the Blood and Glory (?) scenario - our first each. We had to finish the game early, so we drew. Which is probably good, as I doubt I could have destroyed any of his three final units.

Have I mentioned how much I hate Steadfast (when I don't get to use it)?

By the way, Steadfast irritates me. Boo hoo, poor me. ;)

Any way, another update to come a little later; I'll break apart each of the phases over the turns, how productive they were, and how well each unit worked *for me* in this game only.

Have a couple minutes before I get my kids - Tzeench (9), Khorne (3.5) and Nurgle (1.5). All three boys.

His list - off the top of my head, was not perfectly legal - by accident; so he was an accidental cheater.

He had: 40 Quarrelers, 30 Ironbreakers or something, and 30 Longbeards. And, 1 cannon and 1 Grudgethrower.

He had a tough Lord, and a BSB.

I had:

2200 Pts - Daemons of Chaos Roster - 2200 Daemons 20 - 2 Tzeench - Undivided Assassins - Death to Hubris!

Herald of Tzeentch
1 Herald of Tzeentch,
1 Master of Sorcery
1 Winged Horror
1 The Lore of Death


1 Herald of Tzeentch, General
1 Master of Sorcery
1 Spell Breaker
1 The Lore of Death



11 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch,

Herald of Khorne
1 Herald of Khorne (Battle Standard Bearer)


1 Herald of Khorne


10 Bloodletters of Khorne, (Musician Mus; Standard Bearer Std;

10 Bloodletters of Khorne, (Musician Mus; Standard Bearer Std;


10 Daemonettes of Slaanesh,
1 Banner of Ecstasy


10 Daemonettes of Slaanesh,
1 Siren Standard


3 Flamers of Tzeentch,


3 Flamers of Tzeentch,


3 Fiends of Slaanesh,


3 Fiends of Slaanesh,


5 Flesh Hounds of Khorne,


5 Chaos Furies,


3 Nurglings,

Total Roster Cost: 2197

Yes. That was list number 20.

Yes, I lied about exactly which list I was going to use today.

Know why? I can't leave well enough alone.

And I'm a liar.

And I had a plan.

Gotta go - wife's seen me out of the box and must get the Chaos into the household.

Ok, what you have here is the Dwarves set up:

Left to right, 40 Quarrelers with Standard, Musician

Hammerers with BSB, and bad a$$ Thane; 30ish, Full command

Longbeards with Full Command, 30sih

Behind them

Cannon with Engineer

Grudgethrower with Engineer

....To his far right, are my Nurgling scouts (3), who got their charge in on turn 2.

Plans, plans, plans

Scenario and the battle.

Now, if you are familiar with the Blood and Guts scenario, then you know about the army Fortitude and Breaking points and blah blah blah, sorry. I fell asleep there for a second.

I read it, but didn't focus too much on it because I intended to destroy every unit *except* the one I needed to focus on.

Our army breaking point is based on our points - 2200 point game means the magic number is 2. (1 per 1000 points). If we are forced to that break point - the game over. Done.

The Dwarfs had for their Fortitude = 6 (General +2, and +1 for each Banner (BSB, Quarrelers, Hammerers, and Longbeards = +4))

I had - General +2, BSB +1, 2 banners in Bloodletters, 2 banners in Daemonettes, and 1 banner for the Horrors...

Total of 8.

So the way I thought of it was that I wasn't breaking this game, this is an MSU army - which means I have to play for every final turn to set up my final overwhelming charges.

If I *had* concentrated on the Hammerers that had his General and BSB, I'm not sure it would have changed anything.



...

So, there are 40 Quarrelers on the left - I have to take that unit out of shooting.

I deploy my Nurglings near there, and 1 unit of 3 Fiends across the table.

I need to have the Quarrelers shooting something that's more of a throwaway - so I *want* him to shoot at the Tzeench Horrors with HoT in the unit (my General) - at least for the first turn.

My plan worked for mitigating that unit - on Turn 2 I got 2 charges off on the Quarrelers, with the Nurglings and Fiends - won combat by 7...

But he had *1* rank... and I had none... and he was 12 inches from his General (and BSB anyway)... so... Steadfast.

He rolled like a 5 anyway, would have failed if not for the Steadfast rule.

After a Combat Reform, the Quarrelers took 2 full turns to wipe out my Nurglings and Fiend, ready to shoot up my Flesh Hounds on Turn 4.

So, that takes care of my Far Left side of the table, mitigating his 40 St 4 30inch range Crossbow shots a turn saving some wounds on the rest of my units.

Next up, my thoughts on Death Magic, and why I actually brought Horrors to the table. And, in retrospect, some dumb spell targets.

Here's an opponent's view of my battleline:

From my left (that's my hand)

Horrors, Bloodletters, Daemonettes, Bloodletters, Daemonettes

My flamers went up on the very far right flank, as did the Fiend.

The Furies went up the middle, behind his Cannon for a charge.

The Fleshhounds sat in the middle trying to draw a charge, and finally went off to my left to draw shots from the Quarrelers.

The Horrors eventually were charged by the Hammerers, and were wiped out.

The left units of Bloodletters and Daemonettes charged the Hammerers on the Bottom of turn 4, but essentially lost the combat but were still there.

At the bottom of Turn 4 my two units of flamers had engaged the Longbeards to stick them for the second Bloodletters and Daemonettes to charge on Turn 5 - but the game ended first.



So I have three goals -

1. Destroy the Longbeards in Close Combat
2. Shut down his shooting, specifically his Quarrelers so I can engage the Longbeards
3. Assassinate his General with Death Magic

What I did to pursue these goals -
1. Longbeards
First - I tried to whittle down the Longbeards with Magic and Shooting.

The Pink Horrors shot the level 1 spell at the Longbeards each turn, usually using 2 dice to cast from my pool.

The flamers shot the Longbeards each turn they were in range.

The intent was to remove as many ranks as possible, hopefully in doing so they'd lose steadfast.

The challenge - First, he had some kind of runic Wardsave giving a 5+ Ward against magic and shooting. Or something.

Second, range for the shooting and movement. At least once my flamers were hitting only on 7+.

Then they wound on 4+, minus the Armor saves...

Altogether - my plan to destroy the unit through magic and shooting?

Did not work. I probably removed 3 (?) models through 50 some shots, and only 2 successful spella.



[b]2. Shut down shooting
Quarrelers - Previous post described that, I was happy not to be receiving 40 shots a turn by engaging in combat. I knew that once he did not break from combat on the first turn it was just a matter of time before he was shooting again. By the end of turn 3 he was done with combat, at the bottom of Turn 4 he was able to fire - but now he was all ranked up, so he only had 12 shots instead of 40.

I'd consider this a moderately successful as I minimized my damage, but was not able to beat his unit.

As for the War Machines - The furies charged and destroyed the cannon in Turn 4, and my second unit of Fiends charged the Grudgethrower on Turn 3, destroying it on Turn 4.

So, altogether I did mitigate his shooting, or removed the opportunity for him to create wounds with his units. I did deliberately make a poor strategic decision, more on that later.
3. Assassinate the General through Death Magic

Here are the spells I had -
Two HoT - One with 0 spell, and Spell 4 lowering Leadership. This was my primary caster. The other one had the 0 Spell and #5. He only cast once, the 0 Spell.

This was also not successful, I'm not going to complain about T6 L10 Dwarven thane. Completely legit, totally cool with it.

What I *should* have done was actually target the BSB. That would have been easier.

I did lower the General's leadership by 3 once, so he had a 7 for a turn - but that had no impact on any panic or CR checks. He dispelled it on his next turn.

I got the Leech off on the General twice, but did no wounds.

So, was Magic effective? Well, no.

But I'm a firm believer in creating opportunities to create wounds, the more opportunities, the statistics will eventually provide... as you'll see on the very last wound roll in the game.

Ok, I think (?) I kind of explained how the game went for the most part.

Here's what I learned or should have done.

1. It would have been ok to target the Hammerers instead, and maybe a better plan. It would have meant *redeploying the army* to my left flank instead, and perhaps that will happen in a rematch.

2. I don't lament the Tough army that is the dwarves, they're designed to be like trying to wrestle and submit an anvil. I did the best I could with MSU against 2 units of 35 or so, both with Heavy armor, all WS 4, T 4, AS 4 or 5, blah blah blah.

3. My big mistake - placing my unit of flamers + HoT in a building... right where the Grudgethrower dropped a shot on top of it.

I did this deliberately, I'd rather he shoot the flamers because I didn't want him to shoot any of my combat units again. He'd hit one of my Bloodletter units and did 4 wounds (I think).

Would I do it again? No, because they were also not able to charge out of the building. Not a *blunder* per se, but a lesson learned and now in my Black book of knowledge.


Finally -
Here's the final Epic moment - and for me, the most memorable moment in the game:

One lone bloodletter making a Killing Blow against the Thane on the very last wound rolled in the last turn (4).

The game ended with both of our Generals dying in Turn 4... so maybe Chaos *really* did meet it's objectives of destroying the Dwarven General? Only the Gods know...

Overall, both Generals died in Turn 4, 2 of his 3 units were engaged in combat.

I had lost both my units of Fiends, my Nuglings, my Horrors and my Flesh Hounds.

The game was a *DRAW* but I may have lost in the next two rounds of combat.

Please let me know any thoughts or advice!

Also, sorry if this was a rambling battle report... if this didn't work - let me know and I'll change my format for the next ones.

Also - I hate Dwarven Steadfast *shakes fist* - Next time Squats, next time.

Two more pictures:

Blood and Glory

The dwarf army had 3 units with standards, plus a BSB and general's +2 for a fortitude of 6. 2200 points set each army's breaking point at 3.

I expected flamers so I took a master rune of Grungni in the unit of hammerers. All dwarf units within 6" gain 5+ ward save, and so tried to deploy all units close.
Hammerers with general became immune to fear and terror.

The BSB gave all dwarf units within 6" +1 to combat resolution.

I had hoped (incorrectly) that crossbowmen could volley fire. Ended up deploying a super wide unit of 40. Yes, I could have made it into two units of twenty as Grendel kindly offered to allow, but I knew this unit would get into combat and really wanted to keep it at 40. Love that Steadfast!

Cannon was stock, but the Grudge thrower was tricked out with +2 damage and a re-roll, and added a master engineer so I could re-roll either die.
Everyone but the war machines had great weapons.

Game plan: Come get some! Make him come to me and blast em all the way in!

So, wow look at all those units of demons! No real juicy targets for the cannon as none of his units ranked more than two deep.

Whats this, Nuglings sneaking in on the right flank. Ignore them.
What really messed up my game plan was the sheer speed those demons put on. They covered more ground in one turn then our pool little legs could march in 3!
The Fiends moved past my longbeards ability to charge, I reformed to face them but they went after my grudge thrower. The longbeards made them pay for destroying my best war machine.

Wave after wave of small units crashed into my crossbowman, only to fall to their great weapons; Much as a hammer pounds steel against an anvil. The steel gives way, the anvil remains unchanged! All in all, the demons seemed to want to avoid contact. Those flesh hounds seemed to hover undecided in the middle of the board forever...

The loss of the war machines was regrettable, well the grudge thrower anyway. Stupid cannon misfired turn two, and did very little for me. Kinda hoped the quarrelers would protect them, but: did I mention the Dang speed of those accursed daemons!

The most memorable part of the battle was my general swinging first, and mowing the little demon general into the ground. Whats this! killing blow, oh Nooooo! ugggg

Two more turns the the demons would have been mopped up. Gotta love static combat res! three ranks plus two standards plus actual wounds equal bye bye little demon units.

A fun game no doubt! The batrep itself is a bit.. erratic I hope that's a good Word to describe it. Certainly a tough uphill struggle going up against a couple of large blocks of Dwarves with the nigh-msu style army Daemons brought to the table.

Advice? - I'd say against an enemy like this you need a decisive 'win' somewhere so that you crack his line open. So that means, basically, that you take bigger units yourself (or at least one big unit) - giving you the ability to lower his LD, negate his steadfast, and bury him in negative CR all in one crucial turn of combat. Since Dwarves can roll LD-checks on 1 Dice (!) once per game you really need to hit him hard too.

If you're not bringing a Daemonic Lord all those Warmachines are basically a waste of Points for the Dwarf-player. ;)