Champions of Destiny - Game 2

Champions of Destiny Tournament

Okay! Here it is. As promised, the battle reports for my games that I played at the Champions of Destiny 2017 Tournament.

This tournament was held on 26th of March 2017 and held at Warzone in Northampton. This awesome event was organised by the equally awesome Mark Peat. It was an 8th edition Warhammer tournament, which was welcomed by those who attended (including myself) who have no desire to hack off the square bases of their models to convert them to round bases (ugh!), and want to keep the spirit of the much loved 8th edition alive.

The games in this tournament had a very interesting format. They were all Battle Line, a good old straight fight between two opposing armies, none of this capture the corners or other silly rules. However, the games, were escalating, starting at 1,000 points in the first round, 1,500 points in the second, and 2,000 points in the third and final game.

In addition to our 'standard' armies, each player was allowed to take an allied unit of core troops, worth no more than 200 points. The only restriction on this was that it had to be the same alignment as your main army. Also, each player could take a monster (or monsters) worth up to 300 points. This could be from any allied (i.e. same alignment) army book, from the Storm of Magic book, or from the Monstrous Arcanum. These units were in addition to, your standard army lists, so effectively, the armies were actually 1,500, 2,000 and 2,500 points respectively. Exciting stuff, eh?!

So, without further ado, here are the battle reports.

Round 1 - Vampire Counts vs Wood Elves

Having not done a lot of painting recently, despite promising myself I'd get more of my High Elves painted, I had to go with my much loved Vampire Counts...again. Some of my High Elves did get to see some action though, as I had lent my Lothern Sea Guard to my son, Alex (who was also playing in this tournament) to use as an allied unit for his Empire army.

For my allied unit, I borrowed some of Alex's Stormvermin and a Poisoned Wind Mortar.

So, this was my 1,500 point army for round one.

General: Luga Belosi - Vampire

Level 2 Wizard (Lore of Vamps)

Heavy armour, shield, barded nightmare

Sword of Swift Slaying, Dragonbane Gem, Pot of Fools

Red Fury

20 Skeleton Warriors

Full command, sword n board

37  Zombies

Standard bearer and Musician

10 Black Knights

Full command, barding, lance

Banner of Swiftness

Black Coach

10 Stormvermin

Standard bearer and musician

Storm Banner

Poisoned Wind Mortar

Fire Dragon (from Storm of Magic)

My opponent for the first game was Charles Hart, who had brought along a Wood Elf army...with Wood Elf allies and a Wood Elf monster. His army was something like this (given that I am going on memory and don't know what upgrades he had, so I've made educated guesses in some parts).

Charles, if you're reading this, feel free to let me know about any corrections I might need to make.

General: Spellweaver

Level 3 Wizard (Lore of Beasts)

Asrai longbow

Channelling Staff (+ possibly some other magic items)

20 Eternal Guard

Full command

10 Deepwood Scouts

Hagbane tips

5 Wild Riders

9 Waywatchers

Sentinel

18 Dryads

Treeman

Strangleroots

Now, I haven't got a very good track record against Wood Elves, so I was somewhat apprehensive going into this game (when aren't I?), having never won against them, and at the worst being tabled.

We rolled our spells. Charles' Spellweaver got Wyssan's Wildform (subbed down from Transformation of Kadon), Flock of Doom, and Amber Spear. I ended up with Invocation of Nehek and Gaze of Nagash.

Deployment looked something like this. Don't forget, I'm going from memory, so the actual placement might be a bit out. I can't even remember what scenery there was. All I remember was that it was a bit sparse, leaving plenty of room for manoeuvre in the centre. Charles did have his free forest, which was a Venom Thicket.

Suppose I'd better do some kind of key so you know what all the initials are.

Vampire Counts are in red. S= Skeleton Warriors. Z= Zombies. BK= Black Knights. BC= Black Coach. V= Vampire. SV=  Stormvermin. You can't see it but PWM= Poisoned Wind Mortar It's the little thing to the right of the Stormvermin. FD= Fire Dragon.

Green are Wood Elves (of course). EG= Eternal Guard. The Spellweaver is in this unit. D= Dryads. T= Treeman. WR= Wild Riders. The skirmisher units (which were deployed as scouts) were the Waywatchers on the left side, and the Deepwood Scouts on the right.

Charles won the roll off to see who had the first turn. After moving his Treeman forward and his Wild Riders round the back of his Scouts, opened fire with his archers. The Deepwood Scouts did minimal damage to the Skeleton Warriors, but the Waywatchers took out about four Black Knights with their aimed shots, against which their is no armour save.

Not being a Skaven player, I wasn't aware that my Storm Banner could be used at the beginning of any player turn. Oh well, we all forget things. Charles forgot that his Spellweaver had a longbow for all but the last turn of the game.

My turn, and I activated the Storm Banner. The Fire Dragon charged the Treeman. The Skeleton Warriors closed the distance between themselves and the Deepwood Scouts, taking advantage of being out of the charge arc of the Wild Riders.

Everything else advanced, with the Black Knights led by the Vampire moving to within charge range of the Eternal Guard and the Dryads.

The magic phase, I get a couple of power-ups on the Black Coach. I have 9 power dice. I wanted to use Invocation of Nehek to replace some of my lost Black Knights, so I used three power dice to cast Gaze of Nagash at the Waywatchers, hoping to draw out his dispel dice. I rolled Irresistible Force!

Four Waywatchers were killed, and to my amazement, the remaining Waywatchers panicked and ran at the touch of this savage, unearthly death spell.

Now for the miscast. Snake eyes! The vampire succeeds in nuking the entire unit of Black Knights. There was a prize for the first player to lose a wizard to a miscast, the Self Detonating Wizard of Doom! award, so I was actually hoping to go down the rabbit hole. I roll a 4 and the Vampire survives, albeit with 1 wound left.

The Poisoned Wind Mortar fails its roll to be able to fire due to the Storm Banner, so its on to the only combat - the Fire Dragon vs the Treeman. The Dragon absolutely bombed. First its breath weapon failed to cause any unsaved wounds, which was lucky for the Treeman, being flammable, then it whiffed all of its attacks. The Treeman got one wound on the Dragon, making it a drawn combat.

Rather than give a round by round account of the rest of the game, I think it would be more interesting to summarise what happened.

First of all, the fight between the treeman and the dragon went in the treeman's favour after a bit of a pillow fight. The dragon broke from combat and ran after a particularly bad round. It eventually rallied and survived the game with one wound remaining.

The Skeleton Warriors managed to successfully charge the Deepwood Scouts. Their shooting, including their stand and shoot reactions, just didn't do enough damage. In their first round of combat, the Wood Elves, with their superior Weapon Skill and Always Strike First re-rolls, managed to land five wounding hits. The skellies made three of their armour saves, then rolled boxcars for the remaining two parries. In return, they hacked down several of the scouts, forcing them to break, flee, rally, get charged again and ultimately chased off the board.

The Vampire dominated the magic with a single spell (Invocation of Nehek was next to useless with the demise of the Black Knights). The Spellweaver repeatedly attempted to take him down with his magic. Amber Spear was dispelled at every attempt. Between two Flock of Dooms that targeted him, one failed to score any wounds, the other got two wounds but both armour saves were made.

Conversely, the Vampire managed to get Gaze of Nagash off in each magic phase, first taking out the remaining Waywatchers,and then obliterating all five Wild Riders with a single casting, just as they had swung round to within charge range of the Vampire.

The Black Coach which was unscathed, ended with five of its six power-ups. It didn't see any combat, a combination of being too sluggish and spending the last couple of turns shielding the Vampire from a side charge.

The Zombies ended up charging the Eternal Guard, hoping to get some lucky hits on the Spellweaver, or at the very least hamper his spell-casting. This is where Charles remembered that the Spellweaver had a longbow, so he took a stand and shoot which missed anyway.

After four turns each we called the game due to time being up. It was time for coffee, pizza, and to have a look at the other armies to vote for Best Painted Army.

It ended up being an 11-9 win to my Vampire Counts. As Charles said, after that miscast, my Vampire had a charmed life, and he just couldn't get that last wound to finish him off.

All-in-all, an enjoyable game for both of us.

Results from Round One

                 Players                                                      Victory Points     Tournament Points

Table 1     Luke Stout (Dwarfs)                                         1138                        14
                 Warren Stevens (Vampire Counts)                    390                          6

Table 2     Phil Rossiter (High Elves)                                1549                        19
                 Nathan Bradley (Vampire Counts)                    145                           1

Table 3     Alex Hogan (Empire)                                        1443                        19
                 Julie Stevens (Dark Elves)                                      0                           1

Table 4     Andy Wood (Dark Elves)                                    910                        10
                 Matt Stafford (Warriors of Chaos)                    812                        10

Table 5     Andrew Hogan (Vampire Counts)                    480                         11
                 Charles Hart (Wood Elves)                                 305                           9

Standings

        Player                         Tournament Points          Victory Points

 1     Phil Rossiter                            19                               1549
 2     Alex Hogan                              19                               1443
 3     Luke Stout                                14                               1138
 4     Andrew Hogan                         11                                 480
 5     Andy Wood                               10                                 910
 6     Matt Stafford                            10                                 812
 7     Charles Hart                               9                                 305
 8     Warren Stevens                          6                                 390
 9     Nathan Bradley                           1                                 145
10    Julie Stevens                              1                                      0

Coming next

Rounds 2 and 3 battle reports will be posted up as soon as I get the chance. I might even muck about with the settings and try to get this blog looking pretty.