Shimmergloom's 8th Edition Orc and Goblins and Friends: Battle reports.

[Djekar]

I think an MR hero is a great idea when your meta includes lots of spells that allow it - Big Waaagh! and Death are the worst offenders here. No one wants foot trashing their bunker until it runs off the board, and no one wants Death sniping their characters off from across the board either (note that Big Waaagh! can do this to a degree too). I'm probably forgetting some lores here too but those are the ones I can think of right off the bat.

If the meta is heavy that way, I'd say put it on a cheap character. The other issue is - if you are playing vamps, I don't know how cheap your cheapest character is. For skaven, it's 15 points for that engineer. For Orcs it's 30 for the Night Goblin Big Boss. But for Chaos, it's 110 for that exalted champion - probably not worth it there. Even with elven heroes coming in at 70ish points - that's still pretty hefty for a 4/5 up ward against a very limited spell selection.

[Malorian]

I roll with MR2 on my Skaven BSB. It has saved some rats and almost saved my Seer.

So all it has done is saved some rats. How many points of rats has it saved and what is the cost of the MR item multiplied by the number of games? I'm sure in the end you would have been better off just taking more rats.

No one wants foot trashing their bunker until it runs off the board.

The best you can hope for is for the stomp on the bunker to do half damage (MR3) meaning it will still kill 8 models, and repeat stomps will still get the job done. If not the following stomps will just fall on your elite units that's don't have MR.


If MR items could be applied army wide I would be more for it but, with the limited number of spells that can be used on and the fact it only protects one unit, I just can't back it.

However if the meta is heavy with those spells and they are always targetting the same critical unit like Djekar says then you could justify it, but just be ready for the meta to shift again to lores that ignore MR.

(I realize I'm probably coming across as a stuborn old man by now, and I'm sure everyone knows my view, so I'll leave this and wait for the next battle report )

[Shimmergloom]

Maybe against death sniping then yeah an MR item for a cheap hero to boost your main general or caster's ward vs those spells is a good idea.

But against this foot, I think you guys are still forgetting that he failed 2 LOS rolls. Really, what is the chances of that and is it worth him spending more points in just the off chance that he fails 2 2+ LOS and 2 4+ wards?

[TsukeFox]

Maybe against death sniping then yeah an MR item for a cheap hero to boost your main general or caster's ward vs those spells is a good idea.

But against this foot, I think you guys are still forgetting that he failed 2 LOS rolls. Really, what is the chances of that and is it worth him spending more points in just the off chance that he fails 2 2+ LOS and 2 4+ wards?

Okay-how often does the shrunken head pay off?

Dunno as a vamp player or TK player is not best to protect your head "caster" from-everything ? 4+ is easy to fail. Well I guess the vamps can carry on magical leadership. Bah

[Shimmergloom]

A 2+ LOS is not easy to fail and you cannot compare your 2+ LOS to the shrunken head. Your shrunken head shaman still gets a 2+ LOS and his ward vs a template. This is what I am talking about.

You can't protect your caster/characters from everything. It starts to get cost prohibitive. He could have taken yet another chararacter, mounted it and gave it MR. Then moved that character into the unit with him(cause his general moved there after the game started, so the backup character with MR would have had to move as well).

But, 2+ LOS and 4+ ward should be plenty 99% of the time. The chances of me casting foot, it not being dispelled, me rolling a hit. Him failing a 2+ LOS followed by me rolling to wound, then him failing a 4+ ward, me doing 2 wounds, rolling the 4+ to place the foot again, then rolling another hit, him failing another 2+ LOS, me wounding again, and then him failing another 4+ ward is too astronomical to try and prepare for.

It's a dice game in the end and the end result for him was not that he was stupid to not take MR. Just that you can't control the dice.

[TsukeFox]

I was comparing MR2 to the shrunken head actually.

Anywho when is the next trourrnu and what are you like it

[Malorian]

Okay-how often does the shrunken head pay off?

Pretty much every game.

Savages are typically tossed into the thick of the fighting and it doesn't take much to save 3 models (18 saves). It becomes critical when taking on the elite of other armies.

The games it doesn't come into play is when your opponent isnt playing to an 8th mindset and isn't taking offensive units, but in those you could pretty much take whatever you want and win

[Shimmergloom]

I was comparing MR2 to the shrunken head actually.

Anywho when is the next trourrnu and what are you like it

Like Malorian said the Shrunken head really always pays off. And it pays off vs shooting and combat and miscasts and on and on. While MR2 would only pay off if you get targeted by a magic spell that allows saves and nothing else.

[Shimmergloom]

Oh and I am not sure when I'll get to play again. We should have another tournament in July, we are debating right not whether we should allow SC's in our regular tournaments again and whether to go to 3k for more tournaments.

[Shimmergloom]

I hadn't felt like writing reports for a while, but I played a tourney this weekend and figured I'd write up a couple of reports vs 2 wood elf armies. My first game was vs a double hellcannon, ld bomb list, where I was told that my ng horde would be testing at -5ld because doom and darkness was on my general's unit(also -1 from hellcannon and -1 from a doom totem which was in rank 2 of a unit, so I am unsure if that counts as being viewable since I could not see the model, only the banner, which the main brb tlos rules say do not count toward tlos), when I should have just been -1 or -2 ld, so all that plus my bunker/savage big'uns spending 2 turns fighting each other, means that was just a boring game not worth writing about.

My army:
1. Orc great shaman, lvl 4, general
4+ ward and dispel scroll
2. NG bsb, shield, lt armor
Standard of discipline
3. Savage orc shaman lvl 1
Shrunken head
4. Ng shaman lvl 1
Frog scroll
5. Goblin warboss, gw
6. 3 ng big bosses, gw’s
7. 39 big’un savages, 2 choppas, FC
8. 86 ng w/spears, shields, nets, Standard and Musician
9. 21 ng w/shields
10. 5 wolf riders
11. 5 wolf riders
12. 19 squigs, 9 handlers
13. 19 squigs, 9 handlers
14. Troll
15. Arachnarok
16. Mangler
17. Mangler

His army:

1. Elf lord on elven steed, he had a 4+ ward and some sort of magical sword that I can’t remember
2. Lvl 2 mage on elven steed, w/dispel scroll.
3. 8-9 glade riders, no command
4. 4 units of 10 glade guard
5. 3 units of 13 dryads
6. 3 treekin
7. 3 treekin
8. Treeman
9. Treeman

Very light on magic, characters and no eagles. The scenario for this was just that you got vps for any units that you got in the enemy deployment zone.
Pic at start up:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...lves1start.jpg

He won roll to go first.
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WE turn 1:

1. His turn was pretty quick, I let his spell that lets his glade riders ignore terrain go and dispel another spell that gives something regen? and then he wiped out a wolf unit and killed 2-3 big’uns with shooting.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...lves1turn1.jpg
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Orc turn 1:

1. Another quick turn. One squig unit fails animosity and squabbles.
2. In magic I only get fists of gork off on my savage orc shaman.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...es1turn1v1.jpg
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WE turn 2:

1. He moves his glade riders to my savages flank, but that gives his rear to my squig herd who are only 9 inches away, so that should be an easy charge.
2. I then turn his mage into a frog after he casts the ignore terrain spell again. It was kind of unfair since this was all the magic he had. He said he wasn’t expecting people to be taking so many level 4’s to this tourney. I mentioned how with 2 double slann lists around here, you need all the magic defense you can muster.
3. He kills about 6 big’uns with his 40 bow shots, I made a ton of 5+ wards.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...lves1turn2.jpg
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Orc turn 2:

1. Now animosity tries to lose it for me. One squig herd fails and if forced to charge his dryads, then my ng horde fails and is forced to charge his treeman, which is 14” away, which I think, oh, that’s fine, I will fail the charge and then be ok. But no, I roll and 11 and make the charge, which is a frontal charge and now I’ll be stuck fighting a treeman and surrounded by dryads and bow units and way, way out of gen/bsb range.
2. To make things worse, my other squig herd fails their charge on the dryads. I had also been forced to charge with my savages at his other treeman, they fail their charge. So it was up to my 2nd squig herd to make their charge on the glade riders w/general and mage, to save my savages from being triple charged next turn.

They do make their charge and hit the rear of the glade riders.

A very eventful turn already.

I finish it off by putting a mangler through is 3rd dryad unit killing like 8 of them.

3. In magic I try to boost foot of gork onto a glade guard unit. I roll a 20, he rolls a 19 but we are unsure if he can get his +2 from his mage who is currently a frog or not. We ask the organizer and he says from what he can tell he still does, since it says you don’t lose special abilities, which he assumes being a level 2 mage is. So in that case he does dispel foot of gork.

During this he asks if he can dispel the frog scroll and I mention how he needs to roll a 4+ in his magic phase, this will become important soon.

I finish by getting hand of gork off on my arach shooting it across the table to face the flank of the treeman fighting my ng horde.

4. Combat is huge. My squigs kill all 8 of the glade riders(he had killed 4 or so squigs with his general who had made way and his other riders). I break them, but his gen/mage gets away.
Even crazier, his treeman kills one ng big boss and then 4ng with thunderstomps. My warboss and other ng big boss in combat + the few ng manage to do just 1 wound to the treeman. It’s a 6-6 tie, but I win via musician. His treeman then fails his stubborn roll and my ng run him down. This completely changes the game on that part of the map as I had expected to lose that horde after dryads started pouring into it next turn.

During this he wonders if I do kill the treeman, because I can’t move up since my arach was blocking my ng from moving. This is when I realize he’s a new player. I had assumed that since his army was so well painted and put together that he had to have been playing for a good while. He had been playing another game(D&D) and became interested in warhammer seeing others playing it. Which explained how he was already able to paint so well.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...es1turn2v2.jpg
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WE Turn 3:

1. He charges a treeman and treekin at my savages. He charges dryads at my ng horde and more dryads at a squig herd unit.
2. He rallies his general/mage and then manages to un-frog himself.
3. His shooting decimates the squig herd unit that had wiped out his glade riders, leaving them with around 5 squigs and 5 handlers.
4. My ng horde beats his dryads and run them down.
However the herd/dryad fight is just a 6-6 tie with about 3 dryads killed, vs 4 squigs.

With Fists of gork still in play, I manage 2 wounds to the treeman with that and another wound with my regular savages against the treeman.
My other savages kill 1 treekin. I lost a bunch of savages, but still win the combat by 1. He passes his tests. This fight will be a barn burner.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...lves1turn3.jpg
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Orc turn 3:

1. I charge my arach at a glade guard unit, who flees. I reform my horde and my decimated squig herd.
2. My foot of gork scatters off his glade guard and then goes away. He scrolls my hand of gork on my arach.
3. Since he didn’t dispel fists of gork again, I manage to kill his treeman with my shaman. My other savages kill another treekin. He loses combat again, but doesn’t flee, which I really needed him to do, so I could get my choppa bonus back, plus to get his general/bsb engaged and hopefully killed.
The other dryad vs squig fight, I lose this time, but with steadfast + gen/bsb, I hold.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...es1turn3v3.jpg
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WE Turn 4:

1. He charges his 2nd treekin unit into my savage fight and declares a long charge with his 3rd unit of dryads(just 4 remaining after mangler hits) at my bunker. I decide to hold with my bunker, figuring that even if he makes the charge in my flank, I’ll hold with steadfast and be ok vs just 4 dryads. He does make the charge.
2. His shooting wipes out all the handlers from my badly mauled squig herd unit. When the remaining squigs explode, they kill 3-4 glade guard from each of 3 units, do 1 wound to a treekin and kill a couple of savages. He passes all his panic checks from the glade guard units.
3. He dedicates two dryads to my general, but only wounds 1 time, which I save with my ward. I crazily kill 2 dryads with 4 ng attacks. He breaks and runs, but gets away from my pursuit.
My squig herd though breaks his other dryad unit and runs them down.

The main fight though is with the savages. I still have fists of gork, which he never decides to try and dispel. I kill 1 treekin there and do a wound to the treekin remaining from the other unit. However, I lose combat this time. I am steadfast still, so I make that test, just barely. However, now I have lost my frenzy.
http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...lves1turn4.jpg
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Orc turn 4:

1. I charge my generals unit at his fleeing dryads, I catch and destroy them. My arach tries charging a glade guard unit again, but he flees, I fail to re-direct, so it’s another failed charge for the arach.
I reform my remaining units. My manglers who are both still alive, really do nothing.
2. My shaman is out of position for any of his magic and only got a low roll for magic. I say I will skip magic unless he wants to try to dispel fists of gork, which I will then just recast and he won’t be able to stop anyway, so the end result is no magic.
3. The one combat is dicey. I fail my fear check now that I don’t have frenzy anymore. So that means even with fists and other savage attacks I only do 1 wound to each of his treekin units. I lose combat again, but I still have steadfast with 1 rank vs 0 ranks and pass my check with a 4. Whew.

We are running out of time so we speed through turn 5.
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WE Turn 5:

1. He rallies his fleeing glade guard, skips magic and takes pot shots at my other herd unit.
In combat I fail fear AGAIN. I lose again but still hold from steadfast as he only had 3 treekin fighting and doesn’t do much damage to me.

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Orc turn 5:
1. I have the game won now even if my big’uns are wiped out, so I skip everything after movement(to get units in his deployment zone to ensure the win). During this my random mangler goes through my bunker, but I only kills 4 ng.
2. I wipe out the one treekin unit, after I finally pass my fear check and wound the other treekin down to 1 wound. I win this combat, but he doesn’t break to end the game.

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Victory to the Orcs. It was touch and go with that savage combat, but fists of gork really was a big boost(especially since it is deemed as magical attacks in the errata so no 5+ ward for his treeman or treekin from the fists attacks). However treekin are a chore to fight with regular big’un attacks in a grindfest. As S4 vs 5+ armor, 5+ ward and T5 doesn’t afford for a lot of wounds getting through. It was his first tournament though. So I don't expect him to take such a soft list with no banners, bsb and just a lvl 2 mage again. There was a lot of power at this tourney with 2 double slann lists and a tough Ogre list, and lost of WoC crap, but we also had 2-3 new players. I hope they weren't discouraged from the game. I sort of am though, cause while I didn't have to face lizzies, I really don't see much point in having to dodge 2 double slann lists each time with orcs and goblins, where they are just going to crush me with magic.

A final aside, I really wish the guys setting up our tables would stop with the giant shrines, terrain in the center of the table that we always have to ignore, forget about or outright move because it’s impossible to actually place units onto them without them falling all over the place.

My next game is again vs another wood elf army from a different opponent. I'll try to get this one written and put up in the next day or 2.

[dementian]

Hey SG,

Would you mind posting up a picture of just your Arachnarok or let me know where I can see one if you have a close up posted somewhere? It looks amazing from the batrep shots and I would love to see it up close.

[Shimmergloom]

Sure. Thanks for your compliments. Here's a few pics of it.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...m1x/arach8.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...m1x/arach6.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...m1x/arach5.jpg

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...1x/arach-1.jpg


And here's the base before I glued the arach on:

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...arachbase2.jpg

[Powerposey]

SG,

That's Arach looks great! I have been trying to come out there to one of AE's tournaments, but just can't get away lately. Keep up the reports!

[Shimmergloom]

Yeah the new store is pretty awesome. We had music playing at this last tournament the whole time, plus they serve beer now.

[Shimmergloom]

This wood elf player is the same player that Once Bitten played in his last youtube report. If you remember dweller’s from that game…

His army:

1. Mage lvl 4, general
2. Bsb
3. Lvl 1 mage
4. Branchwraith
Those characters were loaded up with anti-magic items(I’m assuming cause we all knew 2 double slann lists would be there). Someone had hail of doom arrow.
5. 3 units of 10 glade guard
6. 20 glade guard w/command
7. 3 units of 8 dryads
8. 2 units of 6 treekin
9. Treeman
10. Eagle

The scenario was that there was a Chaos Tofurky in the center of the table. It had stats of all 0, except for 6 wounds, and WS1, unbreakable and 5+ ward. If you killed it you could claim it’s body but if you did you had to stay right there and defend the body. If you controlled the body at the end of the game you gained 500VP.

This was my only road to victory because there was a river in the middle of the table and I didn’t have the shooting to force him to actually move.

He won roll to go first.

http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...lves2start.jpg
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WE Turn 1:

1. He doesn’t move.
2. He tries to cast some low level spell that I let go, so that I can try and frog scroll him, but he passed his check. Then he casts dwellers and I don’t have enough dispel dice to reliably dispel it, on my ng horde, so I am forced to scroll it.
3. In shooting he kills a mangler and some wolf riders.
http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...lves2turn1.jpg
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Orc Turn 1:

1. My savage’s squabbled, my bunker rolls double 1’s to fight my ng horde.
So all 3 of my caster units cannot use magic.
http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...es2turn1v1.jpg
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WE Turn 2:

1. He shoots at my right side squig herd. The randomizing hits mean 9 hits were on my handlers, 9 on the squigs. He then rolls 9 wounds on my handlers, so they blow up. The only good news is that enough squigs were dead that it was only d6 + 1 hits to the units in range.

The explosion kills his eagle, does 1w to my arach and kills my mangler.
http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...lves2turn2.jpg
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Orc turn 2:

1. My savage unit rolls the double 1 this time to fight with my bunker. So that’s great. The game is really over. It was over anyway after turn 1, because losing any movement phase when needing to cross a river was enough to decide the game, but this was just the icing on the cake.

I charged my ng horde at the tofurky. It turns out that the river was a boiling fire damage river(he wanted to play magical terrain) that did s4 hits to anyone in the river at the end of the turn. This did a wound to my troll and wound to a big boss, plus killed 2 goblins(only the front rank was in the river).

2. I roll all my dice at night shade, which he scrolls.
3. I take the tofurky down to 1 wound.
http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...es2turn2v2.jpg
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WE turn 3:

1. He fails to cast dweller’s, but gives his dryads the +4T.
2. He pours shots into my arach doing 1w. He also kills my troll.
3. I kill he tofurky in combat, so claim the body.
http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...lves2turn3.jpg
----------------------------------------------------
Orc turn 3:

1. I charge my arach at his treeman.
2. I get foot off with IF on his treekin, it scatters to hit nothing, then goes away, then my miscast kills 5 ng, but doesn’t hurt my general.
3. My arach then does 0 wounds to his treemen, despite rolling the poison on my surge attack(he warded it). He wounds me 3 times in return, I break and am run down.
http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...es2turn3v3.jpg
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WE turn 4:

1. He gets dwellers off on my ng horde with IF(he ignores the miscast with the spell that lets him do that cast first, I needed to save dice hoping to dispel dwellers).
This kills my warboss, shaman and 46 more night goblins. His shooting kills 19 more. Then his treemen branch attack kills 6 more. By the end of the turn I have just 11 night goblins and 2 big bosses left.

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Orc turn 4:

1. I drop the tofurky, cause I know his treeman can just charge me now and take it anyway, so I just ask him if he plans to take the tofurky now. He doesn’t, so there’s no point, since it’s going to take my savages 2 turns just to either get the tofurky or cross the river. So I concede. There was no point in being mean and forcing him to roll the dice to kill off the ng and savages which he would do the next two turns while I tried to get across the river.

Victory to wood elves.
http://i384.photobucket.com/albums/o...es2turn4v4.jpg
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I’m really tired of animosity. Especially the double 1. 2 out of 3 games I had my main blocks fighting each other from double 1 rolls. The odds are just way to high. Either make animosity a roll on a 2d6, where double 1's are the fight other friendly units, 2-4 are squabbles or forced charges and double 6's are free moves + forced charge. That's still a 17% chance of squabbling or fighting each other, but only a 3% chance of actually getting the worst result. Instead of now where you fail 17% of the time, then when you fail you have a 17% chance of the worst result. Or at least make it like in 6th edition where you can't fight each other if you don't have LOS.

Vetock managed to make animosity even worse and more crippling than Matt Ward did.

Good Job.

[Malorian]

Wow, what a brutal game. Everything was against you.

Don't get down on it though. The odds are on your side.

[Shimmergloom]

I'm not sure the odds are. With 7 units testing for animosity the way my army was, you on average will fail 6 animosity tests a game and 1 of those 6 fails will be the double 1. That's way too often for the odds to be in my favor.

If I could get that down to 4 units testing, that would help, but I feel like I need to keep 3 units that can carry banners in my army since all the big tournies will use blood and glory in some form.

And since black orcs can't stop a double 1 from screwing you over and you can't honestly put a black orc into every testing unit(I had 3 different units roll double 1 in this tourney and squig herds can't have characters at all) then that wouldn't solve the worst of what animosity will do to you. And odds are it will happen 1 time per game(3 times in 3 games this tourney, so average).

[TsukeFox]

I'm not sure the odds are. With 7 units testing for animosity the way my army was, you on average will fail 6 animosity tests a game and 1 of those 6 fails will be the double 1. That's way too often for the odds to be in my favor.

If I could get that down to 4 units testing, that would help, but I feel like I need to keep 3 units that can carry banners in my army since all the big tournies will use blood and glory in some form.

And since black orcs can't stop a double 1 from screwing you over and you can't honestly put a black orc into every testing unit(I had 3 different units roll double 1 in this tourney and squig herds can't have characters at all) then that wouldn't solve the worst of what animosity will do to you. And odds are it will happen 1 time per game(3 times in 3 games this tourney, so average).

It is the price green skins pay for having the such strong troops.

Why not troll block instead of squigs?

[Shimmergloom]

I only have like 9 trolls + 1 broken chaos troll(lost his arm somewhere) until the mantic trolls show up from their kickstarter.

But plenty of armies have strong troops for about the cost of orcs and goblins without animosity. And much better magic to buff them up to superhero status as well. Tell beastmen players that they can pay 1pt less for their troops, lose their fury hatred and then test for animosity and see how they react to that. Also tell them, no more shadow or death magic.

[TheGreenShogun]

I’m really tired of animosity. Especially the double 1. 2 out of 3 games I had my main blocks fighting each other from double 1 rolls. The odds are just way to high. Either make animosity a roll on a 2d6, where double 1's are the fight other friendly units, 2-4 are squabbles or forced charges and double 6's are free moves + forced charge. That's still a 17% chance of squabbling or fighting each other, but only a 3% chance of actually getting the worst result. Instead of now where you fail 17% of the time, then when you fail you have a 17% chance of the worst result. Or at least make it like in 6th edition where you can't fight each other if you don't have LOS.

Vetock managed to make animosity even worse and more crippling than Matt Ward did.

Good Job.

Hmmm, that's not normal. It is possible your dice aren't properly balanced, especially with the pips (the dots). Try a die with the numerical value (cardinal) on it instead of the pips. See how it helps with the animosity.