Crusade Game 2 - Dragonlord HE vs Vampire Counts (ETC)

[Olannon]

Full report on Ulthuan - http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtop...759174#p759174

Curu Olannon presents:


:: 2D6 Crusade - Game #2 - Vampire Counts - 10/10 points before pairing ::

A lot of people got good scores in their first game, so I was hoping that with a mere 10 points, I'd draw someone relatively average. I discussed shortly with Rusty what kind of players are likely to get a draw in their first round, and we agreed that it was likely either a match between two good players or two bad players (naturally ^^). The one I drew however was far from incompetent, as the game would show!

:: Death, Be Not Proud! ::

The lists -

:: High Elves ::

Saerith with GW, AoC, Vambraces, Loec, Star Dragon - 622
BSB Naenor with Sword of Might, HoF, Shield, Dragon Armour, Great Eagle - 208
Olannon with Level 2, Annulian Crystal - 175

Characters - 1005

30 Archers, Full Command, Banner of Eternal Flames - 365
15 Archers, Musician - 170
10 Spearelves - 90

Core - 625

26 White Lions, Full Command, Banner of Swiftness, Amulet of Light - 450
14 Swordmasters, Bladelord w/Skeinsliver, Musician, STD w/Gleaming Pennant - 270

Special - 720

3 Great Eagles - 150

Rare - 150

Total - 2500

:: Vampire Counts ::

Vampire Lord
- Red Fury, Heavy Armour, Sword of Strife, Enchanted Shield, Talisman of Preservation, Ironcurse Icon, Quickblood, Lvl4
Wight King
- BSB, Screaming Banner
Necromancer, scroll, ruby ring
Vampire
- Aura of Dark Majesty, Fear Incarnate, Armour of Destiny

30 Skeletons, full command, +1M banner
30 Skeletons, full command, flaming banner
22 Zombies, standard
5 Dire Wolves
5 Dire Wolves
5 Dire Wolves

22 Grave Guard, full command, banner of barrows
Spirit Host
Spirit Host

Terrorgheist, infested
Varghulf

Total - 2400

:: Pre-battle thoughts and deployment ::

A quick glance at his list showed me that there was nothing in particular to worry about. I wanted to get a combo-charge against his Lord. The terrain favoured my army, in my opinion, as regardless of what side I got it would be easy to pick my battles.

Magic saw me get Vaul's Unmaking and Shield of Saphery. He got all the spells from the Vampire lore but traded Wind of Undeath for a second cast of Invocation.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2...Deployment.jpg

His Lord was with the Eastern Skeletons, the Necro was in the Zombies behind while his Wight BSB and the last Vampire both went with the Grave Guard. They stayed in these units throughout the game.

I was pretty happy with this start. The idea was to steamroll East and swing around to the West to crush his centre while the Swordmasters held the other flank in the meantime.

I finished deploying first and had Skeinsliver, thus rolling a '5' meant he was powerless to grab first turn!

:: High Elves T1 ::

Lions went up full speed. I took care to advance the flyers so that the Terrorgheist would be out of range regardless of action. The rest held still, save for the big Archers who moved to within 24" of the Lord (Vaul's).

Magic is 7v5 and I start with a 2D6 Drain Magic, which he lets go. I then cast Vaul's on 5D6 and with a good cast, his scroll comes out.

Shooting puts a wound on the Varghulf and kills a Grave Guard.

A pretty decent T1!

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2..._1st_Draft.jpg

:: Vampire Counts T1 ::

His Terrorgheist opts to move west. This creates a 'free fly' zone for me as he can't march it any longer, but on the other hand my Swordmasters suddenly have to be a little careful. The rest of his army moves up, leaving me with a couple of risky - but juicy - opportunities to remove some chaff.

Magic is 4v4 and he throws it all at Curse of Years on my Lions. I manage to beat his casting value, so no harm done! Magic on a budget working a treat, here I am having my 175 point mage getting way more out of my 2 spells than he is out of his X points and 6 spells!

Shooting is non-existant, as is combat.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ire_Counts.jpg

:: High Elves T2 ::

I charge the Spirit Hosts with Naenor and Saerith. The latter is charged to give the lïons an overrun (needing a 4+).

Naenor has to move into charge range of either the Grave Guard or the Vampire Lord if I make the charge. I need 8+ and if I fail it it doesn't matter a whole lot as his position will still be good. I make the charge and elect to block the Lord with an Eagle and give the GG vision. If he charges me, I can flee and have a pretty good shot at getting away because he has to perform a relatively big wheel (robbing him of ~4"). This has the added effect of the GG being stalled for another turn while my Lions + Saerith tear apart his East. Overall, a pretty decent move I think, although a little risky (losing Naenor would be disastrous).

Magic is a low 4v2 and I go for Vaul's Unmaking - getting IF! No need for this with his scroll gone, oh well... The result puts a wound on Olannon and removes his Vamp's 4+ ward.

Shooting does next to nothing as I fail to hurt the Varghulf. Combat sees me kill the 3 units easily and reform the Lions to face the skeletons + lord.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2..._1st_Draft.jpg

:: Vampire Counts T2 ::

His Lord + bunker tries to charge the Lions, needing 6 or 7+ but they fail it! If he had gotten into combat, I would challenge his Lord out and massacre the unit (the ensuing crumble would be insane and they would all, probably, eventually die). I guess at this point he realized the Lord and his unit were doomed and he tried to make the most of them.

The Varghulf charges my Archers. Having only put 1W on it, I'm not too confident about this matchup...

Naenor is charged by the Grave Guard and I flee, easily getting away.

Magic is 8v6 and the result is Curse of Years on the Archers (he wanted to get a '6' to kill Olannon) - 8 die but panic is passed.

The Terrorgheist kills my flanking Eagle (not shown in the diagram, apologies).

The Varghulf massacre a few Archers for no wounds in return. I hold on Steadfast.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ire_Counts.jpg

:: High Elves T3 ::

Lions + Saerith into the Lord, easily making it (both were almost guaranteed, needing like 3+ or something). Naenor rallies.

Magic sees us get 6v6 and there's no effect as he dispels both my casts (Shield on Lions and Drain) on 3v3.

Shooting puts a wound on the TG (I got very few 6's).

The Archers on the East are killed down to a single Elf, who flees. The Varghulf reforms to face my centre.

The big combat is coming up and I declare Loec (basically - if he dies now it's game over). Between my re-rolls he goes down before Faeria even gets to attack. However, as he also has ASF he gets to strike. And oh my, does he strike! First 7 attacks ALL HIT the Lions, despite not having re-rolls and they ALL WOUND as well. He proceeds to pick up another 7, hitting and wounding with EVERY DICE yet again for a total of 14 (!!) dead Lions. Even with breathing fire (which I think is crucial given the 14 dead Lions), I can't crumble the Skeletons completely due to their master's incredible feat: 4 are left alive when we're all done.

The diagram isn't 100% here - crumble tests were generally low but the remaining Skeletons all died, leaving my Prince + Lions unengaged. Unfortunately, I couldn't reform...

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2..._1st_Draft.jpg

:: Vampire Counts T3 ::

He moves up desperately in the middle and I know all I have to do now is stop Vanhel's to buy me some time.

Magic gives us 4v4 but he gets an area-of-effect Vanhel's with IF! The result drain his Vampire of his 1 wizard level.

Shooting sees the Terrorgheist kill a couple of Swordmasters and as there's no combat, it's on to my T4.

Again, diagram a little off here. As the Skeletons crumbled last turn Saerith didn't reform. I also forgot to show SM casualties.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ire_Counts.jpg

:: High Elves T4 ::

I know that I have to get the Swordmasters away from that Terrorgheist and into the middle. To accomplish this, I combo-charge the 30 Skeletons with them + Naenor, hoping to win in one combat round to turn around help my centre out.

My lone Archer miraculously rallies on a roll of Insane Courage, saving me ~85 points!

Magic is 6v6 and he fears Vaul's again. I start off with a 2D6 Shield on the Swordmasters (which is by far the most crucial here) and he lets it go. Not wanting to risk a miscast, I discard the rest.

Shooting is uneventful and we move to combat:

My otherwise trustworthy elites produce an unimpressive result - I can't hit them enough ('only' 13 hits) but disaster strikes as I roll to wound - six 1's show up and I don't even know what to think. Naenor and his Eagle perform a little better, but again I'm left with like 5 models after crumble, thus not getting me a reform or anything.

The Lions kill the last Necromancer and Zombies, making sure he'll take crumble tests for the rest of the game as his Vampire is level 0!

Again a diagram error here, the Lions wiped the Zombies and the Necro easily

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2..._1st_Draft.jpg

:: Vampire Counts T4 ::

This time the crumble rolls are a little worse as he loses one unit of dogs. The Terrorgheist only takes a wound however, as do the Skeletons in combat!

The Terrorgheist charge my Swordmasters, hoping to bring them down below 25% while the Grave Guard charge the blocking Eagle. The Varghulf also charges a blocking Eagle while his last dogs try and get away (sort of, not really sure what he wanted to accomplish with this move).

Magic is non-existant and shooting kills a couple more Swordmasters.

Combat - I direct as many Swordmasters at the Terrogheist as I can and easily kill the Skeletons with the rest. I lose quite a few in return and they're left with 4 guys (at the time, I thought for some reason that this was below 25% >.<). The beast crumbles though. Both my Eagles die noble deaths. At this point I have to make a decision and I don't want to risk charging my characters in against the Grave Guard with killing blows and all. They'll get so much bonus combat resolution against the Archers and with the breath weapon gone I doubt I can crumble them. I regard it as too risky and there's always the Varghulf to kill for my Prince

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2...ire_Counts.jpg

:: High Elves T5 ::

Saerith charges the Varghulf, Naenor the dogs. Magic is uneventful and we move to combat.

The Archers lose badly and run, he decides to pursue (Saerith is much further away than it looks like here). The noble Elf Prince slays the Varghulf.

http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l2..._1st_Draft.jpg

After this he catches my Archers and nothing else happens.

:: Victory Points ::

As I thought my Swordmasters were below 25% I awarded him half points for them. The result after bonuses etc was 1742 vs 760 - a 16-4 win to the High Elves! This should've been 17-3 with proper points for the Swordmasters, but it's my own fault and regardless nothing can be done now as this result affected my next pairings.

:: Evaluation and Conclusion ::

At the very least, this game was a lot easier than my first! With that being said, I think this should've been a clean 20-0 given his list and my good start. I don't know what I could've done differently though, I felt that everything was working as it should. I won't blame the dice either as they weren't really that extreme, though it may seem like it. This game really showed me just how hard it can be to get those last points to achieve the biggest victory. A big part of why I couldn't do this was because his Grave Guard had killing blow, otherwise I could've probably engaged them with my flyers. As it was, they would be facing 4+ attacks each, not a perfect situation.

I think my opponent played fairly well. He made a couple of deployment mistakes, mainly isolating his Lord like that. My list really punishes this though, so you'll have to deploy very well for there to not be anything for me to take advantage of. His mid and end-game play was pretty much perfect, given his position, which helped to prevent me from getting those last 4 points.

Oh and by the way, while I was facing fairly good players Rusty kept meeting people who didn't know all the rules and cruised his way in to another easy victory

I'm sure you have some comments so bring them on

~Olannon

[TsukeFox]

Mr vampire guy should have brought that always strike last shroud- its potential is pretty high I think

[Djekar]

I love the play in your magic phase of T4 - get the spell you want off, then just ignore the other dice. It is something that I struggle to do. One thing I love about reading these reports is seeing how well you do with only a single level 2 mage. I once gave the Lore of High Magic grief compared to the new shiny BRB lores, but I think that you do an excellent job with the tools you have chosen.

I'm glad to see that a character driven list can still do well against an opponent with easy access to KB - which I have found to be the biggest weakness of such lists.

As far as not scoring the 20-0, I really do think that it came down a lot to the round of combat where his vampire racked up 14 kills. That is huge - especially on a mostly elite force like yours.

[thrawn]

i like your battle reports, thanks for posting them!

why did you have 2500 points but your opponent only 2400?

[Olannon]

I'm not sure that it's good for vamps to get the ASL thingy because it's rather expensive and you want to tool up your lord with other shiny things. I don't know though, maybe it's worth it in a certain set of builds, depending on what you want your Lord to do.

As for a magic phase - basically ask yourself if there's any value of getting a certain spell off. I frequently find that my options are to a) get a spell of, but suffer a miscast for it or b) don't get it off at all due to scrolls/mass dispel dice etc. Because a spell is seldom worth a miscast, I've gotten used to discarding dice (especially against Dwarfs!).

As for playing against a plethora of Killing Blow, this is indeed a problem, but usually it can be mitigated somewhat since there's almost never more than 2 units/characters sporting it. Either stay away from it completely or apply so much force that it simply goes down!

@thrawn - with the ETC rules pack, the armies that are perceived to be weaker have gotten a boost (among other things). The standard is 2400 points, High Elves get 2500 to play with while a few others get 2600.