Humble Ramblings from the Woodland Path

[Tidings]

Here it is!  Yup I'm falling in love with it, will probably become my go-to artifact when I play pure Wanderers. I originally thought the Forget-me-knot would be the best but so far I have never even gotten to use it. The stable source of mortal wounds, even if it's a tiny trickle, is something that Wanderers desperately need, and it is always usable.

[Yeled]

I'm really enjoying reading your battle reports, @Paul Buckler! Thanks for posting them. I don't play tournaments but I do want to field a competitive army, so learning from your experiences is great.

[Siegfried VII]

Great reports and to the point. I enjoyed reading them!

[Paul Buckler]

Game 7 vs Tom Hutchings

Scenario Startstrike

Tom was running a very top end Seraphon list, Kroak, big saurus block, bastiladon, skinks eternity warden banner bearer etc.  Wante dto test vs this top end stuff and see how it went.

I deployed off the board, but then pointed out that if I didn't come on turn 1 he woudl just deploy around the edge with his 40 saurus and block me off, giving him a win turn 1 automatically.  (yeah I know, but it was tournament practice)

He bunkered croak, but left the bastilladon vulnerable.  I came on and killed that but spread out my vulnerable stuff so he could only kroak off 1.  He popped croak ove rto kill my prince, but failed balewind, so actually only did 1 mortal wound on him and the wild riders.

Turn 2 the comet fell handily for him, but had I got priority I could have bounced everthing back in a ball and force him to move kroak way out of position if he wanted to get it. (And also become  extremely vulnerable.

Sadly he got it, cast balewind, killed the prince and that was pretty much game.  comets actually fell perfectly for him 2 right next to most fo his stuf and kroak.

Not much more to report, he kept mortal wounding most of my army off, I chipped away.  Got soem decent VP's around 1000 I think but lost heavily on Scenario

Result: Major Loss

Conclusion:  Spotting the auto lose if I go all off the board was good, as I won't forget that again.  Actually if he rolled abad and I got priority I think I killed kroak and then won.  So I wasn't out of it which gives me hope

 

[Paul Buckler]

Game 7 vs @ppetford

Scenario Total Conquest

Paul is new to sylvaneth and just learning his army, but has a solid Gnarlroot list, with Aincient Drycha, 2 scythe hunters, spites and tree revs plus 30 dryads, loremaster and venator fill out his list I think

I wanted to try splitting my forces up for this battle, I deployed on the back board edge, and gave Paul turn 1.  He deployed a long line of dryads along his left objective and 9 away from the right objective.  Tree revs on right in 'thin' zone and the rest near his woods

He got his trees down, and moved up to capture his 2 baord edge objectives, but more crucially he popped drycha through the woods and rolled a 6, allwoing her to get in and kill 10 of my 20 glade guard then charge to kill the rest and some of my 20 eternal guard.  He also dropped 3 scythes near my right objective but not close enough to capture yet. He scored 2 points.

I popped around and shot off the 5 tree revs near his RH objective.  I claimed that and teh bottom LH one.  Abandoining the RH to drycha and her mates I jumped towards the LH board edge. I scored 1 point

Score 2-1 to Paul

Needing a double but failing to get it, a failed mystical helped me keep the RH objective in Pauls half, However the rest fo his army was closing in.  Luckily for me he moved his aincient away from the woods and this slowed him down significantly in later turns.  He scored 3 points

My go The sisters jumped to far right hand corner and peppered the dryads, I killed 2!  so tanky with -1 to hit, and I rolled abysmally (this was just the start) I scored that objective though grabbing it back. and held my bottom left objective.

Score 5-4 to Paul

Turn 3 He wins priority again, shuffles 30 dryads over to my obojective along with aicient.  Killing teh wild riders i was claiming with.  Scythes stay on his RHS objective in my half, whils drycha advacnes towards my left hand one.  He keeps a few of his characters on his points, to secure them as dryads move away.  He scores 4 points.

My turn I manage a cheeky charge on his Left hand objective to flip it, but my sisters of thorn and EG aren't gonna last long vs his 3 scythes.  I do manage to flip that this go though, staionary sisters of teh watch kill 3 dryads which he plucks from the middle of the unit. I score 3 points

Score 9-7

Turn 4 is another one for Paul, and he swiftly deals with the threat on his left hand objective by tagging it with his 20 something dryads.  Teh aincient claims the RHS one, and shoots off 5 sisters of the watch.  I have managedto chaff Drycha off my LH objective for now, but Paul scores 4 points.

My turn I shoot off a few more dryads but am running out of bodies, fail a last ditch charge on teh aincient to attempt to get that one.  I score 1 point

Score 13-8 to Paul

Turn 5 he gets priority, Aincient finishes off sisters, and he gets another 3 points

I call it in my turn as I can't catch him

Score 16-9 final turn.

Result Major Loss

Conclusions Splitting up didn't work, possibly sending 1 unit to each corner might have been better, but I need to work as a mass, and chip away, rather than spreading out.  Drychas getting the 6 was massive as he killed so much astuff with her.  Also me flipping objectives when he was just gonna get them back easily was pointless, should have moved away and focused on ones I could defend.

 

[Chris Tomlin]

More good reports @Paul Buckler - Looking forward to reading your write ups of all the games from Facehammer GT this weekend as I don't think we chatted through them all.

Side note; is it your intention to write up topics like this for every army you do? I hope so! They will be very informative to other players, especially given your preference for dabbling with rarely seen allegiances.

[Paul Buckler]

Yeah think so @Chris Tomlin, gives me a good record of the total number of games I've actually played!

Thought I was onto my facehammer batreps but got this one and then one in my overlords thread to do first.

Game 7 vs @#SteveJames

Scenario Battle for the pass

I had played Steve a lot with my arkanaughts, but this was my first run out with wanderers.

He has gnarlroot, with 20 dryads, treelord as well as the aincient, 3 bow hunters, wraith and wytch.

I got roll of and baord edged the end furthest away from his trees.  deliberately leaving my objective open, tempting him to put something on it which I could kill easily (and hopefully thin his numbers).

Steve put all his dryads in a big line protecting his flanks and rear board edge, the rest was waiting to teleport.

I give steve Turn 1.  He moves up a bit, puts hunters on Right flank, 1 on right.  Sadly he only ported his revs to my objective, but he did score 9 points.

My go shoot off the revs in hero phase, send 10 EG to RH flank, hoping for a cheeky charge/grab. I move my wild riders up to stop anything porting clos eto my objective.  LH flank I shoot off his 3 hunters (thanks to 6 battleshock roll), 1 EG is within 6 so I score that objective, now steve has nothing. I score 3 points

Score 9-3 to Steve.

He gets the turn and moves 10 dryads up to the RH objective and his Aincient towards it.  The lord ports through the woods but doesn't roll a 6 or make his charge. He scores 5 points

My turn I hero shoot off the dryads, move my 20 EG into the building by the objective, (they have mystic shield and mortal bouceback on them as well now).  Shoot waywatchers and GG at the lord reducing it to 3 wounds, Susters port and shoot 1 unit of Bow hunters killing 1.  10 EG on RH flank claim that objective. (Steve forgot to charge them with unters to get more near objective) I score 5 points.

Score 14-8 to steve

I win turn and finish off Treelord, the 2 remaining bow hunters and kill another out of the last unit.  The EG in building plant their staves for another plus 1 save.  I am confident they will survive pretty much anything steve has now. I score 5 points

Steve moves aincient towards my bubble, but charges that rather than the stuff on my objective.  The EG near the RH objective tank some saves and he only scores 1 point.

Score 14-13 to steve.

I get turn 4 and push my stuff up, he has Aincient, 2 characters 1 hunter, 5 revs and dryads left.  Locking his aincient with my characters and a unit of GG, he can't kill it all, so can only teleport retreat, with no where to place near my home objective.  I kill the revs and last bow hunter.  I move my sisters of the thorn so they can run onto his objective next go, effectively locking his big dryad unit on it. I score 5 points

His turn the aincient kills some stuff and he runs his Wytch and wraith towards my home objective  Aicient kills my general and the final members of the Sister of the watch.  He scores 1 point.

Score 15-18 to me

Turn 5 I get priotity, kill his wytch and wraith, score 5 points.  Steve has 2 units and needs to claim all 4 so final score is

16-23 to me

Result: Major Victory

Conclusions: Interesting to see that giving up the points early still gave me a chance to get them back.  I think this is a very valid tactic for this mission, and one I will put into practice.  The EG are so tanky with the buffs, in that building steve really couldn't hurt them at all.

So thats it, my next 5 reports will be from the FH GT, (The results are up if you want to see how I faired) , any list changes and how I feel they perform at 'competative' events

 

[Paul Buckler]

So the first of my Facehammer GT battle reps, (will try to get them out this week before heading off to Warhammer world on Friday), as always these will be briefer than my normal ones, as I have a few to get through.

Game 8 vs Andy Burton

Scenario Boredraw (Knife to the heart)

Was great to finally get a game in vs Andy, have been to a bunch of events together but never had a game.

Andy was running a Deathlords List, with Neferata and arkhan, alongside 3 units of 2 archai, mortis engine and a summoning pool.

I deployed baseline, with most, I added a unit of 10 EG to my objective.  He spread out with his Aarchai, and characters, measuring as many 9" areas as he could to block me off.

I gave him the turn and he summoned up zombies and bat swarms to block the table edges, and try to get some -1 to hit bubbles.  He added a banshees in front of his lines in cover.

My go I popped mostly left flank, and managed to kill the 10 zombies in a line down that edge, I also popped 4 wounds from an Archai.

Turn 2 I won priority and moved up a bit killing the remaining aarchai.  I left him a chance of charging me with an 8 if he got the double turn.

His go he restocked his zombies and added another bat swarm, a unit of 3 spirit hosts re-enforced the left flank.He didn't push with his archai, instead moving them and Arkhan up the board, his banshee providing death saves for them.  He was going for the double turn now I was up on points.

Turn 3

He lost priority again and I jumped over, shooting Arkhan off, I did a wound to his Archai in the centre as well.  His go he moved up but failed a very short charge with his archai.

Turn 4

Another priority to me, I hero phase shot off 1 unit of archai, whilst killing the other in the normal shooting phase.  He shuffled a bit and stayed out of range.

Final turn he won, but all he could do was wait it out as my go I finished off the banshee.

Result Minor victory

 

Game 8 vs Sam Watson

Scenario Duality of Death

By far my hardest scenario, I got drawn against a new face to me, Sam Watson.  He was using Flesh Eaters, boss on ZD, 2x6 flayers 30 ghouls 2x10 ghouls necomancer plus 2 other heroes.

Will summarise the game rather than turn by turn as it was over pretty quickly.  Sam blocked off any close range teleports, and got 3 of his heroes on an objective while zooming his flayers at me.  I couldn't't kill things quickly enough to port over and shoot them off, so he rapidly got an unassailable lead.  Flayers being so fast and able to get to me was key.  Sam did well by putting 6 on each flank, effectively preventing me jumping away.

I did kill a LOT of stuff though, getting 1600 VP in this game.

Result Major Loss

 

Game 9 vs Balal Zafar

Scenario Squiggly deployment ( Total Conquest)

Baz had the only other wanderers army at the event! and we drew each other.  He had my army but with only glade guard, no sisters, so was interesting to see.  He also had teh 'cant attack me ' item rather than board edge teleport.

Was a weird game, I think I won it with the first roll, getting to deploy off the board.  He setup along his back edge, then I let him go first.  He ported down the edges forcing me to come on my edge, and flipped the 2 objective near him.  I came on killed 1 unit wild riders, and a few eternal guard (Shield plus rerolls makes them decently tanky).  I claimed my 2 objectives.

Score 2-2

Winning priority I killed a load more EG, and chipped a couple of Glade guard from another unit.  He moved up killed 10 EG of mine, and moved away with his remaining EG on the right.  We both retained our 2 objectives

Score 4-4

Turn 3 he won, and moved up killing most of my glade guard.  But not getting the objective, he Bunkered his sisters of the thorn and a mage on his RH one.  My go I managed to kill 2 of the sisters, and make a flukey long charge to get my wild riders in.  I was able to flip the objective for 2 points

Score 6-8 to me

I went first turn 4 and managed to hold the flipped objective, bunkering up as best i could on my RH one.

His go he moved over killing most of my bunker, but failed to remove me from his RH one to flip back.

Score 9-11 to me

Turn 5 he was forced to abandon both his LH objectives in an attempt to flip both of mine, but I managed to hold my Top RH whilst he killed everything around the bottom one. 

By leaving his objectives open I was able to port a single unit to each and flip both, which gave me the win.

Final Score 13-16 to me

Result Major Victory

 

Be back tomorrow for the day 2 results, just the matter of a small game with @Chris Tomlin first thing on the Sunday morning

[Paul Buckler]

Game 9 vs @Chris Tomlin

Scenario Battle for the Pass

 

So Sunday Morning arrives and I get the pleasure of a rematch with Chris.  We hadn't played a game for months and a week ago we played battle for the pass vs my Wanderers!  Amazing to get drawn out again. 

Chris had the same list as before, and tbh it pretty much went the same way!

He deployed really well not giving me any gaps, I gave him first turn.  He pushed up enough, getting his 10 brutes onto one objective allowing the gruntas to hang back. He scored 5 points

I jumped, praying to get a double.  I did 7 wounds on his crusha thanks to arcane bodkins. (Even the power of Diesel couldn't help him with those saves). I scored 1 point.

Score 5-1 to Chris

Sadly no double for me, and although my lord dodged the bolt throwers and Crusher shooting, the sneaky kill/auto pile in with another unit did for him.  Chris scored 5 points.  He also managed a double 6" destruction move getting his megabrute unit 5" away from my objective.

I again shot his crusher, and he managed to make every 2 up save this turn I think, maybe I did 1 wounds from the approx 80 shots. I socred a point

Score 10-2 to Chris

He got the turn again, and blitzed my 20 eternal guard.  Who actually are really resilient only 7 dying from the whole units attacks.  Were it not for the bolt throwers they wouldn't have battleshocked off.  He scored 9 points

My turn that crusher was going down, and finally thanks to the starcaster he did!  Also managed to wound the gore gruntas. I scored 0 points

Score 19-2 to Chris

I got the double here and managed to jump a bit of stuff to claim both side objectives to score 4 points

He managed to kill my wild riders this go but basically just held the points, He scored 7 points

Score 26-6 to Chris

Final turn was a bit of shuffling for kill points but the game ended with a comfortable win for Chris

Result Major Loss

 

Game 10 v @Bryan Hatchett

Scenario Starstrike

 

Bryan is another gamer who I keep meeting at events but we have never been matched up, so finally we got a game. 

He was running Stormcast, Stardrake, 2 xJudicators 2x Protectors, Judicators, 2x Liberators, 1xprosecutors Lantern and teleport hero

 

He deployed in the left 2/3 of the board blocking me off, Whilst I dropped off the board to avoid 1 go of rain of stars. 

Brian pushed his stuff up to give him maximum potential for a comet dropping into his territory, basically having a 2/3 chance of controlling it.

I came on on his edge with most, dropping the wild riders and 20 EG on my board edge with potential to grab if the comet dropped.  I killed 5 judcators and wounded a Protector

 

Luckily the comet dropped middle right, by most of my army, but Brian got the turn.  He moved most stuff middle of the board ready for turn 3, leaving 5 protectors on the left. Protectors charged the sisters, who shot off 1 on the charge.  They then messed up their attacks, somehow the ladies killed 1 in return! Rain of stars chipped some wounds

My go I managed to shoot off the remaining protectors, and shuffled up to keep my options with riders and EG.  I scored 2 points

Score 2-0 to me

Turn 3 comets dropped my edge right his edge left.  Very lucky for me and helped a lot.  Bryan had to leave protectors and fulminators to guard his edge comet, whilst pushing drake and liberators at me.  I lost a waywatcher to ROS and shooting.  He scored 3 points

My go I brought wild riders and EG back to defend, as I now had control of 2 points.  Pretty much abandoning any offense I was going to put up a wall of bodies for bryan to get through in the final 2 turns.  I scored 6 points

Score 8-3 to me

I got priority and formed a mass of models, blocking off gaps for the drake or liberators to teleport into.  Was now just about forming waves of units to block him off. I scored 8 points.

Bryan moved his stardrake into combat with the 20 EG but failed a liberator charge.  The drake was dreadful, totally messing up its attacks, think it killed 4 EG total!

Score 16-3 to me

Bryan won priority and needed to take all 3 from me and hold them my turn.  Due to the stardrake being locked this was going to be an issue.  He ported his 2nd liberator unit and had he made his 9" charge he could well have taken the centre line objective, sadly the dice once again deserted him. He scored 5 points.

My turn I shot of some liberators the drake finished the EG, and that was it. I scored 10 points

Score 26-8 to me

Result Major Victory.

So that's it for my FH games, will add my conclusions/comments a bit later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ppetford]

Great write-up @Paul Buckler

Sounds like Facehammer was a bit of a mixed bag for the list

[TalesOfSigmar]

Got to admit your game against @Chris Tomlin on Sunday morning next to me and Diesel looked awesome. Probably helped with two beautifully painted armies on the table too!

[Paul Buckler]

SO Facehammer conclusions, quick run through of what I have learn't from each game and how I am moving forwards with the list.

Game 1 - Low model count armies are really going to struggle as they have to waste valuable models to block off the board.  Certain missions are really good matchups.

Game 2 - Duality is so difficult, getting a hero there and keeping them alive is tough.  Kinda my if I somehow win its a miracle mission

Game 3 - Wanderers off.  I learnt loads from this game, EG can be super tanky vs no rend or rend 1.  GG are imo pretty rubbish.

Game 4 - Ironjawz are a tough matchup, also battle for the pass is not a great mission if your opponent is savvy.

Game 5 - Ignore the drake and feed it models in the stormcast matchup.  ROS is bad news though

 

I had 5 top games this weekend, had great fun and finished 44 out of 92.  The minor win cost me game 1, had I majored 3 I would have ended up in the 20's, 1 more sports vote would have boosted me up as well.

Overall the army plays like I felt it would, solid mid table 2/3 wins.  Lucky draw to get 4, but don't see them top 10 or podium level.  Nice army for me, suits where I want to be gaming atm.  Glade guard are absolute tosh, far too expensive, one shot (barely that) wonder.  They need mystical and the prince to make them even half decent, and then kill one and they are negated.

Wild riders need a buff or huge points decrease, compare them to marauder cav, its insane.

Formation was pretty good tbh, one drop really helped in 3 games, and the prince shooting whilst not often was amazing when I used it.  Having played Baz the any board edge jump is my pref of traits.

So going forwards, dropping 20 GG for 20 EG and swapping wild riders for another unit of sisters of the thorn.

[Yeled]

@Paul Buckler, these are great. Thanks so much for doing these fantastic write ups. If you ever have the time, I'd love to get your opinion of our Wanderer Wishlist. We've gathered everything into the first post, and based on your experience with the list at tournaments I'm fairly certain your perspective would add a lot. 

[Paul Buckler]

Thanks for the comments, really enjoying my games so far will keep up the reports as I play with them.  Had a read of your wishlist thread, for me I am more a make the most of what you have (which is currently very playable, I think) rather than hope for something new.  Best  of luck with it though.