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Game 2: Solaris (playing mostly Tomb Kings)


Sigwarus

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Scenario:

Border war. Major victory gave 15-5 in tournament points. That number was then adjusted +-5p according to the difference in killpoints for eliminated warscrolls for a final score between 20-0 and 0-20.

 

Solaris´ army consisted of:

Settra, Tomb king on foot, Hierophant, Tomb prince on Warsphinx, 2x5 Skeleton horsemen, 2x1 Tomb Scorpions, 3 Necropolitan Knights, 40 skeletons and 6 Spirit Hosts.

My army is presented in the first blog post of this blog.  

 

Pre game thoughts:

Having played a few games against Settra I knew that he is powerful in combat and have even more powerful abilities to augment his minions with. Therefor my first goal was to take him out early on. I opted to continue my first turn aggression tactics and thus taking some risks by placing my fate in the dice Gods mercy.

 

Terrain of significance (described from what became my front of view after choosing sides)

In the absolute center of the board was a very tall and rather big stone formation (impassible due to its height). At the center-left of the board, just were one of the scenario objectives were situated, there were a large hill. In the middle of his deployment zone he had one big area terrain. I had some area terrain at the left side of my deployment zone.

The free Wyldwood (the tournament allowed a maximum of one citadel wood to be placed at a time regardless of source) was planted at what became the right objective from my perspective.

 

Deployment:

As he had a lot of deployments I needed not to set up my whole formation at once to get the first turn.

His deployment was: A screen of skeleton horsemen to my left and behind them the prince on sphinx. In the big area terrain at the middle of his deployment zone were the 40 skeletons, the hierophant and the king on foot placed. Just right of them and just behind some of the skeletons was Settra. To my right was another screen of horsemen placed with the spirit hosts and Necropolitan Knights right behind. The tomb scorpions were buried beneath the sand (not on the board at the start of the game but ready for ambushing).

My army was deployed in a half-circle in my deployment zone ready to walk the spirit path to another forest if I managed to plant one right beside them. Only the revenants were kept in reserve.

 

The battle begins

I took the first turn and planted one Wyldwood in my deployment thanks to the acorn of ages. My Treelord Ancient then managed to create another forest with his ability and I put it close the left objective just to the left of the large stone formation at the center of the board.  After failing the hand of glory but succeeding with mystic shield (both on Durthu) I started to teleport my troops too more favorable positions.

The two Kurnoth hunter units with bows were teleported to the left forest to secure the objective and still be able to fire against Settra.  The left flank also looked less scary than the right with only some skeleton horsemen and the sphinx to worry about. The kurnoth hunters with scythes, the Treelord Ancient and the Spirit of Durthu were all redeployed to the right forest just nine inches from the skeleton horsemen. Unfortunately none of them got a 6 when rolling for the spirit path and therefore could only charge after teleporting. The two units of dryads were deployed just beside the other troops to the right ready to claim the objectives and fight skeletons. The Branchwych were left alone at the home objective and the Loremaster just moved forward in the center.

In the shooting phase I opened fire with both bow units and the Treelord Ancient against Settra. With some favorable dice rolls the Ancient took 4 amazing wounds out of Settra. Between the great arrows of the two hunter units the once great Settra fell. I couldn’t be anything but pleased with this start of the game. 

The Kurnoth Hunters managed a long charge and just reached the skeleton horsemen while the two great Treelords fell short in their attempts to do the same. But the Hunters not only made it to combat, more importantly; they locked the spirit hosts in combat to. As long as the Hunters didn´t killed the skeleton horsemen the Spirits were locked in a combat they couldn´t contribute in (due to having 1” range in combat). The Hunters therefore attacked the Spirits instead. Not an ideal matchup but better than having them up close. I think one was able to pile in. One of the Necropolitan Knights also piled in at the other flank of the Hunters and did some damage.

What a turn! Settra dead, holding 3 objectives and the spokey snakes and spirits tied up in combat. At this moment I lost my sense of tactical judgement. Too filled with joy for the excellent start to understand that the battle wasn´t quite over yet.   

My opponent realized that he had to play for the objectives to stand a chance once Settra was gone. In his turn he set up the Tomb Scorpions just outside my home objective ready to charge my lone and exposed Branchwych. I didn´t realize that they could pop up 5” from your troops and then charge. To my left he made two long and successful charges with the other unit of horsemen and with the prince on sphinx against my two units of Kurnoth Hunters with bows. In combat The Sphinx was a beast and started to hammer my Hunters to firewood. The Necro Knights retreated from combat and the Spirit Hosts continued to do next to zero damage. The Scorpions killed the wych and took the objective in my deployment zone. I think he got the second turn and the grind continued in al combats.

In my second turn I tried to save the Kurnoth Hunters to the left by teleporting both units (1 hunter left in one of them) to the relative safety at the other side of the board. The Ancient had made yet another forest just right of the center stone formation at there were the Hunters placed.  I healed one back with the formation spell and buffed the Spirit of Durthu with hand of glory. An alternative would have been to teleport some back up to the hunters instead but my opponents units were placed in the forest and thus hindered any teleporting attempts. The same were true for the forest in my deployment zone due to the presence of the scorpions.

At the right side of the battlefield the Loremaster ran to hold the objective at the center-right and by that freeing the dryads to move elsewhere.  The Ancient and the big band of dryads moved towards the center of the board to threaten the skeletons that camped at the objective in my opponent’s deployment zone. Unfortunately they were too far away making it hard to charge. The Spirit of Durthu joined the Kurnoth Hunters with scythes in their battle against the horsemen and the spirits. The smaller unit of dryads moved back with the mission to secure the home objective. The Tree-revenants were brought to the battlefield at the outside of my home objectives Wyldwood.

In retrospect I did some mistakes in this movement phase. I underestimated the threat against my home objective and tied up my Durthu in a fight that were rather insignificant for the big picture. He (actually a she-model) could have aided my Ancient and dryads earlier in their struggle to take my opponents home objective.

In my shooting phase the Kurnoth hunters with bows killed at least one of the scorpions, maybe both? (can´t remember).

I don´t remember the exact details of all the following battlerounds but I will give you a summary with some highlights.

In a well thought maneuver Solaris let his Sphinx abandon the left objective (the horsemen still held it) and instead move towards my home objective. In a later turn he placed it close to the edge of the large stone formation and by that effectively created a wall of stone that my troops couldn’t cross. The giant roadblock that goes under the name Warsphinx only takes half of the wounds suffered. That´s a good ability when you want to stop your enemies´ advance. The sphinx was eventually killed by the combined strength of magic into Wyldwood, Hunters with bows in close combat and most importantly by all my shooting, but it was too late.

The horsemen to the left stood by the objective for the rest of the game with just some loses to bowfire. They, and the wellplaced sphinx, also stopped my troops from walking the spirit paths for a surprise attack (they stood to close to the Wyldwoods or inside them and therefor my troops couldn’t teleport).

At the right side of the battlefield it was all about delaying. The skeletons and Necropolitan Knights were placed in the path of the Spirit of Durthu who turned them into boneflour in a frenzied stampede. But it took precious time until I eventually controlled the objective they protected. The dryads assisted Durthu in his/her efforts.

 In the end we didn’t have time to finish all the battlerounds and the last round were lost.

 

Result

Solaris secured the scenarios main objective by winning the objective controlling score by 19-18. But as I had wiped out his whole army baring those (damned) skeleton horsemen and lost next to nothing in return the 15-5 score were reduced by 5 for his part and increased by 5 for mine.

End score: Draw (10-10 in tournament points)

 

Conclusions:

I must say that I´m impressed by Solaris´ comeback after having lost Settra in turn 1. He played brilliantly and I got sloppy. A lesson was learned. I shouldn’t have left my home objective with those weak defenses and when danger presented itself I should have reacted more firmly and faster. I was too confident that the fall of Settra would give me the upper hand. As it was I almost managed to get that big win despite those mistakes (just two more objective points…).

Solaris´ tactical skill was no one hit wonder as he followed up the draw with 3 crushing victories and one more draw ending on 2nd place.

That’s all for now but don’t panic  – more battlereports will be published soon. The story continues with some Order vs. Order action. First up: Stormcasts.

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This was probably the most enjoyable game of the tournament for me, since I was forced to play from way behind from the start and just barely managed to get a draw. Playing without Settra, around whom the whole list was built, was an interesting challenge - all my tools very suddenly felt dull and useless since Settra's presence alone gives most units in the list a damage increase of 75% or more, and that's before taking into account my other two command abilities that I can use when he is alive. Still, I made some mistakes on your right flank, and could probably have held another turn if I played it better there (possibly even two or three now that I think about it). The things I were most pleased with were blocking all your forests so you couldn't teleport to your home objective or to the one on your left flank, and the Sphinx roadblock. These two crucial moves gave me the scenario points I needed.

What I learned from this game is that when I need to sacrifice units to stall, I should do so in the most efficient way possible (I failed in this respect on your right flank). I also learned that I need to take care not to get Settra sniped before the battle even starts. He's really tanky (your Ancient and 6 Kurnoth Hunters would on average deal 2.75 wounds to him after saves), but if you roll bad save rolls, or your opponent rolls good attack rolls, he will fall. I've been looking at some variations to my list that would prevent this from happening again :D

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