Tournament Report - Mixed Death

[Bradifer]

Hey, went to a tournament recently and wanted to let people know how it went.

Not sure if we'll be seeing many of these tournament reports with people switching over to 40K and waiting on General's Handbook 2 to arrive.

This was a fairly friendly tournament (Matched Play) @ 1300 points. Scenarios and bonus objectives were pre-determined but not known by the players.

Three round tournament. 22 players. Meta at this store is not really cutthroat and there is really only like ~$30 store credit for the winner.

My list: 1280/1300

Vampire Lord On Zombie Dragon (440)
- General
- Deathlance & Shield & Chalice
- Trait: Ruler of the Night
- Artefact: Cursed Book
2 x Morghast Archai (240)
10 x Skeleton Warriors (80)
- Ancient Blade & Shield
10 x Zombies (60)
5 x Dire Wolves (60)
Mourngul (400)
 

Round 1: Three Places of Power. 

Well I don't actually own any other cheap heroes at the moment, so I only have the one in this list. (My other heroes are the Mortarchs on Dread Abyssal).

This is also my least favorite scenario, as it invalidates so many units, only heroes matter, or units that can kill heroes ASAP. (I've won multiple games before by killing all my opponent's heroes on turn 1.)

Opponent is Tzeentch mortals, pretty much all chaos-chosen looking knights. 2 Chaos Wizards and some kind of Chaos Knight on steed as general. 2 x 10 Blue Horror.

The general had a few Tzeentch trait/items/spells that made him ridiculous to kill. He had to roll two successful saves for every save, but also got "reroll all saves" which he could use on each separate die. He had a battalion so he basically just matched be deploying unit by unit and then used the rest of the units as 1 drop in the batallion when i had two units left, so he could go first.

Tzeentch deployment:

Left side : Mounted Knights, Wizard on foot.

Middle: 2 x 10 Chaos warriors (2 wounds, battleline), General on steed)

Right side: 5 x Chaos Chosen (3 wounds, elite, hit hard), Wizard on steed.

Death Deployment:

Left side: Mourngul & 10 x Skeletons are towards

Middle: 5 x Dire Wolves, VLOZD

Right: 2 x Morghast Arhcai, 10 Zombies

Tzeentch Turn 1: Wizards both fail their shield-type spells. Everything moves up, general takes middle objective. Wizard on steed take right obj, standing right behind 5 chosen. Wizard on foot (left side) actually just walks into the center behind all the troops. (2 points)

Death Turn 1: Mystic Shield on Morghast Archai. VLoZD charges into his general on steed, ties in both groups of warriors. Mourngul flies over wall, makes 8" charge into both warriors and wizard on foot. I measure to keep his general within 6" as well. Morghast fail 5" charge. (I wrap Dire Wolves around the VLoZD and touch bases on his warriors so only like 3 warriors can hit the VLoZD.

VLoZD does 2 damage to General based on all his re-rolls and such. Mourngul kills his foot wizard. His guys are pretty much all -2 so they do maybe 1 damage to VLoZD. His general 5/7 health left.

Turn 2: Death wins the roll. I pretty much need to kill both his heroes this turn if I want a chance to win.

Arcane Bolt his general for 2 damage. (3/7 left). Morghast move up for easy charge. Zombies and skeletons run slowly just to try and block any late charges. Morghast charge behind wizard and kill it. Mourngul stays in place, eating guys but mostly just keeping VLoZD alive. Opponent has too many models, I can't retreat and re-charge when he has another 25 models not in combat yet, so VLoZD is on his own to kill general. VLoZD does another 2 damage ( His General 1/7 left). He uses destiny dice to pass the rend-2 rolls.

Tzeentch Turn 2: Pretty much melee's back. Knight charge around the dragon and get 5 based on his rear. His hero piles in during hero phase. Dragon takes some damage and he isn't regenerating cuz he isn't killing models. Still have chalice though. Dragon does 0 damage during his turn. His general scores 2 points (4 to 0).

Tzeentch wins turn 3: His hero dies during combat, no more points. Dragon still alive, nothing else really matters).

Death turn 3: Drink chalice, heal 5. Time is called. Major loss 0 - 4. (I would have won this game If we had more time, but I was vs. the TO and people were asking him questions, he didn't play super fast, Tzeentch had so many re-rolls, like ~53 models to move, his friend kept talking to him about 40K etc... Also he messed up his list and had to fix that. It's a friendly spirited tournament so not like there is malicious stalling, but still it felt like I got unlucky having to play 3 places of power in a 3 round tourney, then lost die roll to deploy first, failed plenty of rerollable hits and 3+ wounds, w/ Dragon etc...The maw attack is so tilting when it fails or rolls a 1 on D6 damage. Then losing to time when I have a clear and direct path to victory and a non-horde army. Oh well, was still fun.

Oh and I got 3/4 bonus objectives for additional points

Round 1: TL;DR Major loss.

Round 2: Take & Hold  

Well this the other scenario I hate. You pretty much turn your brain off and jam your stuff and see who wins. Also really favors shooting/magic armies that can afford to play defensively. Feels like there is very little opportunity to outplay your opponent.

Opponent is a friend with a new list: Kharadron Overlords. 0 ships, all infantry. 2 hero's that buff the shooting output. ~10 Thunderers, ~30 Arkonaut battleline, ~5 Baloon Boys. Opponent wins a tournament specific thing that lets him move a piece of terrain, and deploy first. He moves the LOS blocking terrain from the middle of the table. We both have 6 drops but now he gets to deploy first and thus deteremine who goes first. He plops his guys in a big pile on the objective.

I deploy everything pushed up, except Morghasts are out of LOS on far right table. Mourngul and VLoZD are out of LOS on far left table.

Death turn 1: He tells me to go first. I run Mourngul & VLoZD up still out of LOS. Morghast and rest of army is in the open, but still like ~15 inches away. Mystic shield on VLoZD.

KO Turn 1: He batallion moves all his dwarves with a run n shoot ability, rolls 5 on D6, to 'run' 5 inches towards VLoZD. Then moves normally 5 inches towards VLoZD. He has full LoS on it now. His Chemists buff the shooting guys, and he uses a battalion to re-rollwounds or something like that. 9 Skyhooks fire at VLoZD, 18 shots. He ends up with 9 wounds, rend -2. I've got a 2+sv, rended to 4+, I fail 8/9 saves, D3 damage each. I take ~17 damage. ROTN saves about 5 of that.

His Thunderers w/ Mortars fire into Morghast dealing 11/12 damage. He shoots more pistols, taking VLoZD to 1 health, killing some wolves. Baloon boys charge VLoZD and kill it.

Turn 2: KO wins the roll off. I concede.

Terrible objective, he is heavily favored before game begins. I had a chance to win a minor if I stack my negative to hits on his dwarves, but him running and still shooting w/ "slow" dwarves to annihilate my general on turn 1, after he removed the other piece of LoS terrain. This was a joke of a game and a clear indication of the power of shooting, and the problems with take and hold. Also Death showing its age with no ridiculous battalions loaded with rules and reducing your drop count for deployment.

On my end, I feel that maybe I could have deployed further back or something and just prayed for long 14" move & 10" charges with Mourngul & VLoZD. Otherwise I'm really not sure what you do against a gunline when the objective cannot be outsmarted, the LoS terrain gets moved, and you must go first.

I think I might have had the highest score for the 0-1 people, and he barely won his first game so maybe he had the lowest of the 1-0 people.

Round 2 TL;DR: Major Loss

Round 3 Blood & Glory.: I'm now at the bottom table in my first AoS tournament, with my Mourngul list, lol. This game isn't interesting. He doesn't roll well and the lists are on different levels. I'm playing against another 0-2 guy, he has mixed Wanderer Elves with a treelord, and 2 Giant Eagles.

I let him go first, he over extends the eagles (which are not intimidating despite their size). Skeletons kill one eagle. Mourngul kills the other. VLoZD eats some elves on horses. 

I get turn 2 roll. Mourngul starts eating Glade Guard, VLoZD kill his 5 health general wizard. Morghast kill the elves on horses. Turn 2 he doesn't do much.

Either turn 3 or 4, I eat through most of his models, and run the dire wolves near Mourngul for model count on objective. The other corner objective I eat the eternal guard and my skeletons auto charge in to take objective for a major victory.

Round 3 TL;DR Major victory. 3/4 bonus points.

Finish TL;DR: 1-2 Overall score. Not sure of placement.

Overall I pretty much never look at every dice roll and think "lucky vs. average vs. unlucky" I just play and move on. The battleplans and army I was matched up against, seemed unfavorable ((KO shooting when I was 0-1)

Tournament was a good experience, glad to have played and seen all the people there. Although the battleplan/scenarios were like my two least favorite compared to the others which can be neck & neck the whole time (Border War, Gift) or require a diverse army with a well fought battle (Escalation, Blood & Glory).

List wise, I would certainly want 40 skelly or zombie & Necromancer, I just don't own them, and I'm certainly not buying more stupid looking GW zombies, and I'll wait on the new Death release before I buy skeletons. 40K came out the same day so I'll probably be playing my Tyranids while waiting on a Death release or GHB 2.0 to make shooting more interactive.

 

[lastdarkness]

Surprised you didnt run the Mourngul as general with Red Fury and Cursed Book.

[Solaris]

On 6/19/2017 at 6:54 PM, Bradifer said:

He had a battalion so he basically just matched be deploying unit by unit and then used the rest of the units as 1 drop in the batallion when i had two units left, so he could go first.

If I read you right here, what he did was not legal. He has to deploy either the entire battalion at a time, or every unit separately. It sounds like he deployed them separately to begin with, and then the last ones together. That's not allowed.

[swarmofseals]

On 6/20/2017 at 9:47 AM, lastdarkness said:

Surprised you didnt run the Mourngul as general with Red Fury and Cursed Book.

Can't give Mourngul a Cursed Book. Red Fury is fine, but only heroes can have artefacts.

[lastdarkness]

2 hours ago, swarmofseals said:

Can't give Mourngul a Cursed Book. Red Fury is fine, but only heroes can have artefacts.

Indeed, meant it on a nearby hero. 

The negative 2/3 to hit is amazing.

[Bradifer]

On 6/22/2017 at 1:05 AM, lastdarkness said:

Indeed, meant it on a nearby hero. 

The negative 2/3 to hit is amazing.

The general did have Cursed Book. And I did stack auras in my first game.

Quite perfectly actually, I think I tied up about 26 models (about 75% of his army) in a -2/3 hit bubble.

The other games, well you read through. I would have stacked up in game 2 if VLoZD didn't get killed. Running two ~400 point behemoths in ~1300 pt list had challenges however, you have to plan everything quite perfectly and it's all close combat, so retreating is like taking 1/3 of your army out of the fight for a turn.

[lastdarkness]

On 6/23/2017 at 6:05 PM, Bradifer said:

The general did have Cursed Book. And I did stack auras in my first game.

Quite perfectly actually, I think I tied up about 26 models (about 75% of his army) in a -2/3 hit bubble.

The other games, well you read through. I would have stacked up in game 2 if VLoZD didn't get killed. Running two ~400 point behemoths in ~1300 pt list had challenges however, you have to plan everything quite perfectly and it's all close combat, so retreating is like taking 1/3 of your army out of the fight for a turn.

I tend to find people focus Behemoths too much so ive been using them as a distraction lately, Been playing Chaos with a Vortex Beast and people focus on that while they dont notice my Sayl about to drop a traitors mist bomb.

I wish we had better bomb ones other then terrorgheist, Id love a Warpfire Dragon equivilent in Death just for the laughs.