Movie Quote of the Day

Haven't done a quote in some time. So kicking off the wintery weather we are getting here in the Dallas area...


"Come in and know me better man"

Good luck

Kill yourself, win combat

I wanted to bring this out of the comments section and into a regular post. Something new to me, I love it when I learn new things.

Page 37, 3rd paragraph: Count up the number of wounds you caused, it doesn't matter which side they were on...

So it is saying if you do wounds to yourself, you get to add those in for combat resolution.

This changes a lot of things with Plague Censor Bearers. I've had 4-5 of 6 die to their own fog. And always counted those wounds for my opponents. But now if I can kill 3-4 of theirs, and 3-4 of mine, plus a couple wounds from the flails, he will get no attacks back and I have done 8-10 wounds and win combat big.

This also makes the possibility of a Plague Priest carrying a Censor a much more attractive weapon for him. I place him in the middle of the Monks (away from any champion) and I can be rolling for 5 plague monks as well as all his guys and count all those wounds. You just have to beef up your monk unit a bit to handle the extra casualties.

This brings up the question though, what other ways can you do wounds to yourself to help win combats.

What about this example:


In this example, my blue units have tied up the red block. The light blue chariot wants to charge in on my next turn. The only place to go will force it to hit his unit and my unit. Do I do wounds to my own unit and get to count those for combat res? It sure sounds like it.

So what other situations can you guys think of where you are doing wounds to your own guys that will count in combat resolution?

My Solution

Ok, here are the characters and units I think would take this big bad boy out.

There are a few things that would work nice against it. Imagine the Warpscroll, but they are MR 1, so even if out of dice, he has a good chance to dispel it.
The Warp Fire thrower should eat this unit up and cause panic checks.

But to beat it in HTH, I submit the following:

Warlord with/ Warpstone Armor, shield, warpstone amulet, warpstone charm
Chieftan BSB w/Banner of the Horned Rat
30 Storm Vermin w/banner, musc. warbanner, shields

20 slaves w/musc.

6 Plague Censor bearers

Setup:
Turn 1: He is in the middle of the field, marching across. Characters are in the middle of the unit.

Turn 1b: I run my slaves in front of him and at an angle.
My clanrats move off center to the right.
The PCB's are well away from the action to the left.

Turn 2a:He charges the slaves who hold. With a Ld 10 I should make the fear test. This angles him badly opening his flank to my warlords unit. BSB is in the rear of the unit.
He slaughters lots of slaves, they autobreak. Doesn't matter if he pursues or not, he is so large I still have the flank.

Turn 2b: I charge. Since I cause fear, no test. I hit and max, so I have 5 across facing his 7 deep. On avg my general will kill just over 1 guy. My Storm Vermin kill 1/2 of one. His return attacks against my 3+ armor save do just over 1 wound.

He has static +4 (banner, warbanner, BSB, US) I have +7 (banner, warbanner, BSB, 3 ranks and flank). So I win combat.
Ld 9 re-rollable, he makes it.

Turn 3a: He jumps his general over there and challenges. I accept. His general will probably use the Great weapon. Its much better for him. So I swing first and do .33 wounds to him. He swings back and does .74 wounds to me, but also does .3 wounds to himself because of the warpstone armor.
Basically, he hits on 3+ wounds on 2+. I get a 5+ armor save (any saves rebound as a str 4 hit to him. 3+ to wound, 5+ ward) I then get a 4+ ward.
So he has done .74 to me, to .63 ot him.
Storm Vermin actually get to swing first, same Init, won combat last round. So .5 to 1, and I still win combat by at least 2. same as before.

Turn 3b: Same situation, except I'm looking for the time I fail both armor saves. Or 2 of 3. I have a 55% chance to save at least 1 if I have 2 armor saves. When this happens I use the charm to re-roll them. This will have the affect of lowering his wounds to me by .24 and raising my wounds to him by .30

I also move my PCBs up to charge him next round. Since his BSB is in the middle of the unit an cannot move, he is primed for the picking.

After round 2 of the challenge: Highborn has 1.56 wounds on him, Warlord has 1.24 wounds on him.
Yes I know you can't do fractions of wounds, but over several rounds, those odds will even out.

Turn 4a: Same as before: HB = 1.56 + .63 = 2.19 wounds, Warlord = 1.24 + .74 = 1.98 wounds.

Turn 4b: PCB's charge in, getting 3 on the BSB. So 7 EG + BSB in base.
Fog wounds = 2.68. 0.34 of those on the BSB. 1 wound to PCB's.
Attacks: 6 on BSB = 2.51 wounds + .34 = 2.85 wounds. Should be safe to kill him.
4 more on eternal guard = 1.675 + 2.34 from fog = 5.02 so 5 dead.
So EG = 12 attacks = 2.65 dead + 1 fog = 3.65 dead PCBs. For ease lets say 4.

Challenge: HB= 2.19 + .63 = 2.82 (not quiet dead), WL = 1.98 + .74 = 2.72 wounds.

He has stubborn 9, but no re-roll and he no longer causes fear.

Turn 5a: Challenge: I do .30 wounds to him and he dies.
Storm Vermin now do .67 wounds.
He still does just over 1 wound back.

Fog does 1.34 to Eternal guard. and 2 PCBs are wiped out.

So he does 3 wounds, I did 2 wounds.
But now I have +7 to his only +3. So I win by 3, he has Ld 6 break test.

Turn 5b: Warlord does 1.5 wounds + SV = .67 wounds = 2.17 wounds.
He does 1.1 wounds back. So now I win by 5 and he has a Ld 4 break test.

He will on odds fail that one and I break him.

His total points: 1320
Skaven points: Slaves 44, PCBs 102, Warlord: 178, BSB: 149, Storm Vermin: 310
Total = 783

Not quiet under half but still over 500 points less.

What do you think?

Beating the Wood Elf Horde

This has bothered me since the Alamo GT. I ran into this unbeatable block. 70 strong, Ld 10, stubborn, re-rollable.

Sure I could stay away from it and kill everything else. Shoot and magic it to below half and win by a hefty margin.

But what if I wanted to take it down. What configuration of Skaven units & magic items could i use to pull this army down to where it should be and beat it into the ground? and make them run like a bunch of little girls.

Well, after much pondering, I think I have finally come up with the proper setup. But Skaven could beat this unit in Hand to Hand.

And could do it in under half the points he spent on that 1 unit with 2 characters.

It takes 3 units and 2 characters, with the right magic items.

His unit was 68 Eternal guard in a 10 wide by 7 deep unit with 2 characters.
High born with Rhymers harp, 5+ ward for entire unit and annoyance of netlings, (Need 6+ to hit him in challenge), LA, shield, great weapon.
BSB with Ariel banner so the unit causes fear, light armor.

Remember they are stubborn leadership 10 with a re-roll and cause fear and have a 5+ ward save and will always outnumber you.


Any guesses first. I'll be in meetings until lunch, I'll post the answer then.

Good luck

Hero trivia

Ok, for you Heroes watchers out there.

In the show, where did Sylar get his name?

Good luck

Heroes recap

I was wrong, it wasn't the half way season finally, that will be next week. This weeks was interesting though.

It went back 6 months and showed how some of the people got their powers. Ecspecially Sylar.

Sylar's ability wasn't telekenesis to begin with. His ability had more to do with seeing what was wrong with things & people. How Dr. Suresh wasn't able to recognize this, I think was the problem.
When Sylar met with a guy who had the TK ability, he killed him and somehow acquired this power. So I am assuming he is killing all these people with abilities to steal theirs.

Eden and how she came to be with Claire's father is cool. I am starting to think he works for the government to study these people. But his primary concern is just protecting Claire.

And the Hiro, Charlie story line was about as sad as it could get. They fall in love and he gets teleported back to Tokyo. And he couldn't save her anyway because of the blood clot.

And Nikki was abused by her father who had killed her sister. And so she took on her sisters personality to protect herself. Wow, a lot invovled there.

As far as ranking the episodes, this one filled in a lot of back story. Ecspecially with Eden and Sylar, but the next show looks absolutely fabulous. I can't wait.

Ben

Quick Reminder

Just a quick reminder, that the HEROES season finally is on tonight.

Make sure you catch it.

Tactic of the Week

I was going to do a Battle report today, but I forgot the guys army list, so I thought it best to do it in a couple days instead.

Todays Tactic: Beware the offered flank!!

It was my opinion in the previous edition that a flank charge if engaged on the front or not engaged at all is almost always a good thing.

Well, the "almost" part jumped up and bit me in the rear at the Alamo GT.

Here was the situation:
He has a unit of 68, yea count them 68 (sixty-eight) eternal guard with 2 nobles in the unit. The unit is carrying the warbanner. The Highborn is carrying the Rhymers harp & has the Annoyance spite and the BSB is carrying the banner of Ariel.

So from the front this unit will have a combat res of +7 (banner, warbanner, bsb, 3 ranks and US) From the flank they will have +4.

So this huge unit is:
1. Always bigger than you.
2. You have to kill 18 in one phase to cause a panic test early on.
3. Has MR (1).
4. Is stubborn on Ld 10
5. Gets to re-roll that stubborn 10, due to the BSB
6. Causes fear!!
7. Everyone in the unit has a 5+ ward save.
8. It can move freely through difficult terrain.


So no matter what you hit the flank with, you will have an almost impossible time to break this unit. You will not outnumber him, but he will outnumber you. Even if you do enough kills to win combat, he will not be running.
Next round his general moves into combat with your big combat monster and challenges.

About the only thing that can take this unit on is a giant who spends a couple rounds picking up characters and eating them, or throwing them. Then yell and bawls.

I made the mistake of taking the bait of the opened flank for me.

I hit him and have a static combat res of +5. banner, 3 ranks and flank. He has US, banner, warbanner, bsb. So I'm only up by 1. With his ward save I do no wounds at all. He does 2 to me and wins by 1. I auto break from the fear and am run down.

That was about 500 victory points I handed to him. All I had to do was not charge and I get a draw or possible a win in that game.

So before you make the charge, add up the static combat res. Don't take it unless you start up by at least 3. And never do it to a stubborn with reroll unit.

Ben

Movie trivia for fun

Ok, here is what should be an easy one.

In the Original Star Wars (Episode IV) They used the Term TIE fighters.

What does the TIE stand for?

Good luck

Happy belated Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a great Turkey day and if you are not in the US, I hope you are thankful for everything you have.

I want to apologize for not posting over the holiday. I've switched to a new beta blog and it did not want to work from my home. But back to regular posting now.

Lots of good stuff later,

Ben

Tactic of the Week

I found this one a couple weeks ago and wanted to share.

The rules state when standing and shooting, that you wait to shoot until all of your troops are in range to shoot before stopping the charger and resolving the missile weapon shots.

So here is my example to take advantage of this. Here is the starting setup:


In the picture we have a unit of glade riders (red block) riding through the woods. They are in the woods enough to gain cover from shooting but out enough to see.
The blue dots are my skinks with javelins. I'm 10" out which is enough room for me to stand and shoot if I want to do that.

So my opponent declares the charge and I decide to stand and shoot. He is close to his Leadership 10 general in the back (not shown) and gains an extra -1 to hit because of being more than half in the woods. Here is the situation if we moved him up till he is barely in range:


As you can see, first, I wouldn't be able to shoot but with 1-2 models. Add on the extra -1 to hit because of woods and I'm in trouble.

But by remembering this rule, he has to travel till he is no more than 8" away from all my models in the unit, like this:


Now he is out of the woods meaning I'll be hitting a lot more, and now that he has been drawn away from his general, he will be rolling on the much lower 8 when it comes to his panic test.

Good luck

Movie trivia for fun

Ok, here should be an easy one for the day before Thanksgiving about one of my favorite movies of all time.

Trivia value: 1000 points!!

In the movie "Big Trouble in Little China" what was the name of Jack Burton's truck?

Good luck and be fast.

Beast chariots took a hit

Just realized my beastmen chariots took a hit last night as well.

The Beastigor in the back of the chariot is wielding a great weapon. Since he is "mounted" on a chariot, he now only gets +1 strength and not +2. So no more str 6 hits from him. Only strength 5. Uggghhh!!! Will the pain never end.

BR: Skaven vs Bretonians Alamo Rnd 1

After my friday night massacre and lots of beer, I stumble into Saturday morning and find myself facing an Orc and Goblin army. But with my opponent no where in sight I am moved over to face Matt McDonough and his Bretonians.

Here is a pic of his army:


Not nearly finished painting, but you can tell its going to look nice when it is finished.

The scenario is capture the road. Basically have a US 10 unit on the road at the end of the game and have no enemy models on it. I figured, lets just kill as many knights as we can and keep a unit near the road for the last turn.

His list looked like this:
Lord on Warhorse Grail vow w/Heartwood lance (re-roll failed wounds), Armor of Agilulf (4+ armor, WS10), Gautlets of the duel (cannot refuse challenge), Virtue of the Joust (re-roll misses when charging)
Damsel Lvl 1 w/warhorse, 2x dispel scroll
7 Knights of the Realm

Paladin w/BSB Warhorse, Sword of Might, Great helm (6+ armor, re-roll failed armor saves)
Damsel Lvl 1 w/warhorse, 2xdispel scrolls
7 knights of the realm w/war banner

9 Grail knights w/banner of defense (4+ ward save for blessing if str 5+)

3 pegasus knights w/full command

9 Questing knights w/Banner of Chalons (unit being charged may not stand and shoot)

9 Knights Errant w/banner of errantry

5 Mounted Yeomen with bow, spear shield, musc.

After deployment his army looked like this:


He prayed so I decided to go first.
Turn 1a: The skaven horde moves up just a few inches like it did the night before.
Magic did nothing but in shooting my jezzails drop a grail knight. No blessing for him.

Turn 1b: The knight roar up to almost the middle of the field. Similar to the Friday night game.
Magic does nothing. His squires might have killed a giant rat.

Turn 2a: Giant rats charge his squires. He forgot they moved 12". If he flees they hit the building and are destoyed. So he stays and takes it and is quickly killed and run down.
Giant rats on other side charge Pegasus knights on hill. Come up 1/2" short.
Slaves move up and angle.
Jezzails with 5 shots kill 3 THREE Grail knights. 3 hits, 3 wounds, 3 failed armor saves, 3 failed blessing saves. Ouch.
Magic kills a couple knights in generals unit.

Turn 2b: Grail knights charge slaves, who flee, he comes up 1/4" short of hitting my clanrats behind them.
Generals unit and Knights errant charge slaves in the middle angled who hold.
KoR w/BSB and Questing knights (also on hill) charge slave unit who flees. KoR are again 1/4" short of hitting my generals unit. Questing knights fail to catch the slaves and are left hanging badly.

His Pegasus knights fly behind my lines.
His knights decimate my slaves who flee from the knights through the pond. Both fail to roll very far and come up short of my clanrat unit.

Turn 3a:
Clanrats into flank of Grail knights.
Clanrats into flank of KoR with BSB
Clanrats into flank of knights errant
Slaves into flank of Questing knights
Plague Censor Bearers into Pegasus knights.

Tunnelers pop up and run to other flank of questing knights.
Giant rats turn around.
No magic as both warlocks are in combat.
I shoot into generals unit and kill 2 knights.

In combat Grail knights lose and are broken. Clanrats fail to catch. I should have moved my ratswarms behind the grail knights for the cut down. I have to pay more attention to that.
Knights Errant lose combat but hold.
KoR with BSB lose combat but hold.
Questing knights lose to slaves, fail their break test, fail again on the re-roll, flee and are cut down by the tunnel team.
Pegasus knights are slaughtered to a man by the Plague Censor Bearers. 12 attacks, 11 hits (after the hatred) and 10 wounds. Ouch!!

Turn 3b:
Generals unit charges clanrats that just broke the Grail knights. They flee and generals unit is stuck in the pond.

Grail units rally and turn around. But leave their rear completely open for my giant rats.
In combat the knights Errant lose and break even with general and BSB nearby. They are cut down.
KoR with BSB loses combat breaks and runs, I capture both standards but he gets away.

Turn 4a:
Giant rats into rear of Grail knights with no blessing and no banner. So down by 6 going into combat.
Clanrats into rear of his generals unit.
Clanrats into fleeing KoR who will flee into building and be destroyed.

Bretonian player concedes.

I think this game was very similar to the nights before. He played a bit better and the 2 redirects that fell 1/4" short on each could have made a world of difference in the game.

He was a great opponent who took the battle very well and was a real sportsman. He ended up getting the award for worst general at the Alamo. Guess he never got over this stomping.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game.
Skaven 20, Brets 4


Standing after round 1:
1 win, 0 losses, 0 draws, 20 battle points

Movie Quote of the day

Ok, back to a movie quote. This was a fun little movie.

Quote value: 200 points!!

"I create feelings in others that they themselves don't understand."

Good luck,

Ben

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World!

WOW!! What a great show last night? My wife and I were glued to the set, heck we even put off getting our son to bed on time to watch it. The painting Peter wanted, his brother destroyed. It showed Peter dead at the High School. Only a digital capture of it, showed Peter where he had to go.

Its Homecoming and Claire gets elected Homecoming Queen. Her father tries to protect her by grounding her, but it doesn't work. She sneaks out.

In the locker room she is confronting her old friend who had taken credit for saving the man in the fire. So when Sylar showed up, he grabbed the wrong girl.

He slams Claire into the wall which would have killed anyone else, but of course Claire regenerates. But by the time Sylar realized he had the wrong girl he had already cut the top of her friends head off.
So Claire runs and Sylar chases. Claire runs into Peter. Peter tries to slow him down but when he starts throwing locker doors at him, Peter runs as well. Sylar catches Peter at the top of some wall and Peter grabs him as they both go over and smash on the concrete below. The painting was true, Peter is dead.

When Claire gets to him, Sylar is gone and Peter is regenerating trying to put his smashed body back into place. Of course he picked up Claire's regeneration when he touched her. Claire realizes he has the same ability to regenerate. Sylar I'm sure used his TK ability to keep from landing as hard. Still hurt he limps away and runs into Claire's fathers' assistants. The girl controls his mind and orders him to sleep.

When the police show up Peter is getting the final parts of his body into place. They then arrest him for all the blood around. Mostly his, but he doesn't have a scratch on him.

Meanwhile in the middle of all this, Dr. Suresh realizes he must follow his fathers footsteps and unlocks the computer program that has found the people with genetic markers.

And DL and Micah are running from Jessica/Nikki. Micah convinces DL they need to go back to help her, but the show ends with her taking a shot at DL.

Then it jumps to Hiro, after he went back 6 months to save the waitress in Midland.

Next week looks as good as this weeks and 1 hour a week is still not nearly enough for this show. And what about the new painting Isaac put out. Is that Nuke man about to blow up? Did they save the cheerleader? We assume yes, but they didn't save both cheerleaders? How come Hiro going back in time didn't save the waitress? How is saving Claire going to stop the Nuke guy? Who is Sylar and why is he chopping off the tops of heads?

So many questions. So little time.

Weekend in Review

Just wanted to give a quick recap. Had a fantastic weekend. About the only thing that would have made it better was a game of Warhammer, which I didn't get in.

But some of the big highlights:

1. The Who concert on Friday night. Wow, those guys can still sing and put on an awesome show. The Pretenders, a fav group from the 70's that I loved, made a surprise appearace and did a 1 hour opening set. Christine Hynde sounds as good as she ever did and still looks fantastic. I didn't even know they were going to be there. I'd never had a chance to see them live before, so this was really, really sweet.
The who was just fantastic. Still great showmanship. Roger Daltry can still belt them out, though he cannot hit those high notes anymore. ;-) It didn't matter, it was still The Who. Peter Townsend can still play a guitar like nobodies business. A couple times I thought they went too long with the instrumentals, but overall I give the show a definite A-. Not quite as good as the Paul McCartney show I saw last year, but definetely worth going to. A full 2 hours and they sang about every hit they had as well as their complete new mini-album they put out this summer.

2. Move to Saturday where I got to spend almost 2 full hours painting. My goal is to have all 20 of the Rat Ogres finished by the end of November. I got another one finished and 2 more about 80% done. After these 2 I only have 2 left.

3. Did some family time playing some Putt-Putt and video games. I play Soul Caliber 2 and beat the game on the highest level and then whipped butt on car racing as well. Came home and watched Monster House. Fun little movie that I highly recommend.

4. On Sunday I had my Warhammer League Draft that went very well. Got a couple resources I think I'll enjoy using. The league is 8 games long over 16 weeks. You have 2 weeks to schedule and play your game. You have to pick your army, but can change the makeup every game. I'll be playing Chaos Beastmen Undivided.
For resources I have 36 made up. You start with 2 and get one for every game you win. You can bring up to 3 to any game. So while you might have 7 or 8 by the end of the year, you just have a little better selection than the guy with only 3.
We drafted in reverse order of how you finished last year, so I drafted next to last.
I picked up one resource that gives me a free re-roll in the game, even against miscast. And a Chrystal ball, which lets me know all the magic items and special abilities of 1 unit/character during the game.
Definetely not bad.

5. Then made it home in time to see the Cowboys whip up on the Colts. What a great game. The Cowboys really needed it.

6. And at the MAWL draft I got my general for my next army from Brett Amundson. It is just fabulous looking. I cannot thank him enough for painting it for me. I'll unveil it and post some pictures soon. Thanks again Brett. For those who don't know Brett's work, just check out the army featured below this post.

Anyway today I'm having to do a lot of work on the League so not sure how much I'll get to post today.

I hope everyone else's weekend went as well as mine. And have a great day.

Featured army of the Week

This army belongs to the President of the DAWGS and our Lead DAWG since the DAWGS inception. His general skills are good, but his sportsmanship is fantastic and his painting is to die for. I never see an army of his I don't just drool over. I managed to talk him into painting my general for my next army so I have at least one awesome looking model in the army.

Of course I'm talking about Brett Amundson. He took best general at the Boyou battles this year and he took Best overall at the Alamo GT just a couple weeks ago. This army also won 3rd place Players Choice. He is always ranked in the top 10 in Marcus Martins warhammer ratings and is currently 6th.

So enough build up take a look at these:
A unit of Plague Bearers:


A unit of Plague Riders:


A Nurgle Daemonic Chariot:


A unit of Nurglings:


And of course his Great Unclean One, Papa Nurgle:


Here is a pic of the entire award winning army:


And finally a close up shot of the waves on the shore. Just amazing.


I hope you enjoyed the army as much as I did. These pictures don't even come close to doing this army justice. But they are awesome all the same.

Movie trivia for fun

Ok, here is one for you. This one should be a lot easier than yesterday's.

Trivia Value: 2000 points (because its Friday)

In the movie "The Princess Bride" list the real names for all the Dread Pirate Roberts.

Good luck

Lizardmen at GTs

Lizardmen have a wide variety of choices with their armies and are still very powerful in the GT scene.

At the Lonewolf a LM army beat me and went on to go 4-0-1 and take Best General.

They can go with a primarily infantry block force, a heavy skirmishing army, heavy magic or no magic at all. Or a nice mix of all of them.

Lords: The choice at the Alamo was the Lord on Carnosaur. This is a very nasty mix as they move fast, cause terror, and once the carnosaur goes frenzy the Lord does as well.
The key is to kill the carnosaur, which dies rather easily.

Then you have several choices in the SMP. The 2nd gen always seems to be everyones favorite. Just not mine, plus you draw many peoples groans and rolling eyes if you plop down a 2nd gen. For straight out magic it is the most powerful wizard in the game. But for the points and the loss of a rare slot, I think it is a waste. I prefer the 4th gen slaan myself and I'm really suprised more people don't take them.
They are a lot cheaper, don't take up the rare slot and are still immune to miscasts.

Make him your BSB and put him into a unit of Temple guard and these guys are a tough nut to crack. Make them cause fear and you have to kill everyone to break them.

Saurus are great blocks of fighters, but very slow and now that you have to go 5 wide, expensive to boot.

Skinks, are just awesome little guys. Poison javelins or blowpipes are sure to give a lot of damage. But I also love the southlands list. Skinks with short bows are the bomb. Outstanding.

Krox are some of the best Ogre sized models in the game with Strength 7 and armor.
Saurus cav are not that bad matching Chosen Chaos knights for hitting power when they charge. But their 3+ armor save kinda sucks.

Terradons are the ultimate mage hunters.

And finally Salamanders for now are the best shooting unit in the game. 2 of them is almost sick.

Strengths: Great flexibility. Have big saurus blocks that are almost unbreakable or a few heavy hitting units with a bunch of nimble skinks to run around.
You can go heavy magic with a SMP and a couple of priests, or you can go no magic at all with several marks of Tepok. Add in the Immunity to miscasts, great mage hunters, awesome shooting, great leadership because of cold blooded and you have one of the best armies in the game.

Weaknesses: All those great units are not cheap. Its easy to get carried away with marks, salamanders, stegadons, terradons, cold one riders and Kroxigors and you forget about your base troops. Its easy to build too small an army and you get swamped. But build a good size army with a few of the heavy hitters and you have an army to deal with.

Good luck

Tomb Kings at GTs

Ben asked an interesting question. Do you still see Tomb Kings at tournaments?

I think you do and will. They are still a top notch army. There were several at the Alamo, though none of them scored in the top tiers of prizes.

Here are the drawbacks I see with them:
1. Chariot units suffer, really, really badly when they hit a str 7 character.
2. No marching.
3. No where to hide that Heirophant now. So do you put him in a unit? Easy to get to.
4. They tend to be pretty one deminsional and cookie cutter.
5. There is really only a couple paint schemes that work for them. After that you kind of stuck to make your army stand out.

Here are their advantages:
1. Very reliable
2. Magic was not hurt by the 7th ed rules and therefore got a boost.
3. A few really great magic items, like the reform standard.

I know Marcus Martin runs a very fast broken TK army that he won some GT with last year.

So yes they are still out there, but I think are pretty limited. People are learning how to deal with them on a regular bases now and know their tricks.

Good luck

Bretts vs Skaven BR wrapup

First off this was against a guy I met in Mexico who took me around Monterey and showed me a great time. This was our first game and Ricardo is a top class guy with a magnificent army.

I felt he really deployed badly. We talked for a while after the game on what he should have done differently.

1. If I was him I would have deployed more to one side. Maybe keep one knight unit on the flank with the hill for protection.

2. I would have put the archers and trebuchet on the hill.

3. Putting the Pegasus knights on the hill made them a target.

4. On the more open terrain in the middle I would have ran his other 4 lances, with 2 up front and 2 hanging back as wing men.

5. After having not done that, I might have kept a lance or his pegasus knights on my tunnel marker. Bretts cannot let people into their backfield. The chance of being cutdown is just horrible.

6. After having none of that, I might have pushed the edge more. I moved up to stay about 17-18" away and out of charge range on turn 1. He then moved up only about 5-6" to stay out of my charge range. With my skaven slaves in front, I would have definetely pushed this. I would have run the lances across the middle of the board.
Then I would have had a lot more trouble trying to go after flanks and such. It would have been too congested. Then possible overruns definetely end up hitting units, or running off the board.

7. On turn 2 when he charged, that was ok, but overkill to the max. He should have hit the flanks with both units and then restrained pursuit. He could have easily moved up his 3rd unit to act as flank guard.

8. The right flank he was kind of screwed on. Not a lot he could do with the slaves bearing down on him. He could have tried to manuever around them, but it would not have worked. He needed to push that side definetely on turn 1, and get away from the edge that locked him in.

9. The charge of the night runners by the questing knights was just horrible. He had 2 units coming in on the flank side that were ranked up. He could have ignored the night runner completely and pushed to charge the giant rats.

Things I learned:
1. The flee and flank still works as well as ever.

2. The divert and flank still works as well as ever.

3. Magic still has to be reckoned with.

4. I still prefer more units and less magic items.

5. Bretonian flanks are still the juiciest in the world.

6. Rat swarms are great for using the cutdown rule. As are tunnel teams popping up, taking out a warmachine and then running behind a unit to cut it down when it breaks.

Good luck.

Movie trivia for fun

Ok, here is a trick question for you. Think hard...


Trivia value: 25 points

In the movie "Aliens", how many marines survived the initial battle with the Aliens inside the reactors cooling tower?

You need to list either the characters or a good description of them.

Good luck.

Battle Report Skaven vs Bretonians

This was the Battle of the Alamo all over again. But from Mexico came the smaller Bretonian knights. From Texas the overwhelming number of vermin.

The Bret army looked like:
General with stuff
2 heroes with stuff
BSB with stuff
1 wizzie chick with 2 scrolls

Questing knights w/hero and chick
2 knights of the realm units
2 knights errant units
4 Chicken wing riders
1 unit fast cav with archers
10 archers
1 trebuchet

Overall it was a beautifully painted army as can be seen here:


He put his questing knights on the far left flank.
Next to them was a hill that he put his pegasus knights and trebuchet.
In the middle he put his 2 errant knights and KoR. They held his general & BSB.
then his archers. Then fast cav and on the far right flank he had his other Knights of the realm with paladin.

He prayed of course and so I went first.

Turn 1. I move everything up a bit but still well out of his charge ranges.
Magic he shut me down and the jezzails killed a knight.

Turn 1b. He moves up his army. Stays out of my charge range so is about 12" out.
His magic does nothing as his spell is oxen stand. His fast cav killed a couple gutter runners.
His trebuchet guess was short of hitting clanrats but does kill half a dozen skaven slaves.

Turn 2: Tunnel team pops up and charges trebuchet. wipes them out but stays behind the hill to keep the pegasus knights from charging.
I move up to setup several traps. 2 slave units in the middle move up and turn 45 degree angels.
My magic is successful killing 2 pegasus knights. Jezzails kill another knight from his generals unit.

Turn 2b: Starting from the left. questing knights charge the night runners who flee and get away, leaving the questing knights hanging badly.
The 2 pegasus knights charge the giant rats, who stay, but panic when the night runners fled through them. So the pegasus knights catch the fleeing giant rats and land in the middle of my units on the left flank.
In the middle the 3 knight lances hit my 2 slave units. One in the flank and the other in the flank and front.
On the far right flank the KoR charge a slave unit only 2" in front of it. It flees and the KoR must move their full 16" and run them down. Leaving their flank open to my Plague Monk unit with Plague priest.

All his shooting at my Plague censor bearers but fail to wound.
In combat the one lance in the flank of the slaves, slaughters them, they break and are run down and it overruns into the other slave unit in combat. So it now has 3 lances on it. It is obliterated down to 3-4 slaves. So the one in front pursues, and runs them down, going a full 17" to run into my generals unit.
His generals unit that was in the flank tries to restrain, fails, so it turns to pursue and immediately runs into the other lance that had just joined the combat but is unable to pursue. So we got a little log jam there.

Turn 3: Giant rats into the flank of the questing knights. Clanrats into their front.
Plague Monks and Plague priest into the flank of the knights on the far right flank.
clanrats into the flank of the KoR that hit my generals unit in the pursuit.
Clanrats into the flank of his general's unit.
Plague Censors into his fast cav who flee.

This left only 1 unit of knights Errant in the middle with the BSB not in combat.

No magic as both wizards are in combat.
Shooting: 7 globes into the pegasi knights doing 3 wounds. Jezzail gets 5 shots in and kills off the last of the chicken wings. BBQ sause was being prepared.
Ratling gun rips off 11 hits on 2 dice into the unengaged Knights killing 5 of the 9.

In combat, The questing knights lose badly and break and run.
The paladin with the knights errant challenge, so my general accepts. We swap wounds, I win by a lot, knights break and run right into my 2 rat swarms to be cut down.

I drag down a knight errant in his generals unit and he only does 1 wound back. So I win by 4 and even with the re-roll from the bsb, he breaks and runs.

My valiant competitor conceded at this point. We still had one combat to fight but the game was over.

Just too many units. His flanks were not supported and I got him turning sideways. Always bad news for the Brets and their shiney armor.

Movie Quote of the Day

Ok, here is a little known film.

Quote value: 100 points!

"I am not a gun"

Good luck

Some Heroes trivia

Ok, I'll get back to movies tomorrow, but for today...

Trivia value: 33 points

In last nights show, Hiro got the watress to order a plate of food for his friend. What did he get?

Good luck

Heroes recap

Now that was a show last night. This one was back to the way the first few were. Awesome!!

Only a few stories, but of course the biggest news, Claire's father is not Sylar. He is trying to protect Claire from him. He may not be a good guy, but I don't think he is the face of 'evil' the show has hinted him to be.

Isaac finally gets clean but when Claire's father needs his help, he goes back on the junk to help out Claire.

It introduces a new possible hero a sweet girl with a photographic memory. She makes friends with Hiro, only to be killed off by Sylar. Hiro then decides he must do something and goes back in time to help her. It shows him at a party with her the week before in a picture on the bulletin board, but he does not return as he said he would. Did he save her? It didn't appear he did. Will have to wait and see.

Matt meets with the radiation man. It turns out he was kidnapped by Claire's father and the Haitian man as well. Small marks on their neck, maybe a tracking device. Homeland security grabs him. Matt's a bit upset and I saw a bit of overacting there. But not too bad, he was finally trying to get some answers for his missing 2 days.
Matt's wife finally comes clean on the affair she was having and wanted to know if their marriage was over. Saved by the phone, Matt finds out radiation man escaped. I'm sure with a few small nukes along the way. That guy is just scary.

Finally, Dr. Suresh is putting his life in order back in India, but his father's past comes back to haunt him. Are these images a new power being introduced? Seeing the past? Who is the small child? Is it him or this mysterious sister he had? The child looked like a boy and older than 5, so I'm leaning more towards it is him at an earlier age.

What happens when the computer finally stops processing? How long has it been running crunching this program his father obviously started months earlear?

No shots of many of the heroes last night, but the highlights from next week sent chills up my spine. This could be huge. I am so pumped looking forward to next week.

What did you guys think of last nights show?

Tactic of the Week

This tactic utilizes some of the new rules that clarify when you move compulsory move troops.

Anyone fleeing from a charge is considered a compulsory move troop.

On page 20 it states if there are compulsory move troops from both sides, and even gives the example of troops fleeing a charge.

Then the player who's turn it is, gets to decide who moves their troops first.


So lets take the following simple example. In this picture, I've shown 3 units.
Unit 1 is a ranked infantry unit of mine.
Unit 2 (in blue) is a unit of fast cav trying to bait my unit with a flee and rally move.
The small red block with an S is my spawn.

So the next step is for my unit to declare a charge on his unit and I'll get a flee response from my opponent.


Now we have 2 units with compulsory moves. His fast cav fleeing my charge and my spawn. I decide to allow him to move his compulsory troops first. This is the situation after he moves.


Now on my compulsory move, I charge the fleeing fast cav again with the compulsory charge and force him to flee again. Now he runs off the table with the double charge and never allows him the chance to rally.



Next week I'm going to explore what happens if I move the spawn first and the fast cav 2nd.

Good luck

Movie trivia for fun

Ok, here is one you guys should be able to get.

In Blade Runner, Gaff would make oragami figures. In the end of the movie when Deckard and Rachael were running out, they stumbled on one of his figures.

What was it and what did it tell Deckard?

Trivia value: 53 points.

Good luck.

Battle Report: Skaven vs Cult of Slaanesh

I want to get this one out of the way first. Otherwise, I'll never do it. This was round 5 of the Alamo GT so my very last game with Skaven for some time.

I ran my standard army of Warlord bare, 2 warlocks, plague priest
4 clanrats, 4 slaves, 2 giant rats, 2 night runners, 2 swarms, 1 gutter runner, 1 tunnel team, 2 ratlings, 5 jezzails, plague monks, PCB's and some PWGs.

His army consisted of

Lvl 2 wizard as general
Annointed of Slaanesh
BSB w/Banner of Nagyrith

Unit of devoted
2 units of Dark Elf warriors with mark of slaanesh
2 RBT's with mark of slaanesh
1 unit of furies
1 unit of mountied daemonettes

This game was a real hoot to play. First the 17 year old hands me his hand written list in a notebook. There was of course nothing to keep him from having several pages of lists, but at some point it just doesn't matter. I had a hard time reading his hand writing but was able to decipher most of it.

Then we are talking about the terrain. There was a big tower in the field and he asked how we wanted to handle it. I said, well its a building, with 2 levels so as that. He said can't we make it impassable. Uhm, no.
He then claims he hadn't read the rules for buildings and wondered if they were even in the rule book. So I hand him the rule book. He finds a line that says, if the players want to, they can use these rules. And he didn't want to.
I suggest we not use the unbreakable rules for his devoted. He didn't find that funny.
Being already being 2-2, I said whatever and chose the side without the building.

I start to deploy across the board as normal and he crams all but his daemonettes in 1 corner. His RBT's are behind his units and his harpies back there as well. Only his daemonettes are not in the corner and they are strung out along the very back board edge.

I have a feeling this kid isn't coming out to play so to add a little spite on top of the building rule, I move the building in front of his deployment as the scenario allowed me to do.

Then the game went like this:
Turn 1: I move up, out of range of everything.
Turn 1b: He moves up an inch to get a sliver of a line with his RBT's and shoots and kills a few slaves and giant rats. Runs his daemonettes into the corner.

Here is a pic of him moving bottom of turn 1:

The RBT on the left is sitting on the board edge.


Turn 2 and my magic blasts some of his Dark Warriors and 3 of his daemonettes.
Turn 2b: he hides his daemonettes, shooting kills a few more slaves and giant rats.

Turn 3: Tunnel team pops up, charges RBT on board edge. 8 poison attacks, I get NO hits at all. With 2 attacks, he kills 2, wins combat, I break and am cut down by the harpies. Oh joy!!!

Turn 3b: he inches up, shoots some more guys.

Turn 4: I blast some more warriors, storm dameon runs out. I'm trying to get my jezzails and ratling guns up to shoot.

Turn 4b: same

Turn 5: same
Turn 5b: same

Turn 6: I blast his last 2 dameonettes and kill them but wound myself. I do 9 hits to the last 9 warriors. I roll 9 wounds. I scrape the dice up and look down and there is a 1. I immediately speak up and then realized, it probably flipped when I scraped them up. Damn it. So he has 1 guy left. And I have no shot at him.

Turn 6b: his devoted charges out of his unit with the harpies and into my warlocks units. Because of the situation I felt it was better to sacrifice the warlock to keep ranks. I challenge. He does 3 wounds to my warlock. His harpies then do 3 wounds. I of course fail all 3. I get 1 attack back and miss. So in my 9 attacks this game I don't get a single hit.

He wins combat by 1. I roll an 8 on Ld 9. So I stay.

We add up vp and I'm up by 280 points. I have killed his cav and half his warriors and have 2 table quarters.
He has my tunnel team, 1 slave unit that failed a Ld 8 panic test, then failed to rally on ld 8 and then rolled a 4 on Ld 3. And my warlock.

So it is a draw and I got 3 of the 4 objectives.
Skaven: 11, Cult of Slaanesh: 9

This is the only bad game mark I have ever given. This game was akin to eating glass. It was no fun at all. I might as well play 40K. I got 9 attacks the entire game!!!
And didn't get to shoot even 1 time. All I did was magic and all he did was shoot his RBT's.

So at least that one is out of the way. The other 5 battles I had were a lot of fun.

Movie trivia for fun

Going out for lunch today, so I'm going to post this a bit early.

Trivia value: 100 points

In this movie the character was named by using a bedpan. What was that characters name?

Good luck!

Movie Quote of the Day

Ok, here is another fun little movie that I enjoyed. Not quite as bad as Saturday the 14th. ;-)

Quote value: 100 pts.

"I have no intentions of facing this sober"

Good luck. Remember give it at least an hour before doing computer searches. So 12:50 CST.

Swarms in 7th ed

One big thing I noticed was the lack of swarms in all the armies I saw. Now the armies I faced don't have swarms as a choice except for the VC player and he didn't have any bat swarms. But just walking around looking at armies, I don't remember seeing hardly any at all.

Yes the crumbling rule has weakened them and they are not as good a buy as they once were.

However, that doesn't mean they do not have their uses. I still used 2 rat swarms and they were very useful. I only messed up with them 1 time. The crumbling had a big affect the time I messed up. But the other 5 games this weekend, they worked great.

You just have to know how to use them and use them to their greatest abilities.

Friday night game:
I held them back not wanting them to get overrun by the Brett lances. I kept them in front of the ratling gun, to keep the pegasi knights from charging the ratling.
Then when it was time to hit the flanks, I ran them behind a unit I felt would flee. It did and the ratswarms cut them down. Go US 6!!!

Game 1, I kept them in front of the jezzails to protect them from any wayward charge from his fast cav or pegasi. I should have moved them behind the grail knights who did break, but forgot to. If I do that, the grail knights never rally, but it didn't really matter.

Game 2: I screwed up and left them far enough in front of his 2nd eternal guard unit. He hits them barely and I have to rank up to him without him wheeling, which is what I wanted. He does 5 wounds and they crumble.

Game 3: I used them to screen the plague monks from charging in through some goblin fanatics. They also would have worked great for removing the fanatics, if a bit pricey for that. After his whole flank crumbled, I just moved them to capture a table quarter.

Game 4: vs undead. I moved them in front of the jezzails to prevent a charge from his fell bats. He told me later that was a smart move. But I think the jezzails might have been able to handle them. They then moved to get a rear charge on the fell bats who were tied up in combat with my globadiers. As it turned out the globadiers wiped them out. So the swarms charged a banshee. Oh so sweet as the banshee crumbled in 2 rounds of combat.
Finally, my giant rats were slowly losing ranks to his ghouls and were about to lose combat. By charging the swarms into the flank of the ghouls, when I lost combat, the giant rats auto fled but were able to get away and rally because the swarms held the ghouls in place. Eventually they die and crumble but it saved the giant rat unit.

Game 5, like 90% of my army, they did nothing.

Swarms are still very useful and reliable. You just have to pick your targets a lot more carefully. Don't go hit a full ranked unit or you will crumble really quickly, or hit a character. But go ahead and hit a cavalry unit in the flank. Even if his one guy does a wound you lose by 2 (1 wound, banner, US to flank) so you lose 2 more wounds. You can tie him up for several combat rounds while your infantry moves up to charge him.

Since swarms are small they make great protection for your wizards in the front of units to stop those hit and run or suicide attacks just for taking them out.
I also love them in front of my Jezzails to stop those long range flyers or fast cav who like to charge them. I didn't lose my jezzails in any game this last weekend. So only having 5 did a great job and were able to shoot every round of every game except game 5 when they never had anyone in range.

Ben

New Pod Cast

Hey guys, I wanted to let you in on a Hobbyist who has started doing a Podcast and putting it up on YouTube. Name of it is called The Hobby. Mainly going to be talking about Warhemmer and Flames of War.

So check it out here.

Movie Quote of the Day

If anyone can get this one without having to search for it, I'd be damn surprised.

So good luck. Your allowed to search on Google in 1 hour. So 1:30 CST. Before that give people a shot at it.

You'll have to really dig in your bag of tricks for this one.

Quote value: 1 google points.

"If you weren't immortal, you'd kill yourself."

Good luck!!

Ratling guns in 7th ed.

My findings on the ratling gun are that they are just as impressive and powerful as they ever were. There is so little shooting out there right now, that I have had very little need to try and hide them.

Magic missiles (which are everywhere) are still a concern, but with the toning down of magic, even those are not that big of a worry.

Running 2 ratling guns in 7 battles now in 7th ed, I have not lost a single Ratling gun, that I would not have lost in 6th ed. No one has been able to pick them out with shooting or MM's.

I do hold them back a bit more cautiously and then when I uncover them to attack, they are still wickedly good. I even get a bit too aggressive with them, knowing anytime a lucky MM will lose it for me. So when they get to shoot, I want them to do well.

This has paid off several times. But a couple of times it did cost me.

Overall, still very much worth the 60 points and then some. And now others can't complain about them so much. Hey if you don't like them, bring some archers and shoot 'em.

Good luck

7th edition changes report

These are a list of things I noticed different in the armies I faced. They seem to be the new breed of army.

1. Very large units. If it wasn't the 70 man phalanx of Eternal guard it was 20 chaos hounds. And past that nearly every army I ran into my 25 man clanrat units were outnumbered. Only against Bretonians was it different. I ran into a 30+ man unit in every army except 1 at the GT.

2. Tons of static combat res. Be prepared to face an army with +7 or +8!! Combat res walking into comabt. If you can't face this, you are dead. Even in the flanks they will have +4 or +5 and probably do wounds better than you.

3. Things that kill things. Actual killy troops not just static combat res is what is needed. Run into a unit with +8 on combat res and add in 4-5 more from kills and you have a tough unit to beat.

4. Tooled up heroes. I'm seeing more and more heroes tooled up to really put a smackdown on their opponents. Don't be surprised by the Orc with 7 str 7 attacks. Oh yea!!

5. Magic, while I saw fewer lords. I expect medium magic to lead the way. I ran into very little only the Lvl 3 vamp with Lvl 2 Necro and book, was the heaviest magic army I ran into. So I did see a slight decrease in magic power. But when the vamp miscast on turn 6, he was definetely sweating it out. That could have made it a draw.

6. Still very minimal shooting. I did not lose a Ratling gun that I would not have lost in 6th edition. What I'm finding is I don't get to shoot as often, as I hang them back a bit more for protection, and am then more aggresive with them when they do get a shot.

7. Back to magic it is very worthwhile to keep a very high power spell in your spell list even if you never plan to cast it. The 5-6 misfire result seems to be the most common of the bunch. That allows you to cast a spell for free at its base casting cost. For VC its awesome with an 11+ casting of raise, or the 9+ dance spell. Can you say free comet, etc.. So when you roll that 2 & 6, don't automatically change the 6 to a one because you don't think you will ever get the 6 spell off.

8. Speed kills. Speed is super important with the new rules. Subtle change but speed overcomes a lot of mistakes in this edition. Can't quite put my finger on it.

9. Protect your battle line. Getting units behind your opponents battle line is uber-great. Having a small 40 point unit in the backfield cutting down broken opponents is so-so sweet.

10. Building rules rock. I love them. And since it counts as impassable for cavalry models, can you say auto-destroy.

Its all good. I think 7th edition is going to rock once we get some of the finer details ironed out.

Good luck

Movie trivia for fun

Ok, who was the character and movie. This one should be easy.

Value: 1 point.

"Be careful. There're very poisonous."

Good luck

Another great Heroes last night

It was glad to see the cop back in this one, but was disapointed they didn't show what happened at the end of the store incident 2 shows back. He uses his power to help out and find a guy who creates radiation. (Hmmm, is this guy the nuclear explosion in NY) He finds out his wife was having an affair with his partner though. So could be the end of his marriage.

Claire's brother finds out about her power and is totally freaked out. Eventually calms down and returns the tape of her trying to kill herself.

DL is on the run and uses his phasing power to help a woman out of a burning car. Still not fast enough. Luckily Hiro is there and stops time to allow him to save them both. Everytime Hiro uses his power I'm always on pins and needles telling him to just hurry up and save people and stop admiring how the tire is in mid air and not moving.

Nikki lives and names her alter ego. At first she can't get her alter ego to come out to go after Micah but eventually it does. So no change to Nikki. She's loading a gun when Micah calls her and tells her where they are.
Micah knows its not his mom, but this alter ego. Wow!!
But even better Micah shows his power as he gets an Out of Order pay phone to work!!

Electronic manipulation is sweet. I love it. No wonder he could fix a logic board on a Circuit board.

Not much exciting from Nathan and Peter, other than them reconciling. Peter wants Nathan to get the missing painting of Isaacs but is unsuccessful. Isaac doesn't show at all in the show. Neither does Dr. Suresh.

The previews looked very cool as a hint that may prove my theory that Claire's father isn't the bad guy. Lots of twists and turns are coming. Its going to be great.

Ben

Alamo GT report

What a great weekend. We drove down leaving mid morning Friday and arrived in San Antonio with no problems. Timed it so we got there right after they setup the game hall. Its a bit crowded but is made up for with the bar just 3 feet from the tables. And $1.25 beers is nothing to laugh about. So I endulged often.

After making the rounds and was honored appropriately I faced off against Ricardo and his fabulous looking Bretonians. We had set this up as a Texas vs Mexico replay of the real Alamo battle. Except this time the rolls were reversed as his Brets were outnumbered somewhere around 100 to 1 to my Skaven. I shined a laser into his eyes early on and blinded him. He had no choice but to fall into trap after trap. He crushed several slave units, but when the clanrats hit his flanks it was all over except Ricardo crying by the end of turn 3. I thought about buying him a beer but said to hell with it and bought one for myself instead.

I then met up with Roy, Jim, John and the Leadership 2 guys to see Jay spill more beer than he drank and Mike and Ed make continual fun of his mother. This seemed like good sport so I watched and drank beer all night.

The next morning I'm fighting Matt McDounough and his Bretts. He obviosly didn't know who I was and paid no homage to me. Or pay me to take the dive. So while still asleep I move exactly as the night before with the same results. My favorite was the slaves into the flank of the questing kinigits while a tunnel team pops up and runs to their other flank. The slaves drag down a kinigit and they break and are immediately cut down. Some 200-300 points taken down by a 44 point slave unit.
Matt begins to cry and while I want to continue pummeling him after turn 3, there is nothing left on the table to beat on.
Victory for the Mighty Good Skaven 20-4.
Matt did go on to pull worst general of the tournament or some such nonsense. I guess he never got over that initial pummeling.

Round 2 I am facing Aaron Chapman. I beat Aaron's Roman Legion Empire army in a pick up game at the Lone wolf, so Aaron was looking for revenge. I laughed at his army and decided to play blindfolded. After slipping me $20 under the table I made an insane charge into his block of 70 (yea I said that right 70!!!) Eternal guard and they mean eternal. Never die, never flee, never lose, cause fear, 2+ ward save and get to shoot flame templates out of every model in close combat. It wasn't pretty and I handed him a 500 vp lead. I fought back and thought we had the draw. Then we remembered one more banner and he took the 350 point victory.
This was all part of the stratagy to throw 2-3 games and then come back to win later.
I of course gave Aaron dogballs and spit on his generals model.

The mighty Skaven take the loss 4-20.
Aaron goes on to win 2nd best overall. Now I regret throwing the game.

Round 3, I'm up against Clay Aikens or some such guy. He throws down a bunch of Orcs and Goblins. Fanatics, chariots, giants, spiders oh my. Its like an oven in the back of the hall where I'm at. I begin to sweat like Nurgle and gases from the BBQ lunch earlier begin to surround the battlefield. My rats run off everything goblinesque and while dozing Clay announces his giant just ate my general. So I wake up out of my pool of drool on the table in turn 6 and crush the rest of his army.
Another mighty victory for the Skaven 20-4.

A night of feasting and drinking and Warmachine leads to going back to the Velvetta Inn where we were living Velveeta Loco and passing out. Oh yea that was just while waiting for a page to load on the internet with their high speed connection.

Round 4, I'm asleep when my opponent finally shows up 30 mins late to our game. I push Dwaynes army on the floor and laugh while he picks up all 100 ghouls and tries to put them back in his movement trays. He tries to bait my plague monks but they don't fall for it. Again I doze off as now that I'm reaching my ancient years, watching young kids stumble around on the battlefield bores me now. 3 years ago I would have laughed and mocked him, but now... Anyway sometime they call time and Dwayne told me he marked me the winner and I let him live. Later the Bailey twins asked how I lost to such and incompetant fool and realized I'd been had.
Last known whereabouts Dwayne was driving to Tiawana to be in a donkey show bragging that at least he beat me once.
Crushing loss for the Skaven 4-20.

Round 5. The Baileys informed me that there was no way they could award me the best overall after 2 losses. I had to force them to the ground at gun point until they begged for forgiveness and promise to see what they could do. I was matched against Steve Chapman and his Cult of Slaanesh. The young kid was obviously in awe of me and hid his unbreakable army in a back corner and refused to come out.
I easily had the game won until my tunnel team pops up perfectly, charges a bolt thrower and with 8 poison attacks gets no hits at all. Later I discover the dice have all 1's on them, but its too late to do anything about it, the score sheet with the draw was already turned in.

Winning Draw for the skaven, 11-9.

At the awards ceremony The Bailey's are nervous as hell as they know the plastic explosives are set all around the scorers stand. And spend an extra hour trying to figure out how to rightly give me the Best Overall. So they call a time out and offer me a peace offering of a Metal Giant box set and allow another DAWG to win, if I won't blow them up. I generously agree and leave with a ton of free swag and some relieved tournament organizers.

Great games and a great tournament. Not my best personal showing, but had some good times. And 13 ratling guns is always fluffy.

Ben

Quick look at the TL group

Thought I might take a look at the people I said were a threat to do well.

Aaron Chapman: He changed his army taking a very hard wood elf list and got 2nd overall with a 4-1 record

Brett Amundson: Took Best overall with a 4-1 record. and took 3rd players choice.

Brian ching, changed armies to Tomb kings, not sure his final record.

David Long, changed armies to O&G and went 3-2.

Jay White, took an awesome Ogre Kingdome army instead of the bretts and went 2-3 and took one of the best painted awards and Players choice.

The Grejadas. I didn't talk with Jeff and Mike that much except to say hi. No awards, not sure how they finished up.

Luke: He was experimenting with the new O&G book.

Jordan Braun: New army but went 4-0-1 and took best general

Rick Thompson: I think he went 3-1-1.

Roy the Reiksmarshall: While the Khorne minotaurs are tough to handle he obviously kept the games fun for him and his opponent. Best Sportsman.

Todd Thacker with High Elves. Not sure the record but 3rd best overall.

Trevor: Trevor is struggling with the beast herds in the new 7th edition rules went 2 wins and 3 draws. So undefeated, but no awards. (I think that records correct.)

So of my small list of 13 players out of the 62 players there. I got the following:
1st - 3rd best overall
Best General
Best Sportsman
3rd best painted
And 2 of the Players choice winners.

So out of the 15 awards, 8 of those went to the players on my list.

Ben

Daily Movie Trivia for fun

Ok, now that I'm back from all that Warhammer stuff. Back to movie trivia.

Here was a fun little movie that was definetely a on the 'B' side of the burner.

Quote value: 500 points. Whoohoo!!

"I'm sure Typhoid Mary was a very nice person too when you saw her socially"

Good luck.

Alamo GT outcome

What a great weekend. Had a great time overall. Knocked down many beers, spent many hours talking to old friends and making new ones. Played 4 fantastic games of Warhammer and 1 sub-par game. But all in all, it was super.

The only let down was myself as I was way below par and came through with only a 2-2-1 record. Very below average and in fact the worst showing I think I've ever had at a GT. Oh well, at some point I'll probably do worse again. I guess you can't go 4-1 in every tournament.

I still had a great time and I'll do a full tournament report, but I want to add a few pics in with it, so I'll start that tomorrow.
I have lots of comments about the 7th edition rule changes. Some good some bad. Mostly good though. There is still lots of ambiguity in the rules, but it made for some very fun games.

7th has definetely changed the way you build armies now. While I don't think my losses were caused by the 7th edition rule changes. It changed the way people built their armies, and this led to my downfall.

In my draw, this was my one game I didn't really enjoy, he wouldn't come out to play. He just stayed back in his corner. One loss was just my sheer stupidity. And the other loss I'm not sure what I could have done a whole lot different than what I did. My army just didn't match up well to his.

So I really felt like I should have gone 3-1-1. The loss from stupidity was by 350 points, that should have been a draw. And the draw really should have been a win, but really, really bad luck on the dice pulled it to only a 250 point winning draw for me.

But lots of good highlights, some fantastic looking armies. Great friends, good beer and a ton of free loot game with the weekend.

Lots more to come soon.

Top attendees at the Alamo

Just thought I might point out who I think will do really well at the Alamo GT this weekend. Of course this might all change with the new 7th ed rules throwing a serious monkey wrench into things.

Threat Level: TL: 1-5. 1 not very, 3 should watch, 5 severe.

In no particular order:
Aaron Chapman: Empire: Has an excellent painted but soft army. Depends on his matchups but his great showing at the Lonewolf needs to point him out.
TL: 1

Brett Amundson: His painting alone always makes him a target. Depending on his army he also can do well.
TL: 2

Brian Ching: Just pulled his first overall at the Lonewolf. Does he change army? If he does, his TL goes down. But if he brings the purple bitches again...
TL: 5

David Long: Having won best general at the Lonewolf, David changed his army. Running the new Orc & Goblins can still be a threat.
TL: 3

Jay White: I don't know much about Jay, but I've been told he is a good general. And playing Bretonians, this could be an issue.
TL: 3

the Grajeda's: Neither listed an army they are playing, but this father son team gets hot sometimes and are always a threat.
TL: 2

Luke Schnell: Don't let that goofy look fool you. Luke is a cunning bastard that can give many players a good run for their money.
TL: 2

Jordan Braun: The Wisconsin of Warhammer. Doesn't matter his army these days, Jordan is a threat to any GT he walks into.
TL: 4

Rick Thompson: With his blinding Empire, Rick has slowly moved his way up the charts. A 3rd best overall at the Lonewolf, and I think Rick will only get better with the new 7th ed. rules. I consider Rick a serious threat here.
TL: 3

Roy Eggggeeennnnsperrrggerr: Khorne minotaurs is the rumor. This army just looks nasty. And Roy always does well since he dropped those lame ass empire army.
TL: 4

Todd Thacker: Which army? Oh his High Elves. Enough said.
TL: 5

Trevor Heilman: Trevor and Chaos Beasts are synonymous. I expect Trevor to do really well, unless my coughing keeps him up all Saturday night.
TL: 4

Well, there are what I consider the toughest challenges to everyone overall. Of course there are always surprise finishers, but with the Johnson boys out this time around and Tom the Ogre daddy not back to defend his title and Mr. Burr not here. It looks like a fairly light field where anyone can make a run for it.

Daily Movie Trivia for fun

Ok, this one should be easy. This movie will always rank in my top 20 and probably top 10. Its just greatness in all its aspects.

So many quotes its hard to pick just one.

Quote value: 1000 points!! (whoohooo)

"His head smashed in and heart cut out"

Good luck

Alamo GT this weekend

The Alamo is only 2 days away now. I'm starting to get pumped. For those of you who don't do the Indy GT circuit I think you are missing out on a huge asset to our hobby.

Anyway, moving on to my predictions for the weekend.

1. I'm not feeling well this week and I'm afraid its going to carry over for the weekend. Add in the lack of 7th ed games under my belt and I'll be happy if I come away with a 3-1-1 record. Anything more than that would be a real treat.

2. So battle points with 3 wins, 1 draw and 1 loss = 60. Add in my goal of 3 objectives and I am shooting for 72/100. Not that great. But I'd be happy with that.

3. Sportsmanship. Looking to really try and improve my sportsmanship for this GT. Looking to go no bad games and 1 favorite game for a score of 65/80.

4. Painting. Not much I can do about that. I'm bringing the same army with the same paint job. So in the same judge scoring system, I'm hoping to get a 55. I got a 60 at the Lone wolf, so I'd love to get that, just not sure I will.

5. Finally Santa Anna points. I think I can probably get all 10 here. But will probably miss 1. So 9 of 10.

For an overall goal of 201 / 270. I got a 207 at the Lone wolf and walked away empty handed when it came awards time. So I'm not really expecting any awards this time either. Just looking to go down and have a great weekend. Maybe slip into the top 10.

Hope to see everyone there. Here's hoping I do better than I feel right now!! ;)

Ben

Daily Movie Trivia for fun

Ok, after 2 months of contests, I think more people just enjoy playing more than worried about winning a prize. So I'll go back to that.

If you search hard you can find a lot of these on Google, but now with no "prize" on the line, try to get the movie without the internet searching.

Have fun:

Quote value: 2 points (like Who's line is it anyway, the points just don't matter. ) ;)

"You figured he is the type to bless his golf club"

Good luck.