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.
posted by Ben at 9:11 AM
4 Comments:
A question to a post further down the page.
Would you notice if I posted half way down the page?
Anyways, the guy with the 70 eternal guards unit, do you know how well he fared in the tournament?
-Overhamsteren
I usually keep track of comments 5-6 posts down. But its probably best if you post near the top. This is cool.
It was actually 68, with a Highborn and Noble BSB in the unit.
He went 4-1 and took 2nd best overall.
It is a 1 trick pony that won 4 times. If I played it again, I could win with my eyes closed. The one guy who won against it, is a friend of mine, and I told him how to beat the army.
He was all into, I know how to take it down, I can do it. But by the time he got in the game he realized what might go wrong and stuck with my plan.
Really the key to beating an army like this is run away from the big unit. March block it. don't allow any charges. lead it away from his other 4 units and crush those. You still win by 600-700 points.
Just read the report, and I must say your judgment of the kid seems a bit harsh.
He's obviously a pretty unskilled player, his army is very bad for a cult of slaanesh army. Almost all players have some early years were they either play a shooting army castled up in a corner on the back line or a close combat army that they move mindlessly forwards.
Of course if you're lucky you have some experienced players to get you into the game, teach you that playing fair is the most important thing, that a shooting army should move forward to gain ground and have a more fun and more effective defensive play, etc.
But this guy probably plays against the same few people all the time, and I'm sure they doesn't find castling a bad tactic. And they've probably agreed that playing buildings as impassable is the most sensible thing. And they probably have fun.
I've watched some kids at a club playing each other, they had dwarfs vs vampires, each had 2 big blocks of infantry but the chose to stay away from each other all game to capitalize on their 10 thunderers+cannon and magic missiles respectively. I couldn't imagine anything more boring but they enjoyed themselves.
In your game it also sounded like you were thoroughly outdeployed, why would you deploy as normal when he starts to deploy in the corner? If you had just deployed across from him you should have been able to run up and beat him in combat which should be much more fun that what actually happened.
Oh well enough rambling for now.
Best regards, Overhamsteren
I understand your point. But remember the question is. Did I have a fun game? Answer was no.
I don't feel I got outdeployed. I deployed to where I knew he couldn't use his magic to kill my expensive small units and I would easily win table quarters.
If I had tried to cram 500 points of troops down where his 2000 points of troops were waiting, I would have gotten slaughtered. Not really an option IMO.
I know a lot of people have different playing styles. And if thats how he wants to play, thats fine. I did spend a few minutes after the game explaining how I might have played his army differently to give him a better chance to win and enjoy the game a lot more.
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