We were two brave warriors of the North (I was joined by fellow miniature enthusiast Marcus who would be playing my High Elves) who made our way down to, what I can only describe as tropic, Jönköping to give the Stockholm-Gothenburg axis of evil a run for their money. I'll try to keep the report short so no long ramblings about the mystery of what animals people in Jönköping use for their kebab (some very funky kebab was encountered) or how I got whooped like 30 times at Clash of Heroes by Marcus (I blame the whisky). So here we go!
The top 15% finishers of all the tournaments in Sweden of the last 12 months were invited to the Masters to play 5 games of battleline under Swedish Comp. This being my second ever tournament under SweComp, I was feeling less confident than usually with my list drafts. It was quite clear that a comp score of 15 was optimal (comp span used was 10-15, where the difference in comp would grant a substantial 150 victory points per point to the higher comping list, in addition the vp table used had 150 vp steps per tournament point), but I felt like every comp 15 list I made was too weak. In the end I took a knight bus WoC list that comped 12.7, quite a bit lower than I'd prefer but hopefully hard enough to fight for the win against most lists.
Chaos lord of tzeentch on barded chaos steed @ 397 pts
Great weapon, Armour of Fortune, Obsidian Lodestone, The Other Trickster's Shard, Flaming Breath, Scaled Skin
Exalted hero of tzeentch on barded daemonic mount @ 246 pts
Battle standard bearer, great weapon, Dragonhelm, Talisman of Endurance, Ironcurse Icon
Chaos sorcerer of tzeentch on daemonic mount @ 250 pts
Lvl 2 tzeentch, Enchanted Shield, Dawnstone, Chaos Familiar
10 Forsaken of Tzeentch @ 200pts
5 Warhounds @ 40 pts
Vanguard
5 Warhounds @ 40 pts
Vanguard
Chaos chariot of slaanesh @ 115 pts
Chaos chariot of slaanesh @ 115 pts
Chaos chariot of slaanesh @ 115 pts
10 Chaos knights @ 495 pts
Mark of Tzeentch, ensorcelled weapons, standard, musician, Blasted Standard
Chimera @ 275 pts
Regenerating flesh, flaming breath
Hellcannon @ 210 pts
Total points: 2498
All the lists are still visible here. After seeing the lists I was feeling even less confident! Pretty much everyone and their neighbour had brought comp 15 lists, including a bunch of quite nasty looking gunlines. I was also starting to feel that maybe the Blasted Standard wasn't the hottest pick in today's metagame, the amount of low strength, armour piercing shots some lists could put out was really rather disgusting! Well, every shot at the bus wouldn't be aimed at the chariots or the chimera I guess...
Game 1 - You said how many chariots?
Okay so the tournament started with me faced against one of the locals behind the tournament, Johannes, and his rather violent take on comp 15 warriors. He had a trickster bus of some 15 marauder horsemen with two lvl 2's and a exalted hero general on steeds of slaanesh, 10 chaos chariots (!), 2x 5 warhounds, two spawn and a giant. Everything had mark of Slaanesh apart from the giant that had gone Nurgle for the extra pip of toughness. A difficult list to catch for sure, but on the other hand he shouldn't be able to take my bus without risking his own into combat.
I got first turn with most of my army deployed on the right hand side facing his giant, 5 chariots and his bus. In the middle it was 3 of his chariots against 2 of mine and we both had a unit of dogs for nuisance. I move halfway up the board with my knights and chimera to put some pressure on him, but withdraw in the middle trying to slow/tie up some of his chariots in a duel. Magic phase starts with an IF gateway on his giant causing one wound, giving him 6+ regen and reducing my sorcerer to lvl 0. Not good. My hellcannon tries to hit a chariot (with plenty of others around to scatter into) but misses.
In his turn Johannes considers frontal charging my bus with his bus and 3 chariots (which I was secrectly hoping for) but decides against it and instead sets up the three chariots in a line to slow my knights and backs quite a bit towards the middle of his deployment with the horsemen. His giant lurks towards my hellcannon staying hidden behind a central hill.
I charge the first chariot with my lord and make the two others in the line flee with chimera charges. My dogs charge his in the middle and Johannes flees with two chariots from one of mine which will now be counter-charged by another one his (still having nightmares about all those chariots....) My knights reform towards the hill to keep the giant honest. No magic and the hellcannon misses again.
Johannes rallies all the chariots, not letting the lack of a BSB slow him down, and does some counter-charges forcing one of my chariots to flee and another to hold. The giant slips past my units with some dogs diverting my knights and starts to threaten my hellcannon. I'm still able to move it out of the giant's charge arc though, but I start feeling like the game is slipping out of my hands having lost a chariot to a failed rally test and another in close combat to a chariot and a spawn. I manage to catch one of Johannes chariots in a bad position and it has to flee off the board. But this leads to one of my chariots getting destroyed so it's really just swapping points.
Johannes played a really solid game and with very few mistakes, though one of them nets me another chariot when he forgets to end his Hysterical Frenzy and my hellcannon gets to charge it with my forsaken joining in with an overrun from a 1 wound spawn. Except that the forsaken fail to score any wounds and get stuck fighting the spawn for another round, letting his chariot flee to safety...
With his free points from the comp and me playing like a doofus letting Johannes' giant run around in circles and making the demise of my hellcannon only a matter of time, I felt like I had to do something to turn the game in my favour. What I ended up doing was charging the giant with my chimera. Don't ask me why, I really have no idea. I guess I used some kind of obscure maths to arrive to the conclusion that the chimera getting one-shotted or killed in two rounds would be quite unlikely. Naturally the giant one-shotted the chimera and reformed towards the hellcannon, and there and then game was looking very grim.
In the end I charged another chariot with my forsaken just to force a flee and clear some space, but of course the forsaken rolled the required 11+ inches to catch the chariot and were directly counter-charged by two chariots and a spawn. The game ends with the giant and some chariots charging my hellcannon, but with the hellcannon surviving against all odds on 1 wound or so. It didn't really matter as it was ruled that my "two movement trays = good hellcannon base" solution wouldn't fly (both for gaming and artistic reasons) and Johannes would score the points for the hellcannon anyways. Even though the ruling came as a surprise, it was really my fault as the base was 25mm too wide (arquably to my advantage as it widens the frontal arc). But the organizers were really fair in letting me use their hobby room downstairs after the game to fix the base, so at least I wouldn't lose the points in the rest of the games. So absolutely no hard feelings held even if it wasn't a ruling I was expecting!
Really a deserved win to Johannes who played a clean game and me getting way too passive with my knights and making some very poor decisions after the initial decent couple of turns.
Result: 16 - 4 to the side with the most chariots
Game 2 - A bus crash of epic proportions!
Second round I would be facing Axel and his dark elves with dual pegasi dreadlords, a killy BSB and an assassin on foot, two big units of dreadspears, a whole bunch of repeater crossbows, 5 dark riders, 6 warlocks and two cool medusas. An interesting army packing quite a punch but with quite a lot of points in squishy elves on foot.
Early on it was clear that the game would come down to a bloody bus vs bus grind, with both dreadlords and all the foot characters joining one of the dreadspear units facing my knights. I was quite okay with that as my list was the one with more support, even if risking a minimum of 1500ish points in a single combat is always a risky proposition. But hey, who would safe play at a Masters tournament?
The grind was on from round 2a, with Axel charging my knights and diverting my flanking chariots with his medusas. He also charged my chimera with 5 warlocks (one died IFing Doombolt round 1 on my knights, as Axel forgot I had a Lodestone), which really shouldn't be a problem to a chimera with breath and all, but 3 rounds later my chimera was still fighting a warlock champion and at only 1 wound left. Luckily I had my forsaken who made it in and helped out the poor beast. Unfortunately next round some of Axel's repeater crossbowmen got the chimera in their sights and finished him off. Every round of the fight Axel tried to cast boosted Soulblight but either failed or I managed to dispel it with fewer dice which was quite crucial.
Meanwhile the big fight was getting quite sweaty with me whiffing my attacks round 1, the breath weapon from my lord the only thing saving me. The dark elf BSB with Sword of Anti-Heroes challenged and smashed my sorcerer in 2 rounds, but not before me IFing Treason on the dreadspears. This caused a failed fear test that helped me in round 3 but nonetheless the assassin got my BSB. My lord finally killed his Ogre Blade dreadlord, but I still had to pass a leadership 8 break test without rerolls. I held though, and that sealed the game in my favour as two chariots charged the flank of the dreadspears. My lord got the satisfaction of collecting the other dreadlord's head in challenge (epic moment as we both had Other Trickster's and my lord, who was down to 1 wound at that point, scored two wounds killing the dreadlord as Axel missed both Black Amulet ward saves proclaiming "If I just make this one 4+ reroll the amulet will surely kill your lord!") before the elves broke and were run over.
Meanwhile my hellcannon landed the first of only two good hits during the weekend, wiping half of the other dreadspear unit and making them flee. Rest of the game was really a question of how many of his units I could catch, and in the end only one unit of 13 crossbowmen remained alive. I had lost my sorcerer, BSB, one chariot and the chimera, plus some dogs I think, netting me a nice solid win. Really a pleasure to play against Axel and this was without question one of the sweatiest, most entertaining games I've had in a long while!
Result: 17-3 to the better Other Trickster's Shard
Game 3 - The one where the bus was destroyed!
Saturday's last game was against Stefan's infantry high elves with a lvl 4 light archmage, a loremaster, medium sized units of seaguard, swordmasters (with Razor Standard) and phoenix guard, 2x 5 silver helms, 5 shadow warriors, 5 reavers, two RBTs and two eagles. Quite a lot of tools to do damage to my chariots and chimera, and a scary amount of buffs and debuffs to make engaging the elite units a risky proposition. I wasn't that worried though, it's just a bunch of infantry elves you know! (famous last words)
We both deployed quite centrally, me having a chariot and some dogs facing a unit of silver helms each on both far flanks, the forsaken choosing the right flank but deploying close to the board edge. The game started badly when I lost my hellcannon round 1 to a misfire. I had been hoping for some decent results from my magic and the hellcannon, but this pretty much quenched my hopes.
I played the flanks very poorly, the elven cavalry getting flank charges on both of my chariots. On the right I lost the chariot and the dogs, on the left just the dogs as the chariot pulled off some true heroics holding the initial charge and then grinding out the silver helms. At least on the right my forsaken ran past the shelms and in the end managed to take out one RBT (I think the only game where they ended up on a positive balance, what a truly worthless unit they are!).
My BSB got off a nice solocharge past some diverting reavers on Stefan's seaguard unit housing the lvl 4. Stefan chose to flee the charge and barely stayed on the board (rolled 9" I think when 10" would have taken them off). Here I made a big mistake and redirected into the swordmasters (no, don't ask me why) instead of just failed charging. I killed the unit champion and a couple of swordmasters but broke round 2 and lost the BSB for no real return. After cleaning up some diverters my bus was out in the open in front of both of Stefan's elite units and he chose to charge in, confident that his buffs would carry the day, What he forgot was that my lord had the Other Trickster's and I farmed CR from the phoenix guard round after round. Still, I had to sacrifice my sorcerer to a challenge with the loremaster (though I came close to killing him twice before he healed himself with Earthblood) and in the end I lost all the knights to swordmaster attacks. Swordmasters + Wildform + Razor Standard = sad panda chaos knights...
The game turned in my favour when the chimera, which had flown behind Stefan's line, charged the rallied seaguard and them failing their terror test ran them over. Next round the chimera charged the swordmasters in the rear and wrecked havoc. To be fair, I did pass a couple difficult break tests with my lord and knights before this was possible, and the game could have easily gone to Stefan had I failed one of them.
So needless to say Stefan was quite frustrated with the end result, his glorious high elf army reduced to one surviving silver helm tucked into a corner and me with about half my points still intact. Nevertheless, he took it like a man (no mean feat from an elf) and I think his luck turned somewhat the second day of the tournament as he finished on a respectable 9th place!
Result: 15-5 to the one with the better leadership rolls
Games 4 and 5 coming up....
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