In May, I attended the annual SAWS Challenge in Sacramento, CA. This year, over sixty players participated in the tournament and it was a great time. Though, this was one of my poorest finishes in a long, long time. Nothing seemed to go well for the Dark Elves. I blame it entirely on my list, which was designed solely for the outdated tournament composition, and my failure to even get a single game in with an infantry based list before the tournament.
Below is a breakdown of all my games and scores, but full results are available here. I took 34th overall this year going 2 and 3 with scores broken down as follows: 55 battle points (out of a hundred); 39 composition points (out of 40); 24 sportsmanship points, and 21 appearance points (because most of my infantry is not painted like my fast cavalry).
Now on to the games!
Round #1: Robert Hambrick- Ogres
To start the tournament off, I got to play Robert Hambrick and his Ogres. Robert's army was chaff heavy for an Ogre army and I think that all the chaff won me this game as I was able to pick up lots of easy points. His army was: a tyrant (ogre blade and enchanted shield), slaughtermaster, bruiser bsb, 6 ironguts with dragonhide banner,a unit of 9 ogres, a unit of 9 ogres, four units of 10 gnoblars, two units of 4 leadbelchers, and two units of 2 mournfang cavalry.
I pressed really hard this game swinging the executioners straight at the mournfang hoping to wipe one unit with pit before I was in charge distance. With my combined shooting in the early turns I was able to drop both major ogre blocks to a single rank, which made cleaning them up with my smaller infantry units easy. The gnoblars held me from killing the ogre units until the late game, but I was able to easily run over this chaff with multiple charges. The leadbelchers made short work of the dark riders, but the bold throwers turned their attention and wipe both units off before the game ended. The executioners went on a rampage wiping one unit of mournfang out in a single round and taking the charge from the other unit (and a small unit of ogres) and decimating both units over two rounds of combat. I ended up winning this game by well over 1000 points and got my bonus objective giving me a great start to the day with a max-point win.
Round #2: Mark Crow - Warriors of Chaos
After my full point win in game one, I was paired against Mark Crow and his warriors of chaos army. Mark was playing one of the standard tournament builds built around a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh (which meant that whole units of my army would never get to do anything). His army also had the standard 3++ disc mounted BSB (who also re-rolls "1"s), two chimeras, a hellcannon, a unit of four skullcrushers, 4 chariots of Slaanesh, two units of warhounds, and two units of marauder horsemen of Slaanesh.
I managed to get the first turn this game, but after that everything fell apart. I either failed to hit, or failed to wound the DP with a total of 14 bolt thrower shots before they all died. Yes, not a single bolt managed to cause a single wound to the DP throughout five turns of the game. Then, despite successfully casting pit of shades on the Chimeras, I deviated off the creature the first three hits and only killing one of the beasts on Turn 4 (after it had gotten to use its breath weapon). The rest of my heavy infantry force just faded away after several turns of random moving. This was just one of those games where nothing went right for the Dark Elves and Mark capitalized on every single failure my army made (including several failed charges with the executioners). At the end, I didn't even manage to get my bonus objective which was to kill the Daemon Prince.
Round #3: Josh Rosenstein - Dark Elves
Josh was playing a more standard, brolock star Dark Elf army. His list included a tooled up Dreadlord with Cloak of Twilight, a Level 4 with Lore of Beasts, three mounted masters, a small unit of witches with the Banner of Eternal Flame, three units of dark riders, 2 bolt throwers, 2 hydras, and a unit of 10 warlocks into which all five characters went into.
Although I outshot Josh significantly in this game, he was on my fire base early and effectively neutralized all of my shooting the turn after I had dropped all of his. This game saw both of us clear each others' smaller units and chaff (including me getting both of his hydras with the executioner block) but me failing majorly to break through the brolock star. At the end of the game he still had a wounder lord, the Level 4, and 1 warlock left which kept this game way out of draw territory. He used his 'locks effectively and when I had the opportunities to prevent his charges, my units either failed to move appropriately (lots of failed march tests) or made the charges without additional unit support. It also didn't help that in one of the three turns I needed to cast mindrazor which would have allowed me to kill all of the characters in a single turn, I failed (all three turns). This is the price of relying on mindrazor for infantry. Sometimes you just can't roll a double 6. Josh won this game handily after killing but the executioners and two bolt throwers.
I don't even remember if I managed to get the bonus points for this round, but I knew that at the end of the day and going into day two I was at the bottom of the pack.
Round #4: Randy Fischer - Dark Elves
Randy was playing a similar infantry based Dark Elf army with a large executioner horde and a large witch horde with cauldron. His list included a kill dreadlord with Ring of Hotek, a Level 4 with Lore of Shadow, a death hag on cauldron, witch horde, executioner horde, small corsair unit, harpies, four bolt throwers, and a unit of warlocks.
This game went bad for Randy and I could tell throughout the game he was extremely disappointed with how things were falling out. I won the roll off for the first turn and dropped two of his bolt throwers on the first turn as well as setting up charges for turn 2 that he could not stop unless he rolled well with his own shooting. I then began to just kill the executioner horde with my massed xbows. I would do nothing but throw chaff at the witches and whittle down the executioners, eventually killing them to the last model. Randy could never make combat with anything that I didn't want him to. I even led the witches around for a while by charging my witches into the front so that he had to overrun on an angle. Solid win with full objective points. I was now sitting at an okay 2-2 and could make top third with another win.
Round #5: Mike Carbone - Dwarfs
Round 5 I got to play Mike and his Dwarfs. This was my first game against the new Dwarfs, but Mike had what I would call a more standard tournament army. It's more of a combat army than a warmachine army, but it still definitely castles in the corner of the table. His list included two dwarf lords with good saves and strong attacks, a thane BSB with the master rune of grungi, two hordes of longbeards with magical standards, a horde of ironbreakers, and two organ guns.
Mike deployed in a corner and I deployed so that nothing could be shot by the Organ guns. Mike won the roll-off and didn't move his first turn. I then proceeded to kill 1 organ gun and magic the other into uselessness. I then killed the other organ gun on turn 2. Mike didn't realize it, but at this point I could have just stopped and won the game, but I was already down two games and wanted to see what the new Dwarfs could do in combat so I rushed in. The executioners would get into combat with the ironbreakers and some good Killing Blow rolls saw a dwarf lord (general) and thane die. Though I would eventually lose the combat and that unit. I would also lose most of the smaller infantry blocks but take out the Ironbreakers and one whole unit of longbeards. At the end, I lost the game because I couldn't kill the remaining dwarf lord who was running around on 1 wound with my bolt throwers.
This was an okay game. It was obvious that unless I ran forward I had already won and Mike didn't seem to happy with the match-up, but I didn't care at this point. I rushed forward and saw the power of the new Dwarfs. Safe to say, 1 on 1 combat is not how the Dark Elves are going to defeat these guys. Had I been able to set up some multi-charges I think I would have won more combats, but single units just couldn't put out the wounds necessary to grind the units down. At least at the size I was running them at.
So at the end of the tournament I was sitting at 2 - 3 and in the bottom of the pool. I wasn't feeling great about the way I played on Day 1 so I was disappointed in the tournament, but a lot of that had to do with the list I took and the complete lack of practice I got with it.
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