The West Coast qualifier was a three round 2500 point tournament using the 2015 U.S. Master’s rule pack. In the first round, each player was paired against another player with a similar composition score. As my list was a 14, I knew I would be playing one of the other four players with a 14. Ultimately, I was paired against Southern California’s Zack Lopez.
Round #1: Zack Lopez - Warriors of Chaos
Zack’s list was a hard-hitting (for a 14) Nurgle-based warriors list. His list included a Chaos Lord mounted on Chaos Dragon, two exalted heroes on daemonic mount, a level 2 chaos sorcerer with Lore of Nurgle, a few warhound units, marauder horsemen with flails, two chariots of Nurgle, a twelve man strong unit of warriors marked Nurgle, and a flying, breath-weapon spewing Chimera.
Zack deployed in a solid battle line with his focus on the center of the board. His plan was obviously to rush forward and hit my archer blocks which were spread out at the bottom of my deployment zone. I won the roll to go first, which allowed me to rush my Wild Rider units onto Zack’s flanks and start peppering his units with bowfire. In the first turn, between combined magic and shooting I was able to kill four of the knights to take them out of the game (the last knight would run around for the remainder of the game making unbelievable saves until the game ended), and drop two units of dogs.
Zack retaliated by swinging the Chimera to the flank to take on the Wild Riders with his breath weapon, but only managed to kill a single Wild Rider, leaving the five remaining Wild Riders to cause problems in his back field. Even though Zack would eventually get the Wild Riders, the unit pulled the Chimera out of position for the rest of the game.
Despite early progress, Zack and I only managed to finish four turns in the 2 ½ time limit. Luckily, the Wood Elf shooting with Harmonic Convergence did serious work. I eventually killed off the Chaos Lord and Dragon, the level 2, and most of the unit of warriors. At the end of the game I had lost a unit of Wild Riders and an eagle, but had managed to kill everything but the two exalted heroes, the nurgle warrior unit, the Chimera, one knight, and a chariot with a single wound. Another two turns and I think I would have gotten everything.
The game ended with over 1000 victory point difference in my favor, and I was on my way with a solid 17 point win!
Round #2: Jeremy “Effing” Campbell - Ogre Kingdoms
For Round 2 I played Jeremy Campbell and his Ogre Kingdom army. Jeremy’s army also came into the tournament with a 14 with a solid list. His army included a Slaughtermaster, a BSB, a Firebelly, a Butcher, three small units of Mournfang cavalry, a large unit of Maneaters with scout and poison, a few small units of basic Ogres, and an Irongut unit.
This game came down to two of Jeremy’s Ogre units single-handedly holding up the entire left-flank of my battleline including several of my key units like Way Watchers, two Trueflight glade guard units, and a unit of Wild Riders. Do to a tremendously short overrun of 3 inches against a single Ogre, a unit of Wild Riders was caught in the flank by the other unit and killed, which put Jeremy’s Ogre unit in position after reforming to charge the flank of the Way Watchers holding them up for the rest of the game. On the opposite flank, I couldn’t bring my bow power against the Maneaters as poor rolling for the first four turns of the game allowed the Ironguts to get into my line.
By the end of the game, I was able to take out two of the Mournfang units, all the Ironguts, the Slaughtermaster, and one unit of Ogres, but was not able to take down the BSB or the Maneaters which was where a large number of Jeremy’s points were. Luckily, I was able to keep most of my units alive including the Sister bus and the Spellweaver, but I did have to sacrifice a few units during the game. In the end, I took a small 8 point loss to go into game three with 25 out of 40 points.
Round #3: Josh Fricke - Daemons of Chaos
For Round 3 I played Josh Fricke’s Daemon army. Josh’s list included a Keeper of Secrets, a herald of Slaanesh, a fifty-two man unit of daemonettes, a unit of seekers, a unit of fiends, two units of furies, and two soul grinders. His list comped a 9.1 which meant that I got to start the game 490 victory points up. This gave me a huge advantage and pushed Josh to go on the offensive very early, pulling key units out of position.
Knowing how dangerous the spell Cacophonic Choir can be, I set up all my units so that the Keeper would not be able to cast it on anything important on the first turn so all Josh could do was move up fast to get ready for Turn 2. On my first turn, I placed every shot available into the Keeper taking off two early wounds. From then on, Josh’s Keeper was on the back foot and couldn’t throw too many dice at each spell attempt for fear of taking additional wounds from my Feedback Scroll.
Eventually, I was able to take out the Keeper with more combined shooting including the Hail of Doom arrow. I threw the dryads and a Branchwraith into the face of the daemonettes to keep them from the rest of my battleline while I slowly killed off everything else with combined shooting, magic, and Wild Rider charges. At the end, I was up over 1500 points to take the solid 20 giving me 45 battle points out of 60 to end the day. A solid score for second place for the tournament and a place at the U.S. Masters.
Overall List Thoughts:
After playing three games with this list I am happy with its overall performance, but the one game where I did not get Harmonic Convergence I definitely noticed my overall shooting effectiveness decreased significantly.
The Wild Riders performed as expected. They were great in most games, but every once in awhile they did something that cost me the unit before it made its points back. I did miss having shields on the units in one game, but most things that I went into combat against had high strength attacks so that shields wouldn’t have made a difference. I think that shields may be worth it in games against other elves, but I don’t know if it is worth the additional 4 comp points simply for a +1 armor save.
The Branchwraith’s performed as expected. I ended up with The Dwellers Below in all three games, but due to the nature of my opponent’s armies I never had a reason to cast the spell. But, I was able to use the Branchwraiths as sacrifices and speed bumps to protect my archer units. For only 75 points they performed well, but I am not sure that they are also worth the 15 comp points for all three of them. Though, I do think that they will be more effective against other armies, particularly where Dwellers would be more useful.
There is still a lot of list tweaking to do before Masters, but I am confident in both the Spellweaver with Lore of Heavens and the four units of shooting core. Another unit of Starfire Arrows may be the way to go over the unit of Arcane Bodkins, but only more play testing will tell.
No comments:
Post a Comment