Well Waaagh!Paca 2015 is over. In fact, it finished up over a month and a half ago, but with practice and preparation for the U.S. Masters, I just wasn't able or willing to write this post up. This year, I brought a Host of the Eternity King list without the use of any special characters. The list is available here.
I performed very well this year, and placed the highest I have ever placed at Waaagh!Paca. This year I came in 13th place with a combined score of 83. This year, I went 3 and 2, but was able to make up a couple extra points in battle by getting a couple of key objective points even in my losses. Combined with max attendance points, decent paint, and a sports jump, I was able to place in the top 15 (even though I was lowest score on my team). Thanks for Leadership 2's high performance (5th, 8th, 10th, and 13th) we were able to take home the Best Team award which was really great.
This year I played five great guys and got to see a lot of crazy army lists including three nasty special characters: 2 Nagash, and 1 Malekith the Eternity King. Here's how the games when down:
Round 1: Jarrod Hortsman
Jarrod was also playing a Host of the Eternity King list, but his list had a little bit less shooting than mine and included more High Elf components. It looked like we both just supplemented a solid Dark Elf list with our favorite other elves.
His list included a mounted Highweaver with Talisman of Preservation, a mountedMaster BSB with Armor of Destiny, anther mounted Master, a small unit of Ellyrian Reavers, one small unit of Hagbane Glade Guard, a large ten-man unit of Silver Helms, two units of Hagbane scouts, a lion chariot, two repeater bolt throwers, a great eagle, a Frostheart Pheonix, and a small unit of Doomfire Warlocks.
We were playing the "Rudely Interrupted" scenario which was based on the Meeting Engagement scenario. Jarrod was lucky with only his phoenix starting off the board, while I suffered a serious setback with two of the RBTs starting off the board along with the unit of warlocks. This left two serious shooting thefts off the board on Turn 1.
In this game, Jarrod pushed very hard swinging up both the Silver Helms and the Warlock bus with all the mounted characters right into the center of the board with the Silver Helms in front allowing both units to have decent charges into my archer blocks on Turn 2. I took a long frontal charge with a unit of Wild Riders into the Silver Helms in the hopes that I could hold them up for a turn while I tried to whittle down the Warlock bus with shooting. One outstanding Hail of Doom arrow later (15 shots, 15 hits, 13 wounds) and the entire bus was destroyed except for all the characters. Then proceeded to kill the rest of the characters with my shooting except for the BSB (which was down to one wound) and the Level 4. In combat, I killed 4 Silver Helms on the charge losing only three wild riders in return and kept the unit in combat until Jarrod's next turn. In his second turn, he tried to hide his characters, but there was nowhere close enough to hide from 3 bolt throwers. Although the Wild Riders died (taking one more Silver Helm) the game was squarely in my favor and I slowly cleaned up the rest of his army with shooting and magic over the next several turns. In the end, I walked away with a solid 5 point win to start the day.
This was just one game that did not go well for Jarrod. The fact that with a single Hail of Doom Arrow I killed most of the warlock bus meant and being able to hold up the Silver Helms for a turn allowed me to move my shooting out to the sides and allowed me to focus on picking up his units one at a time. This was one of those times where the dice really came into my favor right off the bat.
Round 2: Mark Cox
Marx Cox, of the Lonehammer Podcast game, is a generally all around good dude and a great Warhammer game any time. In fact, he pulled my Best Sports vote early in the tournament just by taking all of the horrible luck that happened in our game with a smile and great attitude. If you haven't had a chance to play him at a tournament yet, seek him out. He travels a lot and I can guarantee you won't feel bad about calling him out Round 1.
As per his usual, Mark was playing a Skaven army with large units of slaves, a unit of clanrats, a Greyseer, a BSB with magical trickery, and various shooting units. I thought Mark had a good shot of rushing forward with all of his units and hitting my shooting line before I was able to do too much damage, but an amazing second turn magic phase put Mark's hopes to ruin. After finding out that the large Clanrat unit had MR 2 thanks to the BSB in the first turn. I threw a Spirit Leech at the BSB which was no dispelled. The BSB then promptly died. Normally, this wouldn't be a huge deal, but I then Irresistibly Cast Purple Sun through a unit of slaves and the Clanrat unit. Both units took decent casualties, at least enough for a panic check. Unluckily for Mark, both units failed (the slaves now out of General range do to loses from the spell and Mark rolling crappy for the Clanrats). Due to the closeness of my Sorceress, both units turned at an angle and ran through the other slave units panicking them as well. So at this point, all of Mark's blocks were running and close to the board. Then, in his turn, the Clanrats and a slave unit ran off the board while the other slaves failed to rally and continued toward the board edge. Game over. The rest of it was quick clean up with my shooting and magic. Though its not very often I can say this, it was Purple Sun for the win! A game that should have been a lot closer ended far to fast due to some amazingly high leadership rolls from Mark for two consecutive turns. I know we are both waiting for a rematch.
After this game, I was sitting at a solid 10/10 points, my best performance at WaaaghPaca yet.
Round 3: Mike Ballard
I played Mike Ballard round 5 last year with his nasty, nasty Tzeentch Daemon list (yes, the one that stole my well earned bonus point). Mike is a fun, laid back guy to play who always brings some tough as nails list and this year's Nagash list was no different. His list included Nagash, a Hierotitan, a casket of souls, three large units of zombies, and a few other random units.
Mike's list was hard, as there is really nothing I can do against Nagash as I did not bring my own 1000 pt. special character. However, I had one leg up on Mike that made this game possible. We were playing actual breaking point and at 2000 points, Mike's breaking point was two. He only started with 4 points, so I knew that if I could kill off two units of zombies I had the game. (Note, Nagash as general actually generated 0 fortitude because of the tournament rules where he was also a monster and a special character with a ward save).
I won the first turn and ran straight at the zombies. My shooting was directed at his fast moving units, and I did take out a unit of skeleton horsemen on the first turn (Down to Fortitude 3). In his first turn, Nagash started summoning, but I blew my scroll and only a single unit of ethereal hosts got through. In the second turn I started charging zombies, whittling down units in combat. With shooting I was able to drop the Hierotitan, but not the casket. Mike, raised a unit of skeleton archers with a banner and a unit of monstrous infantry in my backfield (which I just disregarded because I needed to kill his banner units). In combat, the zombie unit crumbled keeping his Fortitude at 3.
In turn 3, I charged another unit of zombies and started shooting the other unit with everything I had. Mike responded by regrowing the zombie units a little and raising a giant chariot unit with banner. Even though more zombies died in the combat phase, Mike was up to 4 fortitude. In turn 4, I charged the zombie unit with a second unit of Wild Riders and put every magical missile and shot I had into the unengaged unit of zombies over-killing the unit by two. In combat, the last zombie unit was destroyed and Mike broke, giving me the win.
This game could have easily gone different if Mike had been able to raise even another small unit with a banner in a corner of the board that I couldn't get to, but luckily by killing the Hierotitan and the casket (eventually), Mike could only reliably get a single spell through each phase which really hurt his ability to put more fortitude on the board.
I ended Day 1 with 15/15 points. A really solid tie for first with 5 other guys and my best performance at WaaaghPaca to date.
Round 4: Mike Scaletti
For Game 4, I had to play my teammate Mike Scaletti and his Host of the Eternity King army. We were both fairly upset at having to play each other, especially as there was another two guys with 15 points who were also on the same team and had to play each other. I think it would have been really easy to switch the games up and had us play one of the other guys, but in the end we were stuck playing each other and so were they. It's always a drag playing a teammate at a travelling tournament, especially when there is a team award that you are basically hurting your chances for. It was also disappointing because both Mike and I knew there was no way either of us could get max points for this game as the armies were too diametrically opposed. However, had we played the other guys at 15 I think we both had a chance at four or five points and really good position going into the last game, and maybe playing each other then when it really mattered.
Mike's list was Malekith and 1000 points of shooting fast cav with a small warlock unit. This game went exactly as you would expect it to. Malekith rampaged through the units of mine that couldn't get away, but not before I killed off everything else in Mike's army with shooting in magic. Going into the last turn it looked like a solid draw, maybe a small victory in my favor because I had only lost all the glade guard units, but a solid magic phase from Mike and a bad roll on my part saw my Level 4 fall into a pit of shades and die horribly. This gave Mike a small win, but as I already had the objective it ended up only being a 3-2 in his favor. This gave Mike 18 points and me 17 going into the last game.
Round 5: Brad Schwandt
For Round 5 I was playing Brad Schwandt. Brad was running Nagash in all his filth. Although his initial list was only 2000 points, Brad backed that up with another 8000 points of painted models to summon. I believe that he had at least two different unit choices for each summoning spell depending on what the situation called for. The army was quite impressive all laid out.
His basic list was Nagash (at a whopping 1000 points), a single necromancer with Dispel Scroll, two units of skeleton archers, a large unit of zombies, two units of mounted skeleton horse archers, a screaming skull catapult, a casket of souls (for the bonus dice), and a Hierotitan (for the bonus +d3 to cast). This was a really tough list that would be generating lots of power dice and pushing spells through any magical defenses available.
Going into this game I knew it was going to be a challenge as there was a giant building and a hill on Brad's side that would allow him to hide Nagash all game if he so desired. So my main plan of killing Nagash with all my shooting and magic would have to go by the wayside and I would have to play the kill everything else in his army game while trying not to lose too much.
This game, I just focused on everything that was worth points in Brad's army. In the first three turns, I had taken everything in his list but Nagash, but Nagash was summoning units 1 inch away from my archers preventing me from running away. I survived until turn 5 in the lead, but then lost the final archer unit to a unit of summoned crypt horrors. Turn 6 we were dead tied, which would have been great as I had the bonus objective, but in his last magic phase Brad summoned a Terrorgheist which killed off my Level 4, giving him a 245 pt win. It was a great game, and I knew that it was going to be difficult, but I played it my best. This was one of those times that I wish I could learn to slow down a little bit because had the game taken a little longer (extra movement time, etc.) then I would have won this game (but that's really just not my style - I'm an all 6 turn kind of player and get really irritated if I don't finish 6 turns even if I win).
Tournament Thoughts
As usual, this tournament was a blast. This tournament is always high on my list and I got to hang out with a lot of great guys and play a few additional games over the weekend, including one against Johnny Hastings. If you want a recap of that game listen to the 'paca Pointhammered podcast. He was playing Ogres against my elves and there were two buildings on the table for me to block with. It wasn't pretty, even without Purple Sun.
All in all, I was really happy with my overall performance as well as the tournament in general. I hope to make it again next year (depending on what happens with 9th Edition).
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