#194: CANCON Game 3 - Ironsunz Vs. Tzeentch Changehost

I'm not going to lie. The air up on the top tables was getting a little thin!

After two major wins, I'd managed to climb my way up into the upper bracket of the event, and I knew there were no easy games up there. And as luck would have it, I would hit one of the boogeyman armies of the event, a Tzeentch Changehost in all its pre-FAQ glory.

I was playing against James Page, who's one of the New Zealand lads who made the trip, and this was wildly unlucky for me.

For some backstory leading into the event, I was asked to play in the Tasman Cup the day before the event, which is a team vs. team match between New Zealand and some of the Australians from down south. This year, I ended up on the team, and as the matchup process unfolded, I found myself in a horrendous matchup, but in taking that match-up, it hopefully allowed other players on my team to land more favourable ones. That horrendous matchup was against none other than James Page.

This was my first time facing them, and I knew how mental some of the rules in that book are, but playing it on the table was another experience altogether. I did what I instinctively do when facing a ranged army, and that's to launch across the board at breakneck speed to punch on. However, I was met by a shooting and hero phase that could have set off a nuclear winter in the Realm of Fire. I took a 0-20 loss in one of the most overwhelmingly one-sided games I'd ever played!

So, when we met again in the main event, I had an idea of what to expect and where to change my course of action to avoid a repeat 0-20 crushing! 

Here's what I was staring down the barrel of. The Changehost is just too good not to take. All three endless spells were pretty devastating, and then a Fatemaster and Gaunt Summoner provided overlapping auras to hand out re-rolls and increase efficiency to the max.

The scenario was Blood and Glory, so I had to survive until Turn 3, then cap four objectives at once. It was a tough ask, but I wasn't about to go down without a fight. James outdropped me, and bunkered up in the centre of his deployment. I put one unit of five Ard Boys on my right hand objective, so as not to just hand it away to some cheeky Tzeentch teleports, while the rest of my army set up in my back left corner, making sure to zone out my backline. In hindsight, this was probably needless. Jame's army is built around moving as a single cohesive chunk. When units peel off or teleport, they're particularly vulnerable to being isolated and beat to death. Well... beat to death three times in the case of Horrors! 

James handed me first turn, and given that objectives weren't active until T3, and knowing how unrelenting the Tzeentch ranged game is, I didn't really make any big plays. I shuffled around a little bit, threw some Violent Furies out, and that was about it. The only significant movement was my Ironfist Boss unit of Piggies. My secondary objective was Plant the Flag, which required me to get a have a unit wholly within a terrain piece in my opponent's deployment zone at the end of any battle round. This was a no brainer in this scenario, as the daemons were controlling the table with magic and shooting, not bodies. So, my path to the back left corner was pretty unimpeded. If I could lock down that secondary, it meant that at worst, I'd be looking at an 18-2 loss. In this match, I knew I needed to scrape everything out of it that I could.

James' first turn was similarly unremarkable. With all of his ranged abilities out of range, he contented himself sitting in the bunker, casting spells into nowhere and racking up those summoning points!

I managed to win the priority roll going into turn two, and immediately handed it to James. This was best case scenario, as it meant that I essentially wasted another of his turns. Again, finding nothing valuable in range, his hero phase was spent generating yet more summoning points, but knowing that we were getting into the meaty part of the game, he began making moves.

Using one of his Changehost teleports, he launched a unit of Pink Horrors out of the bunker, and toward my right-hand objective. The Gaunt Summoner immediately popped his pocket-Horrors and replaced the unit in the bunker. The Boys were poorly deployed. I probably should have parked their asses wholly within terrain for the boost to their save, but my main priority in deployment was keeping as much distance between myself and the Daemons as possible. This did mean, however, that the Pinks teleported directly onto the objective, and that I was never going to get them back off. This was pre-FAQ Tzeentch, so even if I'd beaten the unholy snot out of them, they could have popped a Destiny Dice, and been fine regardless of horrific casualties.

The other teleport was used to slingshot a unit of Brimstones into the middle of the field, putting a healthy gap between the core of the Tzeentch force and my very angry greenskins. The Changeling leapt over the top of his screen as well to activate all of the negative To Hit auras, and a single unit of Flamers shuffled forward... and found themselves just in range. I'd shuffled up with my Krusha and found myself in a bit of a pickle. Buffed to the nines, the Flamers unleashed an torrent of infernal flames that utterly vaporised my cabbage dragon.

From memory, I think he took some minor damage from long-range spells, but the Flamers just buried him with zero resistance. This was a pretty big blow. Losing my only hammer unit that can fly meant that now I was slogging through each screen one by one, and not launching over the top to hit where I wanted. And I beat myself up about this a little bit, pushing him too far forward, but in reality, I think it was inevitable to a degree. James could have teleported the Flamers instead of the right-side Pinks, and gotten the same result. It was still turn two, and the Ard Boys posed no real threat at that stage.

As it were, the Krusha died a toasty death, while the Ard Boys suffered two casualties, but managed to survive.

Coming into the bottom of turn two, I saw a window, and I went for it. My Shaman, well outside of unbinding range, used Hand of Gork to pick up my ten-man unit of Ard Boys and drop them in James' back left corner. I had the opportunity to park up on his back corner objective, but two of the objectives were being held by near-unkillable Horror units, and I knew they would be sitting ducks in the face of some otherworldly missile fire. So, I shot for the stars and made a charge into the back of his bunker, catching his Herald and the Lord of Change in a combat they didn't want to be in.

This proved to not be as gloriously violent as I'd hoped. While I managed to mug the Herald eventually, the Lord of Change proved far more resilient than I'd imagined. At CanCon, games were set in the Realm of Life. Not only did this empower spells like Emerald Lifeswarm for some cheeky kill-split-return-Pinks shenanigans for the Horror units (who would increase well above starting size by taking a Pendulum or Daemonrift to the back, followed by a Lifeswarm), but it meant that every wizard knew all of the Realm-spells.

Notably, in this game, I don't think there was a single moment after turn one, where the Lord of Change didn't have Flesh To Stone cast on himself. This, combined with the -1 To Hit aura from Tzeentch heroes, completely blunted the Ard Boys' assault, and while it took some time, they were eventually blown apart by shooting and magic.

My Boss pigs on my left flank managed to shuffle into the terrain piece and lock in my secondary objective, which was something! And the surviving Ard Boys on my right objective ran for cover, getting into terrain and hopefully surviving a little longer.

On the frontline, my other unit of Pigs received some buffs and slammed into the Brimstone screen, smashing it apart, before piling in to the Changeling and friends. And it was about this moment of the game that I realised what a terrible position I was in. Thanks to the Changeling's ability, on top of the passive hero aura, meant that my Pigs couldn't hit the side of a barn. Sitting in combat, within 12" of the entire Tzeentch force was only ever going to end one way.

We were well into turn three now, I'd lost a huge chunk of my army, while in comparison, James had lost a unit of Brimstones and a Herald.

The rest of my game was spent holding on for dear life! The second unit of Pigs, having completed their secondary, charged into the end of a unit of Horrors on the left side of the table, but damaging that unit only resulted in more enemy bodies sitting on the objective. 

With the pressure off, the Tzeentchian force shifted gears, and began a search and destroy mission. 

Teleports and unrelenting shooting ended with my heroes and units dying one by one, and all four objectives falling to the hands of Tzeentch. The game ended and James took away an 18-2 win! 

Well. What a game.

I felt like there were some minor mistakes on my part, but I felt that I played a much better game than I had in Tasman Cup. But I will say this. James played an almost flawless game! He was all over his rules, he had his sequence of play down to an art, and he made clinical decisions in an instant. It was hard to pull off any cheeky plays against him, as he was coming off winning the New Zealand Masters with (you guessed it...) Orruk Warclans. He knew exactly what my army could do, and had an answer for it at every turn. 

That said, Tzeentch pre-FAQ was pretty obscene. 

Pretty...

Obscene...

Going into that game, I think we both knew how it was going to go, but I was determined to put up the biggest fight I could in a terrible match up. James went on to win the entire event! And I'm stoked I got to run at one of the NZ fellas! 

This game was the first "boogeyman" army I hit over the weekend, and it wouldn't be the last, but I was happy finishing Day 1 with two major wins, one major loss and two secondaries. 

Check in soon for my maiden run-in with Ogor Mawtribes! 

Thanks for reading,

Gabe