#122: Festering of February Game 1 - Skaven Pestilens Vs. Seraphon

The draw for the first round of the tournament was completely random and was announced the day before the event. I had never met my opponent, but saw Seraphon, and knew I was going to be up against it. Seraphon requires some finesse to play efficiently, but when put in the hands of an experienced player, they are truly something to be feared.

To read my list, check blog post #121.

My opponent ended up being one of the venue's Youngblood players, and he was fielding an intimidating list. 

Scar-Veteran on Carnosaur (General)

Scar-Veteran on Carnosaur

Lord Kroak

Engine of the Gods

40 Skinks

40 Skinks

20 Saurus Warriors

10 Saurus Knights

While the Saurus units weren't a major concern, considering how unheathly it is to be in combat with Monks, the rest of the list was a concern. I was delighted to see that Kroak didn't have a Balewind Vortex, but he was still a formidable wizard. The two massive units of skinks were going to be frustrating to whittle down, as they're incredibly hard to pin down. And two Carnosaurs is never a good thing!

The scenario was Duality of Death, so I knew I needed to kill his four big pieces if I had a hope of winning.

My deployment was pretty conventional for the most part. The bulk of my Congregation deployed on the left, with a unit of forty lining up the left hand objective, and supported by a Priest. The Arch-Warlock delpoyed far enough toward the centre so as to be in range of both objectives once he popped up on a Vortex. Then the Furnace and the other unit of forty deployed in the centre, ready to push straight up the middle and hit whatever got in their way first. 

 My right flank consisted of the last unit of monks, the Censer Bearers, a Priest and the Corruptor. My hope was that each flank could push onto an objective, with the middle force serving as reinforcements to whoever was in most dire need. Catapults sat on the back board edge, with more than enough range to hit anything that wandered outside the opposing deployment zone.

My opponent deployed in quite a conservative manner, making sure to wrap his most valuable units in bodies for fear of some unforeseen Skaven trickery. I was very happy to see Kroak as far back on the board as he was, as this meant he wouldn't really be a huge threat until later in the game. But I've faced (and used) Seraphon and their teleporting shenanigans before, and I wasn't about to lull myself into a false sense of security.

Thanks to his Command Trait, my opponent utilised a second teleport in turn to launch both Carnosaurs onto my left flank, leaving one on the objective to start racking up points, while the second slammed into my Monks! Not exactly how I envisioned turn one...

Elsewhere, Kroak and the Engine of the Gods pushed over toward the other objective, while the Seraphon infantry advanced toward the centre of the table. Luckily for me, the Carnosaur absolutely tanked his rolls and did very little damage to me. In return, I managed to put four wounds on the giant dino-rider.

I knew that if I wanted to win this game, I couldn't afford to get bogged down in my own delpoyment zone, so my first turn was pretty active. The Arch-Warlock popped up on his vortex successfully, and unleashed the arcane arsenal into the Carnosaur, chipping another three wounds off him, as well as killing a Saurus Knight as collateral damage from Warpstorm. Both my large units popped their Contagion Banners, and the central unit benefited from the Corruptor's command ability. With the Furnace successfully casting Rabid Fever on both large units, it was about to get bloody.

I made a mistake on my right side, by moving my Censer Bearers before my Corruptor, which meant that his superior movement was hampered, preventing him from reaching the objective turn one. With both objectives outside of my control, things were not looking good. Both Plagueclaws took aim at the Saurus Warriors with limited success. Guess it was down to my Monks to save the day...

And save the day, they did! While taking minimal casualties, they absolutely blended the Saurus Knights, leaving only one standing after Battleshock, while the Saurus Warriors were completely slaughtered. With four attacks each, the Contagion Banner and Rabid Fever, the monks were on a rampage!

The monks on the flank, not to be outdone by their brethren, ripped the wounded Carnosaur apart, leaving the Scar-Veteran on the objective horribly exposed and unsupported. A double turn would really swing the tide of battle, and allow me to capitalise on the momentum...

But alas, it was not to be. In fact, I failed to win a priority roll all game long! Kroak was in range of several spells now, and had begun putting the hurt on several elements of my army. My opponent made some mistakes with target priority here, as he chose Plagueclaw, the Corruptor and the Monks as his targets for Comet's Call, leaving the Priest (crucial to the scenario) completely unscathed. I also managed to use Verminous Valor to great effect on my Verminlord, passing off the high-quality damage onto the lowly (and entirely disposable in the eyes of the Corruptor) monks. Rapidly running out of units, my opponent pushed the Engine of the Gods onto the right hand objective, applying a great deal of pressure to my army to get points on the board. The Engine also pulled out some Seraphon sorcery, nuking my Furnace with a whopping 6 mortal wounds! The two massive regiments of Skinks materialised on my back corner, with one of them making a cheeky move after the jump. To the surprise of absolutely no one, the forty blowpipes managed to trim the last three wounds off my Plagueclaw.

In my turn, I was intent on claiming the objectives and putting some kind of numbers on the board. It was 4-0 in my opponent's favour, and I simply could not let him widen the gap any further. I cast Arcane Bolt with the Corruptor and put two wounds on Kroak, while the Warlock was left to cast Warpstorm at whoever was in range, crucially managing to kill the last Saurus Knight who was locking the Monks in combat.. The verminlord also put Mystic Shield on the Plague Priest, who had triggered his Plague Tome on the Engine of the Gods before making a dash for the safety of the ruins (and the glory of the objective). The forty man unit in the centre, swept around to launch an assault upon the cursed Engine, while the Verminlord and his accompanying Censer Bearers made a line for Kroak. The twenty monks at the back made the noble (and fanatically insane) choice to screen my army from the eighty Skinks. Retribution was brutal upon the Blowpipe Skinks, my surviving catapult unleashed a shower of corrosive spew that killed twelve and forced another seven to flee! Excellent. 

When combat rolled around, the odds were stacked against the Engine, and it simply couldn't withstand the onslaught of rats. It fell, and the objective was mine! The Verminlord cursed as Kroak managed to wound the Corruptor (and as a flow-on effect, kill two Censer Bearers... seriously, Verminous Valor is amazing!), suffer seven wounds, then refuse to crumble, heal and teleport away!

On the other side of the board, the second Carnosaur was overrun and slain by the bloodthirsty rats of the other massive regiment. The Furnace had manged to sneak close enough to the objective to claim it the moment the Scar-Veteran drew his last breath. 

Cowering behind his swarms of Skinks, Kroak tried his hardest to kill the Priest, but spells either failed or were out of range. He did manage to cast mystic shield upon himself, but that was little solace for the wasted damage potential. The Skinks had even less luck, failing to wound anything with their shooting. Things were beginning to look bleak for the Seraphon. 

In the dying moments of the game, My Arch-Warlock and remaining Plagueclaw unleashed an avalanche of damage upon Kroak, inflicting another seven wounds in hopes of claiming the huge chunk of victory points that would result in his death. Against all odds, he survived AGAIN, and healed back all of his wounds. My dastardly schemes were foiled. With the clock out of time, our last turn was very much just rolling out the crucial parts of the game, but in the end, I managed to win 12-4, securing a major victory, and losing less than four hundred victory points. 

I had complete control of the left hand side of the board, and managed to keep my Furnace alive (just) on only two wounds after all of the magic and Engine mayhem caused earlier in the game. 

I think my opponent had the tools to beat me. We talked briefly after the game about his list, and I think the verdict was that he was going to drop the Knights, and use the points to flesh out the Saurus and invest in a Balewind. It just makes Kroak so much scarier. As it was, I only ever really needed to worry about being in range of one or two spells, and it allowed me to ignore his damage output for the most part, which is not something you want said about a 450 point model. 

My opponent lost sight of the objective a few times, not in regards to his army, but in regards to mine. Other than the Verminlord, my heroes do not hold up well to damage, and several times, he targeted units of monks with spells and abilities that dish out mortal wounds. If he'd blasted my characters off and clawed a big enough lead, there would have been nothing for me to do but watch. But these things come with experience, and considering how long he's been playing, I think he's definitely going to be a player to watch in the future. 

This left me on a major win with a large amount of victory points, pushing me into the top bracket of players, ready to face down whatever horrific list awaited me in round two...

Thanks for reading,

Gabe

#116 Tinyhammer Event Overview Part 1

Typically, when I go to a tournament, I'll break it down into three (or four or five, depending on the tournament) Battle Reports and then do a wrap up post to finish off the series, but for Tinyhammer (a 1000 point tournament at one of the local Warhammer stores), I've opted instead to publish two posts to recap the event, one covering the pre-event lead up, as well as a post covering the event itself . This is for several reasons, but I'll let you read on.

As with any tournament, I had to decide what force I would be taking with me. For me, this decision is largely influenced by the Player Pack, as some of the armies in my collection perform much better in certain environments than others do. In this particular case, the Player Pack stated that your army would be given a painting score out of twenty and that score would be multiplied by the number of games. This is obviously a huge deal, as over a four game tournament, four major wins with all secondary event-specific objectives, would bag me 80 tournament points. Painting scores offered up to an additional 80 tournament points for the day! So, I knew if I wanted to drag any kind of success out of the bag, I had to take a fully painted and based army.

This rounded down my options to Clan Pestilens and Khorne Bloodbound, being the two fully painted armies that I was completely comfortable with, and had an abundance of options to play around with. I toyed with running either a mini-Murderhost, or even a combo Letter Bomb, which consisted of a Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster, a Stoker, and as many Letters as I could fit, but alas... All of my Bloodletters were on 25mm bases, where they're meant to be on 32mm's. Usually, people are willing to give a little lee-way, even at a tournament (if its not too bonkers), but Bloodletters on 25mm's have a significant advantage over 32mm bases, as their 1" weapons can reach through a rank, allowing for tons more potentially devastating attacks to be pushed through. As I knew that it would (at the very least) be frowned upon, and as I didn't have it in me to rebase sixty Bloodletters, I opted away from that option.

I also had some ideas for utilising the Bloodbound side of Blades of Khorne. I toyed with a Reaver horde, a Juggernaught-heavy cavalry list; the idea even crossed my mind to use a unit of six Khorgoraths! But, after sitting and pondering each list, I managed to get inside my own head and convince myself they wouldn't perform well in the meta. Would they have? Who knows...

Then my attention turned to my pet project of last year, the countless swarms of crazy religious zealot rats that make up Clan Pestilens. This fit into my New Year's Resolutions perfectly. Take Pestilens, put up a decent performance, and perhaps get into the upper end of the roster to get some of those tasty ranking points that everyone currently so desires. So I went to work to find out what I could fit into 1000 points. As it turns out, with horde armies, you can fit a metric ton of bodies on the table.

The first decision I had to make was whether I wanted a Corruptor or a Plague Furnace as my general, and I gotta say, it was an easy decision. In 1000 points, a Plague Furnace with the Liber Bubonica is something to be feared. It hands out buffs with impunity, and is no slouch in combat, with its noxious aura and foggy, furious wrecking ball of the flu! I backed up the Furnace with two Priests, knowing full well that I needed to knuckle down and get as many prayers off each turn as I could. With Heroes sorted, this left me to fill Battleline... and fill it I did!

Two units of forty and a unit of twenty Plague Monks took my model count over a hundred, and sat within the points limit allowed! I veered away from Plagueclaws, as I think one is unreliable, and two is by far too large a portion of my army. I know what Monks can do, and I know that on a 4'x4' table, a hundred bodies is gonna take some work to get through!

So, there it was. I'd settled on a list that I already had fully painted, that I was comfortable with, and that could play the scenario in most situations pretty convincingly. I then sent it out to a few people for feedback, and there in lay my unravelling. Most people were horrified by the idea of facing the list. Sure, monks die to a particularly stern glance, but most armies just didn't have the damage output to thin the horde before it hit. Most armies.

It quickly became apparent that Disciples of Tzeentch would be at the tournament in force, and I knew full well that if a Gaunt Summoner got on a Balewind (but, who puts a GS on a Balewind... right, guys? Right?), he would burn through my hordes and have my army for lunch. With that notion alone, I started scrambling. Instead of doing what a logical person would do, and tweak the list to mitigate the possibility of a bad match up, I was like a deer in the headlights of the idea of "the worst matchup". I can say this now, but I feel I should have dropped the small unit of Monks out and swapped an allied Skaven unit in. Jezzails or an Arch-Warlock might not solve all my problems, but they would have given me that ever-so-valuable long-range damage output that would have given the rest of my army some covering fire. But did I think logically? Absolutely not.

I spent several hours studying warscrolls and engineering combos, trying to find that perfect list. And I looked at every possible option. I thought about taking Chaos Dwarves, but alas, Forgeworld was not permitted at the event. I thought about taking Stormcast, but they just didn't inspire me at the time. I even considered ppurchasing and painting a Kharadron Overlord mini-Clown-Car, piling as many Balloon Bros as I could onto a Barak-Zilfin Frigate. This was the mindset I was in; just all over the place. Then a mate of mine sent me a list that caught my eye.

Lord Kroak
Skink Starpriest
10 Skinks
10 Skinks
2 Razordons
3 Salamanders
150 points in reinforcements.

Basically, the whole list was built around Lord Kroak teleporting into the centre of the board, jumping up on a Balewind and then going apocalyptic with his magical arsenal. And while he and his Balewind weigh in at a horrifying 550 points, it was hard to deny his sheer destructive capabilities and tenacity with his bizarre wound mechanic. With Mystic Shield and Starlight (from the priest), he sits pretty at a 2+ save atop the balewind, with -1 to Hit. Many armies simply don't have the tools to deal with him at 1000 points. The other advantage is that he can Unbind spells board-wide. This means that he can sit outside of 18" of enemy wizards, completely dampen their magic phase and then cast at his leisure, uncontested.

The skinks were in there, because not only are they fantastically cheap and infuriating to pin down in combat, but they are FAST!

Razordons offered some consistent shooting to trim down larger units, or blitz a character who might find himself unguarded. They also have a natural 4+, so with some buffs, they can pose a real roadblock!

This leaves the Salamanders. Typically, I would use my turn one Seraphon Teleport on Kroak, but turn two, I'd slingshot these guys at the biggest, scariest unit I can see, and try and Fireball them to death. And this is where the cheeky 50 points of summoning comes into it. When a Seraphon unit teleports, they must be 9" away, and can't move unless the dice comes up as a 6. With their shooting attack only being 8" range, this obviously poses a slight... reliability problem. That's where Skink Handlers shine. They are 40 points for 3, can be summoned on a 4+ (also 9" away from enemies, but Salamanders within 3" extend the range of their shooting attack to 12". This means that, if I roll a 6 for their teleport, they can safely move into range in the movement phase, but if they don't, I can use one of Kroak's four casting attempts to summon some cheeky handlers and burninate the countryside!

While all that sounds scary on paper, the real sting of the list comes from Kroak's command ablilty, which allows him to generate an "Insight" for every 4+ rolled on 3 dice. These Insights can then be used to re-roll any dice until my next hero phase (with the exception of the Priority Roll, as per Rule of One). Any dice. A casting attempt, a botched teleport roll, a damage roll for a spell or shooting attack... Powerful, right? But then I thought... Any Dice? My opponent's dice? Enemy charges, successful casting attempts, reserve rolls for Stormcast. Destiny Dice? DESTINY DICE!

After much studying, debate and deliberation, we came to the understanding (and if you can disprove this, please do so, because it seems pretty amazing), that when a Destiny Dice is used in one of its many ways, I can force my opponent to re-roll that dice. Substitute in a 6 to push through a spell? Sub in a 1 on a Battleshock test for your Pink Horrors? Nah, how about a re-roll!

It completely changes the dynamic of your opponent's turn because they know that the 'moment' they need to happen can be affected by something other than pure probability. Success is a further reach. If I possibly could, I would keep an Insight in the bag for my opponent's turn, sometimes even forgoing an opportunity in my own turn, just to keep that psychological edge, and to have a very large spanner to throw in the works if needed.

Now, it's not all rainbows and lolliipops. This list has two blinding weaknesses. Model count and hordes. With my whole army being solely dependant on a single model, this fell very heavily into the "All Eggs in One Basket" area; something I usually avoid like the Plague (unless I'm playing... wait for it... Pestilens! That was a bad one, I'm sorry). This means that if I either lose him, or he is ignored, the rest of my army is going to eat dirt in a heartbeat. The other issue that I had was the apparent inability to handle massive regiments. Kroak excels at nuking elite, MSU-style armies (Stormcast and Tzeentch spring to mind), but throw 40 Skeletons at him, and there's not a lot he's going to do. Scenarios and match ups would make or break this tournament for me.

With the list settled upon, I made short work of painting it, managing to crank out the entire army in under a week. This was an incredibly important element, as Paint Scores played such a large part of the player pack. I knew if I wanted to do well, I'd need to crank out a cohesive.  And I even managed to fit in two practice games in, both against Disciples of Tzeentch. The first was right down to the wire, and I managed to win Duality of Death 1-0. The second, was quite the opposite, as I rolled the hottest dice of my life, and managed to nuke my opponent off the table in two turns.

These two games gave me the confidence that this list had legs, and might actually get me over the line. Two games against great match ups? What could go wrong!

Check back in on Sunday for my overview of the tournament itself!

What's your go-to 1000 point list?

Thanks for reading,
Gabe