In Game 2, I found myself playing an absolute gentleman by the name of Chris. He was running a beautiful Beasts of Chaos army that, if you can believe it, had an even higher deployment drop count than my army! What a treat to be able to choose first turn.
Here's what I was facing.
There were a lot of bodies and a lot of drops in this list!
The scenario for round two was the new Scorched Earth with the eight objectives, and playing longways down the table. This was a big advantage to me, as Chris didn't have the usual board space to stretch his army's legs and really utilise all the mobility the Beasts possess.
That said, there was a lot of board space behind my front line for some cheeky goat-men to ambush on and start burning objectives!
I was going to finish deploying first no matter what, and so I formulated a game plan that would hopefully be able to handle whatever was thrown at it. Making full use of the sizeable footprints from the Warhounds, I managed to zone out my back table edges, leaving no areas for a whole Beast unit to fit while remaining more than 9" away.
My frontline would split into two. The K'Daai and Epitome would aim to push down the left side of the tower and claim an objective or two, while the three Taur'ruks and Skullcracker would try and chew through enough bodies on the right side to gain the numerical advantage and burn objectives. The Fireglaives were going to be a bit of a second wave if needed, and denial units on my own objectives to prevent any sneaky Beast shenanigans.
I gave Chris the first turn, knowing that the handful of units he'd put in Ambush would have to come on, and didn't have any windows on my half of the board to come in. There was some shuffling and some boulder-throwing by the Cygors, but I managed to come out of it relatively unscathed.
With several targets moving closer, I wasted no time in launching what I hoped would be a devastating assault. The K'Daai rolled high on their run roll, and went for the big charge on the Cygor... And failed a 6" charge. No fear, I had a Command Point in the bank for a re-roll. Nope, failed the second attempt too. Good start, Fireborn!
The Taur'ruks and Skullcracker had cleared some Ungor in my first turn, but Chris had won priority, and with his Bestigor coming in behind his front lines, they were itching to fight. Thanks to a few handy buffs, the Bestigor launched at the War Engine and hacked it to pieces in a combat that surprised both of us. And it's not like the Skullcracker was taken out early. He actually hit first and rolled three 1's and a 2 for his 4D6 attacks.
The Cygor, however, was not so lucky. Having dragged two of the murder-cows into combat, he may have bitten off a little more than he could chew, and was clobbered to death in a single combat phase!
Finally, my K'Daai were able to get into combat, and they tagged as many units as humanly possible. With fairly low saves across the board, Beasts of Chaos infantry units are a K'Daai's dream opponent, and while I dedicated a ton of attacks to the Cygor to make sure it went down, I was able to dish out plenty of damage on all the infantry units surrounding me. The Riflemen helped out, but the Fireborn were ready to prove their worth!
With the demise of my Skullcracker on the other side of the board, the Taur'ruk goon squad went their seperate ways, confident that they could hold their own in search of individual glory! Two moved around the right hand objective to clear the Bestigor and Ungor respectively, which they did with relative ease, while the third barrelled straight toward the Herdstone, trying to get his meaty hands on the Shaman, who was knee deep in sacrificed Ungor.
Chris wasted no time in sending all available troops into the fray, while tactically retreating with his Shamans to maintain the magic support. The K'Daai were quite happy to sit tight and brawl, and slowly tipped the war of attrition in their favour.
Now, I was very aware of just how many Primordial Call points Chris had racked up by this point in the game, and so had been making sure that my Warhounds and Fireglaives had my back and side board edges locked down. I was fully expecting mass bodies to appear on a flank and start stacking objectives, but what I was not expecting was a Chimera to burst onto Chris' back board edge, make an 11" charge and mash my General into the ground like a particularly crunchy-looking leaf. Even the Armour of Bazerak was not enough to save him against the full might of a Chimera! Coincidentally, this also gave Chris his secondary objective for killing my general!
The carnage didn't stop there, however, because as soon as he was finished with my general, he double turned and avenged the Dragon Ogors who had been unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of the Taur'ruk's axe. Thankfully I'd managed to burn the objective before the Chimera joined the party, so it all fell under acceptable losses.
Having slayed their way through everything that was thrown at them, the K'Daai had successfully burned both enemy objectives on the left side of the board, and had a single task before them. Kill the only surviving Shaman to claim my secondary objectives (Kill all Leader models). However, I'm pretty sure Chris had worked out what I was up to, and the Shaman made a mad dash for the back right corner of the board, behind the intimidating shadow of the still-unwounded and still-very-angry Chimera. As it stood, I just ran out of time to get over there and punch him. All of my ranged units were out of range, and my combat units were either dead, too far away or being actively chomped in half by a wild monster!
In the end, I claimed a Major Victory, but missed out on the secondary. I was able to contain the conflict to my opponent's half of the board and fight a war of attrition that Beasts do not enjoy.
Chris was an absolute delight to play, and his army was beautiful! It was using a lot of the old classic Beastmen models like the metal Dragon Ogors from yesteryear, and the paint job was immaculate!
Chris easily won my vote for Best Sport/Opponent, and ended up taking out that prize at the end of the event, so his other opponents clearly felt the same way!
This win left me on 1-1, so I felt like I was back in the mix going into the last game of Day 1, which ended up being my first game against the new Death kids on the block; the Legion of Grief!
Check back in soon for that battle!
Thanks for reading,
Gabe
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