The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#871 Post by Bolt Thrower »

dabber wrote:By himself, a skink priest is not Stubborn. You kill the steg, he needs insane courage or maybe a 3 to stick. The Stegadon is Stubborn and holds better than half the time.
Ah, yes. Good call. A definite plus, and with very little risk absolutely worth it. Thanks for pointing that out!
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#872 Post by Seredain »

Hey all,

A whole lot of good commentary just went down! I think I've dealt with the substantive issues but, if I've missed anything, I'll spot it and come back to it later. I'm glad you enjoyed the report, in any event. I'll admit that I'm having a serious amount of fun with the new set-up. Who'd choose a second repeater bolt thrower over the Banner of Sorcery, and High Magic over a rulebook lore? I think it might have some legs, so more games are on the way.

Now then, down to business...


Battle Review - High Elves v Lizardmen
SpellArcher wrote:On High Magic, it does make some sense if you have just the one caster. In that it has a defensive buff, a good missile, a unit-hurting spell and a shooting buff, plus the fun stuff. In some ways my list is like a less efficient version of yours Seredain and while I've been tempted to try other Lores, I still think it's the best single option for this style of list.
Enjoying the High

It's only my first game with High Magic, so I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I was so so pleased with the way it worked. Even when I had low rolls for power dice, I was still getting 3 casts made a turn - and these casts are so effective for their points, given my unit choices. Unlike my recent experience, where Life has toughened up the swordmasters and threatened Dwellers on wherever the enemy general was, I felt much more able to inflict damage during the early turns where it was needed. Dwellers is a powerful spell, no doubt, but its character-sniping ability encourages you to pick targets containing characters, not the targets that might actually be the most useful to lay damage on. With High, since it's got Vaul's, you can keep that pressure on the enemy characters and lay down an awesome amount of fire power, for very little, with some combination of Flames Fury and, of course, Arrow Attraction. I think you'll agree, the repeaters have made a welcome return. :) Just wait until they bag their first Bloodthirster...
SpellArcher wrote:When you dropped the White Lions back 2 1/2, were you aware that you could have moved 3? Specific example given in the rulebook of this, so obviously you round up in 8th edition. I speak as a 6th edition Wood Elf player whose archers spent much of their time moving backwards!
Actually I was! But a recent opponent told me I was wrong and, since I didn't want to bother checking the book again while playing Mal, I just took the 2.5. Thanks for clarifying, though - I'll remember in future. On reflection, that's quite an advantage to the elves, isn't it, having a whole extra inch of backward movement? Useful for units in the lions' position, for sure. I was actually quite looking forward to combat with them, though. I'd planned to slide them east for the next turn, get another round of shooting into the saurus and then, if they charged the lions, flank them with the 18 archers on Turn 6. Ah, well.
wamphyri101 wrote:Hi Bud,

I like your list. Its different to most things you see nowadays. Only Thing I would like to add is I would personally try and squeeze in 2 lion chariots. They can really pack a punch and could add to your list. Only thing you could really drop would be the sword masters or white lions though due to points.
Thanks Wamp. I should say, two lion chariots is not the sort of thing you can just squeeze in - it's 280 points! I've spent plenty of points in fast attack and honestly I feel that another great dollop of it would make the list just a little too brittle. Curu found something similar back when he was running a dual-cavalry hammer: having the big charge is great, but if you haven't got some ranks or some decent close combat attacks for Round 2, you'll bounce off a few too many armies out there. Infantry are great in the attack but also keep hitting, can take more hits and can stand just as well in defense as they can offense. For me, a truly all-comers list needs them.

Mind you, the helm bus, plus two lion chariots, plus the spear column is probably one of the baddest combo-charges out there. If you can pull it off and keep it rolling (ie avoid stubborn/unbreakable units), it'll chomp a whooole lot of stuff. Just take it philosophically when cannons blow your chariots apart!
Swordmaster of Hoeth wrote:Hi Seredain!

That was a much more difficult match up for Mallas. With more shooting (and spell augment) he had to close the distance fast only to meet your elites and cavalry. I think it was his mistake to deploy on the flank. Both armies moved on a spiral but your cavalry was much faster and while he didn't clear any units while doing so, you killed Stegadon and his skirmishers.
Nicely summarised Swordmaster.

Ultimately, both armies here were trying to do the same thing- refused flank- but mine was much better designed for it. Even before combats hit, I'm dominating the midfield with my shooting, gaining me the advantage for the big combats but also, as you saw, forcing the lizardman skirmishers to throw themselves away for fear of just being shot to death. We elves don't like skinks, but very few of my units had to worry about them here because I was just wiping them off the field with arrows. In the end, only one unit got within (long) range of one of my repeaters before it was killed by the eagle (hiding behind the archers so gaining protection from the stand-and-shoot). That they chose to shoot the lions was a blessing, though they'd only be hitting the bolter on 6's with single shots and, to memory, about four of them weren't even in range- not good odds.

In summary, repeaters are only vulnerable where you leave them so. Get to work clearing the skinks with arrows, use eagles leaping from cover behind friendly units, and you can protect the machines very well from these skirmishers and use them to shoot at harder targets.
Swordmaster of Hoeth wrote: Just two things about the game:

1. Artillery dice has no "9" on it, so it must have been 8 or 10 :) But the main thing is that salamander shot over the heads of Lions :)
Haha, roger that! I was still thinking of the range on the engines blast when I typed that. Edited...
Swordmaster of Hoeth wrote: 2. Why did you accept challenge from the skink shaman with the Prince? BSB could do the same job while the Prince could hack the Stegadon.
This has been dealt with fully below but it's an important point to highlight for anyone facing a ridden monster (even one with other crew on it): where the character challenges, the monster also fights in the challenge and the crew do nothing. So, ideally, you want your best character fighting this thing.

What I did not know was that a monster stayed in a challenge even after the rider is dead. That is a tasty piece of knowledge...
dabber wrote:
GhostWarrior wrote:Was the Stegadon still in the challenge after the Priest died? This is an 8th Ed change, the monster stays in the challenge even if the riding character dies, until the monster (or opponent) dies/breaks/etc.
Wow, I had not noticed that one, but you are correct. Page 103, for everyone else. So the Dragon Prince charge could not hurt the Stegadon, and Seredain probably should have been allocating on the Stegadon exclusively, and popping the Talisman of Loec to ensure it died before the Engine could explode again.
Now THAT is worth knowing. Dang! Thanks GhostWarrior - never ever think that I don't want to know the rules inside out. Look back through the reports and you'll see that I usually make at least 1 rules mistake per game. Seriously, I need them pointing out! To be honest, you miss things in the book and only stumble upon proper memory when you attach it to an event like this: mental note - steg stays in challenge.

The Tactics of challenging an Ancient Stegadon

Lovely game sense here, Dabber. And I think it's a good shout. Seredain was easily capable of taking the steg out in two rounds before it got a chance to blast the engine again and, on balance, I think this would have been the best use of my time. One other consideration, though, is the cube of darkness the skink was carrying. At the time of the challenge, I wouldn't have known what my next magic phase was going to be like, so there would have been a decision to make as to whether or not I wanted the Cube to be still alive when my phase came about. On balance, I would probably have taken that risk – my magic phase is cheap as chips – but heavier, more expensive magic phases than mine might think again about taking on the steg first – as I might if I felt my next magic phase was likely to be crucial. One reason, I suppose, for committing the dragon princes to the fight even where Seredain was locked in a challenge, would be to pursue the skink when he ran. That way the helms could still reform and be threatening the field with a charge should the cohort get frisky and move out (again, though, this scenario was probably better suited to the helms pursuit, freeing up my dragon princes to charge the salamander a turn earlier.

Anyway – a good rule spot by you Ghost and good nous from you Dabber. Based on your thinking, a good rule of thumb for taking out ancients even when they're near Life slanns, is to receive, rather than make, a charge. That way you have two rounds to kill him before the engine goes off and wounds go on the stegadon. Taking a charge as a tactic with knights? Who'da thunk it.

Ultimately, I wanted the engine dead much more than I wanted the steg dead and, since there was nothing else blocking my knights apart from the stegadon, I'd figure I had the time to cut it up. I'd look at it like this: would I rather the extra turn of movement, or an extra handful of unburned silver helms? In principle, unless time is urgent, I'd go with the latter. Finally, apart from anything else, killing the skink did weaken the lizard magic phase and bag me a cube of darkness, so it was probably a good move even in the event of a properly run challenge.
GhostWarrior wrote:Love how much damage you did to the Cohort with shooting, though I'm surprised none of the Krox had died to shooting up to that point - were you randomizing?
No! That was my fault I think. We'd had quite a few vodkas but I think I remember Mal saying "do we randomise hits?" and me saying "nah..". Oops. Good to know there's some way to put hurt on those kroxigor, though. Something (else) to remember.
GhostWarrior wrote:@Mallas:

Deploying the Ancient Steg on the flank was a bold and risky manuevre, but I think you might have been able to make it work if: You'd charged the Dragon Princes - Would you say that the distance was about eqaul here (the picture of deployment showed them as closer, but I can't say it stayed that way)?
I described my Turn 1 cavalry moves, but a photo would have made it clearer. The dragon princes did not advance at all Turn 1, but only shuffled left (east) toward the board edge to choke off the advancing salamander and have a counter-charge against the steg if it attacked. The silver helms then marched about 13 or 14" through the gap and stood out well ahead of the princes. At the beginning of Turn 2, then, the stegadon (close to the helms), could not avoid the silver helms but was not at all within comfortable charge range of the princes. When the Engine went off Turn 2, it was a 9” roll and only just caught the princes, so a charge against them wasn't really feasible. And rightly so! No commander should leave 5 dragon princes within reach of an ancient steg. That's just asking for trouble!
Brewmaster_D wrote:Another great game, Seredain!
Cheers D!

I'll deal with your points in turn, if I may.
Brewmaster_D wrote: Deployment is a huge advantage that High Elves have over most other armies, with a well designed list being able to retain the committal drops much longer than most. Recently I've been trying to put myself in the shoes of the opponent and run through in my head how I would go about mitigating this advantage. My thoughts are that to truly compete with the High Elf deployment advantages, the opponent must be proactive instead of reactive. For example, the Saurus block drop was reactive - he had deployed the rest of his force waiting for you to drop something that would tip him off regarding your strategy. The problem is that this plays into the advantage of the High Elves; we can usually wait longer than the opponent. I think to effectively deploy against a list like yours, Seredain, your opponent must conceptualize a deployment in their head that makes a cavalry approach difficult (I'd use the board edge to cover one flank, for example) and stick to that, as opposed to reacting to your drops. What are your thoughts on this? What do you feel is the most effective method for an opponent to deploy vs. your list?
How should these Lizardmen deploy against the Cavalry Prince List?

This is a very good question but also a very difficult one to answer since it totally depends on the opposing army list and the scenario. If you were a dwarven gunline fighting battleline, you'd obviously just want to sit in a corner and fire away, forcing me to bust through your units front-on. I can do this, mind - I can close ground quickly and the army is good in combat - but it is far from ideal since, in general, I can combine many more attacks into one enemy unit when I'm in its flank. So a decent principle against my army would be guard your flanks!

In this instance, though, I'm not sure the 'hug board edge' idea is a good one. The problem that lizards have right off the bat against High Elves, after deployment, is that their range is really short. If the High Elf list has decent magic and shooting, it can be eroding the lizards away from Turn 1 and, until they get close, there's not much they can do about it. This creates a problem for any army trying to stand defensively (and where, crucially, Dwellers isn't in range of anything decent) since, if they stand their combat units back but send forth their skinks, the skinks are just going to get magicked to Hell, shot to death and run down by eagles and horses. I think, for the lizards, the best bet is to bring the slann within Dwellers range of my general, force me to get stuck in and build a good defence against that attack. In so doing, though, you want to get your big units in combat pretty quickly because, once my shooting phase is done with the skinks, it really hurts the combat units, as you saw.

Thinking about the above then, you don't really want to hug a board edge, since I can just do exactly what I did here to the saurus warriors but more so: my missile base can stand safely far away and my knights can close the open ground quickly. If you (the lizard) stand too defensively, I'm happy to shoot and magic you, so I think you'd need to be a little more proactive. Apart from anything else, the Life slann only has Dwellers for long-range action, and that only has a range of 24”, so deploying him on a board edge, where I can keep out of his range for half the game, isn't a great idea. Of course, advance too rashly and my knights have your flank. If in doubt, I'd say go semi-central with the slann, stand the steadfast blocks before and either side of him (the knights have to get in somehow); and rush my machines with all the skinks and hope they don't get shot and/or charged by eagles (they're rubbish at holding up the cavalry). Honestly, though, it's a toughy! I think my army's quite well suited to fighting lizards.

On the specific matter of the ancient steg; Dabber's suggestion to keep it near the slann is a very good one. The anti-shooting bubble helps the army, and the slann's spells heal the steg. That's what I really don't want - getting stuck in a never-ending combat against T10 regenerating stegadons!
Brewmaster_D wrote: - I'm not sure how your local gaming community has ruled on the 7th edition spells being cast into combat, but opening that floodgate sets the stage for all sorts of ridiculous nonsense. Unless it has been resolved already, I think I'd avoid setting that precedent due to us standing to lose more than we gain. Things like the Dreaded 13th into combat makes me sick to my stomach lol.
Rules for 7th Edtion spells - my local metagame

I'm with you here but, unfortunately, the decision has already been made for me in my local group. The rule followed is that, "if it doesn't say you can't, you can", so 7thEd army book spells are all treated this way. There's nothing I can do about gateways in combat, for example, or (and this is really sick), a double-shrine Tzeentch chosen unit toting the Eye of the Gods manipulation item and the Terror banner. In this instance, the controlling player (who's actually a really cool guy and excellent player, by the way, though you might hate him for this!), deliberately chooses Eye gifts he already has (using the item), so that he can keep rolling on the Eye table until he gets what he wants (the +1 attack, +1 toughness or ward save). I've literally stood there for 5 minutes and watched him roll these dice. He knows it sucks, but apparently there's no rule against it so he's free to take advantage.

So, in these conditions, I'm casting my Flames into close combat. Thankfully, no regular skaven players in this group, so that's something. And I'm never looking to get anything bar the prince (or the robed archmage) into combat with the chosen (I've played them once so far and they never saw combat), so their beefcake bonuses I can live with.
Brewmaster_D wrote:I'm also surprised those repeaters lasted as long as they did with the amount of poisoned shots he had available. I'm guessing he underestimated the effectiveness of your shooting phase when paired with Curse of Arrow Attraction.
Repeater Bolt Throwers and Skink Skirmishers

I've covered this above but it's worth repeating (wayhay): remember, repeaters don't die automatically just because there are skinks on the board! They have to be moved against and shot at. For three skink units, marching through a load of arrow fire while simultaneously trying to hold of a cavalry attack doesn't leave much room for surviving in enough numbers to attack and kill centrally-deployed repeater bolt throwers. Having the eagle sat behind the archers to charge off the unit that did make it close (but not close enough to get even 10 long range shots off at the machine- hence it targeted the lions), sealed the deal. In short, I had multiple threats, and my repeaters were deployed back, were well protected and weren't easy to take out.
Brewmaster_D wrote:All in all, another great match-up. I know all too well how fickle the magic phase can be, and this game really showed that a good general should be able to adapt and play on despite some critical outlying rolls.
Thanks D. A possible problem with the slann, I wonder, is that which maybe some High Elf players suffer when they go for big magic phases: Dwellers brain! (also known as Mindrazor mind). I got it in that last lizard game didn't I? Too tempting just too try and win by waiting for that one chance to Dwellers the enemy general to death, forgetting that you've got a whole army of troops who need support from their mages. High Magic does that well, there's no doubt.

As you say, though, it's worth remembering that magic is fickle and to try and play as if you won't ever get a big phase. That way it doesn't bite you in the ass as much when things go wrong. God bless my scroll, though. I really didn't want to be testing my characters to death on Turn 4!
dabber wrote:Definitely a game won in deployment. He did not even put his combat units on the 12" line, costing them a few inches of movement. I hugely disagree with putting the Engine out on the flank like that. It cannot guard a flank by itself, and its value goes down greatly when away from the Slann.
Fielding the Ancient Stegadon against the Cavalry Prince

I agree in principle that engines should stay close to slanns- lifebloom is just so powerful for them. However, as you've shown, a steg charging the helms is going to be killed by the Str 7 loec'd prince in two rounds, before the slann has a chance to put any wounds back on it. And, since the engine itself will die in one round in any case (if I have to charge the engine, I'll kill the priest first), you really should be charging knights with the stegadon rather than the other way around, as it's the best way to smash them up and cause some casualties with that Str 6. Best plan then is to follow up with some infantry and try and grind the cavalry down.

Of course, ideally the steg could avoid combat and just engine away. The problem there is that the knights are much faster than the engine, while the range of Burning Alignment is pretty modest. So, as long as I manoeuvre the cavalry properly, it's very difficult to blast the knights and not be charged by them - making a charge by the stegadon itself very tempting. Ultimately, there's no getting around that a Giant Blade Loec prince is a very tasty solution to ancient stegadons and, since the prince will be aiming to carve his way to the Slann, the beast will often have to stand in the way and probably get killed. Otherwise, best thing to do with it is to keep it out of combat, wait for the knights to hit something steadfast and then start blasting the engine away. Deploying it by itself, against my list particularly, gets it killed.
dabber wrote:Could the Terradon not drop rocks on something before dying? With a total of 32" of movement, they should be able to reach something, and probably reach the Swordmasters.
Why do Terradons never drop rocks on me?

Unfortunately for the lizards, they were unable. In this game, as always, I deployed back with my infantry so that, even after vanguard moves, the terradons had nowhere to land at least 1" behind my infantry. Since they needed to complete this move to drop rocks, they were unable to do so without spending at least one turn moving over open ground and, as planned, this was all I needed to be able to bolt-thrower them into the ground. Bolt throwers are excellent at killing terradons. Until you get that shot off, keep in mind that the enemy has terradons and eventually you'll automatically start deploying against them just as you do scouts.
dabber wrote:Slann cannot throw 6+1=7 dice at a spell. The extra dice are defined as power dice, so the cap of 6 applies.
Now THIS is good news, and something I suspected for a long time but was told otherwise. Thank you, Dabber, I shall remember this well and breath a little more easily when I face my next Dwellers cast, scroll in hand!
dabber wrote:Can anyone point me to a detailed battle report where a small sized Temple Guard unit is useful? I have read several where under 15 TG are pretty much useless, and that fits my own paper thinking (my Lizardmen don't run TG).
Honestly? No idea. The point of the unit is to act as a few extra wounds and a leadership bunker (Std of Discipline gives the BSB Slann Leadership 10 - mighty indeed in a cold-blooded army). It isn't ever meant to see combat and the idea, really is to sit it in the middle of the steadfast infantry blocks. It doesn't do anything by itself.
Curu Olannon wrote:Good game sir!

Deploying refused flank with M4 infantry against an army which has vastly better shooting makes no sense to me whatsoever. Additionally, sacrificing the Stegadon so early helped to really seal the deal.
Thanks Curu!

Mallas' Deployment - the differences between the last battle and this one

What you say is true, but I have some sympathy for Mallas, here. Last time he played me, he formed a shield wall which I bashed my head against (albeit due to a 7-dice Flesh to Stone) and nearly lost to. I wasn't surprised to see a similar formation turn up for this battle but I think, for his part, he'd underestimated (as many of us would- how many of us take repeater bolt throwers?) the impact that only a very few changes can make to the way my army plays. One repeater, High Magic, and the archers switched from two units of 14 to one of 10 + one of 18. Small, small differences in the list, and yet a massive difference on the table top. The field was also a lot more open this battle than our last one so, unlike before, it was far less obvious which way my knights were going to run and, ultimately, this allowed me to avoid his big anvil of saurus. Being able to put all that hurt on with the shooting and force the lizards to march forward left the army a bit schizophrenic: they wanted to march forward and get into combat to avoid being shot, but they didn't want to advance for fear of letting my knights into a flank.

I think the big mistake was not the stegadon's placement (though it was not ideal), because the damage had already been done in deployment by this point and it was placed there to try and plug a massive gap that had been left open for me. The big mistake, for me, was not deploying relatively centrally with the slann. For the first two turns, he was too far away to influence the game at all and, perhaps more importantly, his position in the east meant that one of Mallas' big units had to be deployed there or else just allow my knights to deploy east themselves and run straight at him. Really, it was the slann that dragged the whole deployment that way for fear of losing him.


Anyway, great comments everybody - a really useful discussion all round. =D>

Ulthuan's a pretty good forum, eh?
Last edited by Seredain on Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:38 am, edited 2 times in total.
The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=33584
SpellArcher
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#873 Post by SpellArcher »

I think the reason you were able to deal with the skinks cleanly Seredain, was that there were not vast numbers of them. My last game against Lizards featured about 90 of these, though I was still able to field them reasonably well. I lost the battle elsewhere. As you say, careful deplyoment of RBT let me preserve these for several turns but in the long run they were going down to all those blowpipes. The key is to make them count while you can.

I guess the classic formation for an offensive infantry army is the hollow wedge but difficult to pull off here maybe.
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#874 Post by Bolt Thrower »

I also want to say that this particular battle report really started to make eagle usage click in my brain. I've always known they were useful, but somehow felt my use of them wasn't "textbook" so to speak and so I was shorting myself. This report shows great in-game examples of using eagles to support, delay, etc. Again, another golden nugget from this thread! =D>
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#875 Post by Curu Olannon »

SpellArcher wrote:I think the reason you were able to deal with the skinks cleanly Seredain, was that there were not vast numbers of them. My last game against Lizards featured about 90 of these, though I was still able to field them reasonably well. I lost the battle elsewhere. As you say, careful deplyoment of RBT let me preserve these for several turns but in the long run they were going down to all those blowpipes. The key is to make them count while you can.

I guess the classic formation for an offensive infantry army is the hollow wedge but difficult to pull off here maybe.
I agree with this - when Skinks are taken in big numbers it's as if their purpose and effectiveness increases exponentially.

Someone requested a BR where a TG bunker worked out well - I do believe that in my game against Lizardmen (in which I ran a Shadow-based cavalry prince list) they did work very well. The only reason I managed a draw was pure luck. Essentially, the TG bunker denied my cavalry the chance to really threaten his Slann. The link is here - http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic. ... 79#p717479 Perhaps Mallas finds it interesting as well ;)
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#876 Post by dabber »

Curu Olannon wrote:Someone requested a BR where a TG bunker worked out well - I do believe that in my game against Lizardmen (in which I ran a Shadow-based cavalry prince list) they did work very well.
I asked about a game with a SMALL TG unit - under 15 models, like the small unit in the last report here. The one you link was 25 Temple Guard.
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#877 Post by Gwydion »

Another wonderful report. Thank you very much. :D

Just one small reminder. You can´t cast flames in close combat. The rulebook says that all spells have some restrictions, if not described differently in the spell description (or already is one of the clear defined rule book spells):

BRB: Choose target, first two sentences

-front arc,
-needs no line of sight
- target has to be in range
- and can´t be in close combat
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#878 Post by dabber »

Gwydion wrote:Just one small reminder. You can´t cast flames in close combat.
Gwydion, you really should read other posts before posting something like that. Seredain addressed it just 5 posts up from yours.
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#879 Post by Nemo »

Seredain, I'd like to ask you a few questions on your Prince - I don't mind if you cannot answer them yet, given that some of them are in the context of using High Magic and I can imagine that you would prefer more experience with it before commenting.

Anyway, I quite like the standard build that you use - it hits like a ton of bricks and certainly adds "oomph" to the Silver Helms. But the questions I have are:

1) How important is strength 7 over strength 6? I remember you commenting that it really helps, but how often does it actually come into play in your experience? The Ogre Blade, or even the bog-standard Great Weapon are such a discount compared to the Giant Blade that it opens up many more possibilities for the Prince (whilst on the subject of Great Weapons, have you encountered many Ethereal/Forest Spirit units in your journeys? My one major reservation with the GW is that a unit of ghosts/spirits could hold up the entire Silver Helm unit, particularly as they cannot take a magical banner nor the Amulet of Light on the champion).

2) Now that you are using High Magic, how much do you rate the Talisman of Loec? It still seems like an exceedingly powerful item - it certainly overshadows the Other Trickster's Shard in terms of what it can do (and for cheaper!) but without the regenerating effects of Life magic I do wonder if it may not result in a pyrrhic victory against well-tooled opposing characters and their retinues. Whilst many of the competing Enchanted Items are far more expensive, there are some nice combinations that could be pulled (Great Weapon/Ogre Blade + Potion of Strength, for instance, for a one-round smashing of strength 9 when it is truly needed).

3) How close have you come to losing him? The other issue I see with the Giant Blade build is the lack of a decent Ward Save. The Engine of the Gods could have done some serious damage to the two characters in one of your above battle-reports, and there are a fair few devious items/spells that ignore armour (and would be quite nasty to a toughness 3 Elf). Taking either the Ogre Blade or Great Weapon leaves plenty of room for a solid Ward Save (I'm particularly thinking the Vambraces here) that, whilst the character is clearly more designed for an offensive role than defensive, seems like a relatively solid investment - I guess it comes down to just how key "permanent" strength 7 and the Talisman of Loec actually are.

I do apologise for bombarding you thus, but it is something that I have been mulling over for my own cavalry prince build, and I figure that you are pretty much the authority on that! I'm loving the thread and finding it very helpful, even if my army differs somewhat considerably to yours (no Swordmasters, the BSB is on foot, a second Spearman block and two units of Ellyrian Reavers - and perhaps soon no Repeater/Eagle either as I am experimenting with other support elements). I do find it intensely interesting that you have switched to fielding more firepower - doubtlessly it is punishing to the enemy, but I have personally found that I want to drop my lone Repeater as it tends to make me anchor my force about a certain point, when in many situations it would have been advantageous to move up my archers to support my other units with either short-ranged shooting or flanking attacks; as well as providing a clear, and important to remove, focal point for the enemy).
Galdermester
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#880 Post by Galdermester »

Hey, Im new to warhammer and just started with HE, and read ure post with great interest as I need a base to start with (I dont want to use time to invent the wheel once again).
A question come and troubled me after i went bed yesterday (thats usually the time when I start getting new ideas and thoughts).
It was about great weapon(great weapons require two hands) and shield, can they be combined. And i remember that u have it in ure lists (example: Caradath
Battle Standard Bearer - Barded Steed, Great Weapon, Heavy Armour, Shield, Dragonhelm, Dawnstone, Amulet of Light - 190)

Ive tried figure it out by reading a around on internet but its so many different conclusions.

For example, from http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=73906

Page 43: Shields - the rule says that a model's armour save is increased
by 1 if it carries a shield. There is no requirement that the shield be
"wielded", or "used", or "held in the hand". As such, people are already
arguing that a model with a shield gets the armour bonus even when using
a weapon that requires two hands.




But finally I found another conclusion on the offically errata on GW homepage:


Q: Does a model with a shield get the armour save bonus in combat if it can’t use it?
For example it is using a weapon that requires two hands? (p43)
A: No.


So whats ure thought about using it? Is it for ranged attacks (where i think they work), or is something else?
Im sorry if Im a little off topic.

Anyways, keep up the good work! :)
Last edited by Galdermester on Fri Jan 27, 2012 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Curu Olannon
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#881 Post by Curu Olannon »

@Galdermester - welcome to Ulthuan ;) Good to see more people starting up with High Elves! There are loads of great resources here for both new and experienced players alike so be sure to have a look around :)

As for your shield-specific question, I'm fairly sure it's simply for ranged protection. This allows the BSB to go on his own if you play a chaff-heavy army (e.g. Lizardmen) and still have a 1+ re-rollable (virtually making him immune to small-arms fire) save. It's a very, very cheap option so it's kind of a no-brainer although you almost never get to use its benefits :)
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

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Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

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Seredain
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#882 Post by Seredain »

Seredain goes to Town - a Tournament mini-report Special - 2400 points

Thanks for the recent queries, chaps (and to Curu for holding the fort) - I'll get some replies up soon. I'm just stopping by now, however, to update you all on my first one-day tournie. SpellArcher got me into it (and I suspect he's told you guys about it by now already), and he was there fielding his chariot prince. I believe Stormie was there too, running Throgg trolls (boo!).

The games ran so fast that I didn't have time to take a load of pictures, but I took a couple and can remember enough of the games to give you an outline of what went on...

Game 1 - Skaven

An interesting army with a mix of blocks and toys. Thanquol led - chucking out a scary amount of power dice (he got 8 warpstone tokens, I believe), with a bodyguard of storm vermin. Two blocks of 50 slaves, two blocks of 50 clanrats (one with assassin, one with engineer), a couple of engineers with scary weapons (brass orb and the rocket), abomination, two doomwheels and two units of gutter runners (coming on as reinforcements).

I had the measure of skaven in deployment. Like lots of big infantry armies he didn't have many drops, so I could deploy away from his slaves and just eat expensive stuff with my units. The 1st turn's two IF spells (dreaded 13th on spears and scorch on the lions) ruined my chances of killing Thanquol (and his BSB+ storm vermin bodyguard), but I killed everything else (except the slaves), so it went pretty well. Bolt Throwers both died but my elites weren't getting shot, at least, and I killed all the gutter runners what done it, so fair trade! Shooting made a big difference this game - 4 wounds on the Abomb from flaming missiles in one round basically crippled it before the knights ran it over at their pleasure (I do wish it couldn't flee from charges, though - and it flees 3d6, too!). Swordmasters ground through an arrow-weakened block of 50 rats with assassin with only the (wonderful) Shield of Saphery to help out. Dragon Princes charged down a doomwheel then joined my prince in comboing and destroying a warlock-clanrat block. Once I'd gotten over the shock of losing so many elves to magic on Turn 1, my units got stuck in and killed everything they hit. Two failed charges from the Silver Helms, though, saw them achieve less than they might have. Next time, Thanquol has to die. 17-3.

Image
One irresistible Dreaded 13th cast mauls my spearelves. The lions then get scorched and my right flank has to stay back.

Image
The left flank, though, sweeps all before it.

Image
End of the game - Thanquol's bodyguard and the slaves survive- everything else dies.


Game 2 - Lizards.

My opponent was a really nice chap and had a tough list made up of saurus hordes, 20 TGs and a bunch of skinks, 3 sallies and a stegadon. Interestingly, he took javelins on skinks for the parry save, guaranteed stand-and-shoot and the greater chance of hitting (no penalty for shooting over half range) - a set-up that worked well for him. The Slann was the Lore of Light dude with Cupped Hands, the Free Power Dice and Becalming Cogitation. I'll say right now that High Magic is ace against this latter ability since you're not usually throwing more than 2 dice, so you're not that likely to roll a 6 - it got me once in the whole game. Drain Magic is excellent against the power dice, since it reduces the number of spells cast and, therefore, the number of free dice. Again, despite lots of chaff drops, I left one of his saurus hordes out to dry after deployment (on my right), and rushed his left flank.

Image
Elven right flank - a lovely setup for me since my shooting has loads of targets but his combat units there have few.

Image
It'll take a lot of firepower to stop this advance...

Plan immediately thrown into jeopardy when two sallies (hiding behind a hill after deployment), burn 21 of my spears in one turn. Bloody hell! The spears now can't threaten the temple guard to pin them in place, and the swordmasters can't move up by themselves until the sallies and skinks are cleared. The swords actually fail a panic test after taking a single sallie-casualty, nearly flee off the board and leave the temple guard free to turn around and flank-charge my engaged knights, who are busy grinding away against a Crown of Command saurus block with hero. Things get hairy.

Image
Without a steadfast infantry block to threaten the middle, the knights are left isolated. Seredain gets ready for the grind!

The helms and DPs are all whittled down, but the Prince and BSB kill enough to hold with the aid of Loec and some excellent armour saves, despite a box car Light magic phase making it a very close call (thank you re-rollable Ld10!). After two more combat rounds - with Seredain shrugging off everything the temple guard can throw at him, I wipe out the last of the saurus block on Turn 6.

On my right flank, the stegadon gets carved up by flanking white lions in one round (lovely), and the other saurus horde is shot down to 20 strong before fleeing a combo charge from my lions and an eagle (front) and remaining spears (flank). The lizards try and get away but are run down by the eagle. All the skinks, bar a little cohort hiding at the back, have been shot by this point. By the end of the game, all the lizards are dead except for the Slann, TGs, one salamander and the little skink cohort with Lvl1 priest. I've lost an eagle and the knights, with the spears below 25% (which in this tournie nets you half points). 16-4.

Image
The hammer doubles as an anvil and holds on for the win.


Game 3 - Tom's Dark Elves

Image
I was in a rush, so this is the only photo of the game. I'll try and add a map for the game's Big Manoeuvre...

A powerful DE army with two hugely killy combat units (30 Corsairs w/ frenzy banner, 20 Black Guard), backed with the cauldron BSB, hydra, unkillable dreadlord, Lvl 4 dagger shadow caster (plus 20 spears), a level 1 Metal mage, 2x10 shades and 2x5 harpies.

Again, deployment favoured me and, in response to my marching out in strength on the left with my helms, the threatened corsair horde holds back in his deployment zone so the dreadlord can join. The blackguard run forwards toward my centre, however (he can't stand still against my shooting), and they leave themselves stuck out in the open. Harpies then block my helms (who come through the enemy magic phase unscathed when Drain Magic causes the Level 1 sorcerer to fail her boosted Burning Alignment).

Rather than hack their way through skirmishers for two turns, my characters spring out of the helms and head for the flank of the blackguard while my spears and swordmasters threaten their front. A beutiful move which sees the black guard surrounded and the corsairs way out of contention. Shooting take off 6 guard models to make their plight pretty terrible (the hydra was in cover), while the eagles hold back so that the frenzied corsairs (frenzy banner) can spend the next two going on a dance to the board edge while I eat the BG's and charge into the soft Dark Elf underbelly with my whole army to kill the Lvl4, the core troops and the cauldron (with white lions and DPs on the hydra). Alas, the corsair-dreadlord horde makes a 15" charge into my lone characters... (very unlucky, but I could've just used an eagle here to be sure, so pretty much my fault); runs them over (BSB auto dies, Prince fled 3"), and hits my swordmasters. Oh... SHIT!

At this point I'm feeling desolate, but my line is in good order and the spears are deployed to support the swords, so they flank charge the corsairs. In combat the swords kill a boatload of corsairs (after combat, however, only the bladelord is still standing!), the spears a small handful, and the dark elves break and are run down complete with the dreadlord and the level 1. YES! The game swings back my way but the black guard keep coming on, manoeuvring goes out the window and we both just take the only options open to us. Carnage ensues and it's all just dice rolling from here.

Only one swordmaster remains but he is later shot by shades (damn- my fault entirely for not running him into a corner- a silly mistake I shall blame on fatigue and not idiocy...). Blackguard get shot a lot (I roll very poorly on my wound rolls), but flank spears (who'd just pursued the corsairs), break them in two rounds and run them down (the spears failed to reform end of first round and it costs me dear for the kills missed). During these crucial middle turns, all my magic phases fail (4 dice vs 3; 6 dice power dice vs 6 dispel dice; 4 dice). Turn 5 I do get the big 12 power dice, but I then fail to cast my first spell (Fury) on two dice. In the end, this is what really kills me, but we're rolling so fast I don't have time to get depressed.

Then the blackguard eat a couple of repeaters. Lions suffer from a boxcar shadow magic phase at just the wrong time, dropping to WS3 and T1 as the hydra charges them (ouch) and, with the loss of the spears and my own magic doing nothing, the game swings heavily against me. Although still Str 6 (I threw all my 6 dispel dice at Enfeebling), the lions fluff their attacks on the wounded hydra and it makes all of the 3 regen saves it is required to take (I had it on 3 wounds from shooting too - bah). All the lions are then killed in one round, before the dragon princes rear charge the hydra and take their revenge. Shooting and helms clear up the skirmishers bar one unit of shades. Last turn, I pile all of my magic and shooting into the few remaining blackguard. Because I think he's more likely to dispel it, I cast Fury before Flames but this is the wrong order. Flames first to get as many hits as possible - then follow up with 2d6 Fury hits. In any event, I roll terribly to wound again, he makes lots of 5+ cauldron-ward saves and 3 BG are left standing after everything I've thrown at them. 12-8 to my opponent.

A bloody close game then! And bloody bloody. My opponent had a good list but was also a complete gent - he was very kind about my poor dice late game. I really wouldn't mind playing this exact list again, either. With my superior deployment, shooting and movement options, I think I have the measure of it. High Magic also poses serious problems for Dark Elves (all the spells are good against them), while Drain Magic really put a counter-balance on his powerful magic. Even though I was repeatedly getting terrible magic phases, I often got drain off and this prevent the shadow sorceress from doing anything until she was blessed with 12 dice just as the hydra was hitting the white lions. The one exception was an irresistible Okkams on the Black Guard fighting the spears but, in truth, this didn't make them that much more killy against lightly armoured elf infantry.

With my surround-pincer movement on the black guard turn 2 - and figuring my characters were far enough from the corsairs to be safe, I thought I had this in the bag. The moral of the story? If in doubt, even if the distance is long, block with the eagle! If dark elves catch you on the hop, you're in trouble.

Other things I learned about tournie Dark Elves:

- Because they like to take big combat blocks, a combined-arms High Elf list can outdeploy, outshoot and outmanoeuvre them.
- Vaul's Unmaking is more important than Flames of the Phoenix. The pendant must die!
- Drain Magic is awesome against a level 1 or against expensive Shadow spells. Marvellous.
- Folariath's Robe would be nice. 2500> 2400 ;)
- Shades are awesome shooters but, if you make it into combat even with just a couple of helms alive, you win. Hit them fast.
- Harpies aren't that scary - they panic so very easily.
- The cauldron is tremendous and makes all of their large combat units killers at will. Combo-charges are a must.
- Hydras are very dangerous when you also consider the number of attacks pumped out by the beastmasters (which I previously had not).
Last edited by Seredain on Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:43 am, edited 2 times in total.
The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=33584
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GhostWarrior
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#883 Post by GhostWarrior »

Honestly, I'm surprised its taken anyone this long to respond to this latest development... you went to a tournament and were successful, congrats! =D>

Oh I see now, everyone is lamenting the fact that you lost a game and didn't finish 1st at the tourney! :shock:

Without Seredain and his Cavalry Prince to lead the way, what chance do the rest of us have? :cry: (A little too much drama maybe? ) :wink:

A 2-1 record in what I can assume is your first tournament (based on what I remember reading), is a very good record. Especially when your loss came in the last game. This meant you were probably in good standing for a shot at 1st overall, depending on the point breakdowns (battle vs. paint vs. sports, etc). Any tournament where I have a shot at top 5% going into the last game is a good one (results-wise).

So rather then say much about your tactics or gameplay, I want to hear what you think about tournament play! Was it worth going? Would you go again to this one/ another one? And the big question: Would you want to play in a 5/6 game, 2-day event at some point?

Personally, after starting to play in tournaments in '07 (local) and then going to 2-day events starting in '08, I haven't been able to look back! It gives me goals and deadlines for my hobbying and painting, and gives me more reasons to play games! (I wouldn't have the HE army to the standard I do now were it not for the goals laid out by big tournaments!)

As alluded to in your 3rd game roundup, playing 3 games in a day is a whole new ballgame when compared to playing one or so per week (that sentence sounds a little snobbish, but no offence meant! :D ). Oh the mistakes that we make when we're tired, with headaches, and bad hangovers! :lol:

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on tournaments and your army in tournament settings.

-GhostWarrior
akielzather
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#884 Post by akielzather »

Missed your tourniment report. But alas have now read.

Skaven, well played. Lizardmen - Prince is just a gem.... Dark elves - High just works and you are right. Eagle eagle. Looks like you could have swung it with a little bit of luck, but nice wee report and army still looks great.
8th 2012 Tournie P12 W8 D0 L4
8th 2013 Tournie 7th Ed book P17 W9 D2 L6
Totals P29 W17 D2 L10

Characters.
Calidiane - Captian of the Silver Helms of Saphery. Death Knight of Hoeth.
Maulinerine - Archmage of Life.
Kavineer - Battle-standard Bearer
SpellArcher
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#885 Post by SpellArcher »

Had Seredain won his last game 16-4, he'd have won the tournament.
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Seredain
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#886 Post by Seredain »

GhostWarrior wrote:A 2-1 record in what I can assume is your first tournament (based on what I remember reading), is a very good record. Especially when your loss came in the last game. This meant you were probably in good standing for a shot at 1st overall, depending on the point breakdowns (battle vs. paint vs. sports, etc). Any tournament where I have a shot at top 5% going into the last game is a good one (results-wise).

So rather then say much about your tactics or gameplay, I want to hear what you think about tournament play! Was it worth going? Would you go again to this one/ another one? And the big question: Would you want to play in a 5/6 game, 2-day event at some point?

As alluded to in your 3rd game roundup, playing 3 games in a day is a whole new ballgame when compared to playing one or so per week (that sentence sounds a little snobbish, but no offence meant! :D ). Oh the mistakes that we make when we're tired, with headaches, and bad hangovers!
Ghost Warrior!

Thanks for chipping in. My impression of the tournie scene, actually, was that it was brilliant fun. To my surprise (I admit), the atmosphere was very friendly and completely relaxed - not at all the serious rules-fest I was (slightly) fearing. Time absolutely flies, too, and this provokes challenges of its own. The games I play usually take quite a while but, here, everything moved very quickly indeed. I was half-expecting to make a lot of errors because of this but, actually, I'm so familiar with my army by now that it really didn't make any difference. Rather it kept all the games fresh and fun because we were rattling through them at such a pace. I had one problem, though: I'd been up until 4am the previous night playing against Warriors of Chaos (and drinking) and I was totally destroyed by the end of the tournie! With the exception of letting my last swordmaster die in game 3, though, this didn't really affect my decision-making. Maybe adrenalin saved me.

In conclusion; yeah, I'll definitely do more tournies (though I'm pretty much reliant on SpellArcher to tell me when they're on, as my organisational skills are very poor indeed). I'm not sure if I'll often have the time for 2-dayers but, if it happens, I'll go. Two things that this first experience of the tournie scene suggested to me:

1 - Even though the combined-arms "Cavalry Prince" idea has done the rounds now, all my opponents were surprised to see it. Most of the players I saw (SpellArcher excepted), took very powerful large blocks of infantry and expected to face them. The metagame is not currently designed to take my army out, and this helps me out from a psychological point of view.

2 - I really dominated in deployment against the armies I faced and this gave me plenty of chances to weight the odds in my favour so that, even were I suffered disasters, the army was still able to compete. In fact, every single battle started off terribly. In Skaven Turn 1, I lost half of my spears and most of my white lions (9 out of 12), to two irresistible force spells and the Storm Banner just ran and ran to punish my shooting phase - all the way to Turn 3 I think (Arrow Curse became invaluable). Against the lizards, I lost almost all my spears Turn 1. And, worst of all, I lost both my fighting characters to the Dark Elves after the long charge on Turn 2 (argh!). Despite all of these events, the army used its advantages in deployment and held together well. Ultimately, I really do feel like taking on anything that's out there!
akielzather wrote:Missed your tourniment report. But alas have now read.

Skaven, well played. Lizardmen - Prince is just a gem.... Dark elves - High just works and you are right. Eagle eagle. Looks like you could have swung it with a little bit of luck, but nice wee report and army still looks great.
Concise! But a good summary. In hindsight, I've had to try very hard not to be furious with myself for making the deliberate choice not to use up an eagle on the basis that an infantry unit would not roll a 10 to charge. You know what, if it had gone my way, as the odds dictated, we'd be laughing about me 'playing with fire' and probably wouldn't have dwelt on it much. Swordmasters + spears + flanking characters = dead black guard and a dark elf army in trouble (with its most powerful frenzied block eating eagle, eagle, helms, archers and doing nothing all game). That I didn't sacrifice an eagle to guarantee this move - and I thought about it - was just annoyingly complacent. Still, it's reassuring in a way: this was totally my fault, easily remembered and easily avoided in future.

Thanks for the comments.
The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#887 Post by SpellArcher »

I think in general there is an ethos of amiability and being reasonable on the UK Indy tourney scene. I also think this is why fairly light comps are the norm and why they work. Of course there are exceptions but on the whole. Compare with the intensity of something like the ETC finals for example.

Play speed has been something of an issue in 8th edition with some tourneys even introducing penalties for slow play. As a slow player myself I have struggled with this. But as time goes by I'm finding it less of a problem. In this tourney my first game was done and dusted in 3 turns and in the other two we got six turns in fine.

I too found myself with more deployment drops than all 3 opponents, a nice feeling and very useful. As you know Seredain, your build has been tested in tourneys by other players. Eldria remarked that he found the profusion of Killing Blow a problem and I think the new trend towards Metal may be an issue for your Helms. That said, I think you understand your own list better than anyone and that should stand you in good stead against tests to come.

Yep, I too offered a 10" infantry charge in my last game (1-in-6 of course) and he rolled an 11!
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#888 Post by Seredain »

Bolt Thrower wrote:I also want to say that this particular battle report really started to make eagle usage click in my brain. I've always known they were useful, but somehow felt my use of them wasn't "textbook" so to speak and so I was shorting myself. This report shows great in-game examples of using eagles to support, delay, etc. Again, another golden nugget from this thread! =D>
Cheers BT!

Aggressive Eagles

It's a not a use of eagles we discuss much but, especially alongside some core elves, eagles can really put the hurt on enemy light units - skinks especially. The only problem is getting them into combat unharmed and, for this, an excellent method is to just keep them parked behind friendly units. You can still see to charge, but the enemy will suffer a penalty to shoot your bird where he's 50% concealed by friendly troops. Charging from one side of a forest to the other, or from behind obstacles, offer the same kind of protection. When it comes to placing terrain and deploying your archers, then, it's worth thinking about how your eagles are going to work from these useful bases - they can come in very handy against harassment-heavy armies.
SpellArcher wrote:I think the reason you were able to deal with the skinks cleanly Seredain, was that there were not vast numbers of them.
Skink Swarms

This is true and definitely worth mentioning. Having said that, I really do feel confident in dealing with almost any number of skinks. Ultimately, since the lizards have no cannons, there's nothing stopping me from running my characters individually and having a total of 4 fast armoured units to run skinks over, plus two archer units, the repeaters, archmage and the eagles. If I deploy properly and concentrate my efforts for a couple of turns, then, I don't tend to find skink-heavy lists much of a problem: they get shot or, if they come close, they get run over. In the last battle against Mallas, though, I spent a lot of these resources killing the ancient stegadon and the cohort so, technically, I was splitting my forces away from anti-skirmisher duty. There was, I feel, plenty of slack in the system.
SpellArcher wrote:I guess the classic formation for an offensive infantry army is the hollow wedge but difficult to pull off here maybe.
Yeah I think this is right. Against an opponent who can outdeploy them, unless they have lots of shooting, heavy infantry need to be able to go in any direction and this means they will typically need to deploy centrally. The formation you describe seems like a good way to compensate for the weaknesses posed by such a deployment.
Gwydion wrote: BRB: Choose target, first two sentences

-front arc,
-needs no line of sight
- target has to be in range
- and can´t be in close combat
Gwydion,

Thanks for the reference. I wasn't actually aware of this section (I've only just switched to a non-rulebook lore after all), and I think this will be helpful in my arguing for sanity when it comes to the 7th Ed lores. I understand the arguments swing both ways but, since I've been using Life lore, I've been happy to let others thrash it out. I'll take a look around and see what comes to light...
Nemo wrote:1) How important is strength 7 over strength 6?
Hey Nemo,

If you go to the contents page you'll find two entries in there somewhere called 'The Giant Blade' and 'The Giant Blade (2)' which pretty much cover everything. The bottom line is that, against the hardest bad guys, the extra strength makes a significant difference for a model with 4 attacks. You're wounding stegadons and other gribblies on 3's instead of 4's (huge) and you're reducing 1+ armour saves to 5+ instead of 4+. Remember, in and of themselves, enemy characters are pretty fragile if you stack the odds in your favour. Getting that extra hitting power is so often the difference between a character/monster that lives and one that dies. Throw Loec in as well and you have truly mighty hitting power with a 1+ re-rollable armour save. Sweet.
Nemo wrote:2) Now that you are using High Magic, how much do you rate the Talisman of Loec? It still seems like an exceedingly powerful item - it certainly overshadows the Other Trickster's Shard in terms of what it can do (and for cheaper!) but without the regenerating effects of Life magic I do wonder if it may not result in a pyrrhic victory against well-tooled opposing characters and their retinues.
This is a good question. Ultimately, the talisman is weakened by the loss of Lifebloom. Even with a 1+ rr save, a 2 wound prince isn't as hard as all that. On the other hand, it's hard enough for most things, so you just have to make a judgment call on when it's worth it. For me the talisman still beats the shard because it can be used against anything (like monsters), and affects all rolls (whereas the shard only effects the ward save). If I have to be a little more careful when popping it, so be it. Vaul's Unmaking makes the character-killing job easier in other ways (including by the removal of ward saves).
Nemo wrote:3) How close have you come to losing him? The other issue I see with the Giant Blade build is the lack of a decent Ward Save.
Now this is an issue I've thought about quite extensively - if you have a look at the contents you'll see lots of entries on the subject of keeping the prince alive (including, for example, avoiding troops with killing blow by gaining flank charges and deploying on the edge of the unit, etc). Basically, you know what's out there that can kill armour, so you mitigate the risk by avoiding these things (death spells have limited range and can't hurt you when you're in combat), killing them (Str 7 with Loec), or mitigating the danger as best you can (Shield of Saphery, Vaul's Unmaking). The helms are there to provide the heavy meatshield that the prince needs against enemy missiles and suchlike. I've literally never lost him to an Engine of the Gods, for example, because, in normal circumstances, by the time the engine has burned the helms it will already be dead to the strength 7 prince. I've only lost the prince 3 times ever. Two of those were to enemy shooting: one for a failed LOS roll (ugh), one from a Hell Cannon direct hit (after a previous direct hit and an IF Gateway burned all the helms); and the last was that debacle with the amazingly speedy corsair horde (where static combat res got the better of me).
Nemo wrote:I do apologise for bombarding you thus, but it is something that I have been mulling over for my own cavalry prince build, and I figure that you are pretty much the authority on that! I'm loving the thread and finding it very helpful, even if my army differs somewhat considerably to yours (no Swordmasters, the BSB is on foot, a second Spearman block and two units of Ellyrian Reavers - and perhaps soon no Repeater/Eagle either as I am experimenting with other support elements). I do find it intensely interesting that you have switched to fielding more firepower - doubtlessly it is punishing to the enemy, but I have personally found that I want to drop my lone Repeater as it tends to make me anchor my force about a certain point, when in many situations it would have been advantageous to move up my archers to support my other units with either short-ranged shooting or flanking attacks; as well as providing a clear, and important to remove, focal point for the enemy).
No problem! Good questions and worth thinking about.

Your point about the repeaters is understandable but remember the upside to taking long-range power. It may encourage some elements of your line to stay static (though, if you've worked against enemy support units early- as is wise- it needn't), but it also encourages your enemies to come forward. Where they do this, it is much easier to get at their flanks with your cavalry and, for those units which you don't engage immediately (especially where you play hold-up with the eagles), the extra firepower gives you plenty of opportunities to wither them into weakness. Combo-charges are much scarier to your opponent when your intended victim has lost a rank or two.

Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you and I hope this helps!
SpellArcher wrote:As you know Seredain, your build has been tested in tourneys by other players. Eldria remarked that he found the profusion of Killing Blow a problem and I think the new trend towards Metal may be an issue for your Helms. That said, I think you understand your own list better than anyone and that should stand you in good stead against tests to come.
Killing Blow is something you have to play carefully against it in the movement phase. The trick is to either go for flanks or for overwhelming force to ensure you don't face many (or any) attacks back. Tomb Kings are a pain, but they have their own problems (overwhelming force from combo-charges devastates undead), while the Giant Blade is pretty much my best solution to enemy characters. :)

Metal Magic Against the Helms

Lore of Metal, honestly, is not something I'm all that worried about. There's usually something trying to kill my helms and I'd rather it was spells than machines. Obviously I can dispel and, if opponents are trying to fry my helms, they're not trying to magic something else. Then there's the question of metal-meta. In my experience, players tend to leave their Searing Doom japes to level 1 wizards and this has problems. If the spell doesn't go IF, +4 to dispel causes him problems, while Drain Magic (so often let through since people are more worried about Vaul's and/or Flames), makes the chance of getting a successful cast off pretty low without double 6's. Finally, there's the enemy army to think of. Armies with Searing Doom don't have other forms of armour-penetration (read 'cannons'): that's why they've taken the spell. Against these armies, I can run my characters separately from the helms and then, suddenly, the helms themselves become much less of an important target. Bottom line? 8 silver helms aren't enough of a reason for someone to take Searing Doom against me when my characters are basically immune to it and my anti-magic nobbles the level 1 caster. Bring it on, metal mages!


And so to bed... I've got work in the morning. :roll:
Last edited by Seredain on Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:46 am, edited 2 times in total.
The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#889 Post by Jimmy »

Thanks for the report Seredain!

@SA - Can you please elaborate on the penalties for slow play in the UK?
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#890 Post by Arhain »

Seredain wrote:
Gwydion wrote: BRB: Choose target, first two sentences

-front arc,
-needs no line of sight
- target has to be in range
- and can´t be in close combat
Keep reading the paragraph under that. Says, "Some unique spells, or spells that are printed in older Warhammer Armies books, do not have a type--their text will contain any casting restrictions that apply." Pretty straight forward, only casting restriction on flames of the phoenix is the unit has to be within 24"
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#891 Post by Nicene »

Arhain wrote:Keep reading the paragraph under that. Says, "Some unique spells, or spells that are printed in older Warhammer Armies books, do not have a type--their text will contain any casting restrictions that apply." Pretty straight forward, only casting restriction on flames of the phoenix is the unit has to be within 24"
The entire discussion about targeting of legacy spells is very open to debate. There are several good discussions of this issue in our Rules Forum, but basically there are very reasonable arguments either way--the text on page 31 is ambiguous and can be construed both ways. Local gaming groups decide their own rulings and, as Seredain mentioned above, his group has made their decision.
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=61399]my MSU army list/battle reports[/url]

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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#892 Post by Swordmaster of Hoeth »

Hi Seredain!

Thanks a lot for a report! It is good to see you posting again and man, I really like these pictures of your deployment. I wish my battle line looked so neat :)
Seredain wrote:An interesting army with a mix of blocks and toys. Thanquol led - chucking out a scary amount of power dice (he got 8 warpstone tokens, I believe), with a bodyguard of storm vermin. Two blocks of 50 slaves, two blocks of 50 clanrats (one with assassin, one with engineer), a couple of engineers with scary weapons (brass orb and the rocket), abomination, two doomwheels and two units of gutter runners (coming on as reinforcements).
That is quite interesting Skaven army. Although it has some usual toys there are a few missing (which is normal, in Skaven army you cannot have it all :)) and I am really curious about Thanquol and his performance. I really like this character from BL books (if you haven't read them I highly recommend them - you will have a lot of fun!) and I am wondering if he was any different from regular Grey Seer in your game.
Seredain wrote:Bolt Throwers both died but my elites weren't getting shot, at least, and I killed all the gutter runners what done it, so fair trade! Shooting made a big difference this game - 4 wounds on the Abomb from flaming missiles in one round basically crippled it before the knights ran it over at their pleasure (I do wish it couldn't flee from charges, though - and it flees 3d6, too!).
That is something new for me :) Somehow I assumed it is immune to psychology. Interesting and definitely something to exploit. Thanks!

As to RBT's vs Gutter Runners - simply great! They can be pain in the a%$ if you don't deal with them quickly with these silly poisonous sling shots. :)
Seredain wrote:Interestingly, he took javelins on skinks for the parry save, guaranteed stand-and-shoot and the greater chance of hitting (no penalty for shooting over half range) - a set-up that worked well for him.
As far as I know it is indeed not common and it is great that there are some people who use things differently and with a success too!
Seredain wrote:The Slann was the Lore of Light dude with Cupped Hands, the Free Power Dice and Becalming Cogitation. I'll say right now that High Magic is ace against this latter ability since you're not usually throwing more than 2 dice, so you're not that likely to roll a 6 - it got me once in the whole game. Drain Magic is excellent against the power dice, since it reduces the number of spells cast and, therefore, the number of free dice.
+1 to that! It is one of the most important assets of High Magic. However, my observations tell me that it is more efficient against new lores which usually have higher casting values. While against old books and the magic from 7th edition it might not be as good, especially if 4th level wizard is casting a spell. Do you have a similar experience?
Seredain wrote:The helms and DPs are all whittled down, but the Prince and BSB kill enough to hold with the aid of Loec and some excellent armour saves, despite a box car Light magic phase making it a very close call (thank you re-rollable Ld10!). After two more combat rounds - with Seredain shrugging off everything the temple guard can throw at him, I wipe out the last of the saurus block on Turn 6.
That was tough and not exactly comfortable situation so it is great you managed to emerge victorious from that bloodbath. Do you think there was a way to avoid that (as it seems it was very risky for your characters) despite the loss of Spearelves and panicked Swordmasters?
Seredain wrote: I've lost an eagle and the knights, with the spears below 25% (which in this tournie nets you half points). 16-4.
A very good result since, as you probably know better than me, Saurus are really tough nut to crack. Also, Light magic on Slann can be very efficient too.
Seredain wrote:A powerful DE army with two hugely killy combat units (30 Corsairs w/ frenzy banner, 20 Black Guard), backed with the cauldron BSB, hydra, unkillable dreadlord, Lvl 4 dagger shadow caster (plus 20 spears), a level 1 Metal mage, 2x10 shades and 2x5 harpies.
That really reminds me about two DE armies I fought againts during my first tournament in 8th edition a few months ago. Seems like an ETC standard and indeed a very dangerous army. The only difference being the magic lore for level 1 as before people used Fire Lore.
Seredain wrote:Harpies then block my helms (who come through the enemy magic phase unscathed when Drain Magic causes the Level 1 sorcerer to fail her boosted Burning Alignment).
Hm, is it the signature spell you are referring to? As i cannot find the one called Burning Alignement :oops:
Seredain wrote:Rather than hack their way through skirmishers for two turns, my characters spring out of the helms and head for the flank of the blackguard while my spears and swordmasters threaten their front. A beutiful move which sees the black guard surrounded and the corsairs way out of contention.
I really like that option your army has and which opponents sometimes forget about. Characters can be like guided missiles sometimes and are very dangerous on their own when the enemy might think they are safe from the whole unit. I am happy to see that you are still using this tactics :)
Seredain wrote:Alas, the corsair-dreadlord horde makes a 15" charge into my lone characters... (very unlucky, but I could've just used an eagle here to be sure, so pretty much my fault); runs them over (BSB auto dies, Prince fled 3"), and hits my swordmasters. Oh... SHIT!
These long charges do happen so indeed it is good to plan for them too. However, in the heat of battle one can make such decisions so even if you consider not placing the eagle in the right spot to prevent that as a mistake, it is still not likely situation. How this combat went on in particular? Did you lose by a big margin?
Seredain wrote:At this point I'm feeling desolate, but my line is in good order and the spears are deployed to support the swords, so they flank charge the corsairs. In combat the swords kill a boatload of corsairs (after combat, however, only the bladelord is still standing!), the spears a small handful, and the dark elves break and are run down complete with the dreadlord and the level 1. YES! The game swings back my way but the black guard keep coming on, manoeuvring goes out the window and we both just take the only options open to us. Carnage ensues and it's all just dice rolling from here.
It is great you could come back to the game so quickly. It reminds me about situation in chess when both sides lose their queens and the whole tactics has to be drawn from scratch :)
Seredain wrote:Turn 5 I do get the big 12 power dice, but I then fail to cast my first spell (Fury) on two dice. In the end, this is what really kills me, but we're rolling so fast I don't have time to get depressed.
I feel your pain. Such situations make me want to throw 3 dice just to have even greater chances of success. You have 12 dice to spend after all :)
Seredain wrote:A bloody close game then! And bloody bloody.
Indeed it was :) but such games are great too and especially when you play against great opponent. So even if you lose you still had a great time! Besides, there are things which next time you will do better (as you have already mentioned what could have saved your Prince and BSB, etc.) :)
GhostWarrior wrote:Personally, after starting to play in tournaments in '07 (local) and then going to 2-day events starting in '08, I haven't been able to look back! It gives me goals and deadlines for my hobbying and painting, and gives me more reasons to play games! (I wouldn't have the HE army to the standard I do now were it not for the goals laid out by big tournaments!)
Fully agreed! As much as I like to paint having that extra motivation helps to finish some units in finite time :)
GhostWarrior wrote:As alluded to in your 3rd game roundup, playing 3 games in a day is a whole new ballgame when compared to playing one or so per week (that sentence sounds a little snobbish, but no offence meant! :D ). Oh the mistakes that we make when we're tired, with headaches, and bad hangovers! :lol:
Try 3 day tournament then :) It is indeed tiring and there are a lot mistakes made due to fatigue but also, during a tournament, you have to move fast. Yet another factor that makes all the difference in comparison to these long battles played with friends over the weekend :)
Seredain wrote:1 - Even though the combined-arms "Cavalry Prince" idea has done the rounds now, all my opponents were surprised to see it. Most of the players I saw (SpellArcher excepted), took very powerful large blocks of infantry and expected to face them. The metagame is not currently designed to take my army out, and this helps me out from a psychological point of view.
I hope you didn't get these dismissive looks like if you didn't know what you are doing. I did get those, especially when I lost games (due to my own mistakes usually) and then my opponents felt like they need to give me some advise similar to "take book of hoeth" or "small units do not work" :)

Once again thanks for the reports and beautiful pictures! You had some nice terrain and great tables to play on :)

Cheers!
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High Elves MSU - Observations
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#893 Post by SpellArcher »

I think the point is that your reports tend to be against balanced Lizardmen armies Seredain. Your army tends to deal with the 30 or so skinks these armies field fairly comfortably. I can see how you have the tools to cope with mass MSU skinks but it would be more complicated I suspect. I'd love to see a report on such a game!

Obviously, I'm with you in the shooting camp. It really does not cost that much to add a respectable shooting phase to a HE army and when you have a Lore like High or Shadow, it becomes a real threat. It's a vital tactical option for those times when combat and magic will only get you so far.

The reason I mentioned Metal is because most HE armies laugh at Searing Doom but your Helm Hammer has to at least consider it. The problem might be with Empire. They might well have a Metal wizard to deal with Knights and Warriors. A 6-dice Searing Doom followed by a couple of cannon shots could be troublesome. As you say, get Drain Magic off and a Lvl1 will need to roll 22 on 6 dice, so slightly above average and you do have your Scroll. It's the 25% IF that's the bigger issue I think. I guess if you see this set-up you can deploy the bus appropriately and there are other things like casting Shield that you can throw in.

On slow play I think there is a bit of a culture clash between the old school players who are laid back and the guys who are more ETC-style and want things more regulated. Some events have a yellow/red card system (also for bad sportsmanship), some have fixed tournament points penalties if you fail to play 6 turns in two or three of your games, say. It varies.

Thanquol was a bit warpstone-happy in this tournament I think! We've already heard about how he IF'd Seredain's poor infantry in game 1. Game 2 he overdid it and got sucked into the Warp against DE's, losing horribly. Game three though, he won big, so I wouldn't be surprised if he swept his enemy away on a tide of luminous green spellcasting!

I too like the Javelin skinks, though coming from an Ancient Wargaming background, I like Javelins in general. The figure range my army uses (3rd edition) actually had elves with javelins (they were in very old army lists), though I haven't got any. The improvement to range in 8th edition helps them I think (also interested to see Shortbows are 18" and not 16" as I thought).

As for opponents underestimating Seredain's army, he loves it!

:)
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#894 Post by Seredain »

Cheers Swordie!

Great feedback and questions - many thanks. First off, when talking about 'burning alignment', I meant 'Searing Doom'. Just goes to show I play against Lizardmen too often!

Thanquol

Thanqol was a nasty opponent just because he was chucking so many dice every phase. Thankfully, I was (mostly) able to weather what he was throwing by casting Drain Magic every turn. Against Skaven I had the Shield, Arrow Attraction, Fury and Flames - all scary spells for the Skaven - especially Flames. My opponent pretty much always expended his dispel dice stopping these, so I got Drain off a lot and this put a lot of pressure on the Thanquol phase. After the first turn, I don't remember magic being much of a problem. For one turn, at least, the scroll bought me another turn of safety because I chucked it at a six-dice (non-IF) spell and had plenty of dice left to see me through that phase. Ultimately, I don't remember magic being much of a problem after Turn 1.

The Impact of Drain Magic

Drain Magic has two chances to affect the enemy magic phase: it will either make your enemy throw an extra dice at low to middle-value spells, or it will make it less likely that he'll be able to cast a spell successfully. In the case of the former, the greatest impact is upon multi-spell phases like those thrown around by Vampires or free-dice Slanns but, in the case of the latter, the spell has the greatest impact on the big 6-dice spells, especially where the caster is of a low level. The effect of having your opponent fail a cast is much more dramatic, but the other effect is more reliable. At the least, Drain Magic is likely to mean that you're facing fewer enemy spells per turn.
Swordmaster of Hoeth wrote:
Seredain wrote:The helms and DPs are all whittled down, but the Prince and BSB kill enough to hold with the aid of Loec and some excellent armour saves, despite a box car Light magic phase making it a very close call (thank you re-rollable Ld10!). After two more combat rounds - with Seredain shrugging off everything the temple guard can throw at him, I wipe out the last of the saurus block on Turn 6.
That was tough and not exactly comfortable situation so it is great you managed to emerge victorious from that bloodbath. Do you think there was a way to avoid that (as it seems it was very risky for your characters) despite the loss of Spearelves and panicked Swordmasters?
Seredain and Caradath stand alone!

When I marched out initially, it wasn't at all risky! The spearelves and swordmasters were both moving up in a stepped advance to cover the right flank of the knights. I was happy to have the cavalry fighting the saurus horde by themselves: I'd already got flames off on it and I was happy to let my characters take them all out. The spears were in close support to charge through skinks and sallies and get past the temple guard, while the temple guard themselves were not in a position to help much, since they couldn't very well turn side-on to my swordmasters without inviting disaster. A single volley from the sallies changed all this by crippling the spears and forcing them to stay back, allowing the enemy light units to flood into the available board space and start shooting at my swotds, who had to take shelter in a forest to save themselves. Once the swords had fled from those same sallies, I no longer had any combat units in the centre of the board (the spears were too weak for the task) the temple guard were free to flank my knights. In short, there was no way to avoid what happened given that most of my infantry were dead or fleeing (my two eagles were too far away to compensate, since I hadn't expected my centre to collapse like this). In the end, my cavalry characters were killy enough to hold and do their job, while my shooting won the battle for the centre (supplemented by my eagles and remaining spears running together), and allowed my infantry (without the swords) to close around the last saurus horde and take it out.

In future, I don't see a problem with holding back my advances slightly against this kind of deployment, to allow my shooting to do more work on the enemy support units before I hit combat. In any case, it is very hard for the isolated saurus block to see any meaningful action with this sort of deployment. As it turned out, the lizardman light units made my life much harder before I finally killed them, largely because I advanced so aggressively on turn 1 and brought my soft spears into sallie range. The fact that they turned out to be laser-guided sallies was a good reason to hold back a little!
Swordmaster of Hoeth wrote:
Seredain wrote:Turn 5 I do get the big 12 power dice, but I then fail to cast my first spell (Fury) on two dice. In the end, this is what really kills me, but we're rolling so fast I don't have time to get depressed.
I feel your pain. Such situations make me want to throw 3 dice just to have even greater chances of success. You have 12 dice to spend after all :)
Trust me I had a use for all of them! Rolling 2 dice, you expect to get at least a 4. Of course throwing an extra dice is safer but I really didn't feel I was playing the odds on this one! That I didn't get this cast, though, really was the nail in the coffin for me: that the white lions died and the black guard lived was pretty much down to the catastrophe of this magic phase and my opponent's massive following phase - during which Drain Magic and an in-play Flames would have been invaluable.
Swordmaster of Hoeth wrote:
Seredain wrote:Alas, the corsair-dreadlord horde makes a 15" charge into my lone characters... (very unlucky, but I could've just used an eagle here to be sure, so pretty much my fault); runs them over (BSB auto dies, Prince fled 3"), and hits my swordmasters. Oh... SHIT!
These long charges do happen so indeed it is good to plan for them too. However, in the heat of battle one can make such decisions so even if you consider not placing the eagle in the right spot to prevent that as a mistake, it is still not likely situation. How this combat went on in particular? Did you lose by a big margin?
Very! My prince went toe-to-toe with the unkillable dreadlord and... couldn't kill him. He was only failing his ward on 6's and he saved all 3 wounds I inflicted. Seredain took a wound in reply (I had a 5+ 5+ save but couldn't get it). Without my prince generating any combat res, then, I lost by enough to make the break very likely. Ranks, banner, charge, flank and the wound on the prince - it all added up!
Swordmaster of Hoeth wrote:
Seredain wrote:Rather than hack their way through skirmishers for two turns, my characters spring out of the helms and head for the flank of the blackguard while my spears and swordmasters threaten their front. A beautiful move which sees the black guard surrounded and the corsairs way out of contention.
I really like that option your army has and which opponents sometimes forget about. Characters can be like guided missiles sometimes and are very dangerous on their own when the enemy might think they are safe from the whole unit. I am happy to see that you are still using this tactics :)
Thanks! Mobility is one of the greatest strengths of cavalry characters, especially against enemy infantry units.

The Ambush that Never Was

In one of my earlier tactics articles, I wrote that you should 'plan for bad luck'. This scenario was an example of a failure to do so and of how costly such an oversight can be. The truth is, I knew I had something good here and just got cocky - I played the odds and, with the distance between my character and the corsairs so great, I not only thought my opponent wouldn't roll the distance needed, I thought he wouldn't even try for fear of just getting a useless failed charge. Here's how the board looked.

Image

In Dark Elf turn 1 the dreadlord, scared of my helms and swordmasters combining against the corsairs, moved out of the black guard and joined them instead. This hindered their advance and meant that, when the black guard went forward (as they had to against all my shooting and magic), they were left alone. This gave me the opportunity to put them in an impossible position, as above. The guard can either stand still and get the crap shot out of them (my repeaters are at close range), or they can advance and try their luck against a combo-charge from my characters, swordmasters and spearelves. All I need to do here, to secure this fantastic tactical position, is to move my leftmost eagle up into the teeth of the frenzied corsair horde, and take them out of the game for (since they have to overrun), at least two turns before bringing in eagle number two. With such a powerful unit heading away from the centre of the field, my attack is likely to prove devastating. Instead, I put my trust in the odds rather than 'waste' 50 points, and I end up losing 476 points and getting this unit right up in my face. My infantry units are setup to support each other, so I manage to counter and kill the horde but, when my shooting and magic both fail, I have no combat units to stop the black guard.

A lovely move scuppered because I was too mean to use an eagle. Use the eagle!
SpellArcher wrote:I think the point is that your reports tend to be against balanced Lizardmen armies Seredain. Your army tends to deal with the 30 or so skinks these armies field fairly comfortably. I can see how you have the tools to cope with mass MSU skinks but it would be more complicated I suspect. I'd love to see a report on such a game!
I'm sure I'll run into one sooner or later - there's basically a lizardman army everywhere I look!
SpellArcher wrote:The reason I mentioned Metal is because most HE armies laugh at Searing Doom but your Helm Hammer has to at least consider it. The problem might be with Empire. They might well have a Metal wizard to deal with Knights and Warriors. A 6-dice Searing Doom followed by a couple of cannon shots could be troublesome. As you say, get Drain Magic off and a Lvl1 will need to roll 22 on 6 dice, so slightly above average and you do have your Scroll. It's the 25% IF that's the bigger issue I think. I guess if you see this set-up you can deploy the bus appropriately and there are other things like casting Shield that you can throw in.
Yeah, Shield is pretty much the last line of defense against this spell for my helms. Of course, knowing that, I made sure I got Shield up on them before casting Drain Magic. ;) Searing Doom has potentially devastating effects but also limits. Chucking 6 dice at a spell that you're quite likely to fail (with Drain up) is a massive risk. You throw away (at best) half of your power dice and I have all my dispel dice left so, if it doesn't go off, your magic phase is over. Is it worth the risk for the chance to get 2D6 hits against a unit with a 5+ ward save? I'm not sure. One to watch for me (unlike most High Elf armies), but something I have the tools to deal with.
SpellArcher wrote:Thanquol was a bit warpstone-happy in this tournament I think! We've already heard about how he IF'd Seredain's poor infantry in game 1. Game 2 he overdid it and got sucked into the Warp against DE's, losing horribly. Game three though, he won big, so I wouldn't be surprised if he swept his enemy away on a tide of luminous green spellcasting!
He got three IF's against me and he suffered no damage at all - not so much as a headache! Bah...
SpellArcher wrote:As for opponents underestimating Seredain's army, he loves it!
Haha! It's true... If you ever suspect your opponent is looking down on the helms, the temptation, when they've done a lot of steamrolling, is to just clap your hands and shout out: "How do you like them apples?" Not that I'd do anything so vulgar, of course...
Last edited by Seredain on Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=33584
Eldria
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#895 Post by Eldria »

SpellArcher wrote: Eldria remarked that he found the profusion of Killing Blow a problem and I think the new trend towards Metal may be an issue for your Helms. !
Much much politer than I put it ;) I do seem to play a lot of Demons, Tomb Kings and Dark Elves which really emphasize that problem.

Congrats on getting to a tourney Seredain. I know that club thats Og games in london is it not?

In which case where are you based it might be possibly to meet up for a game sometime...
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Seredain
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#896 Post by Seredain »

Eldria wrote:Congrats on getting to a tourney Seredain. I know that club thats Og games in london is it not?

In which case where are you based it might be possibly to meet up for a game sometime...
Hmm... not sure to be honest - SpellArcher's the brains of the operation - I just turned up at the given address. It all happened above the Spread Eagle pub in Wandsworth. If that's the place then you're on! Apparently they do games nights every Thursdays (Tuesdays too, maybe), so I'm hoping to get out of work early some time soon and head on down.

Battle Report Preview - High Elves v Warriors of Chaos

Now, having had a crack at 2400 (apart from missing my new robe, it was fine), we're back to 2500 and a face-off against a chosen-star warriors army.

Warriors of Chaos

Tzeentch Sorceror Lord - Disc, Golden Eye (4+ Ward), Spell stealer (Third Eye?), Bloodcurdling Roar
Exalted - Level 1 caster, stuff (general)
Exalted - BSB, Banner of Discipline, stuff

45 Marauders - Great Weapons, Mark of Khorne
40 Marauders - HW & Shield, Mark of Tzeentch
15 Warriors - Standard, Halberds, Mark of Khorne
5 Marauder Horse - Javelins, Shields
5 hounds
5 hounds
5 hounds

10 Tzeentch Chosen, Halberds, Full Command, Terror Banner, Item of Endless Choosing Gifts Crap (both exalted here)
Warshrine (unmarked)
Warshrine (unmarked)
Chariot (unmarked)

Hellcannon

High Elves

Seredain
Prince - Barded Steed, Dragon Armour, Shield, Giant Blade, Helm of Fortune, Talisman of Loec, Plucker Pendant - 286

Lecalion
Archmage - Level 4, High Magic, Folariath's Robe, Dispel Scroll - 325

Caradath
Battle Standard Bearer - Barded Steed, Great Weapon, Heavy Armour, Shield, Dragonhelm, Dawnstone, Amulet of Light - 190

30 Spearelves - Full Command - 295
18 Archers - Musician, Standard, Banner of Eternal Flame - 223
10 Archers - 110

14 Swordmasters - Bladelord, Ironcurse Icon - 227
12 White Lions - Guardian, Gem of Courage - 202
8 Silver Helms - Musician, Shields - 192
5 Dragon Princes - 150

2 Repeater Bolt Throwers - 200
2 Eagles - 100

= 2500 points

Image
The Warriors of Chaos

Image
High Elf right flank

Battle Report coming soon...
Last edited by Seredain on Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=33584
Eldria
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#897 Post by Eldria »

Hmm... not sure to be honest - SpellArcher's the brains of the operation - I just turned up at the given address. It all happened above the Spread Eagle pub in Wandsworth. If that's the place then you're on! Apparently they do games nights every Thursdays (Tuesdays too, maybe), so I'm hoping to get out of work early some time soon and head on down.
Yup thats the one.

Awesomeness, I can get down there if we arrange a game sometime. I'll Pm you some contact details. Rather than a High Elf off I'll bring my rather awesome Trolls of Chaos army.

---

On the Chosen star game, Good luck I hope you got him. I'm going to guess you evaded the chosen and smash up the rest of his list.
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Seredain
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#898 Post by Seredain »

Battle Report – High Elves vs Warriors of Chaos


Terrain

On the west flank stood a totem of Gork, or possibly Mork, with a burning barricade stretched nearby on an east/west axis and a stone building north of it toward the corner of the field. Some trees were scattered elsewhere – all mundane and, in the east, a collection of buildings were laid by my opponent in such a way as to try and bar passage for my knights.

Rule Quibble 1 – Shrine Bonuses

You'll see the army lists in the 'preview' given above but, for ease of reference, it's easy enough to say that this Chaos list was packing enough ward saves to make me swear eternally never to leave camp without the Other Trickster's Shard on my BSB (I'm shifting the Amulet of Light to the swordmasters), in order to give my cavalry characters some massive 'oomph' without losing Loec on the prince. The predilection for ward saves on the chosen, in particular, caused me concern from a rules point of view and I'm hoping there are some learned opinions on this subject, whose input on the below I'd appreciate.

My opponent had the 'manipulate Eye of the Gods roll by 1' item on his chosen champion. Apparently, this meant that he could use the roll 'tweak' to deliberately choose an ability he already had (eg terror as already granted by the unit's terror banner). Since he couldn't have the same ability twice, this meant he got to re-roll and, since the terror banner, chosen EotG roll and the 1st shrine all stacked, that meant that for the 2nd shrine roll my opponent could just keep rolling and rolling until he got the result he wanted. This presumably wasn't meant to be the case when the EotG rules were first drafted. Is there an accepted view on how this is played?

Rule Quibble 2 – Shrine Duration

Also I was told that, if I kill a shrine, the unit last targeted by it's bonus will not lose this bonus. Is this the case?

Before I continue, I should say that I don't doubt my opponent's honesty, but there were a few rules mistakes made later which I had to argue with and, as a result, made me place a question mark over the above.

Spells

High Elves – Drain Magic, Shield, Arrow Curse, Fury, Vaul's.

Chaos – Treason, Gateway, Flickering Flames, Pandemonium. The Exhalted caster got Flame Cage, I think.

Deployment and The Plan

My opponent had some nifty little drops in the marauder cavalry and three hound units, but the mega-shrine setup made the likely location of the chosen pretty well guessable (central), so I had plenty of time to build an attack against one of the flanks – each held by one of the big marauder units. Since I got to go first with some elite ASF goodness, I chose the least tough horde to smite – the GW Khornite marauders. The helms, swordmasters and spears combined ought to tear a bloody swathe through them with ease, before I put my characters into something expensive. My right (east) flank, protected in part by the line of buildings, was held by my dragon princes and, more centrally, the white lions. The way I saw it, the enemy opposite (warriors and Tzeentch marauders) would either have to come to me or be badly eroded by my shooting. If they did advance, my princes would move out wide to envelop them to draw a second front to that presented by the lions. Some relatively small unit drops could, with my shooting base, actually pose big problems for Chaos. The last things Chaos had deployed, of course, were the characters and their placement provided me with some opportunities. The disc sorcerer began parked right infront of my archers and repeaters, sat with 5 dogs. I had a solution for him...

As for the chosen? I was going to follow the usual glorious plan and avoid them for as long as possible. Ultimately, though, I had a solution for them and that, unsurprisingly, was the prince. The great weakness of this chosen unit was, from my point of view, actually its characters. Since Chaos characters (and I believe champions too) have to challenge, I could put him into the unit from Turn 4, kill off a character each round and safely collect a bunch of points while simultaneously forcing a couple of break tests (albeit steadfast ones). Forced challenges are Seredain's friend against chosen. In future, I'd bring the Other Trickster's Shard on Caradath as a more direct solution but, for now, this seemed like a good option all by itself.


High Elves Turn 1

Since I wanted to bust the Chaos West flank before their chosen could come into play, I advanced aggressively with my knights, swordmasters and spears. Although my opponent had drawn a tricky line across my path with a fence, I avoided the worst of the danger by free-reforming the silver helms into a column three wide, so that only three of them would take a test for vaulting the fence. To the helm's right, and slightly in their wake, the swords and the spears, led by Lecalion, moved up in support, the archmage advancing with his fellows to bring himself within range of his Tzeentchan enemy. Elsewhere my line stayed pretty static, except for the princes would shifted east a little to begin opening up a gap between them and the lions.

Magic saw 8 power dice to my opponent's 6 dispel dice. First, I cast Arrow Curse on the sorcerer lord, knowing this would draw some dice, and it worked better than hoped. A high roll on two dice forced my opponent to use 3 to get rid of it. Vaul's Unmaking on 4 dice followed and couldn't be stopped: the sorcerer's ward save went from 3+ to 6+. Lecalion chuckled. I now had two dice left to Chaos' none, so I was feeling cheeky. Shield (on the helms) and Drain Magic both went up on one dice each.

My plan for the shooting phase was obvious. My archers thudded a volley of arrows into the dogs but (annoyingly) only killed 3 despite plenty of hits (damn wound rolls!). This meant I had to use a repeater to clear the remaining two, which it did successfully (though failing to wound the sorcerer with the one hit on him it managed). One repeater on one sorcerer, then, hitting on a 4+ with a single bolt...

It missed.

Image
Seredain leads a powerful force out against Khorne's hordes.
Last edited by Seredain on Wed Mar 21, 2012 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=33584
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John Rainbow
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#899 Post by John Rainbow »

As far as you go with the rules quibbles I think your opponent is correct. This is how the WoC players round by me do it and it makes for some very difficult match-ups to say the least. 3+/3++ anyone? Basically with 2 warshrines your opponent is virtually guaranteed to get the ward save within 2 turns if not the first turn rolling. There are a few people I know who have 'discovered' the best way to get the bonuses they want. I think it involves taking the numbers around 7 (most likely result on 2 dice) to then maximise the number of re-rolls they get and therefore get the ward save. As for destroying the warshrine and the effects staying on, that is also true. Once given to a unit there is no way of removing the buff they get unless they get 're-buffed' by the same shrine in an attempt to get a different bonus.

Not sure if this is what the game designers intended but it's the way it worked out. Sucks for any of us facing indestructible Tzeentch Chosen. My usual tactic is to avoid the Chosen at all costs. Don't even bother to try fighting them/reducing numbers. Take out anything else and leave well alone. Eagle redirection for the win! Also, be aware Warshrines are no pushover either.
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Re: The Cavalry Prince - List Design, Tactics, Battle Reports

#900 Post by pk-ng »

John Rainbow wrote:As far as you go with the rules quibbles I think your opponent is correct. This is how the WoC players round by me do it and it makes for some very difficult match-ups to say the least. 3+/3++ anyone? Basically with 2 warshrines your opponent is virtually guaranteed to get the ward save within 2 turns if not the first turn rolling. There are a few people I know who have 'discovered' the best way to get the bonuses they want. I think it involves taking the numbers around 7 (most likely result on 2 dice) to then maximise the number of re-rolls they get and therefore get the ward save. As for destroying the warshrine and the effects staying on, that is also true. Once given to a unit there is no way of removing the buff they get unless they get 're-buffed' by the same shrine in an attempt to get a different bonus.

Not sure if this is what the game designers intended but it's the way it worked out. Sucks for any of us facing indestructible Tzeentch Chosen. My usual tactic is to avoid the Chosen at all costs. Don't even bother to try fighting them/reducing numbers. Take out anything else and leave well alone. Eagle redirection for the win! Also, be aware Warshrines are no pushover either.

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