Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

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Curu Olannon
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1591 Post by Curu Olannon »

Independents are not the problem. Plenty of people produce fantasy miniatures. The problem is that if you don't attract new players, the game will slowly die out. Thus it is only a matter of time before you end up playing the same players. Perhaps it lives a month, half a year, or 2 years. Sooner or later it will be very dead. I've played Warhammer for many years now so in the grand scheme of things this is relatively little seeing as I intend and expect to play miniature strategy games for many years to come. Furthermore there are a lot of basic things in Warhammer that I think is just plain stupid and that really annoy me. Perhaps switching isn't a bad idea after all ;)

I will write up my ETC reports. I'll make 4 detailed battle reports as well as 2 explanations of why I chose to agree on 10-10 draws. Usually I write reports mostly for my own good, so that I can learn, adapt and improve as a player. These reports however will be just for you guys, dedicated to the readers of this army blog :)

I will hopefully get around to it next week when I get home and settled!
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
SpellArcher
Green Istari
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1592 Post by SpellArcher »

Curu Olannon wrote:The problem is that if you don't attract new players, the game will slowly die out. Thus it is only a matter of time before you end up playing the same players. Perhaps it lives a month, half a year, or 2 years. Sooner or later it will be very dead.
I guess I could reference Blood Bowl here. As said, if people are playing the game a lot at clubs and tournaments (which seems to be the main problem in Norway), new blood will follow. When I first joined a wargames club in 1979 at the age of 10, I played what the guys there were playing. The books are easily accessible on ebay.

The issue here is that a lot of players are only familiar with the GW-era model of how games go. Wargames, tournaments etc existed before GW and are not dependent on them (as WM/H seems to show Curu).
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Curu Olannon
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1593 Post by Curu Olannon »

Blood bowl is a niche game. WHFB was, to my knowledge, by far the most popular fantasy miniature wargame worldwide. Anyway, if 9th age or Kings of War turns out to be a big hit I can easily make the switch back - after all I have all the models I need :)
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
sparkytrypod
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1594 Post by sparkytrypod »

Will you blog your warmachacine exploits?i
death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain

do an rpg personality test, im from Ireland and I get...

[CENTER][url=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/img][/url][/CENTER
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Curu Olannon
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1595 Post by Curu Olannon »

:: Olannon's ETC 2015 Reports: Prologue ::

This is the first post in a series of ETC reports, musings and thoughts dedicated to the readers of this blog as my journey as a Warhammer player has come to an end. I hope you appreciate it :)

In the fall of 2013 I got a call from the captain of Norway's 2014 team asking me if I'd be interested in playing on the ETC team. I said that I'd like to be a part of it. In the end I didn't have the activity nor tournament presence to justify a position compared to the guys who were selected. It did however spark an interest to make a run for the team in 2015 so throughout 2014 I helped the team prepare as best as I could and I attended tournaments to dive deeper into the competitive aspect of this game. The ultimate goal of 2014 was to place well in the team tournament in Sweden in November: BSK. On the road there I assisted the ETC team as best as I could with practice games, many of which were posted as reports on this blog. I also attended SM2014 where I ended up playing a livestreamed game on table 1 for the last round. At that point in time this was past my skill-level and the matchup was horrible so I was happy to walk away with a small loss. During the summer I went to another ETC tournament, Indian Summer, where I attended with a unique list I'd never tried before going there. The lack of experience hurt me but it was a good experience anyway. Just a few weeks later I went to an uncomped tournament, Invasion, where I was hoping to get first place until I brainfarted against a Skaven player. I ended up getting runner up and best painted (!), so overall I was very happy despite being annoyed at myself for literally throwing away the win.

During this time we also had discussions about ETC2015. Norway performed very poorly last year and a lot of the stronger players were not happy with the preparations, the games and the result. My increased activity had paid off as I was a part of these discussions. We arrived at the conclusion that if we can gather a team which is interested in making a shot for the top spots then those players should be allowed the privilege. Shortly after the team was selected based on the criteria that there would be a lot of work and ETC focus throughout the year and I was very happy to be a part of it.

We immediately divided the year into 3 large chunks: The fall was spent understanding the current meta. We played the various top lists from ETC2014 winning teams as well as top scoring ones from the different factions and learned the upsides and downsides of these variants. The End Times changed the game significantly but luckily for us the restrictions were coming along quickly. Early 2015 was spent following the scene worldwide with various 'sources' so we knew pretty much everything that was played successfully from the US to Germany, Poland and England, Spain and Denmark. We developed our lists accordingly and felt we had a very good grip on the meta. At this point in time I think next to no other teams were close to our level of activity and we were really optimistic.

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One of many dozens of games leading up to ETC.

The restrictions gradually tightened up and a lot of our builds were ruined overnight. We managed to work around it largely but some concepts were just completely nuked. At this point in time we also decided we needed to lock down our faction choices because we would not have the time to properly learn a new army. We had 2 armies we struggled with in particular: High Elves and Dark Elves. We could not get builds that were strong enough for our liking. The alternative was me switching to Empire and our DE going for Brets (which he won an ETC tournament with earlier in the year) but we made a team decision to stick with the Elves because the Elves are always popular - and for a reason. I picked up Dennis' list from 2 years ago and started practicing with it. I never found it to be an excellent list but the list was good at getting stable results. When we also saw how scared DoC and VC were of it we decided to go for that concept. We also arrived at a very strong DE list in the end, luckily. However we still followed the meta closely and we knew we were lacking some key elements, most notably we found BM and Karl Franz Empire to be broken. We had no real way to bring these lists though so we had to stick to what we had, making small changes to try and counter these lists as best as we could.

When the lists were revealed there were very few surprises for us. We were glad BM weren't as abundant as we'd feared and among the top countries we had nothing we feared in particular. We proceeded to do the evaluations: We went through all the lists and asked ourselves the question: "If I play an opponent who plays flawlessly and I play my best, what is the likely outcome of this match?". 40 countries, 8 players, 4 scenarios, precise scoring from 0 -> 20. This took forever to complete, but oh my was it worth it? Having all these values meant that we were able to analyze what teams were problems from us and, if we considered that country to be among the best, we could look further into how we could deal with them. Furthermore when we got down to Prague and we got the pairings throughout rounds 1 => 6 we could just make small adjustments and QA instead of doing everything from the bottom up. Lastly we wrote a pairing program based on Alpha-Beta pruning (google it if you're interested, game theory algorithm) which helped us with the pairings and this program needed these numbers as its input data.

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Prague old town center.

We got to Prague a couple of days before the event started. The last month before ETC, i.e. after the lists were published, we were unable to play as many games as we'd liked because GW killed WHFB and with it, a lot of our motivation, as well as other unforeseen circumstances making it hard for us. Regardless we felt well prepared and we had arranged for a practice game vs Belgium on Thursday night.

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The venue with our reporter for the people back home, lunch fixer and general go-to guy.

We spent all of Thursday at the venue, preparing our routines etc (we had 3 players, myself included, that had never attended before) and when Belgium arrived we had an absolute blast of a game that felt like the perfect preparation for the tournament itself.

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Going through Northern Ireland's lists just before pairing.

Day 1: We drew Northern Ireland game 1. We had great matchups here and managed to get a lot of them. We got a ton of points and capped them. My matchup was near-perfect: DoC. The only problem was Metal which proved to be more of an issue than I'd have hoped as IF Final Trans caused me big problems early game. Regardless I went on to score a big win, 19 points and a perfect start both for me individually and the team as a whole.

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Posted on Facebook by our TK player with the caption: "Norwegians with a mac against Asians with pen and paper? I don't like those odds".

Game 2 was against Singapore who had capped a team by a large margin as well. I got to meet Eldwin aka pkng of this forum and as chance would have it, we were drafted against eachother. I was really unsure of how I should approach this matchup given that I had called it as an 8, largely because I think it can swing either way but it's marginally in his favour because of how strong PG with Tyrion for 2++ vs magic is against my list. My fears quickly went away as I was immediately offered a 10-10 which I took after a quick chat with our coach. The rest of the team largely dominated the matchups they were supposed to, with one exception. However DoC and I believe DE pulled through in style, getting us some big points to score a significant win. Singapore is no easy matchup in our opinion, we did not take them lightly and they indeed gave us a tough challenge. Day 2 concluded with the pairings for game 3 and we drew Austria.

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Our Dark Elf player putting the pressure on his Austrian Wood Elf opponent.

Day 2: Austria is a country that has, historically, performed well at the ETC. The recent years however have seen a decline in their results so we weren't sure what to expect. Our matchup tables looked great however and we managed to pair well, dodging our worst fears and getting a couple of really good matchups. I had an absolute blast in a game vs Dwarfs where I made a big strategical mistake during deployment which meant I had to fight like crazy to get away with 7 points. It could easily have been 5 and it was apparant that I'd been too optimistic calling this a 10: Even with better play from my side it's likely an 8 or a 9. Anyway a 7 proved enough as our strong matchups pulled through yet again and we walked away with yet another win.

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Table 2 vs Russia.

Russia awaited us for game 4 and this would be our first game against a top-tier team. Russia is easily among the very best and they had some scary lists. We did manage to get decent pairings though and we avoided the worst of the worst. I played vs WE in a matchup I had as a 7 but nothing worked for me in the early stages of the game (in 4 turns I got off 1 spell, which was an IF Burning Gaze causing 1W to a great eagle). I was set to lose 0-20 but my opponent made a move I still struggle to understand that basically gave me a ton of free points and a safe endgame. I was very happy to take away 6 points from this game. Unfortunately 2 of our positive matchups turned against us disastrously and this caused us to suffer a 70-90 loss.

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Team meeting before facing Australia

Day 3: Despite losing to Russia we were not far away from the top tables - Australia awaited us on table 6. Australia beat Norway last year and we know they have several high-skilled players. Our matchup table had 2 big issues but we managed to steer clear of them and Australia made a disastrous call on a matchup so we were set to win big. Again however one of our positive matchups did not come through at all but the miss-call from Australia kind of made up for it and towards the end of the game we were ridiculously lucky on 2 tables which turned a small win into a big one - we nearly capped them. In this game I agreed to my 2nd 10-10 as I faced Tomb Kings. We deployed in opposite corners and I had the matchup as a 9 because he has very few points for me to pick off at a distance. In addition he can do it a lot safer than I can: He has no Khatep scroll to fear and the Casket can't miscast.

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Going all-in!

For the very last game we drew Poland. Poland was for us the worst possible country to face: Our matchups here were truly abysmal. We went through the table again and adjusted matchups that could swing both ways up, telling people to take the chance when they could -if- pushing was reasonable. We ended up dodging the worst matchups and got a lot of potentially good ones, including me being paired vs TK in KOTH. I had this called as a 10-10 because I believe it can go either way. On the other tables matchup after swingy matchup turned against us and not even our 2 good ones managed to pull through (most were neutral). I had little information about how bad we were doing and I was fully focused on my own game which I was able to secure as a 15-5 win. I felt great securing our team this many points as anything above cap could be crucial for our final placement but it mattered very little: The rest of the team all lost their games (including 3x 0-20) and we only got 39 points combined.

A bit of a disappointing end to what was otherwise a great run starting way back in September last year. Regardless we largely improved our placement from 2014 and we know that we were competing with the very best - it says a lot that our final placement was the worst we had all weekend (we were never below table 6) as opposed to submarining our way to a decent finish. Indeed, if we had somehow capped Poland we would've taken silver. The team is overall happy with the performance, most of all we think it's a pity that we can't continue building on this (the motivation for continuing to play Warhammer on this level is non-existant for almost everyone on our team) as we believe 2016 would've been even better now that we all have a lot more experience.

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Team Norway!
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
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Curu Olannon
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1596 Post by Curu Olannon »

sparkytrypod wrote:Will you blog your warmachacine exploits?i
Already have started to do that, although it's on a Norwegian forum. Not sure if I'll go to an English one. I haven't found one that appeals to me yet.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
User avatar
Curu Olannon
Vindicated Strategist
Posts: 4929
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2004 6:21 am
Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1597 Post by Curu Olannon »

:: Olannon's ETC 2015 Reports: Game 1 - Northern Ireland Daemons of Chaos ::

Table for the game: N/A

The first game of a tournament is always interesting. You can draw a terribly hard opponent or a very soft one. Northern Ireland are known for their heavy drinking habits and casual approach to the game but everyone that comes to the ETC knows how to play Warhammer and as such, no matchups can be taken too lightly or for granted. True, we were very happy with this draw and our matchup tables were insane as well. When pairing was done I don't think we had a single bad matchup. A funny story from this game is that our Dark Elf player completely lost his head as he was deploying 2nd in Meeting and for some reason he thought he'd be going first (unless his opponent rolled a 6). Needless to say, this did not pan out very well but he got away with a small loss.

Anyway, so onto my match: Daemons of Chaos is a good matchup for me. Not as good as some people think because Wall of Nurgle is so resilient and capable of literally drowning the board. The Lions can't be everywhere at once and additionally chaff is typically abundant. This particular variant however had no Plaguebearers and an interesting choice in Fiends + ASF Herald, a combination I've come to understand is popular in the British scene (though I can't for the life of me understand why).

:: Lists ::
Loremaster of Hoeth: General, Book of Hoeth, Shield of the Merwyrm, Sword of Anti-Heroes, 330
Archmage: L4, Light, Power Stone, Ironcurse Icon, Golden Crown of Atrazar, 255
Mage: L1, Light, Dispel Scroll, 110
Lothern Sea Helm: BSB, Standard of Discipline, 140
20 Archers: FCG, 230
10 Archers: Musician, Standard, 120
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: 80
28 White Lions: FCG, Banner of the World Dragon, 444
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Frostheart Phoenix: 240
Total: 2399
Herald of Tzeentch; General, Level 2 Wizard; Lore of Metal 125
Herald of Tzeentch; Level 2 Wizard; Lore of Metal 125
Herald of Slaanesh; Greater Gift; Steed of Slaanesh; Greater Locus of Swiftness 215
15 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch:;Lore of Tzeentch , Iridescent Horror; musician; standard bearer 225
15 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch; Lore of Tzeentch Iridescent Horror; musician; standard bearer,Standard of Discipline 240
10 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch; Lore of Tzeentch musician; standard bearer 150
6 Fiends of Slaanesh 390
5 Beasts of Nurgle 300
5 Chaos Furies 60
1 Beast of Nurgle 60
4 Plague Drones of Nurgle:;Rot Flies (Plague Proboscis); Plaguebringer; standard bearer (Banner of Eternal Flame) 270
4 Plague Drones of Nurgle; Rot Flies (Plague Proboscis) 240
Total: 2400
:: Pre-Battle Thoughts ::

Our scenario was King of the Hill and I wasn't afraid I'd be unable to reach the middle in time because of his lack of chaff. Typically vs DoC I want my Lions on a flank to protect my weaker elements so that the Drones can't easily wrap around me and go for the Archers. Magic would be an issue because of the Metal mages for DoC: Final Transmutation can often downright win DoC games vs HE.

:: Deployment and Early Turns ::

I managed to get the pattern that I wanted and he deployed everything directly opposite me apart from the Horrors whom he had in a central position. Interesting choice considering he should expect to be smashed in a straight-up fight. He got the Final Trans on his general and I got all the spells I wanted on my L4. Due to the thread of FT I deployed the L1 + BSB in Archers.

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I vanguarded the Reavers up to be within 19" of the Fiends, making it look like I'd be willing to take the risk. In reality I was intending to flee to buy myself a turn in case he managed to steal T1. This is exactly what happened and he took the charge, which I promptly fled. He then sent everything up towards me and as I was getting ready to throw my 6DD on Final Trans he IF'd it and I lost ~10 Lions. Not a good start.

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I had to react and I had to put pressure on him. Avoiding another FT was absolutely vital so I sent the WL up full speed while the Frost charged a unit of Plague Drones. This is not a fight I'm expecting to win big, fast unless I can get Timewarp off, but it's a grind I don't expect to lose either. The Archers made themselves useful as relatively safe-haven character bunkers tucked behind the Lions and my Reavers started going up the table.

For magic my priority was the Frost and I kept throwing small spells at the Plague Drones such as Miasma and Iceshard. My opponent saved dice so I needed IF for my last spell on 3D6. I reckoned that if I were to IF the most useful spell to get through would be Ryze because getting up some more combat power would be more useful than e.g. Timewarp or Banishment. Furthermore the Book of Hoeth means a greater chance of getting the IF off so I cast Ryze on 3d6 and promptly summoned a unit of Vargheists. Luckily the resulting miscast was contained.

In combat the Frost fluked and lost but held due to BSB.

He responded with sending Fiends + Beasts into my White Lions and after a terrible string of rolls on my part he actually killed 3 and won combat. This was most definitely not good and the 10 boys who died from Final Trans were sorely missed.

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For my T2 I finally managed to clear the table of the Furies whom I'd been shooting at with full power in T1 to no avail. This allowed my Reavers and Bolters to start focusing on the bunkers and I reckoned that the WL would hold out for a long time despite the terrible rolls so I sent the Vargheists (who wouldn't do much vs Beasts anyways) towards the bunkers also: In case of disaster I could possibly kill all his banners and thus deny him taking the center at least. Magic saw me IF Wyssan's as my first spell which was really bad as I had a 5+5 phase without channels (thus the power stone is a really good item) but at least it would help the Lions out somewhat. The combat this time was tied, I could not believe the rolls I was having towards the Beasts.

DoC responded by sending a single Beast into my flank. Luckily my Frostheart was slowly winning but it was also losing the wounds and the other Drones were finally in place to counter-charge it.

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So at the end of the "early game" his heavy hitters are at least all tied up, his Horrors are in serious trouble (he IF'd Gateway on my Vargheists, killing one but I was ready to scroll the next) but the huge fight middle is shaky to say the least. If i lose the WL my Archers would be in for a swift death. My Frostheart is dead, hopefully it held out long enough.

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:: Middle Game ::

HE T3 and it was finally my turn to have the dice with me. He had thus IF'd all his spells, FT on WL, FT on Archers and Gateway on Vargheists. In addition I couldn't hurt his Beasts and it took 12 attacks to bring down the Herald of Slaanesh. T3 saw me get off Miasma -WS on his Fiends, thus allowing my WL to hit on 3s and swapping the Loremaster with the BSB for +1 CR and freeing him up for magic missiles. My opponent tried to stop my Power Stone'd Timewarp but failed and that allowed my WL to really put out the hurt. I also had 1d6 left which the Loremaster spent to case Shem's on the 2 Drones which, combined with my shooting, finished them off.

In combat my WL hit very hard and he rolled high for LD tests as well. A triple-charge on Horrors from Reavers + Reavers + Vargheists nearly wiped out one unit and suddenly the game was looking a lot brighter. One of the defining moments in the game for sure.

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He reformed the Drones and started walking towards me (reform shown on the picture above) but there wasn't a whole lot more he could do. In combat I finally wiped him out in the WL combat and I killed off the Horrors in the center. I reformed towards the center as Timewarp was still up and the "hunters" reformed to kill the other Horrors. It was all about maximising points now.

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:: End Game ::

White Lions marched into the middle and claimed the objective. I slingshot my general with Reavers to be able to join WL T5. My hunters went into the last Horror unit and wiped them. My Archers split up so as to present him with a bait: Charge the small ones => Flee off table => maybe I save the big ones.

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He charged the small ones and I fled off but he passed his redirect test -and- I rolled horribly for my flee so he caught them, too. I didn't cast magic as bringing down 4 Flies is unrealistic and he had no more major actions to do.

We counted up the points and I was massively ahead, it ended up being a 19-1 victory to the High Elves!

:: Evaluation ::

This game is fairly typical of DoC-HE when DoC decide to go all in without Blight Kings: Even with a Final Trans the Lions are just too hard to bring down effectively. True, the game looked grim during T2 and I could indeed have lost had he been luckier, but to be fair his dice were on fire for the first 2 turns. Granted I had a round of CC where the WL saved something ridiculous like 18 wounds or something like that but then again that was after his 4 Beasts rolled 24 attacks (20 +4).

The deployment strategy worked wonders and I managed to use every unit to great effect. The Archers anchored my back field vs the single beast, meaning a charge would likely see it either get stuck or just die (high CR for me in ranks of 5). They also helped keeping my characters safe from Reign of Chaos and his magic missiles. I rarely get a lot of mileage out of Archers vs DoC but this game was an exception.

The decision to go for the objective with the WL instead of charging the Plague Drones was perhaps a bit rushed. I was however counting on saving the big Archers and I wasn't sure I could kill the Drones in time. Besides, without the WL taking it there and then, double 6 for Reign could've simply landed there to prevent me from ever claiming it and I don't think my Archers could've reached it without magical assistance. Thus, I'd need Ryze or Timewarp to grab the 3BPs.

In the end I was happy with the game and I did what the team expected of me. I had this as a 12 or 13 I believe as I think that most of the time DoC, playing perfectly, will spread out and go for small points. In this case my WL will seek out combats near the middle of the table so I can easily reform etc to grab it but I can't go for the big points out of fear of going too far away from the center. In these cases I believe DoC with Tzeentch missiles, Drones on the flank and Reign will trade evenly for points, perhaps slightly more, meaning HE win on the objective. Hence the bid of 12-13 points (can't remember which of them it was but that's irrelevant). Metal does make it dicier, but statistically he is unlikely to get off FT more than twice per game, one of which I can scroll.

The rest of the team, barring our DE player and his Meeting mistake, performed admirably and we were way beyond capping Northern Ireland. This could be a blessing or a curse: True BPs are used for tiebreakers but they are also used for round 2 pairings, meaning that if a very strong team faced a very weak team they would be likely to be way beyond cap as well.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
User avatar
Curu Olannon
Vindicated Strategist
Posts: 4929
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2004 6:21 am
Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1598 Post by Curu Olannon »

:: Olannon's ETC 2015 Reports: Game 2 - Agreed 10:10 vs Singapore (pk-ng) High Elves ::

Table for the game: 2

For our 2nd game we drew Singapore, who like us had won their game convincingly beyond the 100-60 cap. I was eager to face this team because they are among the very few who take the trip from half-way around the world as opposed to the majority of the rest who are European. I've only been to Asia once and the cultural differences are huge, something I am very fascinated about and always eager to increase my knowledge of.

Our matchups against Singapore were decent. For me personally it was rough as I had quite few lists I wanted to play against. We did however end up with a favourable set of matches in our opinion, I think we had 90 or 92 points on paper based on our evaluations when the pairing was over. I drew High Elves and I was immediately happy I got to play Eldwin aka pk-ng of this forum whom I've known online for a long time (we've played on UB, chatted on Facebook etc).

:: Lists ::
Loremaster of Hoeth: General, Book of Hoeth, Shield of the Merwyrm, Sword of Anti-Heroes, 330
Archmage: L4, Light, Power Stone, Ironcurse Icon, Golden Crown of Atrazar, 255
Mage: L1, Light, Dispel Scroll, 110
Lothern Sea Helm: BSB, Standard of Discipline, 140
20 Archers: FCG, 230
10 Archers: Musician, Standard, 120
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: 80
28 White Lions: FCG, Banner of the World Dragon, 444
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Frostheart Phoenix: 240
Total: 2399
Tyrion on Malhandhir: General, Sunfang, Dragon Armour of Aenarion, Heart of Avelorn, 410
Prince on Barded Elven Steed: Dragon Armour, Giant Blade, Dawnstone, Enchanted Shield, Ironcurse Icon, 282
Archmage on Elven Steed: Level 4, High, Dispel Scroll, Crown of Command, 300
Noble on Barded Elven Steed: BSB, Spear, Dragon Armour, Shield, Banner of the World Dragon, 174
14 Silver Helms: FCG, Shields, 352
5 Silver Helms: Standard Bearer, Shields, 125
5 Silver Helms: Standard Bearer, Shields, 125
19 Phoenix Guard: FCG, Razor Banner, 360
Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
Great Eagle: Swiftsense, 60
Total: 2,398
:: Pre-Battle Thoughts ::

Playing an Elf matchup is usually straight-forward: The guy with the least shooting is almost always the aggressor. He dictates the pace of the game and he creates the opportunities and exploits the mistakes in the defensive setup (see my "Powerplay" article for more details on this pattern). Usually the guy with the most shooting has an upper hand. Of course Warhammer isn't that simple, but as a rule of thumb this is how I approach Elven matchups.

I had this called as an 8-12 loss so my job going into this game was to try and get at least 8 points. Realistically speaking this boils down to 2 scenarios: Either my opponent pushes and I manage to tie him up until the game is over before he's killed off too many models -or- he plays a no-game in which he basically hides away and I can't push them, in which case my ranged dominance is likely to net me more points than him.

Given the lack of flexibility in Eldwin's list, i.e. taking a no-game by deploying far back and pushing is disastrous as you won't get any points, I assume he will always be looking for an ability to push me here. He has relatively few drops and in most cases I will be able to win deployment, though not necessarily by enough to buy me the time I need to face a proper push. Getting the Lions and big Archers in the right spots is absolutely crucial to defend against a push like this.

:: Agreeing on the Draw ::

Immediately when I arrived on the table Eldwin offered me the 10-10. I hadn't even rolled a die nor gone through my units. Taking this is a bit of a no brainer: I was given a poor matchup and my job was to hold as many points as possible. Of course it's possible I could've won big as well, after all this is Warhammer and lots can happen, but our pairings did not call for me to get the points. It's better for me to take these safe points, doubly so as I was offered more points than I had committed myself to getting for the team, than to go all-in and hope for even more points. Those sort of risks are not worth taking for the sake of the team.

Instead we had a couple of beers, a great time and Eldwin got to spend some time with his girlfriend. He was tired from having had 2 practice matches before the event and with the physical conditions at the event I can perfectly understand where he's coming from. I did offer to play a friendly just for fun but naturally, given the reason he offered me a draw (which is also partially because the matchup is swingy I believe and like me he had committed himself to a draw-ish result to his team) he declined which I was perfectly fine with. This gave us time to watch the other games, several of which were hugely exciting! I must give props to the Singaporean team for being absolute great sports. In my opinion as a team these guys were the best to play, I don't think we had a single significant issue and the atmosphere was great on all of the tables. Absolutely top notch guys and I hope I get to meet at least some of them again.

But, back to the point of the draw: I suppose the interesting question is not why I took the draw when I've called it an 8 and am offered a 10 (that part is self-explanatory, if we'd all been offered +2 points from what we'd called we'd have capped them) but instead why I called it an 8 in the first place?

Ok so the Tyrionstar is a list I have extensive experience with. Immediately when the drafts started tightening up that was the direction I looked to. Granted I ran a variant that differs a bit to Eldwin's list, but the essentials are the same. Here is one of my first drafts:
Tyrion: 410
Prince on Barded Steed: Dragon Armour, Enchanted Shield, Dawnstone, Giant Blade, Potion of Foolhardiness, 282
Archmage on Steed: Level 4, Lore of High Magic, Book of Hoeth, Crown of Command, 330
Noble on Barded Steed: Battle Standard Bearer, Shield, Heavy Armour, Banner of the World Dragon, 166
Mage on Steed: Level 2, Lore of Beasts, Dispel Scroll, Ironcurse Icon 160

17 Silver Helms: FCG, Shields, 421
2x 5 Ellyrian Reavers: Champion, 2x 90

25 Phoenix Guards: FCG, Razor Standard, 450

Army Total: 2399
I played this in the club and at UB against a variety of opponents. The basic TL;DR of this list is that if there is something in the opponent's army I can hit hard, I will hit it hard unless he kills me before I get there. Hard games and losses with this list included MSU Dark Elves with Metal magic, Orcs and Goblins with War Machine and chaff spam and gyro Dwarfs. Easy games and big wins with this included defensive block High Elves (sounds similar to what I was fielding?), Daemons of Chaos and Vampire Counts.

The main issue I had with this list was its inability to get in combat early enough. It had some inherent problems from not having any shooting with regards to clearing the table of redirectors etc. Eldwin has partially solved this problem I believe by including 3 Bolt Throwers. Once I saw his list I immediately realized the beauty of the compromise. One of my main weaknesses in Warhammer list design is my inherent tendency to avoid compromises: 19 PG just screams "too few" to me. Eldwin's results speak for themselves: His list is simply superior to mine and although I didn't know this at the time, I did most certainly realize the threat his list posed to me. Another problem I frequently ran into was being severely out-deployed. Eldwin's list is marginally better here with +2 drops but perhaps more importantly the bolters means that his opponents can't simply play their chaff as they want to without fear of getting shot off the table.

So anyway, back to our specific matchup. Silver Helms vs White Lions isn't even funny. They deal so much damage on the charge with re-rolls to hit, 2+ to wound and no saves for me. In itself perhaps not a big problem as I strike back hard as well and in subsequent turns the Lions just murder the Helms, but there is one important aspect to remember: High Magic. With Drain Magic my otherwise CC-dominant magic has a very hard counter that can downright win the game, Hand of Glory allows the Helms to hit even harder (not to mention increased Move on PG, I'll get back to this) and last but not least: Arcane Unforging. If this goes off on the WL BOTWD this game becomes so ridiculously hard as I can't kill Tyrion as is and with my protection gone he will utterly murder my Lions (remember that Sunfang has a Breath Weapon attack as well). So that's one problem.

Another problem is the Phoenix Guards. These guys utterly ruin Elf infantry (barring Witch Elves and possibly Sisters) and especially White Lions. It's not even funny how one-sided this is. Usually the solution to this is to shoot them. PG are hard, but they are not -that- hard. Until you put Tyrion and L4 High Magic mage with them, that is. They will almost constantly have a 3++ vs everything and 2++ vs Magic (from Heart of Avelorn), which means that in this particular matchup Banishment goes from being absolutely devastating (killing a handful per cast is a lot when there's only 19 of them) to being completely negligible. Furthermore the 3++ means that they are 3x as resilient to bolter fire instead of 2x (saving two thirds instead of half) -and- one hit per volley can be allocated to Tyrion who's not going to die anyway. This setup on PG with High Magic means that Walk is an absolutely terrifying spell for my face, if PG get in my face with that it could very well be game over. Even without Walk a simple Hand of Glory to boost their Move can accelerate the game so much that he will eventually reach me anyway.

So I am faced with a serious dilemma: The Helms alone cannot beat the Lions but having the better mobility they get to dictate the game and, implicitly, when and where the fighting happens. If he gets Arcane through he can push hard. If he gets Walk through he can push hard. In addition Hand of Glory is amazing so how many turns can I survive this?

The problem from his point of view is that he'll get bogged down by Reavers, Ryze-undead, L1 solo mage and finally reach WL in conga with champ in front while being shot up by magic (miasma is still good, as are the missiles on his chaff and bolters and not to mention Net on his PG), 30 Archers (saves do fail eventually and his body count is low) and 4 bolters.

Most of the time, perhaps not by a big margin, I believe his list will have what it takes to push me down and score a significant win. The Frostheart is decent but not spectacular here as it can't touch the SH and it fears the static of 3++ PG with Tyrion's killing power. It could go for a suicide charge on the L4 High, thus it partially zones him from staying with them, but it's unlikely to succeed unless I get off Miasma I on him and Timewarp on the Frost (hitting on 3s with re-rolls with 5-6 attacks changes the odds). This isn't completely impossible since I can 1-dice miasma and on a low phase if he stops it I might be able to follow up with power stone'd Speed + Timewarp for the same effect, but unlikely.

Thus, I called it an 8. I found this assumption to be validated, at least to a degree, when I heard he had faced Sweden's Dennis with his High Elves (very similar to mine, basically swap bolters for another Frostheart) and won 11-9. While I don't know the specifics of what happened there, I do know that Dennis is certainly not a worse player than me so I was happy with the draw. It's an infamous ETC thing to agree on a 10-10 but it makes perfect sense and I hope the elaboration provided here helps you understand just why. Understanding the nature of matchups is the basis on which you perform your evaluations and thus how you pair and I believe that the biggest difference between the very best teams and the not-quite-that-good teams is a better understanding of just this: How does a matchup play? This also in turn helps you write army lists as you're able to visualize and understand how a game flows if both sides play near-flawlessly without even deploying a model or throwing dice.

:: Game Result ::

On the other tables the games were raging back and forth. I can't remember the specifics at the moment but I believe our Skaven player lost 0-20 (his first loss at the ETC ever I believe and this is the third time he's attended) which put pressure on the rest to perform. We had our DoC vs WoC bring home a 15 I believe, DW vs Empire took 13 and I can't remember the rest. We did end up beating Singapore and we were all very happy with that as they are a stronger team than most give them credit for and with that day number 1 was over for Team Norway with a 2-0 thus far.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

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Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Games 1 & 2 Up!

#1599 Post by Ferny »

Thanks for posting these - great to see this process at ETC. And congrats on how it went, especially after all the build up. Very sad to see that your scene died overnight and you're leaving the game (or rather it left you, but you know what I mean).

I haven't played many other games because I chose to focus my limited gaming time on one I knew I liked to improve at that...guess if there isn't a relic 8th or a new 9th Age scene then I'll have to consider KoW or something more radically different like WarmaHordes, though I'm loath to shift my collections base. Looking forward to seeing your final push in 8th.
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Games 1 & 2 Up!

#1600 Post by Curu Olannon »

Hey Ferny, I'm glad you enjoy this :)

I was discussing what exactly it is about Warhammer that I like so much with one of our most dedicated players on the metro back from the venue on the last day in Prague. I think it basically boils down to the learning part of the game: For every game I play I'm looking to take something away from it. Learn, adapt and improve. I've never thought of it this way before but it does make sense seeing as I've always been a sucker for learning new things - so long as they interest me. I remember starting school and finding the first year super boring because I could already read, write and do simple math.

The complexity of the game means that there's always more to learn. The nature of the game means that there will always be mistakes to improve on my part and mistakes to exploit from my opponents. I guess an interest in subjects in school gradually switched to an interest in games. Becoming good at a game, almost regardless of what kind of game it is, is about learning and adapting.

The question, as my friend so excellently put it, is whether another game can provide the same depth and spark the same interest and enthusiasm as Warhammer. I guess we will find out soon enough ;) If not, let's hope 9th age or Kings of War is largely the same and gathers enough players to rival the pre-AoS Warhammer scene.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1601 Post by Curu Olannon »

:: Olannon's ETC 2015 Reports: Game 3 - Austria Dwarfs ::

Table for the game: 4

Traditionally day 2 has been hard for Norway: First round draws frequently feature one of the weaker teams and so many teams perform well in round 1 that round 2 also has a high chance of providing another matchup below the top-tier teams. Inevitably though if you keep winning you will face the top teams and we were mentally prepared for this as the day 2 curse was something we were determined to end this year.

Going into Austria we were unsure of what to expect. Historically they have been one of the stronger teams and they were 1 of 10 teams we prepared for in detail prior to going down to Prague. However in recent years their results have been lacklustre. Regardless we approached the game with the utmost respect for their skills and lists.

Our pairing process provided us with a number of good matchups and some very dodgy ones. Mine was, on paper, one of the safer ones. This was also a first of sorts for me: NI had a standin playing DoC and as I agreed to a 10:10 vs pk-ng this was my first game actually facing a guy playing for his country. I had the pleasure of playing against a very nice guy: Philipp. At first he was so chatty I thought it might be a thing he had to lull me into a false sense of friendliness and thus forget about the importance of the game but it dawned on me before long that he was just genuinely a happy and out-going guy. Despite performing terribly and struggling like mad this was my favourite game of the ETC.

:: Lists ::
Loremaster of Hoeth: General, Book of Hoeth, Shield of the Merwyrm, Sword of Anti-Heroes, 330
Archmage: L4, Light, Power Stone, Ironcurse Icon, Golden Crown of Atrazar, 255
Mage: L1, Light, Dispel Scroll, 110
Lothern Sea Helm: BSB, Standard of Discipline, 140
20 Archers: FCG, 230
10 Archers: Musician, Standard, 120
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: 80
28 White Lions: FCG, Banner of the World Dragon, 444
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Frostheart Phoenix: 240
Total: 2399
Master Engineer: general, Rune of Stone, 75
Thane: BSB, shield, Master Rune of Grugni, Rune of Slowness, 188
Runesmith: shield, 2x Rune of Spellbreaking, Rune of Furnace, 113
Runesmith: shield, 2x Rune of Spellbreaking, 108
Master Engineer: Rune of Stone, 75
20 Quarrellers: FCG, great weapon, 310
19 Quarrellers: FCG, great weapon, 296
Cannon: Rune of Forging, Rune of Burning, 150
Cannon: Rune of Forging, 145
2x Gyrocopter: 80
Gyrocopter: Vanguard, 100
Grudge Thrower: 2x Rune of Penetrating, Rune of Accuracy, 155
Grudge Thrower: Rune of Accuracy,105
10 Irondrakes: standard, musician, 170
2x Gyrobomber: 125
Total: 2400
:: Pre-Battle Thoughts ::

We were playing Battleline and I had made the error of not realizing just how similar Philipp's list was to our own Gyro-Dwarf variant. This is an absolutely devastating list to face for High Elves and I have never won against it, despite playing against it like 10 times. The best I've achieved is a draw and I managed that once. Why? Those copters are just disaster waiting to happen for our troops. If you don't have PG, don't expect a unit to survive their onslaught (WL cloaks don't work vs bombs and SH hate armour piercing). This Dwarf list will literally march across the table and downright wipe you out. If you try and counter-push there's an additional 50 shooters to worry about, not to mention the gyros' ability to simply block you if you get too far.

:: Deployment and Early Turns ::

I did not realize how well Philipp understood this matchup until it was too late. My White Lions were hopelessly out-deployed and I immediately realized that this would be an uphill battle: In an ideal situation I should've been diagonally opposite him to ensure that any advancing gyros wouldn't have crossbow support and I would have more time and space to deal with him. My only shot then was to contain the gyros. Luckily for me, he only had 5 as opposed to the 7 I've become so used to facing. Unfortunately for me he had some excellent cover and advancement opportunities.

Image
See the ruins? That's roughly where my WL should've been.

At least I got T1. I started off with reforming the WL to hopefully get some useful spells off while the Archers advanced to target a gyro. Killing these ASAP is absolutely paramount. I managed to bring down 1.

Image

Philipp opened with doing what most Dwarf players do every single game: Establish ranged superiority. War Machines targeted my RBTs and I had made a stupid mistake as my L1 were in Archers with the Frost directly behind. Although the Frost is behind the hill and thus invisible he can target the mage and thus get a lucky bounce. I know this very well and it was just stupid on my part. Thus the Frost lost 3W, so annoying.

Image

Sending the Archers up to target the gyro meant they took a bit of a hit and I had to back down. The Frost made a run for it as the space behind my hill was becoming seriously crammed. I would have to survive one direct cannonball and one GT with clear line of sight before getting away to relative safety. I managed to land Net on the Cannon as well so I was hoping I'd be able to save these points.

Image

:: Middle Game ::

With 2 bolters down he sent the remaining 3 copters up to attack me. One killed the Frost with its bombing run (so much for Net) after he scored 10 hits. The shooters started marching too, confident I couldn't push him at this point in time. Perfect play on his part (he actually opened his turn with: "ok, now it's time to play").

Image

Gyros kept coming and I had to do something. I spent a long time this turn checking various reform options, carefully measuring angles etc. In the end I found a position where I believe he'd risk all his copters if he went in. The situation was still grim but magic gave me a lot of help as I IF'd Banishment to take out one of the gyros. Woho!

Image

Philipp sent the gyros in regardless. With the shooters safe from a push due to sheer distance he was smelling blood in the water and wanted the big points, understandably. Luckily for me the bomber missed my WL. The Copter used its infinite-charges breath weapon to kill some Archers.

Image

:: End Game ::

Another turn where I spent forever contemplating my options. Neutralizing the gyros was my first priority but I also needed to ensure my Lions would survive the game, also preferably above half strength. Originally I wanted to ensure the Lions a combat with an overrun off the table but the move was too risky and would expose them to too much unnecessary shooting. Instead I went for a more conservative approach where my Archers + Reavers charged gyros and my WL would focus on minimizing his shooting while my magic would be centered on protecting them. To be fair I wasn't expecting a lot from magic as he still had both (!) destroyers intact. Book of Hoeth would have to do some work. Archers pinned the copter and the Reavers ran the bomber off the table, following suit to avoid unnecessary losses.

Image

At this point in time the game was pretty much down to throwing dice. Philipp kept shooting WL and it came down to 3 armour saves on 4+: I had to make 2 of them to conserve full points. I failed 2 however and he got half points. I sent the copter fleeing but both Archer units remained alive. His inability to kill off my last bolter also helped my points immensely.

Image

Image

A game which at one point seemed impossible did not end up being a complete disaster: Although my original bid of 10 was too optimistic even with optimal play I managed to take away 7 points which I was happy with, given the circumstances.

:: Evaluation ::

I'll blame my deployment mistake in this game on sheer stupidity. I have played this matchup enough times to know very well that my blocks are supposed to be diagonally opposite the Dwarf corner. I do believe I had the drops to at least ensure the Lions this position in this game.

A rough start was helped by me getting the first turn (by far not a sure thing despite having +1) and getting 2 gyros fairly early on. Mid-game still looked hard but IF Banishment was probably a deciding factor in me defending so well lategame.

Gyro-Dwarfs are a complete nightmare for High Elves. The first time I faced them I played Sweden's HE list from ETC 2014. I tried to push him and needless to say I got 20-0'd. I think that game ended T3. With less gyros and depending on unit selection the High Elf list might be able to push but with a single unit of WL as the only threat I am never going to get meaningful points against a configuration like this. Even if all the gyros go down he can feed me cheap Runesmiths to conserve the big points.

Philipp played the matchup well and he clearly knew what he was doing.

The rest of the match vs Austria felt like we were struggling: We had some amazing matchups on paper such as our DoC vs HE in KOTH. This might seem unintuitive on paper but once you've seen 10 Blight Kings in action you'll realize how hard of a counter this is to anything High Elven apart from something like SD + Frostheart combo. The HE player ran up and took the hill and a 4-turn grind or something ensued. The Blight Kings failed a critical combat reform despite being steadfast and having BSB re-roll and this ensured that their HE player just barely held on long enough (at the end of T6 he had a single rank of Silver Helms left to claim the center), taking 12 points in a matchup we had pegged as at least 12 points in the opposite direction.

Our DE came through in style though getting a massive 20-0 and this helped lift the team overall. In the end the score was 88-72 in our favour. Despite it feeling like we should've capped them we were all extremely happy to break the day 2 curse and walk away with a win!
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1602 Post by Curu Olannon »

:: Olannon's ETC 2015 Reports: Game 4 - Russia Wood Elves ::

Table for the game: 2

Russia was our first truly top tier opponent. Their performance has been consistently strong over several years and they were among the teams we had prepared extra against. What made Russia a decent matchup however was how well our lists were against theirs. On paper it did not look like we would have any significant issues and indeed our pairing gave us multiple favourable matchups.

My list however did not have too many good matchups here. Instead I was used in a way that gave our team-mates favourable matchups, we gave them a bit of a headache towards the end when I was used as a counter with Wood Elves and they had to choose one against Bretonnia and the other against Wood Elves with less shooting. Anyway, I got the Wood Elf list with 21 Wild Riders and a huge sisters bunker, backed up by hagbanes. I've played variants of this before, but not in meeting and not with a focus on hagbane (in my experience trueflight is more popular). Hagbane makes it significantly worse for me because it's a lot better vs the Frostheart, which is one of the main units Wood Elves struggle with.

To add an extra level of difficulty we had meeting engagement and he got to deploy first...

:: Lists ::
Loremaster of Hoeth: General, Book of Hoeth, Shield of the Merwyrm, Sword of Anti-Heroes, 330
Archmage: L4, Light, Power Stone, Ironcurse Icon, Golden Crown of Atrazar, 255
Mage: L1, Light, Dispel Scroll, 110
Lothern Sea Helm: BSB, Standard of Discipline, 140
20 Archers: FCG, 230
10 Archers: Musician, Standard, 120
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: 80
28 White Lions: FCG, Banner of the World Dragon, 444
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Frostheart Phoenix: 240
Total: 2399
Spellweaver on Elven Steed: General, Lvl 4, Dark Magic, Sceptre of Stability, Talisman of Preservation, Moonstone of the Hidden Ways, 340
Spellweaver on Elven Steed: Lvl 4, Metall, Dispel Scroll, Obsidian Lodestone, 310
Glade Captain on Elven Steed: BSB, Asrai spear, Starfire Shaft, Charmed Shield, Hail of Doom Arrow, 151
3x10 Glade Guards: Hagbane Tips, Musician, 3x160
5 Glade Riders: Hagbane Tips, Standard, Cleaming Pennant, 125
10 Sisters of the Thorn: Standard, Standart of Discipline, 285
7 Wild Riders, Shields, 196
2x7 Wild Riders, Shields, Champion, 2x206
2x1 Great Eagle, 2x50
Total: 2399
:: Pre-Battle Thoughts ::

I had this matchup as a 7. I expect him to kill everything but the Lions and some characters and maybe the Frostheart. In return I expect to wipe all Wild Riders and Eagles more or less. It can swing both ways: If it goes my way it's a maximum of 5 points up unless something spectacular happens, if it swings his way it can go all the way down to 0. His magic makes this matchup even harder: Final Trans and Black Horror are both very hard for me to face. With a big sister bunker with Moonstone he will pretty much always have the positioning he needs as well.

I would have to make my magic work for me here early on and I would probably have to blow the scroll early on as well: Stopping final trans in the opening turns means that the Lions have a bigger impact on what he can and cannot do.

:: Deployment and Early Turns ::

Sergey, aka DM Crew on TWF and WhiteGlory on UB, deployed everything on the line with WR on both flanks and hagbanes centrally. This gave me a big headache as it was impossible to hide the RBTs for more than a turn. Seeing as I couldn't prioritize the hagbanes either this meant that he would likely be able to silence my bolters quickly. It was at this point in time I realized how much worse this matchup was for me in meeting than in Battleline, but to be fair if I had been able to deploy first it probably would've been better (which is one of the main reasons I hate meeting, so much hinges on that one roll-off).

I responded by castling up. Main priority was to put some level of pressure on the best advancement areas and keep the bolters + frost as safe as I could.

Image

The Reavers as you can see were sacrificed to buy me time. I failed to roll the 6 needed to steal T1.

Image

Uppermost Reavers are charged and flee. Redirect intro central who holds: I'm happy with him being stuck there. He lands both Eagles there as well as parking the other WR nearby. The last WR danced around my last Reavers. Shooting killed off the fleeing Reavers and he moonstone'd his Sisters to the woods on my flank. Magic saw him focusing on Archers and I stopped FT on WL.

Not a terrible start, the question now was how much I could hurt him. In Elf matchups dominating the ranged game early on is key to success.

Image

Everything reformed to create firing lanes, LoS and pressure on the center where he now had a juicy 500 points: 2 units of WR and 2 Great Eagles. Killing them all was unlikely but not impossible, depending on magic. Magic however was terrible: I opened with a 1-dicing of Fireball which failed and my 2nd spell was Shem's from the L4 on 2d6 which came up box cars. For my troubles I put a single wound on the closest great eagle and drained the rest of my dice. Great. Shooting wasn't much better as I spent everything barring a single bolter to kill off the Eagles and the last bolter picked off a couple of WRs.

Image

The pain was about to start as his Glade Riders made their 3+ to enter the table and his Hagbanes were in range of bolters. His magic phase was absolutely brutal as he had 12-5 after he channeled twice to my none. I did want to keep the scroll for T3 because he was still focusing on my Archers. I let him have a 40" black horror which called off a lot of Archers and a bolter, luckily the Frost survived. I then stopped FT on dice but my problem arose when he managed to cast a Doombolt on the Archers where my general + bsb were on 2d6. His hagbanes were in range and I have next to no armour so I couldn't risk this and thus my scroll was blown.

He killed another bolter.

:: Middle Game ::

The Glade Riders near my bolters were a problem because if I shot them and he survived he could probably charge them at an angle with an overrun into the WL. In itself this wasn't a big problem as he'd die, the problem is he'd lock me down in my turn, preventing me from casting magic missiles and setting up charges for his WR. I thus moved the closest bolter up. With the game becoming more desperate I also pushed up the Frostheart in an attempt to create space and buy time for the WL, at this point in time my only hope was to keep the bunker alive. He would've been in range with Hagbanes regardless.

My magic phase started off with another 1-diced Fireball which failed. 89% yeah right. I then failed to cast Net on 4D6. My corner bolter killed 4 Glade riders, the remaining guy passed his panic test.

Image

Sergey was smelling blood in the water and moved up very aggressively. The remaining Archers were all killed, his magic phase saw FT go off on IF and kill 10 Lions (luckily no characters) and 2 units of hagbanes killed the frost (!). Things were really not looking good for me.

Image

I reformed WL to face WRs. Again my magic phase started off with a 1-dice which failed. He did blow his scroll on banishment so that was something at least. The last RBT killed his last GR, netting me some points.

Image

At this point in time I was at his mercy and I was really frustrated with my complete inability to get anything to work.

:: End Game ::

Sergey gave me a huge opening in his next turn however as his Sisters ran past the WL to kill off the last bolter while his WRs charged the WL in the front. I used Naval Discipline to force him to maximise on characters + champ to preserve as many WL as possible: The L4 had his Crown intact, the Loremaster with parry would likely survive 3A and the mage and BSB were expendable at this point in time.

In magic he IF'd Curse of Anraheir on the WL and lost 3 Sisters for his trouble. I stopped boosted Word of Pain. In combat he killed the BSB and the L1 but this meant most WL survived and striking back, despite needing 5s to hit, the WRs all perished. This allowed me to reform towards his 2 cav units in my rear and suddenly his mistake became very apparant and I had a chance again.

Image

I charged his Sisters which elected to hold: Had he ran I would've redirected into the WR who would've had to hold due to Frenzy. Getting into the Sisters also allowed me to overrun off the table on a 4+ or 5+ which I managed after killing them off. This was huge as it allowed me a safe haven from both charges, magic and shooting for a full turn while also netting me big points from the solid bunker.

EDIT: Sergey pointed out to me on UniversalBattle in hindsight that we forgot that Curse of Anraheir causes units to treat everything as Dangerous Terrain. This is indeed a good point and it could possibly have turned the tides or maybe given him half points for the WL unit.

Image

In his T5 he thus backed up. T6 saw me stop FT though to be fair it wasn't that big of a deal as he was far from half points. In my T5, surprise surprise, I got no spells through. In my T6 I got off Banishment on Hagbane Archers only to score 3 hits.

Counting up points I was pleased to have managed 6 points in a game which should've been 20-0 in his favour. His decision to charge the WL and go for the RBT T4 was a big mistake which I managed to capitalize on perfectly.

:: Evaluation ::

I have played against "combined arms" Wood Elves many times as we were expecting them to be popular. I have always managed to get more out of my magic than I did here and my shooting has usually done more as well. To be fair I've never faced a huge sisters bunker, which is in effect immune to shooting due to their resilience (i.e. shooting at them is just a waste of potential) and I haven't faced them in Meeting.

Furthermore his magic is absolutely disastrous for me but this is nothing new: High Magic is the worst I can face because Arcane on the WL with this much shooting means they will die in droves (they only have a 6+ vs magical shooting). The problem in this game however was that he got -so much- out of his magic whereas mine did absolutely nothing of value all game. I can't remember ever having rolled this bad for magic and my list is built around making the magic phase work regardless of split: The Book of Hoeth usually allows me to force some tough decisions for my opponent and the Power Stone allows me to boost a phase when I need it the most.

Deployment-wise I might've been able to put the RBTs even further behind but the problem was getting LoS through the WL. I could arguably have had the WL positioned differently, for example to the bottom where I had the majority of my RBTs. I was afraid that this would allow him to get too many Wild Riders in at the same time but in 20/20 hindsight I probably would've been fine because in doing so he'd have to advance himself into the open vs 4 RBTs (which, positioned even further behind, would've been out of his Hagbanes for another turn). I'm not sure it would've been better and this highlights another important point: You have to know the matchup to play it perfectly. I'd have to play games with both variants to gauge their impact on the game because this is something I can't theoryhammer.

Sergey played a brilliant game and he was, rightly, going all-in super aggressive. I do believe his 3rd WRs, which were tied up chasing my Reavers all game, wasted their potential by not simply ignoring the Reavers and going for the White Lions, but apart from this he made the right moves and found the openings he needed. His T4 decisions however were very poor and I still struggle to understand what he was looking to take away from this. If he was hoping to get off boosted word of pain there's still a good chance he'll die seeing as he's only T3 4+/6++ with 4 models left. If he had kept his cool, danced around me and kept casting black horror/FT from point blank range I'm pretty sure this would've been 20-0 in his favour.

In the end I was very happy to take away 6 points, only 1 less than I had called, in a situation where I felt nothing was working out for me.

The rest of the team had varying stories. Our Dark Elf player got a good matchup and made the most of it, bringing home a 20-0. Skaven won a bit but our Wood Elves, facing Bretonnia, only got a 10. This was supposed to be a good matchup for us so that hurt us. However the worst was that we had 3 games which gave us a total of 3 points where we were supposed to get around 30. The players said that a lot of this came down to dice, including 10 catapult shots of which neither rolled a hit. It's hard to say as I didn't observe their games but the feeling in the team was that we were really close to actually beating Russia despite the 70-90 loss which was the end result. Thus we went home after day 2 with a feeling we could compete with the best of the best and were eager to fight for the top spots on the last day.
Last edited by Curu Olannon on Sat Aug 15, 2015 10:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
User avatar
Curu Olannon
Vindicated Strategist
Posts: 4929
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2004 6:21 am
Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1603 Post by Curu Olannon »

:: Olannon's ETC 2015 Reports: Game 5 - Agreed 10:10 vs Australia Tomb Kings ::

Table for the game: 6

For the last day we drew Australia in our first game. Australia nearly capped Norway last year and we knew very well that despite being on table 6, they had some excellent players. They also had the thus far worst lists for us to face: All our previous 4 matches had superior evaluations compared to Australia. In pairing however they made a couple of huge mistakes, including putting their HE up against our DW in Meeting Engagement early on. This relieved some of the pressure on our other lists as a lot of us struggled with Australia's HE and on top of that this is a matchup that DW should win any day of the week (as I said in a former report, I've never won against this DW list despite playing like a dozen games with 4-5 vastly different army lists). The worst that could happen would be a stand-off. We also managed to get our Wood Elves against their Ogres, one of the worst matchups in Warhammer for them, so what originally looked like a really up-hill battle heavily favoured us after pairing.

I personally had to tank one for the team again. Very few wanted to face their TK list with a total of 11 Morghasts in 2 huge units. This is a difficult matchup because their magic makes them extremely resilient. To play effectively against Tomb Kings with Morghasts you have to wipe them out in one go, or play the ranged game.

:: Lists ::
Loremaster of Hoeth: General, Book of Hoeth, Shield of the Merwyrm, Sword of Anti-Heroes, 330
Archmage: L4, Light, Power Stone, Ironcurse Icon, Golden Crown of Atrazar, 255
Mage: L1, Light, Dispel Scroll, 110
Lothern Sea Helm: BSB, Standard of Discipline, 140
20 Archers: FCG, 230
10 Archers: Musician, Standard, 120
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: 80
28 White Lions: FCG, Banner of the World Dragon, 444
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Frostheart Phoenix: 240
Total: 2399
Grand Hierophant Khatep: General, Lore of Nehekhara, 330
Liche High Priest: L4, Light, Obsidian Lodestone, Neferra's Scrolls of Mighty Incantations, 305
Liche Priest: L1, Light, Dispel Scroll, 95
Liche Priest: L1, Light, Scroll Shielding, 85
Liche Priest: L1, Light, 70
30 Skeleton Archers: FCG, 210
25 Skeleton Archers: FCG, 180
20 Skeleton Archers: FCG, 140
5 Skeleton Horse Archers: 70
5 Skeleton Horse Archers: 70
5 Skeleton Horse Archers: 70
5 Morghast Harbingers: 400
6 Morghast Archai: 540
1 Casket of Souls: 135
Total: 2700
:: Pre-Battle Thoughts ::

I have faced Tomb Kings a lot. For our ETC preparations we were paired up 2 and 2 to evaluate eachothers' matchups and make sure that we weren't putting down ridiculous numbers. This QA process helped us a lot and it also meant we learned to see beyond our own army. I was paired with our TK player because we know eachother well, have played tons and understand eachothers' armies from experience.

What I'm always looking for vs Tomb Kings is 3 things: How many drops until they commit, how many Horse Archers to slow down a potential WL push and how many Morghasts? Australia's list had very non non-commital drops so not going for a corner for him could be scary as I'd get a perfect positioning for a 3 units of Horse Archers is something I can handle without too much trouble (I find 4 to be the threshold where they really become a problem) so the only problem I had here was the sheer amount of Morghasts. In an isolated setting the White Lions typically beat Morghasts but he has better magic than me due to Casket and Hierotitan (the spells are equally devastating for both sides) and his superior mobility usually means he gets to dictate how the fighting happens.

As soon as I got to the table I encountered one of the nicest guys I've ever met. Adam was very clear about wanting to have a good game without shenanigans and having previously had a couple of games where my opponent tried some really wacky stuff (like picking up way too many dice, or my favourite: Attempting to reform in -my- shooting phase) I breathed a sigh of relief. Australia has a good reputation and Adam was a true pleasure to be on the other side of the table of.

:: Agreeing on the Draw ::

So off we went to start playing a nice game. He immediately committed to a corner and I went in the one diagonally opposite him. I had called this matchup a 9 because I think I can hold him off he wants to push and if he doesn't I can counter-corner as I did here and play the ranged game with minimal differences. He does have the upper hand because his magic is less risky than mine and I don't have the Khatep scroll. However when Adam placed his very last unit of Morghasts in a very defensive position I realized he'd probably been told to play for a draw.

"So Adam, I don't mean to be rude but from the looks of your deployment it doesn't seem like you want to play the game. Do you want to call it a 10-10 and, if you want to, we can play a proper game instead of this corner-hammering (which of course doesn't count for the result)?"
"Yeah sure, totally!"

And with that, the draw was a fact. Our coaches were informed and I went to get us a couple of beers. We played a fun game instead where we both went all-in with some proper crazy dice rolls. In this game I did win but it didn't matter, especially not as we deployed everything from scratch and got a completely different game.

As I argued in my explanation of why I took the draw vs Singapore (pk-ng), taking a deal in itself is a no-brainer when you have called less points than what's offered. The question is, why did I call this as a 9?

My experience from pushing Tomb Kings is that is usually does not work. A lot of things have to happen for it to go for the High Elf player. In this game, I had the commits in my favour (in terms of deployment) and 3 horse archers is doable. However lots can happen: Him getting T1, me being unable to deal with Horse Archers, Khatep scroll eating a wizard etc. The main problem in this matchup is the Morghasts. 11 is a lot and having big units really hurts me as it almost always ensures that he gets a turn of magic to heal them back up even if I get the charge off.

Thus my decision in this game was to try and play a diagonally opposite game. This buys me time to manoever and the Morghasts are surprisingly cumbersome when they can't charge. Huge footprints with Skirmish is something I've come to learn can be a real issue. DoC and TK players can surely agree.

In a diagonally opposite match, it boils down to long-ranged magic and artillery. My focus will be on getting the easy points unless he starts pushing. That means throwing fireballs, shems, banishments and shooting RBTs at Titan, Casket and Horse Archers. In return TK will retaliate with Light of Death and Banishment and, if they know how to play the matchup, the movement spell is critical as it allows him to close with me dangerously fast. Lategame smiting also becomes a problem. One of the main problems with this type of game however is that I have a lot more easy points for him to target in the shape of RBTs, Reavers and Archers. Add to that, the Casket can't blow up due to miscast, Khatep can re-roll if he gets IF, he has more powerdice and he has no Khatep scroll to fear. In total then I think TK has the marginally upper hand in this situation, despite not having catapults (which would make it even worse).

:: Game Result ::

The good part about agreeing on a 10:10 was that we could follow what happened elsewhere closely. A lot of the games were really interesting, including DW-HE where Jamie decided to push. I did the same the first time I played Gyro-Dwarfs and I was eager to see how much this would cost him:

Image
With Dwarfs getting T1 on anything but HE rolling a '6', this does not look good.

The push was stopped T2 I believe from which point the High Elves did their best to retreat all game. The end result was 15-5 to Dwarfs. Again this highlights the importance of understanding and knowing the various matchups. I believe the ideal play here would be to stand in a single rank on the table edge, which might've allowed a 10-10. I spoke to the Australian coach about this, which I believe is THRILLHELM of this forum (if I remember correctly) and he said they had this as a positive matchup for HE.

There was a Dark Elf mirror which was the cause of some problems: The lists that Australia had did not have our Dark Elves with Warlocks. This was a copy-paste error in the initial posting on TWF which was fixed ASAP in the google docs document with the official lists. No other team had alerted us of this so I suspect Australia printed an earlier version of the list. This is a problem of the ETC lists submission, there is no fixed date nor official, written-in-stone document which includes the finalized, corrected and double-checked lists. A similar situation happened on table 1 between Poland and Germany I believe and they demanded a re-pairing because of it. Australia could've done the same vs us but they elected not to. This particular matchup was interesting because it featured one of the lists we intended to bring for a long time - the Hellebron shadestar - but our resulting list had superior shooting. Chris played this absolutely brilliantly though and our DE player made a couple of big mistakes so what should've been a big win for us ended up being a big loss. A bad start for us.

Our DoC played their WE to a draw as did our TK vs their VC. The problem however was that these were matchups we were assuming were in our favour. We had to have someone get the big points to weigh up for our DE matchup, which was assumed to be our 2nd best after WE-OK.

Skaven was the first ones to bring the pain onto DoC: 5 Beasts of Nurgle into the Screaming Bell's flank matters little when you ring 13 with the bell (all models in unit get to strike regardless of being b2b) and a low magic phase allowed him to force through death frenzy. A Potion of Strength-popped Assassin revealed himself as well and I have never in my life seen Beasts of Nurgle disappear so fast, barring full-strength White Lions hitting them with Flaming Sword (happened in a game I played last year). This meant SK had complete control of the game and as it was KOTH he could claim the middle. Until T6 that was when DoC got off Final Trans on the Stormvermin and SK failed the LD9 re-roll stupid test and rolled the required 5+ to be taken off of the center point. This prevented a complete disaster for DoC but we still took away 15 points.

Our LZ likewise managed to get 15 from their Skaven. I'm not sure exactly what happened here but from the looks of things early game (we played on the table next to them) the Rippers got around and started massacring Slaves.

It all boiled down to WE vs OK then, which was BnG. OK was defending as best they could, putting up a defensive circle in a corner. Though trueflight shot them apart all the same, the Waywatchers struggled more. At the very end OK was forced to move BSB out of the gutstar to avoid having all fortitude in a single unit and it came down to whether the majority of the Wood Elf army could kill him or not. It was a coin-toss which we were lucky to see go in our favour, netting us big points in the very end: 16-4 to Wood Elves.

Counting up the points we were ecstatic to find that we'd beaten Australia a massive 97-63! Having nearly been capped last year this gave us a huge boost beforee the 6th and final game, not to mention that with a big win we would again be fighting for one of the top spots. Additionally, Poland was about to be capped by Sweden on table 4 so our worst possible matchup was unlikely to face us.

Then disaster struck. Sweden failed an LD10 re-roll test on a bunker on a table which turned the game completely. The very same thing then happened on another table. It was unreal, it was unbelievable what happened. However, their absence of luck had just started as their DE player was about to secure even bigger points vs the Polish TK: His Dreadlord on a Peg with 1+ re-rollable armour save, having lost 0 wounds, charged the flank of 4 Morghasts. Let's consider this scenario for a minute. The only way this Dreadlord can lose combat is to outright die: With charge + flank and no static for the Morghasts even 2 wounds on him would see them tie. The only way for him to die is to have at least 3 attacks hit (4+), wound (3+), fail armour save (3+) and then fail again (3+). The odds of this happening is around 1:5000. Guess what happened? The Dreadlord died and the remaining Morghasts reformed and charged the DE bunker, getting Poland the 3rd consecutive big win due to sheer luck and thus turning the entire game around. Sweden, which were about to cap them, lost 68-92. The disaster for them was a fact, but it was to us as well because this put Poland right next to us and we naturally drew them for our last game.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
User avatar
Curu Olannon
Vindicated Strategist
Posts: 4929
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2004 6:21 am
Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: Path To Glory - ETC Preparation Tournament Reports!

#1604 Post by Curu Olannon »

:: Olannon's ETC 2015 Reports: Game 6 - Poland Tomb Kings ::

Table for the game: 3

Our dreaded matchup comes at last. Poland is without doubt one of the most consistent and skilled countries in ETC. Year after year they feature among the very best in this tournament. The skill-level in our opinion is roughly equal among the best teams and, perhaps a bit arrogantly, we consider ourselves on par with them. We beat Sweden at a warmup-event prior to ETC and we've beaten them in smaller team tournaments. Last year they won. This year, the gold is out of reach unless Germany and Denmark gets a very specific result as well as us capping Poland, but the fight for 2nd place is still very much alive.

The problem with facing Poland is our terrible matchups. First of all Poland does not have High Elves and High Elves have been an army we've repeatedly got strong matchups against. Vs NI I think we capped them. Vs Singapore we did indeed get a tough one here but that was the best placing HE of ETC and besides, we agreed to a draw. Against Austria we managed to pair them up vs our DoC in KOTH and although that particular game was lost, the matchup is on DoC's favour. Russia's High Elves were utterly destroyed 20-0 and Australia's push-train was taken down 15-5. Furthermore Poland lacked any soft spots like OK which we locked down and shot up vs Australia. Our lists featured a lot of ranged power with some lists having extreme amounts of shots (DE and WE but also DW, HE and SK to an extent) but Poland's lists were by and large built to suck this up and counter-push.

Our very worst problems were the Lizardmen. Heavily inspired by last year's dominating 100+ points lists and in the hands of the same player we knew this could be devastating. Indeed we built our own LZ list on the same principles and it had dominated throughout the tournament. Both TK, HE and DW were afraid of taking these on, indeed I think that if LZ plays correctly this is 20-0 in our matchup at least. This created some huge issues for us during pairing and when armies like our DW really feared VC as well, we were at a loss as to what to do.

Prior to the pairing we all revised our pairing evaluation but in a new light: Our matchups vs Poland was so bad that we had to adjust the way we were approaching the game. Instead of thinking "ETC-safe" play we would have to look at the matchup and think: "If I go all-in, what are the chances of me succeeding?". Thus the scores became a little better, albeit at the cost of having extremely risky games. We were determined as a team to go in and do our best - for many of us this would likely be our last Warhammer game - and so we sat down.

Pairing went exceptionally well with Poland making multiple mistakes. We could not believe some of the dangers we had averted nor some of the high-potential matchups we had gotten. We were filled with a sense of optimism as we were about to play. We all got matchups we knew very well and we paired our best players with the strongest lists against the worst armies (e.g. LZ) from Poland.

Personally TK was far from the worst I could've gotten and I knew this would be an all-in game.

Bring it!

:: Lists ::
Loremaster of Hoeth: General, Book of Hoeth, Shield of the Merwyrm, Sword of Anti-Heroes, 330
Archmage: L4, Light, Power Stone, Ironcurse Icon, Golden Crown of Atrazar, 255
Mage: L1, Light, Dispel Scroll, 110
Lothern Sea Helm: BSB, Standard of Discipline, 140
20 Archers: FCG, 230
10 Archers: Musician, Standard, 120
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: Bows (swap), 85
5 Ellyrian Reavers: 80
28 White Lions: FCG, Banner of the World Dragon, 444
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Eagle Claw Bolt Thrower: 70
1 Frostheart Phoenix: 240
Total: 2399
Grand Hierophant Khatep: General, L4, Nehekhara, 330
Liche High Priest: L4, Light, Neferra's Scrolls of Mighty Incantations, Obsidian Lodestone, Ironcurse Icon 310
Liche Priest: L1, Light, Dispell Scroll, 95
Liche Priest: L1, Light, Scroll of Shielding, 85
Liche Priest: L1, Light, 70
40 Skeleton Archers: FCG, 270
20 Skeleton Archers: FCG, 150
20 Skeleton Archers: FCG, 150
7 Skeleton Horse Archers: champion, 108
4 Morghast Harbringers: 320
4 Morghast Harbringers: 320
Casket of Souls: 135
Hierotitan: 175
Screaming Skull Catapult: 90
Screaming Skull Catapult: 90
Total: 2698
:: Pre-Battle Thoughts ::

Given the nature of the pairings and our matchups, this was a make it or break it game. We were playing King of the Hill which left no doubt as to what my objectives were: Get up the field and secure that middle! I had this as a 10 because I believe it can swing both ways. It would be a game coming down to skill and dice.

When playing against Tomb Kings like this one of my favourite things to do is get the Frostheart up to where it can hurt him as soon as possible. The mighty scrolls + Banishment combo makes this hard, if not impossible. Getting the Lions up the field is also important, naturally, but I find that every game against TK presents them with unique challenges.

The table we got along with me winning the dice-off for sides allowed me to force him to a side where he had an impassable in the middle. I thought he'd commit to either side and off we went.

:: Deployment and Early Turns ::

Andrzej aka "Maryś" started with deploying his biggest unit of Archers right on the 12" line next to the impassable. This confused me because it wouldn't allow his Morghasts to go centrally and take a dominating position, nor would it allow him to protect them effectively from my shooting - which usually does nothing to TK apart from clearing Horse Archers (of which he had next to none). The deployment continued with him amassing around the impassable and I knew this meant I would likely be able to divide and conquer if given time. I did however mis-judge where he'd put his 2nd unit of Morghasts so my Lions were in a bit of a pickle when deployment was done: I wish they'd have been more centrally deployed to make it easier wheeling towards whichever side he presented me with a mistake on. Regardless I was fairly happy and he scouted the Horse Archers far away from my WL. This meant my "TK pushability" factor went up (see reasoning from G5) and I was feeling good about my chances.

Image

I got lucky and stole T1, despite his +1.

First things first: Lions up the field. I had to wheel a little to avoid the lake in further advancements but I maximised my movement. I had a feeling I would have to move centrally sooner than later anyway. The Frostheart jumped out, no point playing this cautiously. I deliberated going to the center with it instead of trying a flanking move but ended up deciding against it: I considered the bird dead anyway in this matchup and the most useful thing it could do for me would be to draw spells and firepower. If it somehow made it into combat and held him up, that would be a huge bonus.

I cast Timewarp which he let go and he stopped Net on his bunker. Shooting started targeting his big Archers with my Reavers wrapping around to force him to pay attention unless he wanted his WMs in trouble.

Image

He responded by backing up and reforming Archers to shoot Reavers. Magic saw my scroll come out as I couldn't have him get extra move nor force DT tests on Lions at this point in time. This is very early to blow the scroll vs TK but I felt I had no choice in the matter. Frost took 3W from Banishment.

Image

I marched the WL with a long wheel towards the center, figuring that I'd force him out with nothing else. It was at this point in time I realized I either had to draw out his Morghasts or connect my WL with his Archers to win this game. His defensive position made that a continued push would almost certainly mean a double charge. Coupled with his scroll intact, mine gone and his magic that could be disastrous. The Frostheart tried a double 6 charge on his Morghasts first though, if I could pin him down the WL could still have pushed. It failed but I counted it as dead anyway. I immediately gave up on the flank with Reavers locking down Horse Archers and the other unit running away with the Archers. I drew his scroll with another Timewarp and my shooting kept pounding his big Archers which were dying in droves.

Image

When faced with the proposition of my Lions wrapping around the impassable and eating into his Archers, Andrzej decided to push the Morghasts. It wasn't as though I could've charged him anyway, apart from maybe the Frost. I let him have Net of Amyntok because there were bigger risks to fear and I stopped DT spell and move spell. Frost died to Banishment.

Image

:: Middle Game ::

I ran some quick calculations and found that without magical assistance, I would beat his morghasts no matter how many because of Naval Discipline. Thus, my priority was Net. Speaking of Net, I failed my S4 test to move so the Lions were stuck. This wasn't intended, having them stuck in woods is bad because I lose rank bonus. I sent my remaining Reavers to screen them so that only 1 Morghast unit could contact me. The other would in theory have an ovverun, but Naval Discipline would quickly take care of this.

Magic phase saw Net go off IF on his bunker. I cascaded but survived. Meanwhile my shooting was tearing huge gaps in his big Archers and they were now almost completely dead, which meant that my position with the WL was a lot better. TK shooting, although 5+ to hit and S3, eats into them sooner or later.

Image

He charged my Reavers and I did as the Swedes: LD10 re-roll failed. Luckily for me, this wasn't my bunker and this might just turn out to be favourable, if I'm lucky. He redirected into WL which held and the and second unit came as well. Ok, time to make this game go boom!

His magic phase came up and after the Casket he had 12 dice. Oh-oh. Khatep fails his S-test from net, yes! L4 Light fails as well, double yes!! I had Naval Discipline'd to bring all but 4 Lions to be able to hit and all but 3 of them could hit one unit. Additionally 2 morghasts were unable to hit back and from a mathematical point of view, this should be a big win in my favour.

As combat started however the White Lions proved that they understood the gravity of the situation as they took out more than average. In return, he somehow managed to kill just a couple. He crumbled by 11, which meant there were barely any Morghasts left at all.

Image

Ok so game was looking good for me. I now had to bring my remaining units within my LD bubble to avoid losing points. At this point in time the rest of the game was about not losing points and grabbing that middle objective. I cast Net on his bunker again hoping for a repeat of last time. I finallly annihilated his "big" Archers and I had thus established ranged dominance and board control - quite unusual vs TK.

In combat the WL were exhausted and fluffed. The Morgheist was left on 1W.

Image

The TL;DR of this turn was that he did nothing worth talking about and his Morghast died.

Image

:: End Game ::

At this point I made my biggest mistake of the game which nearly cost me several BP: I charged the Archers with WL. Lining them up 3-wide was to guarantee a charge but what I didn't consider was that this move would also deny me effective damage output and thus I might get stuck in a grind. So unnecessary when I had enough firepower to simply whittle them away: Besides I could've cast highly effective missiles on them (Shem's on 1d6 scoring 2d6 hits is just stupidly good). Furthermore this put the small Archers out of LD bubble.

Image

Finally Andrzej was free of Net and this allowed him to bring his spells to bear on the WL combat. I won, but not by enough. Luckily for me, I had the big Archers left and he had nothing to contest with.

Image

In my last turn of the game I reformed the Archers 2 wide and walked onto the center point. He'd have to kill them all or panic them and ensure the TK Archers would survive at the same time (otherwise my WL could've reformed on top of it) and this was simply asking too much: I stopped skullstorm and he did not have enough firepower left to kill them.

Adding insult to injury his lack of buffs for the Archers meant my WL killed them all off for some final VPs.

Counting up I was ahead and with the scenario bonus, it ended up being a 15-5 win. I was ecstatic seeing as I believed this would mean we still had a chance. Unfortunately the situation was terrible on multiple of the rest of our games, of which I had no overview because I was so focused on ours. The feeling soon turned bittersweet as I realized we'd be capped regardless.

:: Evaluation ::

His deployment featured a pattern I have never seen before and I was at first curious as to how he intended to bring his firepower to bear on me. I found his Archers to be too exposed and wondered how he'd protect them. Indeed this failed hard and this allowed my WL to stop chasing Morghasts and still dominate the table, something strangely unusual vs TK (though largely due to the scenario as well, of course). Indeed his open Archers suffered horribly from my longer-ranged firepower and their demise was probably what spurred him into engaging the WL while under Net.

Let's take a minute to discuss this particular situation. Him failing both essential S-tests was indeed lucky, but truth be told there was by and large multiple things that could go wrong here:
- Killing Blow is useless apart from the heal. Seeing as they had taken no wounds, heal was irrelevant.
- Extra attack likewise because it would net him +1 or +2 at most.
- Movement is pure heal, irrelevant.

This leaves boosted Desiccation and Light Buffs. True, they are a problem, but Light buffs alone still require a lot of stacking to work well. Timewarp, like +1A from Nehekhara, is by and large useless on its own. Coupled with Speed it's another situation, but that was on another wizard I believe.

Overall then it was a risky proposition that, despite a crucial spell going through, could still have turned against him. I would likely have won combat regardless (unless he'd IF boosted Deseccation) because of the Naval Discipline reform in which case my next phase would've absolutely destroyed him with his scroll being gone. Had he not gone for it the WL would've marched onto the objective from which I could've obliterated the last Archers with magic missiles before facing the Morghasts late-game or just kept repeating my pattern.

Without a better coherency between his shooters and his Morghasts he can't force the Lions into a catch22: There's no downside to just staying out in the open when I have ranged superiority.

Among our other tables there were lots of sad stories. Lizardmen tried to push VC but Banshees literally turned the tables around. 0 points. Our Wood Elf list, built to dominate Elves, lost 15-5 in a mirror matchup. Our SK held up well against LZ and nearly did win big, but even taking away 9 points was good compared to the rest. Our Dark Elves lost big to Skaven and only took away 3 points. Dwarf mirror saw our opponent's 82 Warriors march into the middle to claim KOTH and the rest being a fairly even trade, he took the game 13-7. Our TK, usually dismantling Empire left, right and center due to Death being so strong here, lost 20-0. With Daemons losing 20-0 to Dark Elves we got a meagre 39 points combined. We were utterly beaten and the dream was crushed.

I think it's saying a lot that our resulting position (12th) was the worst we'd had all weekend. We had been constantly fighting in the top tables and even against Russia we felt we had a good shot at winning. Against Poland however we were not even close: You could've taken any game and turned it to 20-0 in our favour and it still would not have mattered. Although our matchup table was horrible here we -did- go out of pairing with games that were absolutely playable, so I think that without a doubt Poland was just a superior team. We didn't have a meltdown across the tables unlike Sweden either and although some might've been unlucky here and there, you don't lose with this many points without simply being outplayed. Among the 8 tables we lost 7 games.

The sad part is that the run we've had for the last year has been so incredible. We have learned so much and come so far. Another year would have been just perfect as we now have a very solid foundation in Norway for this type of gaming. With the mistakes made and lessons learned in Prague, I believe that 2016 could have been the year where we would be back even harder. We came so close this year, we could almost taste it. When we entered our 6th and last game we were so determined to play the best Warhammer we could and snatch 2nd place, sending Poland down beneath top 10 for the first time ever. These hopes and dreams stand in stark contrast to the result: 121-39.

Nevertheless the team overall has put in a tremendous level of effort over the past year and it did pay off. While we don't feel that 12th place in itself is much to boast about, it is light years ahead from last year's performance and again, we were never below 12th place all weekend (as opposed to a lot of teams finishing ahead of us which catapulted up from winning their last games big). It is what it is, but we are all proud of what we achieved and sad to be unable to keep building on this. Norway went from being 8 skilled invididuals who were by and large all by themselves to having 20 people work together as a team for 10 months to prepare 8 players as best as possible. The internal forum activity, gaming frequency and tournament attendance has gone through the roof and it's been an incredible journey to be a part of.

Hopefully I can find the same in another game. I will probably be bitter and angry with Games Workshop for a long time. Not just because they killed the game I've played for so long but because of the attitude they display towards those of us who have spent countless hours in the universe they created. At least I felt I went out on top, I was part of a Norwegian initiative to "put us on the map" one last time, I was happy with my ETC performance and lastly I managed to win my very last game convincingly (against Poland none the less!).
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

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Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1605 Post by SpellArcher »

Just posting on the non-game stuff first Curu.

I knew you and the guys had put a lot of work in but am staggered by the sheer scale of it now revealed. Bravo! Did you find the scenarios complicated the planning much? To back up your own comments (and mine elsewhere), 12th place belied the strength of your opposition. It is a great shame you can't build on this for next year. Sorry to hear you are so angry with GW. They have not behaved well since the 80's and even then they had their moments, so I am more saddened than angry myself. I think you're doing exactly the right thing going to WM/H.

I get the impression that Singapore had hovered around the 2/3'rds mark in past years and top half this year was a step forward? I also heard that your Russian WE opponent did very well in the ESC. Oh and how was Prague?

:)

High Elves vs Daemons is always interesting. As you say, the Lions can't be everywhere, people forget that the Daemons can bring a lot of pain elsewhere. In general I feel HE have an advantage but not a big one. I remember the initial angst when their book came out, a lot of players asking how they would deal with armour. Double Metal Heralds is a good answer and obviously FT is very helpful vs World Dragon. Fiends are a bit of a 7th edition book throwback. I guess the M10 is great against some things.

Even in my limited time with the Frost Phoenix, I quickly adopted the 'charge, lose, hold on BSB, grind' policy you used here to great effect Curu. Sure he died in the end but you got one unit of Flies and sucked in the other. You seemed to have quite a light touch with the characters here, which seemed to work well. How would you have played it if he'd spread out more and tried to come from your right flank?
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Curu Olannon
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1606 Post by Curu Olannon »

I think I've literally spent over a thousand hours specifically preparing for the ETC myself. I know I'm not the only one dedicated in the team so the combined effort was pretty huge, yeah. It doesn't feel like work though, it was a journey we all enjoyed. It just puts things in perspective ;)

The scenarios were troublesome because we didn't know how to adjust the lists for them. Getting enough practice games is also very hard because some of the scenarioes completely change certain matchups. All that said though I feel most other teams were about as prepared as us, at least among the ones we faced, so I guess we weren't that bad off. Meeting was probably the hardest with only 2 players on the team (usually) comfortable playing it: Daemons and Lizardmen. We thought Wood Elves were good here but got utterly punished vs Austria when we countered their TK with WE, a matchup we otherwise expect to be playable in Battleline (though I'm not sure how much we've played this so we could have some bias here based on too few results).

Angry, sad, disappointed. Words fall short in trying to express my feelings. We should have seen it coming though but it's so unbelieveable because I don't understand the logic behind it. How much does it cost to produce a decent ruleset and continuously develop it? Like 3 guys working full time? That's a drop in the ocean. Anyway I'm just gonna leave that topic because I feel that even just writing this gets me agitated.

I don't have tabs on all the teams attending. We focused on the 10 historically best nations as well as the ones Norway had experience with in recent years. Singapore was a country we knew to look out for and I'm not surprised they did well this year. Their preparations appeared to be solid and their results speak for themselves. Really cool to see a team being able to work their way up like that, I have a lot of respect for the work it takes. The guys being absolute great certainly helps too ;)

Daemons. Oh my. Daemons. Where do I begin? I have a passion for hating Daemons. When our Skaven player got super-lucky vs a DoC player (can't remember which country) I remember telling him I'd feel sorry for him but since he's playing DoC I don't. I'll tell you one thing for sure: Getting rid of Daemons as I'm moving away from WHFB will be a relief. So anyway, let's start with ETC 2014. Last year, DoC were super popular and the highest scoring faction. Their go-to build was 4-5x Horrors core, double Beasts, double Drones and the ubiquitous Skillcannon (see my signature). Add ambushing hounds, furies, screamers, heralds to taste. What this list did well was to simply spread out across the entire table and wherever you pushed, they backed and pushed elsewhere. Annoyingly effective. I remember going to BSK with Rusty playing such an army and despite having next to no experience with it he was top scoring in our team if I remember correctly.

Fast forward to this year. The builds are essentially the same, but the change in comp means that their units are generally bigger and most choose to have Plaguebearers in core. True, BOTWD allows us to have a small edge but as I keep pointing out: A good DoC player is able to work around this. See last year's average results HE vs DoC. Despite the Deathtrain being the most popular HE list (one of the best lists vs DoC) the average was 10.1 points. Naturally not all of these matchups were Deathtrain vs Nurgle-DoC, but I remember playtesting this for the ETC-team and our concensus was that the loss for DoC should be somewhere around 12-13 points if played correctly. Hardly a game-breakingly tough matchup in a world where some games are downright 20-0 based on the lists. The TL;DR is that the advantage is more of a psychological one - and this did indeed help us in pairing so at least my list did something - and ingame it's fairly marginal. Daemons, for all their brokenness, are not easy to play when they are down in a matchup though (I personally believe that this is because DoC players are so unused to not being up). This takes experience, patience and mental fortitude. This means that in effect DoC players fear High Elves so much because they are used to BOTWD steamrolling them following a wrong (set of) decision(s). Again, understanding a matchup, how it plays and how best to go about it, is so important at this level of Warhammer. Look at our game vs Austria (I wish I had pictures) where we deliberately sent DoC into HE and expected them to win. Blight Kings in DoC armies are completely broken and the High Elf player narrowly avoided a huge loss when said broken unit failed an LD8 re-roll test. Even then, it was only a 12-8 win and that was because he was standing on top of the middle in KOTH.

If the DoC player had spread out more I would not have had to commit my Frost that early. I needed to shut him down because there were so many units crammed together. FT going off forced me to commit and try and lock the game down in combat. Typically when DoC spread out I try and keep one unit behind the Lions but if needs be I send everyone into the BOTWD-haven. This is really bad for FT but then again, most of the time that spell's not going off and the alternative can be worse. I've frequently lost my back lines to DoC swarming me and/or a grinding war because of, well, DoC happening. See Crusade 2015 game 1 for example.

The Frostheart is amazing. It brings so much to High Elves for such a cheap price. Were it not for the fact that it's competing with RBTs for rare points (which I believe are 100% essential to this type of list) I'd have tried my best to include a 2nd. I had a chat with Dennis about this as he ran with 2 Frosts this year. He said it's a tradeoff but he found double birdies to be superior. I think we'll just agree to disagree on this point. Looking at his points from this year's ETC gives a skewed picture because he had terrible luck in 2 games (that I know of), otherwise we'd be roughly comparable. Even then, points don't tell half the story.

The Frostheart against Flies can go both ways. Many times it's crucial that you win. In this game it was simply crucial to lock them down, hence prioritizing miasma and iceshard over Timewarp (which is by far the best offensive spell when fighting Drones as their low I allows re-rolls to hit).

As for Prague, I have a weird relationship with the city. Granted I've only been there once before, when I was visiting various WW2 concentration camps through a school program (quite usual in Norway, don't know if you do this abroad?). We took a ferry to Poland and went by Auschwitz before heading to Prague. As I've always been interested in history in general and WW2 in particular I knew fully well what we could expect that but being 17 at the time and seeing it in person. It's hard to describe, but suffice is to say that coming to Prague was a huge relief. It felt like stepping into the real world again, a world we know as safe, kind and generous. It's unfathomable what went on some 70 years ago and I am still having problems even remotely trying to understand the logic behind some of those things. I remember our time in Prague back then very well. In a sense, going back to Prague despite the context being vastly different this year kind of felt like going home, in a strange way. It's as if I came to a calm and quiet place (which it very much is, I guess especially since I was in NYC just a couple of weeks ago which is quite the contrary). Unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time to experience Prague. We arrived Tuesday evening and headed straight for dinner and then out to experience the nightlife. I called it an early night and we spent Wednesday basically being tourists. It was a great day, sunny and quiet without too many tourists crowding the place (it's funny how, as a tourist, you don't want other tourists around you :D). I wish I had more time to explore and experience the city. It is truly beautiful and has a rich history. Being in the middle of Europe it's a fascinating mix of East and West. Anyway, Thursday was spent at the venue preparing and facing Belgium and the rest of the little spare time we had available in-between playing was mostly spent eating, drinking and relaxing.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

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Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1607 Post by SpellArcher »

Ferny wrote:guess if there isn't a relic 8th or a new 9th Age scene
It's worth keeping an eye on this forum Ferny:

http://www.warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=13

I agree with your observation re shooting in elf match-ups Curu and I feel magic can be similar. For example, I recently faced a Teclis list where shooting was roughly equal but he obviously had stronger magic (while I had stronger combat) so I had to push.

I don't blame you and Eldwin at all for taking the draw, especially considering the conditions. I played a chess tournament in Kiev once where it was below freezing in the hall (fuel shortage) and I had virtually no fruit or vegetables for ten days (food shortage). So when my master opponent offered me a draw at the start of the last round, I took it! The Ukrainians were great and did their best in very difficult conditions but getting back even to København airport felt like a safer world.

I can't imagine what visiting concentration camps was like. I know Norway had a hard time in the war so I guess that's why the visiting program is there. I remember my mum in the 80's even asking school kids who we fought in the war and they said Russia! It's a long time ago now and most people involved are dead but I think it's important to understand what happened and why.
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1608 Post by Curu Olannon »

The thing with Elves of all flavours is that they are glass cannons. Even PG die in droves to sustained shooting. All Elf armies are completely incapable of absorbing fire in the way that DoC or EMP often can. This means that whenever there's an Elf matchup, it will be bloody. I cannot remember having ever seen an Elf matchup turn into a corner-corner standoff, with a single exception: I had a practice game on UB vs Wood Elves with roughly the same list that I took to the ETC (albeit with Shadow + Metal L4s for magic). Anyway, a bloody game means that it can often swing. Most times, in my experence, the skill level and list strength decides who takes away the win, which more often than not tends to be around drawish if lists/players are roughly equal power/skill-level. Sometimes it goes very wrong and sometimes it goes very well. The glasscannon nature of the army means that a single spell or volley can completely change the game. Examples include a magic missile rolling 10+ hits, Waywatchers rolling 4+ in droves against BOTWD-White Lions, Dark Elf Reapers taking out Eagle Claws etc.

I never feel safe playing Elf matchups unless I'm massively up based on armies/deployment, in which case it is usually a walk in the park.

As for WW2 and Norway, I think we had it far better than most other countries occupied by Germany. Of course the resistance was met with harsh realities as the nazis weren't known for being kind to their enemies. However most of the population went about their everyday lives in a fairly normal manner. 2 of my grandparents remember the war well as they were in their early 20s at the time and I've been told many stories about how it was, in addition to reading the history books. Naturally, being occupied is no walk in the park but considering what the nazis did to the eastern european countries they occupied, the non-arian populated "lebensraum" areas, I think we were lucky. The white buses initiative (as the tour we took was called) actually originated in WW2 as a humanitary operation (link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Buses) to save prisoners from concentration camps. The tours were started shortly after the war to make sure we remember what happened, so we can try and learn. If possible, understand how this could occur. Hopefully this knowledge will allow us to prevent it from happening again.

As for fighting Russia, it of course didn't happen that way. At least not until after WW2 was over. It is an interesting thought-experiment to try and analyze what would've happened with crazy Stalin by the steering wheel if Germany had somehow remained peaceful. It's not unlikely that Britain would find itself at a warm war (as opposed to the cold one which ensued) in my opinion, but that's of course pure speculation.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1609 Post by Curu Olannon »

With all the ETC reports up, the time has come for me to pack away my models and put Warhammer to rest.

In closing, I would like to present the reports I've documented on our Norwegian forum. I will not copy-paste and translate them all because it's way too much work, but if you want to try and read them (perhaps google translate will work sufficiently or perhaps you understand Norwegian?) the links are below. The forum requires logging in but there are otherwise no access rights needed to read the reports. The names in the paranthesis denote games where I've played against people in our ETC preparation team. The astute reader will recognize some of these from Team Norway. Some of these reports have been reposted here on Ulthuan but the majority have not. I hope at least some of you will enjoy them:

Battle Reports

#149 - vs Dark Elves (Asbjørn) - klikk
#148 - vs Vampire Counts (Thomas) - klikk
#147 - Lagkamp #5 vs Vampire Counts (Thomas) - klikk
#146 - Alliance #5 vs Tomb Kings (Christian) - klikk

#145 - Alliance #4 vs Dark Elves - klikk
#144 - Alliance #3 vs Vampire Counts - klikk
#143 - Alliance #2 vs Empire (Lasse) - klikk
#142 - Alliance #1 vs Warriors of Chaos - klikk
#141 - vs Empire (Lasse) - klikk

#140 - vs Vampire Counts - klikk
#139 - vs Lizardmen - klikk
#138 - vs Warriors of Chaos - klikk
#137 - RSOO #5 vs Warriors of Chaos (Stian) - klikk
#136 - RSOO #4 vs Wood Elves - klikk

#135 - RSOO #3 vs Dwarfs - klikk
#134 - RSOO #2 vs Ogre Kingdoms (Kenneth) - klikk
#133 - RSOO #1 vs Empire - klikk
#132 - vs Tomb Kings (Christian) - klikk
#131 - vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk

#130 - Lagkamp #4 vs Beastmen (Kenneth) - klikk
#129 - Crusade #5 vs Warriors of Chaos - klikk
#128 - Crusade #4 vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk
#127 - Crusade #3 vs Empire - klikk
#126 - Crusade #2 vs Skaven - klikk

#125 - Crusade #1 vs Daemons of Chaos (Geir) - klikk
#124 - vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk
#123 - vs Empire - klikk
#122 - vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk
#121 - vs Wood Elves - klikk

#120 - vs Orcs and Goblins - klikk
#119 - vs High Elves - klikk
#118 - vs Dark Elves (Asbjørn) - klikk
#117 - vs Empire (Lasse) - klikk
#116 - vs Lizardmen (Martin Andre) - klikk

#115 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#114 - vs Wood Elves (Trond) - klikk
#113 - vs Bretonnia (Thomas) - klikk
#112 - vs Daemons of Chaos (Tor Erling) - klikk
#111 - vs Bretonnia - klikk

#110 - vs Lizardmen - klikk
#109 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#108 - vs Wood Elves - klikk
#107 - vs Daemons of Chaos (Tor Erling) - klikk
#106 - Conquest #5 vs Daemons of Chaos (Sverre) - klikk

#105 - Conquest #4 vs Ogre Kingdoms (Stian) - klikk
#104 - Conquest #3 vs Wood Elves - klikk
#103 - Conquest #2 vs Dwarfs - klikk
#102 - Conquest #1 vs Tomb Kings (Christian) - klikk
#101 - Dark Elves vs Wood Elves - klikk

#100 - Dark Elves vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk
#99 - Dark Elves vs Tomb Kings - klikk
#98 - Dark Elves vs Lizardmen - klikk
#97 - Dark Elves vs Wood Elves - klikk
#96 - vs Tomb Kings - klikk

#95 - Dark Elves vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk
#94 - Dark Elves vs Lizardmen - klikk
#93 - Dark Elves vs High Elves - klikk
#92 - vs High Elves - klikk
#91 - Dark Elves vs Dark Elves - klikk

#90 - Dark Elves vs High Elves - klikk
#89 - DSK #5 - vs Tomb Kings - klikk
#88 - DSK #4 - vs Warriors of Chaos (Mats) - klikk
#87 - DSK #3 - vs Bretonnia (Asbjørn) - klikk
#86 - DSK #2 - vs Warriors of Chaos (Stian) - klikk

#85 - DSK #1 - vs Ogre Kingdoms - klikk
#84 - vs Lizardmen - klikk
#83 - vs Wood Elves - klikk
#82 - vs Bretonnia (Thomas) - klikk
#81 - vs Daemons of Chaos (Sverre) - klikk

#80 - vs Warriors of Chaos - klikk
#79 - vs Lizardmen - klikk
#78 - vs Lizardmen - klikk
#77 - vs Dark Elves (Christian) - klikk
#76 - Empire vs Tomb Kings - klikk

#75 - vs Tomb Kings (Hermund) - klikk
#74 - vs Wood Elves - klikk
#73 - vs Daemons of Chaos (Sverre) - klikk
#72 - vs Empire - klikk
#71 - vs High Elves - klikk

#70 - vs Skaven - klikk
#69 - vs Lizardmen - klikk
#68 - vs Dwarfs - klikk
#67 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#66 - vs Dwarfs - klikk

#65 - vs Skaven - klikk
#64 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#63 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#62 - vs Warriors of Chaos - klikk
#61 - vs High Elves - klikk

#60 - vs Lizardmen - klikk
#59 - vs High Elves - klikk
#58 - vs Dark Elves (Asbjørn) - klikk
#57 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#56 - vs High Elves - klikk

#55 - vs Warriors of Chaos - klikk
#54 - vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk
#53 - vs Wood Elves - klikk
#52 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#51 - vs Bretonnia - klikk

#50 - vs Lizardmen (Sverre) - klikk
#49 - vs Dark Elves (Amund) - klikk
#48 - vs Vampire Counts (Hermund) - klikk
#47 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#46 - vs Orcs and Goblins - klikk

#45 - vs Orcs and Goblins - klikk
#44 - vs Warriors of Chaos - klikk
#43 - vs Warriors of Chaos - klikk
#42 - vs Tomb Kings - klikk
#41 - vs Lizardmen - klikk

#40 - vs Tomb Kings - klikk
#39 - vs Beastmen - klikk
#38 - vs Lizardmen - klikk
#37 - vs High Elves - klikk
#36 - vs Ogre Kingdoms - klikk

#35 - vs Dwarfs - klikk
#34 - vs Ogre Kingdoms - klikk
#33 - vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk
#32 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#31 - vs Vampire Counts - klikk

#30 - vs Dark Elves - klikk
#29 - vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk
#28 - vs Daemons of Chaos - klikk
#27 - vs Beastmen - klikk
#26 - Dark Elves vs Wood Elves (Martin Andre) - klikk

#25 - Vs Lizardmen (Martin Andre) - klikk
#24 - Vampire Counts Vs Dark Elves (Christian) - klikk
#23 - Vs Dark Elves (Christian) - klikk
#22 - Vampire Counts Vs Lizardmen (Martin Andre) - klikk
#21 - Vs Ogre Kingdoms (Kenneth) - klikk

#20 - Vs Ogre Kingdoms (Kenneth) - klikk
#19 - Vs Lizardmen (Martin Andre) - klikk
#18 - Vs Vampire Counts (Sverre) - klikk
#17 - Vs High Elves - klikk
#16 - Vs Bretonnia - klikk

#15 - Vs Bretonnia - klikk
#14 - Vs Ogre Kingdoms (Kenneth) - klikk
#13 - Vs Dark Elves (Asbjørn) - klikk
#12 - Vs Dark Elves (Christian) - klikk
#11 - Vs Dwarfs - klikk

#10 - Vs Dark Elves - klikk
#9 - Vs Wood Elves (Amund) - klikk
#8 - Vs Empire (Lasse) - klikk
#7 - Vs Warriors of Chaos (Mats) - klikk
#6 - Vs Dark Elves (Christian) - klikk

#5 - Vs Vampire Counts (Helge) - klikk
#4 - Vs Wood Elves (Amund) - klikk
#3 - Vs Dwarfs (Amund) - klikk
#2 - Vs Dwarfs (Øystein) - klikk
#1 - Vs OnG (Asbjørn) - klikk

I will, in the near future. still be around to answer questions etc.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1610 Post by SpellArcher »

Wow, that is some catalogueing Curu.

I knew there was a lot of effort to help Danish Jews for example during the war but hadn't heard of the White Buses intiative. Remarkable.

Absolutely re the bloodyness of elf v elf fights. I'm not quite seeing why Lion Cloaks don't work vs bombs, is the interpretation that they work in the movement phase and hence aren't shooting attacks? Regardless, I had trouble with just two Gyros, five looks very difficult. Well scrapped!

:)
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1611 Post by Orchaldor »

Hi Curu,

As you move on from Warhammer-that-was, I'd just like to record my heartfelt thanks for the hours of enjoyment I've had reading your reports.

Although I've played 40k for more years than I'd like to remember, my Fantasy experience began (and apparently ended) with 8th Edition. With most of my friends having played Fantasy for a lot longer, the detailed army blogs and battle reports from yourself (and others) gave me a wonderful insight in how to get the best out of my High Elves, as well as the pleasure of seeing both you and your list adapt and improve.
SpellArcher wrote:Wow, that is some catalogueing Curu.
SA is not wrong! I'm tempted to dust off my "Learn Norweigan" book to go and read some of them!

For now, I'll just say tusen takk , and Skål! :D
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Curu Olannon
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1612 Post by Curu Olannon »

@SpellArcher - Lion Cloaks specifically work vs Shooting Attacks. Shooting Attacks are, as per ETC FAQ, attacks that either happen in the shooting phase or are specifically noted as being Shooting Attacks. Bombs are neither, they happen in the movement phase and are not classified as Shooting Attacks in their entry. A vital piece of information to know when playing Lions vs Dwarfs ;)

@Orchaldor - Thank you man, means a lot :)

As for learning Norwegian, I'd say give it a go! Many people complain and say it's hard but I don't see the hard part of it. Take verbs for example, we don't conjugate them. I remember learning English and never understanding why you had to conjugate like "I am, you are, he is" when in Norwegian you'd basically say "I are, you are, he are". Don't get me started on Spanish...

Vær så god, skål!
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
SpellArcher
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1613 Post by SpellArcher »

Pg 50 "If a Gyrocopter Dive Bombs, it cannot make any other (emphasis mine) shooting attacks in that turn". Which heavily implies that Dive Bombing is a shooting attack. That said, I'm sure the FAQ guys have analysed this to death and after seeing similar rulings in the past I'm not that surprised.
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Curu Olannon
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1614 Post by Curu Olannon »

Ah, a perfect example of GW being completely unable to write clear rules. I do indeed agree that the "other" part of it implies that it is a shooting attack. However this issue has been up many times and the books aren't exactly new so I expect most players to know this. It was double-checked by the judges at ETC as well (came up in another situation where, apparantly, neither the the DW nor the HE player knew).
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
gaz
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1615 Post by gaz »

Hi Curu,

Thanks for posting all the ETC content (and all the other other content over the years).
Took ages to read through it all which really makes one appreciate how much time and effort you have put into this stuff.
Really enjoyed (as always).

Best of luck with your next steps in wargaming.

Cheers,
Gaz
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Browncastle
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1616 Post by Browncastle »

Nice write up. Im inspiried by our games. At Invasion I borrowed several elements from your list. Painted up 8 crypthorrors(confrontation wolves:P) and 10 skeletons for a desent summoning pool.
I used this list:

Anointed on Flamespyre P, Sword of antiheroes, enchanted shield, tots
Alarielle
Handmaiden, Horn of Isha
Seahelm BSB, flaming banner
27 Whitelions, Botwd, FCG
10 Silverhelms, shields FCG
18 Sisters
32 Archers FCG

Five drops and no redirectors, The list played very well, but I failed to bring back the big points. I partly blame this on bringing no reavers, as I couldnt count on summoning to go threw. So I "had" to play a slower more controlled game. Whish in the end only netted me 2 x 13 - 7 and 3 x 10 - 10, putting me I 4th overall(16 - 4 cap) Im left with a feelingof a really strong list, wish could have been brilliant with some tweeks. Basically I were missing a loremaster for a second lore of undeath sig, and reavers or 2x silverhelms instead of two. What do you think about this list Curu?
[url]http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=41281[/url]
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Curu Olannon
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1617 Post by Curu Olannon »

@gaz - You're welcome :) Warmahordes is going great by the way! Will take me a year or two to get back to the same level I was in Warhammer but it's a matter of time ^^.

@Browncastle - My list was designed around having all the tools available in the books to create reliable magic phases. Power stone, Book of Hoeth, Channellers, cheap spells: The strategy was to always have tons of useful stuff to cast of which most would go through. While this failed in one of my games (WE Russia), it also means that the list is not built to take big wins or win tournaments. Ironically I did win Crusade with it, but looking at the games you'll realize that my big points came when my opponents made mistakes and/or I played very risky.

As for your list, it plays very differently. Prior to the ETC latest drafts I know some countries had Alarielle + Star Dragon as a popular competitive choice. It's much more of a sledgehammer type of build than your list, but the basic idea is to have a nigh-unkillable flyer roam the field with a BOTWD-protected Alariellestar backing it up. It was eventually banned out, as with most other things HE, and I think the ETC averages tell that tale well enough on their own...

So, to your actual question: What do I think of the list? I think it's poor. I think all HE lists are poor. Given the metagame I saw at the ETC I think High Elves are among the bottom 4-5 factions in competitive Warhammer. There are too many powerbuilds out there that we do not have an answer to. Examples include BM, DE, DW, EMP, LZ, SK, TK to name but a few. When you add to this that our positive matchups aren't extremely good you're left with a subpar toolbox. Granted I haven't played Warhammer since the ETC so for all I know the meta might've changed, but regardless I think you should try and evaluate the list based on its merits against the other top scorers out there. In light of that, I don't see what matchups you're comfortable running your current list into apart from some obvious ones.
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
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Curu Olannon
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1618 Post by Curu Olannon »

Hey everyone, how are you doing?

I'm just dropping by to do a little shameless self-advertising. While attending the ETC this year I had a discussion with a fellow player about the state of "internet discussing gaming". He said that he found my blogs to one of the few with the deep tactical insights and discussions going beyond the superficial things that everyone can see. I was of course very flattered by this. Anyway, new game, new blog. I've gotten in 80-90 games thus far, including 3 tournaments (1 of which I won! Small field though). Until now, my games have been documented on an internal, Norwegian forum only. It's time to take a step up and write for an international audience as well. As always, I'm hoping for honest feedback and long, meaningful discussions. If you're by any chance interested in Warmachine & Hordes, check out my new blog here: Courage of Caspia

I will do my best to increase the quality of my posts. The WM&H environment in Norway is booming, which is perfect for me. I hope you're all well :)
Retired from Warhammer. Playing Warmachine & Hordes (Cygnar).

Follow me on Courage of Caspia, my blog.

Warhammer blogs from 2011-2015:

:: Path to Glory - High Elves Army Blog ::
:: Curu Olannon's Vindicators - 2500 points Army Blog (Old book, outdated) ::
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John Rainbow
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1619 Post by John Rainbow »

Curu Olannon wrote:So, to your actual question: What do I think of the list? I think it's poor. I think all HE lists are poor. Given the metagame I saw at the ETC I think High Elves are among the bottom 4-5 factions in competitive Warhammer.
I miss you telling it like it is around here! Welcome back briefly.

Unfortunately I have little interest in Warmahordes at the moment. I've actually been shifting towards x-wing for some time but the truth is I haven't had time for gaming in a long while - new job and all keeping me busy since the summer.
sparkytrypod
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Re: Path To Glory - ETC All Games Up!

#1620 Post by sparkytrypod »

any interest in 9th ...??
death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain

do an rpg personality test, im from Ireland and I get...

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