'The Battle for Milliardo Valley'
Game 2 of the day saw me running an EBTS list in a standard battle line scenario requested by ~Milliardo~ on the Ulthuan forums. I previously haven't been that successful with these lists but was keen to revisit the idea and see if I could make improvements.
My opponent and I didn't bother changing the table up and he used the same list as the previous battle only switching to lore of heavens.
Warriors of Chaos:
Level 3 - Heavens
BSB
10 Warriors of Khorne - XHW
10 Warriors of Slaanesh - Halberds
15 Warriors of Tzeentch - Hw/Shield
6 Knights of Tzeentch
5 Knights of Tzeentch
5 Marauder Horsemen of Slaanesh
Hellcannon
4 Trolls
2 x Warshrines of Slaanesh
Tomb Kings:
Hierophant
Necrotect
2 x 20 Archers - Std
4 Chariots - Std, Flaming
2 x 5 Horse Archers
6 x Necropolis Knights - Std, Mus
2 x 3 Entombed Necropolis Knights
2 x 3 Stalkers
1 Tomb Scorpion
Casket
2 x SSC
The basic idea for this list was to create enough distance between my battle line and my opponents, do as much damage as possible with ranged firepower, use the knights to protect my Hierophant and fingers crossed the entombed units would arrive to destroy the enemy artillery and supporting units whilst the Necroknights threatened the rear of the combat blocks. Sounds great on paper but would be turn out like that?
Deployment:
Spells:
Hierophant - smiting, desert wind, desiccation, vengeance
Level 3 - comet, curse midnight, second sign,
WOC win the roll off.
WOC 1
Comet fails.
Warriors of tzeen - +1 T and +1AS
Hellcannon kills one archer.
TK1
Shooting kills Marauder horses.
SSC hits warriors does one wound and they panic with a re-roll.
WOC2
Warriors fail to rally and near table edge.
Khorne warriors get +1 AS.
TK2
One unit of stalkers arrive behind knights.
Light of Death kills one warrior. Vengeance is cast on knights with BSB.
Stalkers kill 4 knights. SSC kills one. Other SSC misfires and dies.
WOC3
Knights with BSB charge into catapult and make it taking 2 casualties from Vengeance spell. The Trolls, warshrines and warriors charge into knights unfortunately one Warshine is too slow. Slaanesh warrriors charge into horse archers making it easily.
Warriors finally rally bringing them back into the game.
A Large comet attempt is dispelled in the magic phase.
Hellcannon kills 2 archers.
Knights kill SSC, take 1 from DT, overrun into chariots. The Warriors kill the horse archers and reform to face the Necropolis Knights flank.
Lone knight kills 2 archers, archers reform into block.
Necropolis knights manage to kill enough warriors to cause them to break, trolls folloow suite. Warshrine remains behind to fight.
TK3
Stalkers arrive next to the hellcannon, one unit of knights in front of the trolls and the scorpion arrives to flank the Knights.
Light of Death kills the fleeing khorne warrior, wounds the warshrine, wounds some trolls (who then get a roll on the Eye of the Gods table!), and finally drops 2 slaanesh warriors.
Shooting drops 2 warriors, and puts 2 wounds on the hellcannon at the expense of a stalker falling.
Necro knights wound WS - holds.
Knights smash chariots, crumble a few but combat holds.
Lone knight kill a few archers, crumble but hold.
WOC 4
The Slaanesh Warriors charge into the flank of knights.
Trolls run, warriors march forward.
Harmonic convergence off on warriors.
Warriors get +1 AS.
Hellcannon kills 2 archers through misfire and can't shoot anymore.
BSB kills chariots reforms to face scoriopn
knight draws combat with archers.
Knight crumble, Warriors reform to face archers, WS overruns into building.
TK4
Last Necro Knights still don't arrive.
Necro Knights charge into rear of warriors. HA into Trolls who continue to flee.
Reform archers, Hierophant leave archers and heads to get behind buildings.
Light of Death does nothing, smiting goes off on knights. Desiccation on warriors by 3 dropping them to toughness/stregth 1. I did throw 6 dice at this, IF and ended up losing a single level and that spell.
Stalkers kill knights and BSB on 1 wound. Hellcannon dead from stalkers.
Archers kill the last knight.
Necro knights kill Warriors and reforms to face larger block (not shown).
WOC5
BSB charges Stalkers.
comet dispelled.
Stalker crumbles.
Tk 5
Scorpion charges into rear of BSB.
Knights finally arrive behind the last warriors.
Light of death goes off however does nothing on the warshrines. Desert wind goes off healing some damage and allowing the Hierophant some extra room.
Stalkers do some wound on trolls.
2 wounds to the Warshrine from shooting.
BSB is killed by the stalkers before the scorpion even gets to swing! Scorpion overruns.
WOC 6
Level 4 leaves unit of warriors and moves warriors off towards trolls. My opponent was simply trying to minimise his losses here by dividing his forces and to try and muck up my order of charges next turn. I think I would have done this differently however if he didn't move he would have possibly been hit with both units of knights and a scorpion had I rolled high enough.
Harmonic Connvergence on level 4.
TK6
Charge sequence is as follows: Horse archers declare charge on warriors flank and after electing to flee they're cut down. Necroknights then have clear way to declare onto Level 4.
Stalkers kill warshrine with their gaze attack.
Light of death does nothing to last warshrine.
The knights easily Kill the remaining level 4.
Result - TK Victory.
Conclusion:
Well 3 games over the weekend and all 3 victories so I feel very chuffed. Once again another list concept that was totally experimental and a single victory doesn't always mean it's a great build. I certainly did enjoy playing this build though, there is something about playing an entombed list and ambushing the enemy that just feels so fitting to the Tomb Kings play style.
I won't go too heavily into detail but just some preliminary thoughts of the overall feel of the army.
Firstly on magic - I certainly did miss not having the larger menu so to speak of a second level 4 however given my track record of miscasting lately perhaps that's a blessing in disguise! As soon as you take a second priest then its beneficial to take the Hierotitan and I just simply wouldn't be able to find the points for it.
Necrotect was a waste and only included because of the remaining points I had. I think I'd perhaps drop him and find some points to include either a BSB or even a level 1 death.
Core seemed to work well and do what it does, I probably didn't use the chariots well (at all) however I've been guilty of that in the past many times.
On the special choices or the real work horses of the army. The knights as always performed and did exactly what they needed to do. Firstly the large unit started to drop pretty quick when I couldn't get a desiccation off on the flanking warriors otherwise they would have hung around for another turn but as it turns out the 8 wounds they took spelled their doom. Necrotect did only 2 regeneration saves this game and I don't have enough constructs close to him to justify keeping him.
Stalkers were awesome, two units I think is the only way to run them and their gaze attacks were directly attributed to taking out knights, hellcannon, warshrine, wounding the BSB (not to mention killing him in combat!) and of course putting wounds on the trolls. They ended up taking two casualties each from misfires but it's eventually going to happen. Perhaps they performed above average for me but needless to say both my opponent and I were fairly impressed. He was a little shocked that I put the first unit that came up near the knights rather than the hell cannon but I'm confident it was the right call to make.
On the scorpion this battle didn't really showcase it's capabilities, didn't even get to swing at the BSB unfortunately but maybe next time!
SSC's didn't really do a great deal for me in the first turns they were around however that's always going to be the case against heavily armoured opponents. I didn't dedicate them onto the trolls because they weren't an immediate threat and secondly my opponent was anticipating I'd pour every available S3 shot into them which turns them into powerhouses when you start rolling doubles on the eye of the gods chart which happened a few times but luckily for me nothing significant. I think against any other army the SSC's would have performed no doubt cutting down infantry.
The casket was fantastic as usual, it's a great investment for really turning your average magic phase (say a 3/4 split into all of a sudden you've got 10 PD and your opponent is fighting you with a tiny 4DD) into something very powerful. I was mainly 6 dicing Light of death but unfortunately my opponent was rolling very low on the leadership rolls.
Anyway if you've got this far then I thank you for reading, I'm not sure when the next battle will be with a list like this however it's certainly the most fun game I've had in a long time and I really want to thank my opponent Todd who is basically my warhammer sparring partner and he puts up with my personality so he's a great wargamer.
Thoughts and comments forever appreciated.
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