8th Ed. Dwarves and Lizardmen win doubles tournament!

These aren't full battle reports because I didn't have time to take detail notes but I tried to include the most pertinent details.

Our Team
Slann, 2 disciplines: extra power dice, and Lore Mastery (Life), Cupped Hands of the Old Ones
24 Skinks with javelins and shields, 3 Kroxigor, Musician, Standard
10 Skink Skirmishers, with Javelins and Shields
25 Temple Guard, musician, standard bearer + Standard of Discipline
Stegaodon
Salamander Hunting Pack, with extra handler

runesmith with master rune balance and dispel rune
35 gw warriors, FC
10 gw quarrelors
Cannon with engineer, and runes of forging, burning
Grudgethrower, 2x runes of penetrating, rune of accuracy, engineer
33 Hammerers, FC
Organ Gun

Six teams of two 1500 point armies each played a tournament at our local gaming store. We each played three games, and got 15 points for winning and bonus points for secondary scenario objectives. The the points were tallied to see who the tournament winner was. Each scenario was based on one of the six basic scenarios in the brb plus a small number of special rules. The games were four turns each due to time constraints.

My dwarf friend and I followed the same basic plan every battle, whittle down our foes with shooting and magic making our foes come to us. Then overwhelm them with hard hitting infantry backed by Life magic augment spells. We got the first turn all three games. We went after secondary objectives when convenient, but didn’t make it a priority. We were the only group the only team that won all three of our games.

There were six teams. We played a team of two Skaven armies for our first game. Wood Elves and Ogres for our second game and Wood Elves and Empire for our final game. There was a team made up of High Elves and Tomb Kings, and there was a team made up of Warriors of Chaos with Demons that we didn’t get to play. I believe they came in third and fourth respectively.

First Game vs two Skaven armies

Our first game was a battle line versus a team of two Skaven players. Each side got to gift any one unit with Vanguard for free. We made the salamander vanguard, they made their rat ogres vanguard. There were bonus points for killing the other side’s Vanguard unit (and we both killed the other teams vanguard) and for controlling any forests, hills, and the one building. We had one such terrain feature at the end of the game, and the Skaven got three (they had spare units to seize objectives during the last round). We had all but forgotten about the secondary objectives until the last turn and got one purely by accident. The Skaven kept us hopping with their special rules. A rocket here, exploding unit there, chance of getting free clan rats there. I can see why they would be fun to play, though they are a little random.

The Temple Guard was our center. On one side was the Stegadon on the other side the Skroxigor. Next to the Stegadon on our left flank was the warriors and to the left of them our war machines, skink skirmishers. On our right flank next to the Stegadon was the Hammerers and Salamander. The runesmith hid in the back behind the war machines.

Both me and my friend had never played Skaven before. It was fairly intimidating with how much space they took up. I’m probably forgetting or misstating a unit or two but they had a big unit of rat ogres, two warpfire cannons, two hell pits, three units of slaves, one unit of storm vermin, a group of globadiers, some giant rats, and some kind of ambushing unit. Each Skaven player had a BSB and they dispersed the two BSBs, so that their units benefited from the rerolls most of the time. They had a storm banner that made our shooting (and their shooting) difficult for the first two turns before fizzling out at the start of Turn 3. They had four wizards, at least one, maybe two was a lord.

The runesmith’s dispelling bonuses combined with the Slann’s +4 to dispel attempts meant we were able to dispel any particularly harmful skaven spell cast without irresistible force. They only got IF once. The 13th spell went off with IF and coincidentally killed 13 dwarves. The Skaven players saved most of their dispel dice and their one scroll to keep me from casting Dwellers on them. I managed to get at least three augments up every turn. Though we forgot to apply the bonuses from our augments far too often.

Summary of Events on our left half of the field:

On the first turn the Storm Banner and poor damage rolls nerfed our shooting. Worst of all, the organ gun misfired and blew up. We thought the skink skirmishers and the nearby quarrelers could take a few models out with shooting before they died versus the rat ogres. We underestimated the power of the Storm Banner, so we did minimal damage to them (and what we did was due to lucky CC). But we did position the skirmishers and quarrelers to force the rat ogres to overrun where we wanted them to. This allowed the warriors to charge the rat ogres in the back, break them, and run them down. This cost us two of our units to get one but we still ended up with more points than them from the transaction.

After beating the rat ogres, the warriors ended up getting in a protracted combat with a hell pit. Once out of range of the Slann and his helpful Life spells, they could no longer compete and were eventually ground down by attrition. The grudge thrower and cannon got a few good shots in subsequent turns (killing a hellpit eventually), but never were able to cause anyone to panic. We had a stroke of luck that our foes ambushers didn’t make it till the fourth turn. The ambushers one round of firing NEARLY killed the grudge thrower. One of the infantry blocks also got to the cannon the last turn and NEARLY killed it in close combat. This game was a nail biter.

Summary of events on the right half of the field:

The first two turns my Slann threw most of his spells at the dwarf warriors. Later when they got out of range so I backed up the Temple Guard and the Hammerers with buffs. By turn three they had most given up on getting their own spells off and focused their power dice on getting rid of my Throne of Vines.

My Salamander was able to dart around shooting blasts of flame killing units here and there on three out of the four turns (eating three handlers on turn 3). It was finally brought down by the poison wind globadiers in the bottom of turn 4.

The Stegadon was killed by the warpfire cannons before it could enter close combat, but I did manage to kill three skaven with a good giant bow shot in turn three after the storm banner finally stopped working. In turn four our Temple Guard and Hammerers managed to charge, break, and run down a unit of skaven slaves and storm vermin respectively also taking out a wizard and a bsb in the process.

Poor positioning resulted in the Skroxigor being blocked from entering close combat by our own troops preventing them from doing more than occasionally throwing javelins at things.

We killed some rat ogres, skaven slaves, storm vermin, and a couple characters. The cannon picked off a hellpit somewhere. They killed our great weapon warriors, quarrelers, the skink skirmishers, Salamander team and got points for our misfiring organ gun. The stuff we killed was worth enough that we secured a win, but on some level I feel we may not have deserved it. The Skroxigor sat out of most of the battle due to our own sloppiness and we were extremely lucky not to lose either of the two war machines when they got successfully charged. One additional lost war machine would have probably made our game a draw, losing all three would have cost us the match.

If we played six turns they probably would have killed our war machines entirely but we had our three remaining blocks fairly well positioned to tear up the Skaven opposite flank, so the game would have been a toss up in all likelihood.

Second Game vs Ogres and WE

The second game was a Blood and Glory Scenario, but neither side brought the other to the breaking point, so we had to use victory points at the end of turn four. There was bonus points for controlling hills and forests. We ended up with two, the other team got two or three. I don’t remember what special rules existed in this scenario.

Our enemy team was made up of Ogres and Wood Elves. To be fair their lists were hammered in thirty minutes or so before the tournament started, so they weren’t super optimal lists. The ogre army had a unit of scouting maneaters. A unit of ironguts with a level 4 butcher (his general) and BSB. The ogres also fielded an iron blaster. The Wood Elves had three units of Glade Guard with full command, one had a level 2 wizard, another bunkered a high born with the magic bow that lets him making shooting attacks in number equal to his base attack profile. He had a unit of dryads and a unit of glade riders.

We benefited from great luck initially. We killed the ogre iron blaster in one lucky shot from the cannon on turn one. Our domination of the magic phase was near absolute. Most of the time we had MORE dispel dice than our foes had power dice. They got no useful spells cast all game. They made it a priority with their dispel dice to knock out Throne of Vines, and they sometimes got other spells dispelled, but we managed to get most if not all of the other augments cast every round. My opponent thinks I should have tried casting Dwellers this game, but I thought an ueber spell like that would just be showing off given the sweeping gains we made in the first turn.

Left Flank Summary:

We got the first turn and killed the iron blaster in one lucky shot from our cannon. Scouting Maneaters showed up in our bottom corner (technically not our deployment zone due to the 9” margin of emptiness required by Blood and Glory scenarios). I don’t remember if the Hammerers charged or got charged but they were able to eventually break and Hammers got in close combat with the Maneaters and won (thanks to their high weapon skill, high damage power, and high toughness due to Stone Flesh). They broke the unit break them auto-killed the SB, and routed the last man eaters. The following turn the victorious dwarves charged the glade riders which had by now made it to that section of the battle. The glade riders gained poisoned attacks from a venom thicket forest, but they still got beaten and broken by the mighty augmented hammerers (the last rider eventually fled off the board). While pursuing the last glade rider, the hammerers managed to redirect pursuit into the fleeing ogre model and kill him. Around twenty hammerers pursued through the venom thicket and not one died due to the dangerous terrain test! It seemed luck could not fail us this match. The last turn the Hammerers claimed the forest for some bonus tournament points. Definitely our MVP of the match.

Center Summary:

Due to terrain and a wide deployment of archers, it was impossible to move my Salamander around the flank of the enemies and safely shoot flame at them, so we move the sally up the center to take a pot shot at the ogres before absorb an initial first round charge from the Irongunts. We were hopeful that the ogres would get a poor overrun and thus have their advance slowed down. That is what happened.

After killing the salamander on turn one, the iron guts attempted a charge on the temple guard and failed. Then they got subsequently charged by The Temple Guard, Skroxigor, and Stegadon in one go. After a couple rounds of fighting, the Lizardmen units eventually broke them and ran them down. Then they took some inconsequential shooting in the last turn from the more or less undamaged Wood Elf archers.

Left Flank Summary.

We had a tight line keeping our artillery protected with a building on one side and our quarrelers on the other. The dryads looped around the building to try to get at our war machines but we blocked their path with the skink skirmishers and angled them away from our artillery so the dyrads would be pointing the wrong direction to attack the artillery line the following turn. Though the Skinks were butchered, their redirect allowed our organ gun to wipe out the dryads over two rounds of shooting. We had the quarrelers move to do a supporting charge in case the dryads did make it to the war machines, but it wasn’t necessary.

Our constant maneuvering of the quarrelers prevented us from getting any shots off after turn one, but we got our points worth out of the quarrelers using them as living shields to the artillery. They provided hard cover to our artillery, so the Wood elf player decided to try to kill the quarrelers first then target the war machines. Due to relative bad rolls, he failed to kill the quarrelers entirely. Also due to the positioning of the building and our units, his three archer units generally couldn’t concentrate their fire on the same target, so the various volleys were split between the Skroxigor, GW warriors, and the quarrelers. The cannon never did anything impressive after turn one, but our grudge thrower managed to do a fair bit of damage to the archers, managing to panic a unit of archers with the WE general preventing them from a round a shooting on us.

We killed every single ogre unit and the glade riders. They killed the skink skirmishers and the salamander team. We won by a wide margin. We played very well deploying our forces very defensively. We made good use of our sacrificial units. We were also very lucky. We did six wounds in one cannon shot, blocked all enemy spells, panicked an Ld 10 unit, and our tiny unit of quarrelers managed to survive four rounds of glade guards shooting at them, and a unit of dwarves rolled high enough on pursuits and overruns to butcher many times its value in points. If we played all six game turns we would have continued advancing our line and shooting artillery and probably gotten the extra standard removed from one of the archer units to make them reach their breaking point.

Last Game, vs. Empire and Wood Elf team

Our opponent in the last game was the only other team of the six besides us who won both their first two games. We knew we were essentially deciding first and second place. The third game was a Dawn Attack scenario. The Empire player had two great cannons, a very large unit of knights, a mounted bsb with the knights, a lore of fire mage lord on pegasus, and a steam tank. The Wood Elves had an eagle mounted BSB, tree lord ancient, two units of archers (I think one may have been an elite unit), and a unit of tree kin. In this scenario every team’s general got a free potion randomly chosen, but none of the potions were used all game. We got bonus points if we killed an enemy general (we did kill a general but we would have done that anyway without the encouragement of the bonus points). The other team got no useful spells off the entire game and we got most of the spells we wanted most of the time (save Dwellers).

Summary of Events on the Right Section of the battlefield:

The randomness of the Dawn Attack scenario led to us only having our left flank made up only of our quarrelers arrayed against all their glade guard (one of them had flaming attacks), who were advantageously making poisoned shooting attacks thanks to a venom thicket forest. The archers split their fire between the quarrelers and the Temple Guard. In one turn they were able to inflict a wound with flaming attacks to negate the regeneration the Temple Guard were enjoying due to the Earth Blood spell, softening them up for the Empire cannon to kill several more (though Regrowth brought them back to full). The quarrelers failed to do meaningful damage during their relatively brief time alive, but they did draw fire from our more valuable units.

Left Section of the battlefield:

Our artillery was all towards the left and so were the two Empire great cannons. Thus artillery fire characterized this section of the battle. Turn one, we killed an Empire cannon with our dwarf cannon. The other cannon couldn’t shoot our cannon due to a building blocking line of sight (and thus our cannon couldn’t target it either). After the first successful turn killing the enemy cannon, the cannon managed to inflict a wound on the master engineer the next turn and kill the tree lord the third turn. The surviving Empire cannon couldn’t shoot at our cannon, but they could hit the grudge thrower. Fortunately for us, the cannon whiffed damage on our grudge thrower. The grudge thrower shot at the second Empire cannon in a subsequent turn and killed it. They also killed a knight or two firing towards the center. The same turn the cannon killed some knights, a lucky shot from the Stegadon’s great bow killed three! LM players are not accustomed to the great bow killing anything, and I managed to kill things with it in two games in a row! Unfortunately, the organ gun was out of range or line of sight of unengaged enemy units all game, but at least it didn’t blow up.

Outside the realm of artillery, our team didn’t do so well on the left side of the battlefield. The Skroxigor moved to prevent the tree kin from charging our artillery, but they lost to the tree kin in close combat and were broken. The Skroxigor ran through my partner’s hammerers and panicked them. Both units kept running the rest of the game (though they stayed alive and on the board, so yielded no points beyond the captured standard).

The Salamander was also on our left deployment zone. I tried to move it around for shots against the various flammable units nearby. The Salamander due to overshooting the target, poor damage rolls, and good ward saves did no damage. The last turn the Salamander was charged by the flying Wood Elf BSB and Master Engineer. The Salamander killed the already wounded master engineer but was itself killed by the Wood Elf BSB.

The skirmishers were also in our left deployment zone. They moved into position to harass enemy units on the left flank entering a mysterious forest. The mysterious forest turned out to be a Wild Wood. Turn One the Wildwood killed enough of them to force a panic test, causing them to flee. They didn’t flee far enough to get outside of the Wild Wood though. During our opponents turn the skirmishers took a few more hits. At the top of our second turn, the skinks rallied, but unfortunately were STILL in the forest. We weren’t able to move the unit out of the forest until the whole unit was reduced to one model. We fled him behind our artillery line to hang out with our rune smith to deny our foes 80 points for killing the whole unit.

Center section of the battlefield:

We had the Great weapon warriors, Temple Guard, and Stegadon here. The Temple Guard got in close combat with the Empire Knights. Then the Stegadon made a supporting charge, getting pathetic impact hits. Since the Stegadon was fighting cavalry they got no thunderstomp. The skink crew actually killed about as many knights as the Stegadon itself. Then the Steam Tank trudged in and got some impact hits. Then the great weapon dwarf warriors hit the Steam Tanks flank. They added CR points for the flank attack but didn’t really do significant damage to the steam tank any of the rounds they fought. In hind sight the warriors would have probably been better served going after the Tree Kin. The combat went back and forth. When we lost our units avoided breaking (barely) thanks to being stubborn (dwarves were steadfast, Temple Guards had Sacred Duty, and Stegadons are always stubborn). The turns we won the Empire was able to hold its ground due the BSB being present. We managed to keep the Temple Guard alive thanks to the Slann throwing regrowth on things often (the other team said it was like fighting against the undead). I would have really liked to play out all six turns to see how the grand combat would have turned out, the Empire units were killing good amounts of our units thanks to the mighty steam tank, but we had almost finished off the knights and were replenishing losses with Regrowth. Also if we played out all six turns we could have rallied the Hammerers and put the hurting on the Tree Kin.

Overall they killed a lot of our stuff, but they only killed one of our units entirely (the salamander team). They also got a standard from the broken Skroxigor unit. We killed the tree lord (who was the WE general) and both great cannons.