8th Ed. 1000 points battle vs WoC

[Anubris]

Hey guys,

So I had my first warhammer game since a long time last weekend. It was a complete massacre for WoC. Points to note: we were both on our way to figuring out ''how the game worked and what changed about it'' and hence, we made a lot of mistakes. But still I think it's worth sharing and I wonder if you have any tactics for a possible rematch.

My list:
Heroes (238)
Saurus Scar-Veteran: light armour, shield, venom of the firefly frog, dragonhelm, dawnstone (138)
Skink Priest: level 2 wizard (100)

Core units (550)
-15 saurus warriors: full command (195)
-10 skink skirmishers (70)
-24 skinks: 3 kroxigor (285)

Special units(60)
-5 charmeleon skinks (60)

Rare units (150)
-Salamander (75)
-Salamander (75)

His list (roughly): 1 chaos sorceror on disc of tzeench, ~16 (?) chaos warriors, 5 chaos knights, 3 skullcrushers of khorne

I'll try to give you guys an overview of what happened.

DEPLOYMENT

sorc.
knights warriors forest rock skullcrushers







sal. sal. forest(inc. skinks) saurus forest (charm. skinks) skrox

I got to deploy first and this is what it turned out to be (roughly). Then, the first problem occured: I had no idea where to deploy my charmeleon skinks. He placed his sorceror in such a way that I couldn't put my charmeleon skinks behind his army (which was my plan). So I ended up putting them in the bottom-right forest --> turned out to be a mysterious forest I could not stay in.

Magic: My skink priest gets Curse of the midnight wind + chain lightning (I didn't take iceshard blizzard because he has no shooting whatosever).
His sorceror gets flickering fire of tzeench + a remain in play spell I cannot remember the name of (my units cannot use leadership of heroes and casting ''double'' results are ignored).

TURN 1 LM
no charges. I move my salamanders forward, and we get into a discusison about ''move and shoot''. After the game we looked it up; it seems salamanders can march and shoot? In our game they could only move 6 inches and fire. I move my skinks + priest in the forest to prepare for an attack. I move my chamo's up as well as I want to try and bait/shoot at his army.
Magic phase: I try to blow up his chaos warriors with chain lightning; I misscast and end up killing 5 skinks. My charmeon skinks cannot fire at anything (nothing is withing 12 inch).

TURN 1 WoC
He charges my charmeleon skinks with his skullcrushers; I flee. He moves his knights forward, but moves his chaos warriors backwards (he's afraid of 2x salamander I suppose). He flies his sorceror in front of his knights and warriors and casts flickering fire of tzeench on my skink unit; they all die except for the priest. He also casts that annoying remains-in-play spell. (I do not have any dispell dice to spare, I used my 5 dice for the misscast chain lightning).

TURN 2 LM
I tried to charge his skullcrushers with krox; it fails. My charmeleons fail to rally. Saurus move forward a bit. I move both salamanders forward in an attempt to toast his chaos knights. My skink priests stays in the forest.
Magic phase: after lots of doubting I cast curse of the midnight wind on his skullcrushers, it gets dispelled. I thought about trying chain lightning again, this time on his sorceror (and hopefully bouncing to his warriors or knights) but I wanted to ''play safe'' and keep some dispell dice.
Shooting: first salamander missfires and eats 2 skinks. Second salamander: the flame backfires into my salamander, no wounds taken.

TURN 2 WoC
He charges my salamanders with the knights, I flee (cannot stand and shoot like razordons). He charges my skrox with his skullcrushers and fails. His chaos warriors move a bit forward.
Magic: He kills my priest with flickering fire of tzeench, I fail at dispelling it.

Fast forward of events (it went really fast from here onwards)
-Charmeleons end up rallying but die to flickering fire of tzeench
-Salamanders keep fleeing
-Skrox fails charge again and ends up getting charged by skullcrushers; in combat he kills 6-8 skinks and I kill 1 skullcrusher. He wins combat by 6 and I end up fleeing and get overrun....

At this point I concede defeat, for fun we try to let my saurus fight his warriors of chaos: 6 saurus die in one round of combat and I kill like 1 or 2 of his warriors (even though I have a scar-vet in the unit).

So yeah, conclusions:

-Misscast on a high-risk-high-reward spell.
-We did not allow salamanders to march and shoot, giving me a lot of difficulty to get them into position. How close do you guys move them to the enemy army before firing?
-We did not realize that without a wizard, you still have dispell dice.
-My skrox unit was not capable of stopping his skullcrushers, which was disappointing. I thought they were ''good'' against knight-units, but it ends up I underestimated his unit.
-I have no idea how shooting works (can javelins/'blowpipes shoot beyond 12 inches or not?) and I have no idea where to put my charmeleon skinks
-His sorceror can fly, has a 2+ (or so) armour save, a good ward save and kills half my army. Basically I have no idea how to stop his sorceror.
-In general my placement of units was incorrect (I think). I wanted to use my skrox as a flanking unit for the saurus but his warriors stood still (avoiding salamanders as much as possible) and the skullcrushers went straight for my skrox. Meanwhile his wizard causes me lots of trouble even though he is IN MY FACE. I want to kill that wizard!

Do you guys have any tips?

 

[david l]

It sounds like you are playing magic completely wrong. Your Power dice and your dispel dice have no connection to each other. In your turn, you roll winds of magic and that one roll of 2d6 determines your power dice and the enemy dispel dice for that phase. In the enemy turn, his roll of winds of magic determines his power dice and your dispel dice for that phase.
How much did you kill with the Chain Lighting that you got off? Or did you not realize that double 6s is Irresistible Force FIRST, and then you resolve the miscast.

I think your SKrox should have been Steadfast against the skullcrushers, and thus not testing at -6.

Javelins and blowpipes both have 12" range. With skirmishers, you can march and then shoot. Both will take penalties for long range if the target is over 6" away. But skink shooting is not going to inflict much damage against the high armour save of WoC.

Charge the wizard with a combat unit. Admittedly the disk makes that hard.
The wizard shouldn't be doing that much damage because of the extremely random damage of flickering fire. Unless he kept rolling well.

15 Saurus is not really big enough to be a combat unit, especially against Warriors of Chaos. They'll get obliterated.

 

[Anubris]

Yeah we screwed up magic big time. My chain lighting was casted with 5 power dice, 3 of which were a 1. So it was a very hard miscast.

I will look into the term Steadfast (don't know right now what it means). It just seemed very silly to me that if I lose 6 or 8 skinks in 1 round of combat and I kill one of his skullcrushers, he shouldn't ''win'' combat. Hopefully this rule will explain.

I want to charge the wizard with a melee unit, but my fastest ''melee'' unit were the skrox and they were paired up against the skullcrushers. If I would try to charge his sorceror I am afraid that I would get out of position and get flank/rear charged myself.

He had alot of luck with his flickering fire (usually strenght 5 or 6 hits). He also was very lucky on miscast table himself.

My saurus unit would not be able to face off his warriors toe-to-toe. I knew that. The idea was to burn his warriors with my double salamander before engaging, but that plan horribly failed.

I will definitely look into the stuff you just said. But one thing bothers me.. If I have no use for skink shooting against WoC, what use are my charmeleons at all?

 

[Arli]

Your salamander can march and shoot by the way. Also, to get the best 'sweet spot' for shooting with one, position the salamander about 7 inches from the target unit. You can also position them in such a way that they can hit multiple targets.

For you magic, rolling 3 1s and a 5 only means that your spell failed. It did not miscast (requires double 6s). Your priest would not be able to cast anything else after that though (lost concentration).

Steadfast occurst when you have more ranks than your opponent (after CC is resolved). If this is the case, your unit gains stubborn and would have tested on the highest leadership in the unit.

Hope this helps.

 

[Anubris]

Your salamander can march and shoot by the way. Also, to get the best 'sweet spot' for shooting with one, position the salamander about 7 inches from the target unit. You can also position them in such a way that they can hit multiple targets.

Yeah we figured that out way too late, I won't make the same mistake. thinking about it now; I could have just marched both salamanders close to the knights and flame him from both sides. He would have to choose which salamander to charge afterwards. But looking at your tip I assume that sending your salamanders on a kamikaze mission is the right thing to do right?

For you magic, rolling 3 1s and a 5 only means that your spell failed. It did not miscast (requires double 6s). Your priest would not be able to cast anything else after that though (lost concentration).

Wow... we didn't know that either!

Steadfast occurst when you have more ranks than your opponent (after CC is resolved). If this is the case, your unit gains stubborn and would have tested on the highest leadership in the unit.

Wow, that would have made a huge impact on the game. I would have been able to kill his skullcrusher unit eventually (I still had 16 skinks and 3 kroxigor vs 2 skullcrushers) but in the game as we played it I had to flee and got overrun

Thanks a lot for pointing this out, it gives me a bit more hope for our next encounter. Now I just need to figure out how to kill that wizard of him

 

[Arli]

On Salamanders, you should never, EVER accept a charge with them! Unless they will run off the board, always flee! They get 3d6 to flee with, so they should be able to get away easily. In the instance where one of them would be charged either way, it would be safer to stand to one charge while the other gets away.

However, you should work to position them so that they are almost never in a good charge arc.

If you happen to take razordons, they are great for taking the charge (great stand and shoot reaction for them).

 

[Qupakoco]

5 charmeleon skinks

Lol! You have pokemon on your team?! Haha.

Couple things I'll add:

I had no idea where to deploy my charmeleon skinks. He placed his sorceror in such a way that I couldn't put my charmeleon skinks behind his army (which was my plan).

Placing your charmanders (read as Chameleons) on his flank is a very good idea also. So long as you place them out of his charge arc he can't possibly do anything to them on the first turn except use his magic. WoC have minimal shooting, so our Chameleons are usually pretty safe. And hey, if he uses a spell on them it's no biggy. They are pretty cheap and distract him from the rest of your army while they advance. If he ignores them, even better! Also remember that Chameleons can charge into combat, so if your Saurus are in a sticky situation with Warriors you can flank/rear-charge them and get an instant +2/+3 to combat resolution. (1 for charge and 1 or 2 for flank/rear attack) Some people overlook that tactic and are quite surprised if you do it.

My skink priest gets Curse of the midnight wind + chain lightning (I didn't take iceshard blizzard because he has no shooting whatosever).

Don't forget that the -1 to hit Iceshard Blizzard gives is not limited to shooting. It also works for Close Combat attacks AND it confers a -1 to Leadership. That can swing a combat in your favor pretty easily as it makes you harder to hit and makes the enemy easier to break. So don't count it out because you aren't up against a shooty army. Also the lore attribute hurts flyers regardless of what spell you cast on them. I'm pretty sure the Disk Sorcerer is a flying model, right?

Shooting: first salamander missfires and eats 2 skinks. Second salamander: the flame backfires into my salamander, no wounds taken.

This can't happen. The flame template always goes forward, not left/right/backwards. So long as you don't misfire and gobble up some Skinks, your Salamander will always shoot forward by the amount shown on the artillery die.

Besides what everyone else has already said, you really should just sit down and read everything from movement through close combat in the main book. That'll clear up a lot of your issues and introduce all the little nuances in each phase of the game.

And don't forget to put charmeleon back in his pokeball after the game is over.

 

[Anubris]

Thanks alot for all the comments and tips! I feel alot better about my Skrox/salamander/charmanders after reading this!

 

[Eladimir]

Also if you have a Games Workshop in your area go there and play a game under their guideance, they certianly don't know everything but they'll get you play correct 8th Ed as a start before you start to take incorrect rules for granted.

 

[Rettile]

sorry, why salamanders flee 3d6?

 

[Arli]

Salamanders and Razordons are War Beasts. That gives them the Swift strider rule (3d6 on charge and flee).

 

[Rettile]

thank you, i didn't know this

 

[Hasnat]

sorry, why salamanders flee 3d6?

They count as Warbeasts. Therefore, when fleeing they roll 3D6 and pick the highest two.