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8th Ed. End Times Oldblbood Wizard! (Pure Saurus army)

Discussion in 'Battle Reports' started by SilverFaith, Dec 16, 2014.

  1. SilverFaith
    Terradon

    SilverFaith Member

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    Okay, this was fun! Playing by the End Times rules, IE new magic, I tried out an all Saurus list. This was against a normal High Elf list, 3000 points.

    My list was:
    Lords: 790 points
    - Saurus Oldblood (cold one, great weapon, light armour, wizarding hat)
    - Saurus Oldblood (Carnosaur (full upgrades) light armour, shield, piranha blade, dawnstone, other tricksters shard)
    Heroes: 595 points
    - Gor’rok
    - Scar Vet (BSB (War banner), Carnosaur (full upgrades), great weapon and light armour
    Core: 764 points
    - 40 saurus, full command and spears in a horde
    - 24 saurus, full command and HW+Shield
    Special: 851 points
    - 10 Cold One Cavalry, full command and spears
    - 29 Temple guards, full command, razor banner
    Gor’rok went into the temple guard unit, the wizard saurus went into the cold one unit. From right to tleft: The carnos were both on the right flank (Because that flank was MINE), then the HW unit as close to the enemy as possible. The temple guard where in the center, a few inches behind the HW saurus unit, to make the HW unit tank the deathstar unit he has (White Lions are bad news). The 40 spears where on the left flank in a good position to flank charge anything the TG unit got into combat with. Right behind that unit, was my CoC unit, to keep them in cover behind my other units, and in range for spell casting purposes. I got Light magic on my Saurus oldblood.

    The elves had:
    Lords:
    - Archmage lvl 4 with book of hoeth with high magic in the white lion unit
    - Loremaster with book of ashur in archer unit #1
    Heroes:
    - 2 princes on griffons, 1 with star lance, and 1 with talisman of preservation and a mundane lance
    - 1 prince on foot with BSB (Banner of the World Dragon) and armour of destiny (The cheating bastard! :p) in the unit of white lions
    Core:
    - 20 archers
    - 20 archers
    - 15 ellyrian reavers
    Special:
    - 40 white lions in a horde
    - 2 bolt throwers
    - 2 eagles
    Not sure about the upgrades.

    The white lions were placed in the dead center, as close to me as possible. The bolt throwers were placed somewhat behind that unit, 1 to the left and 1 to the right, giving it protection and line of sight to my units. The eagles were placed near the front line as well, seemingly to be used like redirectors for my spear and carnos. The griffon princes were afraid of my carnos at first, so they were placed on the other flank, to assist the white lions against the spear saurus, and likely to hunt the small cold one mage bunker. The Reavers were also placed here to assist mostly against the cold one unit. The archers were placed as deterrents near the Bolt throwers, to grant them some protection from the cold one bus and the carnosaurs.


    --First turn – High Elf--
    He got first turn.
    Movement: White Lions held. He was afraid of moving up, despite the unit being a horrible deathstar kind of thing. His eagles flew closer, one trying to pull a redirector on at least one of the carnosaurs. The other just flew closer, probably trying to set up a flank charge later on or something. His reavers also held, afraid of getting charged, and the archers stood their ground, eating the long range penalty in return for not getting a penalty for moving.

    Magic: Magic was utter crap from his point of view, and did almost nothing to me. He got off spirit leech on my bsb carno, but he flopped the roll and did nothing. He failed to cast Fiery Convocation on his high lore wizard, who then IF’d soul quench on my cold one cavalry, killing 3 of them, and then killing 8 of his white lions, and promptly getting grabbed by Tzeentch, taking him out of the game. There goes his level 4!

    Shooting: Shooting did bugger all, killing 2 saurus total from the spear unit. He moved forward, placing the eagles to attempt a redirect on my carnosaurs. The bolt throwers both shot at the oldblood carno, but did nothing.

    --First Turn – Lizardmen—
    Charges: Alright, eagles in charge range! I charged with the Oldblood carno, and the eagle failed it’s Ld test to avoid terror. I didn’t catch it, but I get into a better position with it.

    Movement: My BSB moved closer to my HW+Shield saurus and templeguard, giving them the BSB aura. I moved the HW block up, baiting a long range charge for the white lions, and moving my cold one bus with their wizard further up the board.

    Magic: I got off banishment on his ellyrian reavers, killing 7, but failing to panic them. I got another banishment off on the non-terrored eagle, killing it. Nothing else got off, but it certainly helped that his level 4 wizard died to his miscast.

    Nothing to shoot with, and nothing in CC, so on to turn two.

    --Second Turn – High Elf—
    Charge: White lions make the charge! They hit CC with the HW+shield block. Needed 11 to do so. Oh well. The Ellyrian Reavers charged my CoC unit, 7 man strong with the oldblood wizard.

    Movement: The Griffon heroes originally wanted to kill the other flank, but two massive carnosaurs frightened him, so he got them into a position to counter-charge if they tried to charge something. Wasting yet another turn doing bugger all. His eagle kept running (or flying)

    Magic: He threw 3 debuffs on my unit of HW Saurus (-3 leadership, -2 WS, -1 S), and net of amnytok on my 40 man spear unit.

    Shooting took 1 wound off the oldblood carnosaur with 1 boltthrower, while the other chipped 3 Temple Guards down. The shooting from the archers was laughably inefficient, doing absolutely nothing to the saurus unit they targeted.

    CC saw my saurus unit obliterated. They steamrolled through it, killing all but 2 guys, who then broke. He didn’t pursue, but reformed to face my carnosaurs and temple guard unit, despite setting up a perfect flank charge for my 40 man spear unit (I guess he hoped they would fail their strength check). The Reavers, whom I almost forgot while writing this, got hilariously butchered. He apparently forgot that Cold Ones are heavy cavalry, and that an Oldblood with a GW is still an Oldblood with a great weapon, even if he is also now a wizard. Even the +1 S from their spears wasn’t enough to even budge the cold ones.

    --Second Turn – Lizardmen—
    Mass charge! One Carnosaur made a very long range charge against one of his griffon princes. I had hoped he might fail he terror, but he was immune to it (had forgotten griffons had terror) – instead, I smashed into him with my Oldblood Carnosaur. This was the one with the talisman, unfortunately, though it did rob him of his lance bonus. My 40-man saurus unit made the S check from net of amnytok, and charged the white lions, succeeding in doing so. The Temple Guard block had to front charge, but managed to do so as well.

    Movement: The BSB Carno moved closer to the fun, but stayed out of the star lance prince’s charge arc, waiting for his inevitable charge into the temple guard block. The Cold one Cavalry with their wizard moved closer to the white lion carnage, getting in range for some spell-casting fun.

    My 2 saurus HW warriors kept running.

    Magic was sick. I IF’d Timewarp, hitting the 40 man spear unit. I lost d6 dice, which was 1, and nothing else. I then IF’d Speed of Light on the same unit, and lost 3 cold one cavalry models to the small blast. I realized I was close enough to cast Light of Battle, and got it off on my fleeing 2-man HW unit, reforming them and saving me the points using my last 2 dice.

    CC was brutal. The TG unit lost 19 men, but his BSB got reduced to 1 wound by the temple guards focusing him, while gor’rok did nothing (damn 2+ ward save). The Templeguards and Spear Saurus managed to lose combat by 1, but both held their ground.

    The Griffon prince got eaten by a carnosaur. His talisman didn’t help much against the sheer amount of wounds they got through, and the multiwounds took care of both rider and mount. This lead to the carnosaur overrunning straight into an archer unit, holding their loremaster. He butchered the poor archers, breaking the unit, but was unable to pursue (Stupid forced restrain rule!). Unfortunately, this placed him straight in the charge arc of the star lance griffon.

    --Third Turn – High Elf—
    Charge: His remaining archer block took a wound off my carnosaur BSB, and his bolt throwers managed to reduce it to 1 wound left. Ouch.

    Movement: Eagle ran off the table, and the loremaster kept running, giving him no magic phase.

    CC: His white lions killed all but 1 temple guard, but lost their bsb prince to gor’rok, despite his 2+ save. The spears lost a few guys as well, but did fairly good against them, reducing them to 10 this time around, making them lose the fight. They somehow managed to hold their ground.

    The Star Lance griffon prince almost killed my oldblood, who then promptly turned around and butchered the squishy elf. Oldblood still had a wound left. He turned to face the loremaster archer unit, to make sure he could either run it down, or at least force it into the other archer unit.

    He conceded. He had 10 white lions who wasn’t going to survive another turn, no heroes, 1 lord who was fleeing, and was probably going to be charged off the board by my carnosaur, a super inefficient archer unit, and 2 bolt throwers. He might have been able to earn back a few points, but he had no real chance of winning this one.


    --Post-game—
    He admitted he had technically cheated by giving his BSB armour of destiny, but he hadn’t noticed it before the white lion combat started. It turned out to not make much of a difference, I would have killed him 1 turn earlier without the 4+ save, but it didn’t matter much. His thoughts on the game was basically that:
    1. Archers with S3 are useless when the enemy only fields T4 and 4+ or better across the board.
    2. He messed up his use of the princes. He should have aided his white lions, but instead, he made them cross the board to go up against the carnosaurs, a matchup not at all in their favour.
    3. His White Lions with their BotWD was only really effective if the enemy actually had magic to attack him with. Since gor’rok and the oldblood carno was basically the only magic damage in my army (Aside from the few light spells), the points where pretty much wasted.
    4. A Wizard oldblood is still an oldbood, and 1+ AS and 5 attacks at S7 is brutal, magic items or not.
    5. Elves really need those saurus characters to die before they get to strike, so resilience is pointless. The talisman of preservation was useless on the griffon prince, he’d have been much better served with something that could kill the guy, rather than try to take his blows. He had thought he’d be hunting something else, like skinks or something, which a ward save would have helped against I suppose.

    My thoughts was that, while I did get somewhat lucky with my magic (Light is one of my favorite choices for my Slann), I don’t think it would have changed much, honestly. It was fun to have a chaos sorcerer type of character, but even with the end time rules, it wasn’t really all that impressive.

    He is usually a VC player, so he may just have been too used to his blenderlords and never having to worry about things like terror. He made some pretty glaring mistakes, but the real reason I won as hard as I did, was likely poor unit placement pre-game, and poor list-making from his part. Luck was a bit on my side, because despite whiffing my spear saurus attacks completely (ASF+WS10+1A+Initiative 10 meant rerolls against the GW white lions hitting on 3s…) only did like 7 wounds, so I felt like my luck was equally rotten at times where it really shouldn’t have been. In the end though, I don’t think his level 4 being there had made much of a difference, in all honesty. High Lore was all he lost out on, and the 2+ to dispel wouldn’t have made a difference in the spellcasts I got through.

    Which brings me to my final point

    --The new magic system—

    Rolling for dice available was dumb. It made Light a good lore, though, because it was easy to cast most of the spells, even for a level 2. One thing I did notice, however, most likely because of my inferior wizard, was that having to roll for power and dispel dice separately was to my advantage. I rolled 3 dice, got a good roll casting value, and he rolled 2, and basically had no chance of dispelling, even if he had had +5 to his roll, instead of +2. It meant he couldn’t just throw as many dispel dice after my spells as he wanted to, which forced him to make bad decisions in terms of dispelling, wasting his dice and accomplishing nothing. It was odd, because with the Slann, I felt like magic had been nerfed, but with my Light magic Oldblood, I felt like it had been actually been buffed. It makes me think this new system just rebalances the system, so lesser wizards are closer to the stronger wizards in terms of power, because the stronger wizards can’t just spam whatever they want. I feel like they should have made the system be “Only 1d6 dice for power/dispel allowed, to a minimum of your wizard level” to make sure the higher level wizards don’t get shafted by poor rolls, but that’s just me I guess.

    We didn’t get to use the end times spells though, because his level 4 died before he had the chance, and neither the loremaster nor the Oldblood was a high enough level to use them. Their presence might have made a difference in terms of the wizard power. On the other hand, considering we technically only had 1 level 2 each, magic was incredibly potent, with spells flying everywhere. You’d never see this in a regular low-point game without level 4s, and it also made sure that the enemy didn’t just 6-dice dispel your only good spell, because you only had 2 spells to cast in the first place, and he had to use his 6 dispel dice on something. The 6’er spells was impossible to get through. He tried Fiery Convocation once, and Purple sun twice, and never even got enough dice to get the casting value. It made dispelling odd, because usually people only attempt spells they actually have dice for, rarely failing them. This system meant you often saw people waste dice trying to cast something they had no real chance of getting off because of an arbitrary limit.

    Though to be honest, I hadn’t expected this list to do anything against elves. I was extremely surprised when I just seemed to curb-stomp every combat I got into. Even the White Lions, while dangerous, just wasn’t doing enough damage. Not once did I feel like I was even slightly pressured. Though to be completely honest, I have no idea where his points went. It felt like his list was only 2k points or so, because it was so short on units and actual power. I don’t know, I just think I expected more from the high elves at this point level.
     
  2. Hooligan
    Skink

    Hooligan New Member

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    Great read! I'm pretty surprised the all saurus list worked as well as it did. I agree with your thoughts on the new magic system. It seems balanced, but in an odd sort of way. If your opponent gets lucky with a 5 or 6 dice cast, it's almost useless to try to dispel it in the first place since you probably won't be able to match his dice count. I might have to try this against my normal WE opponent if I can ever figure out how to catch them with saurus!
     
  3. SilverFaith
    Terradon

    SilverFaith Member

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    I think him bringing a White Lion Deathstar was to my advantage. Had he done otherwise, I'd probably have been in trouble.

    I don't think you'd ever catch a WE army with saurus. You'd need tons of ranks though, to make sure those wildriders don't insta-break you from a charge.
     
  4. Screamer
    Temple Guard

    Screamer Member

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    interesting game!

    A rule question, sounds like you're carnosaur got to fight the archers and loremaster after an overrun. Was that on the same turn? Since you wrote you couldn't pursue.

    You can only fight twice in the same turn if the unit you overrun into is already engaged.
     
  5. GCPD
    Bastiladon

    GCPD Active Member

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    Great game and even better list! I reckon an Oldblood with the hat is a thing even in regular Warhammer.


    Your feelings on Khaine magic pretty much sums up what I've gathered: fun on low level wizards but doesn't work well with anything bigger (and especially with end times Lords allowances). A pity really.

    I especially can't fathom those who hate unreliability liking the dice rolls for power and dispel dice either.
     
  6. SilverFaith
    Terradon

    SilverFaith Member

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    Yeah, we did that wrong. Noticed it a few days ago, but my opponent said it wouldn't have mattered - his unit would still have been destroyed, even if he had gotten off a few spells, and the game was lost anyway.

    We even read up on it, so it was kinda embarassing that we missed it :p We just read it as "If the combat hasn't been resolved, resolve it now", despite it clearly stating otherwise. Doh!

    The unreliability thing is an issue for high level casters, especially level 5s or 4+ashur, because they rely on making those dice count. For a level 1 or 2, you don't expect much in the first place, but a lucky roll can easily give you an insurmountable advantage that the far more expensive caster just can't make up for.

    Whether that is good or bad, I can't comment on yet. Had a few games with it, but I still can't quite figure out if I like it more or less. My Ogres do love it, though, getting +1 to cast for every spell cast is insane. I have had +12 to cast because of he escalating bonus and a magic item that grants more bonuses. When you have +12 to cast, you don't really mind getting 2 power dice aganst 5 dispel dice :p
     
  7. NexS1
    Carnasaur

    NexS1 Well-Known Member

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    1. How can the BSB have armour of destiny and BotWD?
    Answered in post battle comment

    Will edit this with comments on the battle...

    EDIT:
    2. How did the IF kill 8 White Lions? Did your opponent not realise that the BotWD gives a 2+ ward against miscast damage too?

    3. Re: the overrun into the loremaster archers: Did you write this in the wrong order? You don't get to fight another round of combat unless you had something else in combat (waiting to be resolved) with the archers. Also, what forced restrain rule are you referring to?

    4. FYI White Lions are stubborn, which is why they held.

    5. How did you feel about a slannless TG unit? To me it kinda feels wrong. With Gor-Rok in there to provide stubborn, you'd get 2 extra S5 attacks. Was it worth not having a slann?


    Thanks for the report. It's interesting to read the new khaine magic. I'm not a fan, but the report was great :)
     
  8. Pulstar
    Skink

    Pulstar New Member

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    The White Lions can take the BotWD with out the BSB. While he technical did it wrong, unless the Lions had another magic banner it all works out.
     
  9. SilverFaith
    Terradon

    SilverFaith Member

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    An oddity of our local rules. Since miscast rules say nothing about being magical attacks (Despite the fact that it clearly should), it is not threated as such, and therefore does not work against ethereal units, and does not generate a ward save because of BotWD.

    I think that's kinda stretching it, but he is right, the entire page about miscast only contains fluffy text about "magic going out of control", and never says it counts as magical attacks.

    Already asked, and we did it wrong. The forced PURSUIT was the Predatory Fighter rule, that means I can't retrain, however, you can only pursue once per close combat phase, so the second combat would force a restrain.

    But yeah, we did it wrong. We managed to overlook the fact that you only play out the additional combat if the unit is already engaged, which it was not.

    Wouldn't have mattered, he rolled snake eyes :p I had actually forgotten that when i wrote this report, but your right. they were quite unlikely to break.

    The TG unit was there to provide some additional strength for can-opening purposes, so a TG unit with razor standard was far better at dealing with armour than standard saurus. Gor'rok was there to grant stubborn. Against BotWD, he was useless, because of his magic weapon. Since I charged, I didn't even get to make sure of his dangerous terrain tests. It was sad.

    It wasn't the first time I had gone Slannless, but I'll say, Slanns are often excluded from my TGs because of their insane cost. Since I often meet dwarves, I need something to deal with 3+/4+ saves, which S5+AP does quite nicely, with or without a Slann. It also means I don't waste 100 points to a miscast.

    I've said this elsewhere, but honestly, I don't know whether I like this more or less than the standard magic system.
     
  10. NexS1
    Carnasaur

    NexS1 Well-Known Member

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    The miscast thing was errata'd. The botwd protects against it and there's nothing to question.

    It's sometimes fun to try out sub par lists just because it's different. Like last night, I used a troglodon and it was shit. Got beaten in combat by skaven slaves, then run down (same turn that I charged).
    Worst moneter ever.
     
  11. SilverFaith
    Terradon

    SilverFaith Member

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    Ah, we must have missed that one! Nice.

    Trogs have a hard time alone against anything with static combat res.

    I often use it, actually. It was mostly because I wanted a pure Saurus list, and the Troglodon is mostly useful when you have a slann (And it is ridden by a skinks, so NO :p)
     
  12. bernard02
    Jungle Swarm

    bernard02 New Member

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    What type of weapon did you use? It seems you were so excited at the gameplay.
     
  13. SilverFaith
    Terradon

    SilverFaith Member

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    Not sure I understand the question.

    Trogs don't have access to weapons options.
     
  14. lordkingcrow
    Temple Guard

    lordkingcrow Active Member

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    This sounds like the kind of army I would love to play! Very entertaining read. I tend to face a HE army quite often, but my opponent has never fielded a White Lion unit (even though he's got a good 30 or 40 models). I never knew they were so nasty to fight against.
     

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