Terradon
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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!
) 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.
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!
) in the unit of white lionsCore:
- 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.
