After six weeks of constant battles, triumph, and miserable, abject faliure, it all came down to one battle for the Lizardmen in our mighty empires league. I made it far enough to contest the final section of the map, and had to fight a mystery opponent chosen from the store regulars that weren't playing in the league. This being hot on the heels of two successive massacres against Daemons, I was feeling pretty confident, especially when I learned I would be challenging Brettonia. After dual Bloodthirsters, how hard could a bunch of T3 knights really be? Little did I know... His List: (Forgive me if I've gotten the names wrong on these, never seen Brettonians before) Fay the Enchantress- Unicorn, Holy Grail, Power Frog 8 Holy Grail Knights- full command, war banner BSB- horse, sword that does D3 wounds and hurts higher toughness stuff 8 Knights of Realm- full command 8 Knights of Realm- full command Hero- killing blow, something else 8 Impetuous Knights- full command Lord- Horse, magic resist 3, re-roll 1's to hit, thing that lets him kill the stegadon in one shot 2x Woman spellcasters- lvl 2, other stuff 2x19 Peasant Warriors- full command 6 peasant horsemen- full armor and command 3 Flying Horse Knights My list- see http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/the-final-battle-3000-vs-brettonia.4149/ for full details My plan was simple, and if I had followed it things would have gone a lot better. I was going to present Gor-Rok's big stubborn saurus block and the huge TG block as the only viable targets to start with, close enough together and next to terrain so that they couldn't get flanked. But, as deployment commenced things got spread out a bit too far, with the carnosaur and kroxigor on the far flank, TG/ Slann in the middle, the EotG lurking at the back, and the saurus further down. I tried to counter the placement of his units with my own, and almost without exception I've found this to be a mistake. My skinks, terradons, and chameleons were spread out in some nice forest; they weren't too important to the overall flow of things. He got the first turn, and didn't need to pray for the ward save because the Enchantress gives it to them automatically. He surged forward with everything, naturally, and succeeded in casting a few ineffectual spells on his own units. My turn I moved up a bit, and cast everything I could from lore of metal, plus Uranon's from the Engine Priest. I didn't get a single spell off, as he had lots of DD and magic resistance. Terradons and skinks killed his peasant horsemen. Turn 2: Forever after, I will think back on this as "The Bad Turn." He declared a charge on my kroxigors with his realm knights from nearly their maximum range. I fled, with what I thought was ample room, to make him fail. Of course I rolled an 11; 1/2" enough to take them off the board. The Enchantress with Holy Grail knights, and BSB with realm knights charged the Slann's big unit, just as I hoped. The Impetuous Knights and their hero charged Gor-Rok's saurus. The Lord charged off on his own through a gap and into combat with the stegadon... Gor-Rok took the hero's challenge, ignoring his strength bonus for charging and the killing blow he landed thanks to his shield and Resilient rule, but he didn't do any damage back. The saurus took a number of wounds as expected, and I went to take my stubborn break test. 5, 5, 6 on the dice! No problem, I thought; I'll just use the Slann's battle standard and re-roll it... Only to discover that I was 13 1/2" inches from the standard itself! As I deployed, I had measured to the side of the Slann's unit and not to the Slann; as the opponent pointed out, the rulebook says "within 12" of the standard". Gor-Rok & friends ran for it and were ridden down by the crappy knights, blowing my flank wide open. Next, the Lord landed a killing blow on the Engine of the Gods stegadon. Yup, just like that. Mind you, this is halfway through turn two (turn 2!!!) of the most important game of my career, and 1173 of my points have just gone up in a puff of embarrassment. On the bright side, the peasant riders I killed may have been worth almost 100... Meanwhile, the Enchantress's super unit and the Standard Bearer's knights smashed into the Temple Guard. My unit champion with hornet sword managed to wound the BSB in a challenge before being slain, and the the enchantress caused a wound to the great weapon scar-vet and one guard by forcing an initiative test on them (evidently this happens to whatever's in base contact with her). The knights wiped out the rest of my back rank, and the scar vet failed to hurt the enchantress with her super ward save. Stubborn break test... And I actually passed, first try. At this point, the carnosaur rider, with all the insanely tooled up goodies I gave him, was just in front of the unengaged knights, and my opponent told me to go ahead and charge them. Instead, I charged between them and the side of a hill and into the flank of his engaged BSB unit that I thankfully had line of sight to. The terradons, just for good measure, charged into the rear. This is where things started to turn... He shut down the Slann's magic again, except for the Ultimate Power I rolled on Burning Iron against the wounded standard bearer- enough to kill him. The Enchantress killed more TG and the scar-vet with her initiative test thing. And then, the Carnosaur went to work. If you read my army list post, you'll recall the Oldblood has a special sword that ignores armor, and both rider and mount have hatred (special items and abilities I earned over the course of the campaign). Hatred sure is nifty for Dark Elves, eh? Now think about what a rule like that would do for a fully geared up carnosaur Oldblood. Without going into unnecessary length or detail, the carnosaur killed most of the knights of the first unit, broke the Enchantress and her Super Grail Knights, ran them down, and then went on the most amazing and delightful rampage across the board. It got both spellcasters and their big footsoldier units, as well as the knights and hero that had ridden down Gor-Rok, without taking so much as a scratch itself. With the magic phase freed up again, the Slann was able to fry the rallied survivors of the BSB unit, then survived a dual charge from the other Realm Knights and the hated stegadon-slaying Lord. I positioned some chameleons behind the combat, and after the Slann killed the whole unit of knights with Spirit of the Forge, the Lord ran shamefully into his death at the hands of the lowly camo skinks. The flying horsemen had not been idle, and, despite losing one of their number, had hunted down most of the other skinks and terradons on the board. The faithful salamander escaped, however, and that was the game. The flyers were all he had left, while I had the Slann and just over half the TG, the blood-spattered Carnosaur, the salamander, one unit of terradons, and the camo skinks. My opponent did the math and called it a minor victory in my favor; I think it could have been a solid, but it doesn't matter, as for League purposes all I needed was a win. Victory, sweet victory, belongs to the servants of the Old Ones! Thanks for reading, everyone, and see you in 8th edition!
Congratulations on the victory! I bet you were almost ready to throw in the towel after the 2nd turn...2 big blows to your army. O darn! I also bet you were thrilled when your carny (finally) got to work, that would not be a pretty sight to behold... Again, congrats! On to the next one! The Hunted
Great you won, you won the campaign, that asks for a party About the battle, that must've been a harsh battle, gor-rok fled and was screwed , but the carni was man of the match, he saved the day
The interesting thing about a campaign like this is that a lot of a player's failure or success is decided between the actual games. The Tomb Kings player was tied with me at the start of the last week of play, and scored a massacre on his opponent the same as I did. Normally we would have rolled dice to see who went first, and if he had won the roll it would have been him challenging the Brettonians for the final territory. However, he was over half an hour late to the league meeting, and so the game master said I got to go before him. Punctuality for the win! And thanks for all the encouragement and support everybody. I wouldn't have made it halfway across the board without the new strategies and advice I've picked up on this forum. Stand tall, my cold-blooded brethren; we'll do it again in 8th edition!