SAWS – Round 5 – John Lee - Vampires

The Mission: Battle of Attrition

My Objective: Destroy your opponents most expensive character

Master Necromancer, Level 4, lore of death, dispel scroll

Master Necromancer, Level 4, lore of vampires, earthing rod

Necromancer, lore of vampires, book of arkhan

35 Crypt Ghouls, champion

5 Dire Wolves
5 Dire Wolves
20 Zombies, musician, banner
35 Zombies, musician, banner

8 Crypt Horrors

35 Grave Guard, great weapons, musician, banner, banner of the barrows
Spirit Host
Spirit Host

Terrorgeist

Terrorgeist

Death Caster – Spirit Leech, Carass, Soul Blight, Doom and Darkness

Lvl 4 – Invoc, Vanhels, Gaze of Nagash, Raise dead
Level 1 - Invoc

John and I have crossed paths before, he is a member of Bizarrohammer, and despite what I have said before about those guys bringing softer lists, John did not do so.  Now let’s be clear, I don’t think his list was in anyways over the top, but it was the hardest list I had seen that weekend and harder than I expected to see with my comp.  I was probably a little harder on my teasing then I should have been.  I was pretty sure I could never touch the crypt horrors, the death magic made me want to mess myself and I knew without a good amount of luck I wasn’t going to be able to kill 2 terrorgeists before he could kill my gutter runners.  We won’t go into my chances of killing the spirit hosts though (just the champs and weapons teams had magical attacks and then only 2 and D3, neither enough to have a chance to kill a swarm in one round of combat – maybe a combo charge with a flank and ranks?).  That and my utter inability to kill units faster than 5 levels of vampire magic can raise and I knew I was in for a big challenge.  But I didn’t need to kill in this mission, just keep below half points, so perhaps that was something?

John deployed smart, terrorgeists and zombie bunker inside line with the fastest unit the farthest away from the center and the biggest unit in the center to protect any chance of an early push through.  Keeping his back to the edge meant no gutter runners coming up behind and getting first shot at the nice terrorgeists.  Therefore I responded by putting all my tokens along the mid line scattered from his deployment to my own.  Keep away from the tough, regenerating crypt ghouls and away from the large ghoul block and go after my objective (most expensive unit of grave guard) and the softer zombie unit with the death caster.

We roll off and for the fifth game in a row I’m stuck going first… yay?  I don’t do anything but run with my general away from his corner (I deployed center-back of my deployment zone to give me room to respond).  On John’s first turn I think he makes a critical mistake.  Seeing that his big and baby ghouls won’t be seeing much action he swings them around, opening up plenty of space around his terrorgeists.  He rolls a 2/1 magic phase and moves a unit forward a little extra (the ghouls).

On my turn 2, 5 of the night runner units come on.  I inform him that in 4 games I’ve only misfired twice, so I owe the dice 3 misfires in his game.  I misfire once, killing 12 gutter runners and leaving the 8 stranded in the center.   I charge the unit of dogs to open up space.  Also 1 gutter runner unit comes on into his backfield.  This is good, as I would hate to have had one run off the table due to the death of another.  I manage to kill 2 grave guard with my half circle along with putting 3 wounds onto a terrorgeist.  ¼ of the way!  I also kill 1 doge, and 2 more on the overkill.

 

On John’s turn 2 my 8 rat unit flees a charge from the grave guard.  John continues to move for position.  He rolls a 5/3 magic phase and allow gaze to kill some rats (he rolls snakes for hits).  I fail to dispel vanhels on the ghouls.  He uses his casting to heal the terrorgeist… 1/12^th of the way L.  He screams and kills a bunch of gutter runners who stick around.

Look, a finger!

On my turn 3 the last of my units come on.  1 of the units scatters to a place where I have 3 options – charge the flank of the vanhells ghouls, get charged by the crypt horrors on the next turn or charge the flank of the grave guard.  I opt to charge the grave guard, and then put a bunch more units into him, taking the other flank and into the front.  A weapons team sneaks in and his the center swarm.  I take down a terrorgeist and do 4 wounds to the other one with 3 units of gutter runners.  1/6^th left!  In combat I kill off the dogs and get lucky and kill the swarm.  I kill 8 graveguard, and then he comes back and kills 8 night runners and 1 weapons team – the other one kills itself at the end of the turn.  I win the combat by 3 and drop the grave guard down a good amount.

On John’s turn 3 the left dogs flank a unit of gutter runners, the ghouls corner into the combat and the swarm charges the smaller unit of gutter runners.  His caster bails out of the zombies now that their dogs aren’t in front of them and joins the other characters in the big zombie unit.  He rolls a 10/6 magic phase.  Spirit leeches a weapons team but fails to do a wound.  I dispel an attempt to bubble vanhels.  He then invokes 6 grave guard and heals the terrorgest 2 wounds (one from bubble and one from casting a spell), damn vampires. 1/3^rd left L.  He screams and kills 3 gutter runners.  I kill 2 dogs but lose a gutter runner meaning I lose the combat.  I do hold though but fail to reform.  The champion whiffs on the swarm, but the unit holds.  I kill 4 grave guard and all the rats run away.  1 unit gets caught and a weapons team blows up as its parent runs out of range.

On my turn 4 the big fleeing unit rallies.  I double charge the small zombie unit.  In shooting I kill 1 grave guard, still leaving me 1 model short of the low point.  I then put 3 wounds on the terrorgiest, not killing it because of the damn heal.  I fail both fear tests on the zombies, but still manage to kill 16 zombies with over kill.  The gutter runners kill off the dogs.  My champion once again fails to wound (damn D3 wounds!) the swarm and unit runs off the table.

On John’s turn 4, the reformed swarm charges the unit of gutter runners that just kill off the dogs.  The grave guard lose 1 on the stand and shoot as they charge some night runners.  The ghouls watch the same unit flee from a charge.  The ghouls redirect into a weapons team.  With an 8/6 magic phase I dispel Doom and Darkness on the bigger gutter runner unit (to combo with scream, that cheesy guy!).  I do allow gaze of nagash, but he again rolls snacks to kill 2 night runners from a fleeing unit.  He vanhels the ghouls.  The terrorgiest kills 5 gutter runners, which pass their test.  I kill 2 zombies and lose a weapons team but clear away the unit on crumble.  My champion in the other gutter runner AGAIN fails to wound the damn swarm, and the unit escapes thanks to smoke bombs.

On my turn 5 I have a unit rally.  I flank the zombie bunker unit.  In shooting I kill 1 grave guard.  I drop that damn terrorgiest!  In combat I put 2 wounds on the death caster and kill 4 zombies.  He doesn’t roll well and I get 8 more zombies on crumble.

On John’s turn 5 the swarm charges off the non-rallied gutter runner unit.  He rolls a 5/4 magic phase but doesn’t risk his caster by throwing any dice.  I kill off the death caster and 5 zombies and only lose 1 guy so more zombies crumble.

On my turn 6, the remaining few gutter runners and assassin charge the rear of the zombie bunker.  All of my units rally but for the 2 remaining night runners which have more to go than time to go before running off the edge.  In the zombie combat I fail all my fear tests but by still roll well.  The champion in the gutter runners actually kills 2 zombies (probably after seeing the fate of his equals in the other units).  I kill enough with static combat, and only losing 4 models to pop the entire unit and the two characters.  The crumble kills the last swarm (revenge!) 2 ghouls, 2 grave guard and no crypt ghouls.

At the beginning of John’s turn the crumble kills 7 ghouls, 2 graveguard (giving me half unit!) and 2 crypt ghouls (too bad he passes last turn or half this unit could have given me the win).  The ghouls charge a unit, which flee but get caught.  The grave guard fails their charge.

In the end we figure out the points and John is up a bit, but it’s close to a win for him.  So we decide we need to double check.  Then we figure out he missed my 100 for general and the two batters, so after recalculation we determine it’s still a tie, but now I’m up a little.  This was a good rough game.  John will soon be a good enough player that he won’t have to deal with punks like me pulling ties at the last minute (then as much fun as he is to play, he won’t be someone I will want to play in an event).  Of note, this was my first tie of 2013.