Wherein I channel a certain High Elf player

I've been working on finalizing my list for the upcoming GT (Grand Tournament) in SF (San Francisco) in JN (June).

The list I'd been playing with was working well, except for the Cold One Knights. I gave them a chance but they never seemed to make back their points and just felt awkward on the table. So I tried swapping them out for some Dark Riders and Harpies, two of my must-have units from 7th edition. The Harpies seemed ok, so long as you don't try to use them for march blocking or redirecting.

The Dark Riders, on the other hand, just didn't feel right either. Everything moves so fast now and not being able to charge on turn one kinda takes the wind out of the vanguard move. As with the Harpies, march blocking and redirecting aren't really possible anymore. They just felt awkward. Fast enough to get to anything, but not really hard enough to break anything other than small units and war machines, which the Harpies could do for half the points cost.

I think I've come to the conclusion that I just don't like cavalry in this edition, at least not the Dark Elf options. Unless I'm willing to field a really big (and expensive) block of them, they just aren't worth it. Seeing as how I can often get my infantry blocks into combat on turn 2, and certainly on turn 3, the extra movement on the cavalry doesn't help.

So my newest variant is to have two units of six Shades and two units of five Harpies with no Dark Riders or Cold One Knights. The Shades are cheaper than Dark Riders, have better weapon and ballistics skill, and get two attacks. Plus the scout deployment lets me start them in good enough positions to go after soft targets the Dark Riders would have targeted anyway.

I tried this list on Thursday against WoC and Sunday against Dwarves. I tabled the WoC army in turn 5. The game against the Dwarves went all six turns but I rolled more sixes in a single game than I normally roll in 3 games combined. Needless to say, there's not much a Dwarf player can do with Witches doing around 10+ wounds every round and Corsairs with Mindrazor cast on them every combat round they fight in. By around the fourth turn my opponent felt the need to start pointing out the high number of sixes I was rolling. I agreed to give the guy a rematch some time soon, since I'd really like to see how the list performs when I roll normally.

At any rate, I liked how the dual Shade units felt much better than the Dark Riders. I'd still like to play a few more test games, but I think my list is pretty well set now.

Miscasting for Fun and Profit

Got in another game of 8th Edition this past week at Game Kastle. This was the first full sized (2250 points) game I'd played and it was against a Warriors of Chaos army that was a bit of a hybrid. See, the guy had wanted to do a 'Troll King and his Court' army of all monsters and beasts, which I thought was a cool idea. But he didn't have enough points of just those so instead it was trolls, monsters, and a couple of small units of Warriors and Mauraders on foot.

By the start of the 3rd turn, both of us had miscast our wizards off the table, and mine had taken half of her bodyguard unit of Spearmen (Spearelves?) with her. The last few turns went very quickly what with us skipping a whole phase.

I did manage to win the game and can make a few observations.

1. Black Guard are still sick. Even with being limited to 20 per unit, and the other side getting to swing back, the extra rank's worth of supporting attacks and the ability to take a magic banner other than ASF and still be able to strike first due to their ridiculous initiative more than make up for it. They are pretty much guaranteed to out-kill anything the come up against since you can give them the armor piercing banner or flaming attacks banner.

2. The Pendant BSB is even better at holding up big monsters now. He still gets +1 combat resolution for having the banner, but the monster doesn't get +1 for outnumbering anymore. Now instead of the most likely outcome being a (GALLERY????) tie, the most likely outcome is that the monster loses combat by 1. The cheese, it is great. I foresee that I shall feel even dirtier using that combo in the future.

3. Bait and Flee is still a viable tactic, but it is much riskier and only really viable with Dark Riders and only really reliable against slower units. Harpies are still good for getting right up in the enemy's face on the first turn and directing them where you want them to go, but now that they flee on foot they are not likely to escape. Dark Riders are slightly more likely to get away as they get to roll 3 dice and drop the lowest, but enemy cavalry is still likely to catch them if you get close enough to force the issue. I had noticed previously that the longer I managed to keep my Dark Riders alive, the more likely I was to win the game. That was sort of when the Dark Elf army started to click for me, when I learned how to Bait and Flee to setup counter charges and keep the Dark Riders alive to rinse and repeat. I think in 8th Edition that will be an even more telling factor. I should keep track of that...... I suspect that I tend to win if I still have a unit of Dark Riders alive in the 4th turn.

4. Magic is dangerous. The Ring of Hotek is still nasty, you just have to get up close and personal.

Lastly, congratulations to Rushputin on being a Golden Demon Finalist two years running!