Friday 5 April 2019

Unending Battlelines 2019

KRAGS: Unending Battlelines 2019



This coming weekend, on the 6th of April 2019, a club located in the Southern metro area of Perth called KRAGS (Kwinana & Rockingham Armchair General Society) is holding an annual event called Unending Battlelines. I don't know how long it has been running for but I remember attending this event during 8th edition Warhammer prior to the old world being destroyed. KRAGS has a weekly club night and is one of two clubs that I know of in the Perth area (the other being Outpost 6030). 

This year's version of Unending Battlelines is a 4 game event, with 2000 point matched play armies. It will be held over 1 day, so another long day, but given that I don't really play other than at events I'm okay with this! I'm going to be taking my Nurgle and I'm going to be experimenting with a Pestilens contingent within the Nurgle allegience. My list is as follows:




This list is very much an amalgamation of my old 2000pt list and the two 1000pt lists that Sam and I took to Ultramates. It's very character heavy (exactly 1000 points are spent on the leaders) but each of them has a purpose:

- The Verminlord Corruptor provides anti-horde and anti-behemoth options;
- The GUO boosts my magic defence and makes things move more quickly;
- The Plague Furnace provides battleshock immunity to the Plague Monks; and
- The Lord of Afflictions lets the Pusgoyles be Battleline, and provides me with a mobile piece for summoning and to support the offensive elements of the list.

I always find list-writing an enjoyable experience. It can be approached in different ways (ie. with a theme, or looking for certain combos), or it can involve using the core of a previous army and playing with the periphery. What I find particularly interesting is the decision making behind those decisions, and the effect that small changes can have on the way a list plays (ie. artefacts, command traits and spells).

When I write lists, I like to include little strike forces that can carry out a job on their own. In this list the strike forces are the Plague Furnace and Monks, the Lord of Afflictions and the Pusgoyle Blightlords, and the block of 30 Plaguebearers. Each of these forces can act independently of the others (the Plaguebearers and the Pestilens in particular) and I can task them with certain roles in deployment. I find this approach clarifies my in-game goals more clearly and I can adapt my opponents armies more easily. 

I started off writing the list with 30 Plaguebearers. I find at 2000 points that a full unit of 30 gives be a clear choice when defending my own objectives. At 30 they inherently come with -1 to hit in combat, and they don't need support from any other part of my army to maintain that resilience; they are a unit that can maintain their defensive power independently to the rest of the army.

I knew that I wanted to include a Skaven contingent in this list; I'm enjoying playing with the Corruptor and I have always liked Plague Monks so those both went straight in. I had a fair bit of deliberation about how big or small I should make the Plague Monk units - I thought about 10/10/20, 30/10, 20/20 and one unit of 40. I also consider having 60 but ended up dropping some to put other things in.

In deciding to take two units of 20, my reasoning was:

1. Monks in Nurgle don't get bonus for the unit size in the same way that Monks in Skaventide do; there isn't the same incentive to max out the unit.

2. If I wanted to get all the banners I would need to take a unit of 40. My worry about a unit of 40 was that I would struggle to keep it wholly within the Furnace bubble. I also don't think that 40 models worth of Monk attacks is always necessary, and is sometimes overkill.

3. By splitting them into two units of 20, it means that I can afford to be sacrificial with one unit and will still retain a combat threat after the other unit perishes. I have found that sword Monks are better for this role as they provide their own re-rolls to hit and don't need support from the Corruptor.

4. I don't want to leave the Furnace stranded. It was a common problem at Ultramates that the Monks with the Furnace would charge off and then there were no monks nearby. Hopefully I can avoid this by having two smaller units.

By deciding that I was having two units, that made a Furnace more necessary to protect against battleshock. Overall, I'm not yet sold on the Furnace. I could have pushed one unit to 40 and added another 10 Monks instead, but I want to give the Furnace a good run before I come to a decision on that. I'm also dreaming of taking off a small hero with the Great Plague Censer and want to achieve that before I take it out.

The Verminlord Corruptor was a stand out at Ultramates for its versatility, so I wanted to keep playing around with that. An essential part of this was the Sword of Judgment and the Umbral Spellportal. I think the Spellportal is going to be particularly useful in this list. Plague Wind, Favoured Poxes, Glorious Afflictions and Dreaded Plague are all excellent spells to put through the portal, and it will give me a great deal of versatility in games - I'm really excited to try this. Putting the Sword of Judgment on the Corruptor was a more difficult decision. Both Places of Arcane Power and The Relocation Orb are scenarios in this tournament, and having the Rustfang on the Lord of Afflictions has worked well for me in the past and would have given me a third option for capturing in both those scenarios. However, I ultimately decided that I want to keep testing the Corruptor and so the Sword of Judgment is in, though I may regret it. 

With these choices made, I still needed two Battleline units. For me, the next choice was the Pusgoyle Blightlords. The Blightlords are a unit I really like, but I'm not certain yet whether I am better off taking another unit of 20 Plaguebearers instead. What I like about the Blightlords is that they fly, they can be very fast if I want them to be, and they benefit greatly from the GUO command ability. They give me a medium sized option to fight middle level monsters, or to tag the corner of units without losing too much power. I'm also a big fan of the Lord of Afflictions, so by making him my general I can get the Blightlords as Battleline and I don't need to take more units of Plaguebearers. This decision is probably partly motivated by lack of Blightkings; I don't own any (shock! horror! A Nurgle player that doesn't own Blightkings!). I'll fix this eventually but at the moment they don't exist for me.

So by this point we are starting to run out of points. It is almost second nature for me to take a support Great Unclean One now; he is a two cast wizard with a movement buff and improved casting and dispelling. Eventually I will need to try a list without him and see how the Corruptor does instead, but this is not that time. The list is then rounded out by a unit of 10 Plaguebearers to act as chaff and to be my third Battleline unit.

The hardest part I find about list building is that I don't yet think I have a good grasp on what is needed (or not needed) in a list. I think (hope) this is a skill learnt through experience, but I think this list has some good options in it. It has defensive units and offensive units, I have ways to debuff or slow down offensive armies and I have speed and range to tackle defensive armies. I'm not sure how well I will deal with shooting armies but hopefully I can find an answer on the day.

If anyone has any thoughts on list-building, or takes a different view on the units I have chosen, I would love to know. I'll otherwise post up reports on Unending Battlelines once I have finished up my coverage on Ultramates. Thanks for reading!


Thursday 4 April 2019

Ultramates - Game 3


Game 3: Total Commitment - Chamon

After a rushed lunch (the kitchen in the pub was experiencing a backlog with many hungry gamers wanting food) our third game was Total Commitment in the realm of Chamon. The realm didn't end up playing a part in the game, but the lack of reserves may have been significant. Our third round opponents were Dave Satterthwaite and Shannon Reid, and their lists were as follows:

Dave Satterthwaite: Sylvaneth

Alarielle

Branchwraith

20 x Dryads

10 x Dryads

Shannon Reid: Sylvaneth

Durthu

Drycha

5 x Tree Revenants

5 x Tree Revenants

3 x Kurnoth Hunters w/ Scythes


I have had the pleasure of playing against Dave before, and I occasionally see him at Outpost 6030 - my local club. He was playing with his partner, Shannon, who was new to AoS. It was lovely to meet her and it was really nice to see a couple playing at the doubles event together.

Initial Thoughts & Deployment

Prior to this game I had played Sylvaneth on one occasion. My memories of that game were that Tree Revenants did more damage than I thought, and that Treelords were difficult to kill. Fortunately, my addiction to podcasts had left me with one resounding piece of advice; denying the spread of trees is important. Given the way that objectives are spread in this mission, restricting Sylvaneth's mobility was doubly important. 


On the left, we set up 10 Plaguebearers and the stave Monks. Opposite them was the Branchwraith, 5 tree revenants and the two units of dryads. In the middle we set up the Furnace, Gnarlmaw, sword Monks and Verminlord with Drycha, Durthu and Alarielle opposite, and then on the right were the Lord of Afflictions and 30 Plaguebearers opposite 5 Tree Revenants and the Kurnoth Hunters that were in a Wyldwood. 



The way that we board had been set up, we each had a weak flank set up against a strong flank. On the right we had 30 Plaguebearers that were too far away and too hard to shift for Dave or Shannon to bother trying to take that objective; Alarielle could have made a play for it but other threats such as the Plague Monks needed to be out of the way before she could try. On the opposite side however, there were only 8 models holding their objective. In comparison, there were 30 dryads and 5 Tree Revenants guarding the objective on the left flank. In order to get through there we would need a turn 1 charge from the monks that devastated their numbers before they had a command point to avoid battleshock. Conversely, our objective was being held by 10 Plaguebearers, and if Shannon and Dave could past the stave Monks then they had a good chance to take that objective.



Taking all that together, this meant it was a race. The person who lost their objective first would most likely lose.



It's also worth noting that in the centre of the board was a big tower on a hill. It was big enough to block line of sight and to divert movement to the left and right of it. It effectively divided the board into two flanks that were limited in the assistance they could provide to one another. We finished setting up first, and with the podcast wisdom resounding in my brain, we took the first turn.


The Game

Not a great deal ended up happening on our turn one; we repositioned the sword Monks to make a turn 2 play onto the right hand Sylvaneth objective and the Verminlord got Umbral Spellportal and Dreaded Plague off onto the unit of 10 dryads and they ended up being wiped out by battleshock. The big gamble we took this turn was to try and get a turn 1 charge from the stave Monks into the dryads protecting the left hand Sylvaneth objective. Dave and Shannnon had placed their dryads at the front of their deployment zone, which meant that the Monks had a 7" charge to get in. If they could get int then there was a great chance we would knock out the unit of 20 dryads and would have been contesting the more strongly held Sylvaneth objective on Turn 1. The risk was that if the Monks did not get the charge then they were going to face retribution from both Drycha and Durthu. Unfortunately, despite command pointing a re-roll, the monks fells short and didn't get in. They were going to have to face the music next turn, but it would delay the Sylvaneth forces from spreading their woods and threatening our left objective.

In Sylvaneth Turn 1 not a great deal happened expect for one thing. The Slyvaneth magic phase was ineffective and there was only a little bit of re-positioning done. The exception was a valuable lesson that Sam and I learnt about Drycha. Apparently, she has a shooting attack and this shooting attack hits all models in a unit that are within 10' of her and inflicts a mortal wound on a 3+! The Plague Monk unit was suddenly looking like it would hold out for much less time that anticipated as they lost half of their number to Drycha in one fell-swoop. The only saving grace is that they took enough damage that we were able to remove models in a way to return the unit to wholly within 13' of the Plague Furnace; battleshock would have been lethal for the unit and in hindsight the loss of that unit would have cost us the game.

At the end of turn 1, we were both on 2 points, and big plays were going to be made in Turn 2. We won priority and chose to take the turn.

Looking at the board, we had a heavily stacked left flank of Sylvaneth with both Durthu and Drycha committing to that side. Alarielle had a summoned a Treelord and both her and that Treelord were pushing towards the left flank. We had a unit of stave Monks that could block things up a little bit, and some citadel woods in between our left objective and the Sylvaneth monsters, but otherwise most of our damage was in the centre. The spark of inspiration came when the Great Unclean One managed to successfully cast Foul Regenesis to move the Nurgle Wheel. The sword Monks were within 7' of the GUO giving them a move of 9'. With the wheel moved to +2' to movement, plus a strong run, the sword Monks could move up to 18' (11' + (D6 + 1')). This was enough to get them within a reasonable charge roll of the right Sylvaneth objective that was held but the Kurnoth Hunters and the Tree Revenants. Dave and Shannon had placed a Wyldwood on top of that objective, and this meant the Kurnoth Hunter's had a 3+ re-rollable armour save. 

We cast some spells in the hero phase, but what we were really waiting for was the movement phase. After getting the Corruptor out of the way, we were then ready to move the sword Monks. Sam picked up the dice, gave it a roll, and luckily for us it came up a 6'. We then moved our lightspeed sword Monks 18' across the board into a empty space and making threatening ratty faces at the Kurnoth Hunters near them. Seeing an opportunity to give the sword Monks a better chance the Lord of Afflictions touting the Rustfang also buzzed his way towards the Kurnoth Hunters.

By the end of the turn, one Kurnoth Hunter was left with one wound (that re-rollable armour save is amazing!) and the stave Monks had taken off Drycha. We had managed to take a Sylvaneth objective and we were on 7 points.

This left Dave and Shannon in a difficult position. They needed to take our objective plus reclaim their own in order to take the game back. We both knew that we weren't going to get another turn after this one so it was all or nothing. Unfortunately, neither us or Dave and Shannon realised this, and we both thought that if they retook our left objective then that would tie up the game. This made for an intense turn as they managed to get Alarielle across the board into the 10 Plaguebearers, where she killed only six, but they got enough dryads within 6' of the objective to take it from. They also finished off the stave Monks while we cleaned up the Kurnoth Hunters. In the end we had pulled ahead on kill points and it was only then that we realised that we had also walked away the the major victory - we were on 7 to their 6.


After-game musings


Timing was an issue in this game. We started a little late, and the rounds were short, but we should have got through more than 2 turns. I'm not sure where exactly the delays were but it's something I need to bear in mind in the future. The monk combats definitely take time to resolve, and moving that many models can also be time-consuming. Other than that, Dave and Sharron were great to play against. After the game they said that the decision denied them the space to set up Wyldwoods which made things difficult; thanks podcasts! Otherwise this game on our side was all about the monks and the placement of the Plague Furnace. It doesn't say much about the rest of the army but I guess that's what happens when only two turns are played.

Somehow, we had won all our games with one more to go! I was starting to get nervous at the idea that we might go undefeated and who our next opponent might be! We certainly had not intentions of being on the top tables in the last game but that's where we were! Stay tuned for Game 4 and the final results!