We finally pulled on out tonight, knowing that Mark was bringing a Bretonnian army that featured two huge units of knights, I went for a counter-attack style of play and tried to distract one unit of knights with my fast Ellyrian Reavers and bomb the other one with metal and high magic until I could draw it onto a spearblock and kill it with a flanking lion chariot.
Well, the plan didn't go as hoped, the Reavers drew a unit of knights away from the board centre, then promptly failed to rally on a 9 and fled off the board. Fortunately the second larger knight block spent a couple of turns battling my swordmasters and the spears faced the first knights, pumped full of confidence after routing my Reavers. While chasing my Reavers I also managed to slip a unit of Dragon Princes past his knight who then overran the Bretonnian rear and collected the scalps of 40 archers.
When his knights finally hit my spearblock, they held fighting in 4 ranks, and the lion chariot pounced on their flank the following turn. Game over. The dice gods were not too capricious this game, although my bolt thrower fired a "1" every turn either to hit or to wound, today elven steel (and the always strikes first rule) and the plague of rust spell combined to bring down the brave Bretonnians.
On the workbench: my last unit of Scottish ECW cavalry.
Congratulations on your victory even though I hate to see another Bretonnian player fall beneath the ASF of the high elves.
ReplyDeleteMixed feelings too, I love my Brets. But yes, ASF makes the elves very formidable. Personally I think it compensates for all the T3.
ReplyDeleteFortunately Mark has started working on a gobbo army - so I guess I should start calling him Mork. I'll feel better beating them (hopefully).
I think the way they've done ASF in 8th has made the high elves quite powerful and definitely compensates for T3. It used to be ASF was just that, always strike first. Now, if your initiative is better you get to reroll misses, essentially giving them Hatred except it's better than Hatred as they can do it every round of combat. And for me here's a big one. I was thinking of getting a greater daemon of Slaanesh to shred these guys then I reread the ASF rule. It used to be if you were fighting someone else with ASF the higher initiative side would go first. In the case of my greater daemon with initiative 10 that would mean he could shred swordmasters before they got to hit. Not any more. Now both sides hit the same time regardless of initiative. It's actually quite easy for a half dozen swordmasters to kill a greater deamon. If these guys are worth less than 20pts a pop then that's one hell of a deal.
ReplyDeleteA gobbo army? Must have got it cheap.
S'pose that might make you think twice of that greater daemon then? Fortunately, I have more swordmasters coming in the post (15pt each, Special choice). But this game was won by massed spears fighting in 4 ranks, the swordmasters died on the tips of lances.
ReplyDeleteMork has been hording gobbs for some time- just needed motivation to paint them.
There is a way to mitigate it but regardless I don't have one and highly doubt I'll have one for a little while. More Swordmasters. Stellar.
ReplyDelete