Bretonnian beat-down

Mark brought his Bretonnians over for another round of WHFB this afternoon and it was a bloodbath. I'm not sure if the lady abandoned him or his army list is paper to my elven scissors.



My list featured a lvl 4 High Magic and lvl 2 Metal wizards, tooled up with book of Hoeth, banner of sorcery and the annulian crystal. Nasty magic phases. I am starting to like High Magic as a lore, all the spells are useful, they are easily cast, and the list is versatile. Metal is a killer against Brets though, and Mark was horrified in game 1 when Final Transmutation went off and he lost 4 knights and a prophetess turned to gold on the first turn. Very deadly spell.

We replayed the game, and the second time around it went a little better for him since Final Transmutation only killed knights, but the speedy elven cavalry got behind his lances and shredded his bows, while his knight were afraid to charge
swordmasters and were pummeled by magic.

Brets really need Life magic to buff and save knights, but he also doesn't have any special or rare units to play around with either. Big blocks of knights are juicy targets for smug elven mages carrying around the book of Hoeth. Lore of Metal is like krytonite against knights as well. Feeling better about facing Daemons next, now that I am getting the hang of these pointy ears and dirty tricks.

First blood for High Elves

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.

I just finished my last unpainted High Elves, a Tiranoc chariot, which has less punch but is cheaper, faster and can shoot in comparison to the lion chariot And a second mage bearing the Annulian Crystal, a very useful arcane item that will likely feature in my next list: Mark of Bretonnia had to bail on today's rematch since it is his 20th wedding anniversary- what a lame excuse!

More Warhamburger High Elves

This week I finished a unit of Ellyrian Reavers, these are Elven fast cavalry for Warhamster, armed with bows and spears and very fast- ideally hard to catch. Good for hunting lone mages, warmachines, redirecting charges, and generally getting in the opponents rear and being a pain in the arse:

The way things are going, they will die before achieving very much, but they'll look good doing it! We'll see, Mark of Brettonia brings his lucky dice back to my house this weekend.

A letter to Vaul

Dear Vaul,

After working so hard to put together this lovely army of Ulthuan's children, we now wonder why you have forsaken us. Tonight, my friend Mark of Brettonia, who knows not the rules of Warhammer, brought over a second hand - out of date - ragged assed - illegal listed - pile of crooked knights, and you allowed us to be smote. Some of the highlights included letting Mark roll double 1s on two consecutive no-hope break tests (WTF?!), seeing 16 swordmaster attacks fail to scratch a paladin charging the door of the watchtower, and the greatest insult, seeing my last two swordmasters holding the watchtower on the very last turn die from the attacks of the last two warhorses (the probability of this, incidentally, is 4/144, less then 3%).

Why have you forsaken us?

Two more Covenanter regiments done

Over the last 10 days I finished a box of Warlord ECW infantry which I managed to stretch into two Covenanter regiments using some leftover command and pike bits. I am planning to use a modest figure density and either Black Powder or Impetus to do some ECW- Scotland theatre this year. Here are the units- 9 pike and two sleeves of 6 shot representing each regiment:






I also managed to witness what looked like a High Elf inaugural victory on turn 2 fizzle away to defeat by turn 5 after the gods of dice abandoned me. Key failures? Two consecutive leadership 9 test failures, followed by an improbable 18" charge that crushed my Dragon Princes, topped off by the failure of Eltharion to dispatch a measly Herald of Khorne when I was buffed by Beast of Horros and had the charge. Mathhammer gives me the clear nod on that one, with 7 S9 attacks, re-rolling misses, and no armour save he shouldn't have lived to strike, but I only netted one- on the reposte he hits with 2 killing blow 6s and I'm dead. Sigh.

Next up? Elven reinforcements for the rematch, not sure if I need to call on Teclis or chalk this one up to some bad dice....

Bonus Pic: working out the Mathhammer with my lovely assistant, Charley:

High Elves ready to go!

This week finished off enough of my High Elves to field a decent army, I did a Lion Chariot, which is just a great model and can kick ass:



And a repeater bolt thrower, which is important for bringing down big things, but can also open rapid fire whup-ass on big groups of little things.

Another very purdy model:


I also did some more spearelves to fill out the core units, so here is what I have painted arrayed for battle (Scott ... look closely...)






Up next: I dunno. Really.