#012 - death and beasts

so how did i fare against vampires? incredibly well, considering i was using beasts - i lasted 5 full turns against an army i should have fled from immediately...

things i did right:
- units that cause fear and have frenzy dont need fear checks
- taking 2 trios of nurgle minotaurs because they dont die
- keeping the doombull within 12" of units i knew would break

things i did wrong:
- keeping linebreakers near hound packs, which caused panic checks
- not marching my bestigors up further
- warhounds dont pack enough punch at 10x each

the main problem with facing the vampire army i did was it happened to be a cheese list... 2 units of zombies, some dire wolves, 5 blood knights, cairn wraiths with a banshee, 2 corpse carts... then a vampire lord, 2 vampire heroes, and a wight king in one unit of skeletons... with a battle standard... and a banner of regeneration... that brick was impossible to damage...

all in all, i feel my list should hold up well against armies that dont cause blanket fear or have blanket immune to psychology... i think im going to split up my warhounds so i can have three packs instead of two - the rank bonus really doesnt help unless i take more of them or attack smaller units... possibly throw my doombull into one of the minotaur trios, since i now have two of them to work with... ill keep looking over what i can trim and replace with... still have two weeks left to go... /post

#011 - practice, round one

well, it could have been worse - at least i wasn't crushed in the second turn (just the third)... the list i had was fast, and it was hard hitting... but against an all khorne chaos warrior list, with a giant and a shaggoth included, it just wasn't hard or fast enough... also, i changed my list at the last moment to test the effectiveness of a great bray shaman - it wasn't, so i won't be doing that again...

on a positive note, i learned a few things about my army while losing:

1. beast herds make better screens than charge units, even if you have a lot of them
2. spread the brute squads out more in the front line, since they need more room to move
3. take more squads, period
4. use natural speed to my advantage and engage their line by turn 2

so i dropped the ogre bulls from the list, as they didn't see any combat until the end, and that was getting charged by 2 marauder horsement... dropped the great bray shaman and threw the doombull back in there... swap some magic items around so the regular shaman has two dispel scrolls... and now the new list looks like:

- doombull
- wargor of khorne, 26 beastmen
- wargor of nurgle, 26 beastmen
- bray shaman, lv 2
- 15 khorngors
- 15 bestigors, vitriolic totem (poisoned attacks)
- 10 warhounds
- 10 warhounds
- 3 minotaurs of nurgle
- 3 minotaurs of nurgle
- 3 dragon ogres

this should perform rather nicely for general purposes... we'll see how tomorrow's fight against the vampires works out... /post

#010 - failure

i have failed myself... im not proud of the fact, but it happened... i was not able to finish my sisters in time, so i did not go to the tournament... standards, you know... i wasnt about to travel out of state with an army that was mostly primer white, and still missing 6 models (something else entirely wrong) on the hope that because i drove so far they'd let me play anyway... i wanted to play with an army i could be proud of, but without the pride there was no army... some people i know don't understand how the whole "i have pride in my paint" works because they don't paint... poo on them... painting is just as much a part of the game as the dice are...

in any event, i now have 20 days to play test, modify and paint my beasts of chaos for a 2250 fantasy tournament... as of right now i have a good theoryhammer list:

- doombull (general)
- wargor of khorne w/ 25 beastmen
- wargor of nurgle w/ 25 beastmen
- bray shaman, lv2
- 3 minotaurs of nurgle
- 25 khorngors
- 10 warhounds
- 10 warhounds
- 3 dragon ogres
- 6 ogre bulls (for the impact hits)

of course, with almost 3 weeks to train, this list will probably see one or two revisions as time goes on... tomorrow night i have a battle against the new chaos warriors, and wednesday should be a magic heavy vampire counts list with a rumored 2 vargulfs... luckily i have extra shamans for that battle should i need them... something tells me i will lol... /post