Winter 2009 Fantasy Escalation League

Week 10

Since I've given up on any hope of winning with my army book, I'm casting good judgement to the wind when it comes to my list this week.  Not only am I running a Grey Seer, I'm running Thanquol of all creatures.  And I'm putting him on a Screaming Bell just. because.  The chosen of the Horned Rat, his Bell, and his robotic rat ogre corpse costs 760 points, which makes me throw up in my mouth a little.  Whatever.  I just won an auction for Ravening Hordes, so I might see if there's any interest in playing some games with lists out of that book, which is allegedly somewhat more balanced than the current state of Fantasy.

Painting

No painting done, which is a shame.  This league has not done a very good job of illustrating that I'd rather paint than play.  Given my frustrations with the game, though, it's not a surprise that I'm back to painting Deathwing Terminators.

Army List

Lords & Heroes

Grey Seer Thanquol -Screaming Bell

Chieftan - Battle Standard Bearer, Heavy Armour, Stormbanner

Warlock Engineer - Accumulator, Condenser, Warp-Blades, Dispel Scrol Storm Daemon

Core

Clanrats x25 - Full Command, Ratling Gun

Clanrats x25 - Full Command, Ratling Gun

Clanrats x25 - Full Command, Ratling Gun

Clanrat Slaves x20 - Musician

Clanrat Slaves x20 - Musician

Clanrat Slaves x20 - Musician

Giant Rats x24

Giant Rats x24

Night Runners x5

Night Runners x5

Special

Plague Monks x10 - Extra Hand Weapons

Warplock Jezzails x6

Rare

Plague Censer Bearers x6

Warp-Lightning Cannon

2498 points, 10 Casting Dice, 5 Dispell Dice, 232 models

Roster - Ratputin Marches - Week 10

Battle Notes

Game 26 vs. Tower of Blessed Dread

This was a really good game. 

Thanquol accomplished nothing an unnamed Grey Seer couldn't have done for 200 points less, but that's okay.   Being on the Bell helped him cast; although I had casting dice coming out my ears, I couldn't do much with them as Thanquol had every spell save Warp-Lightning.  I  did cast Plague, however, twice.   The first time was a blowout: the spell requires a 13 to cast, and I  rolled a 13... which made that mother irresistable.  It killed more than 2/3rds of his Black Guard (better than odds).  The second time wiped out a number of Crossbowmen before leaping into my slaves (and killing surprisingly few of them) and expiring.

The Warp-Lighnting Cannon, operating at S 4 every time I  shot it, was unable to injure the Hydra but quite successfully fried the Beastmasters.  The unattended Hydra got sad and spend the rest of the game hanging out in woods, doing nothing.

Mid-game, it looked like I  had the game in the bag.  My doom, however, was Death Frenzy.

Because I had magic dice burning a hole in my pocket, I cast Death  Frenzy on a unit of Clanrats.  Mike overran the remainder of his Black Guard into my Slaves and his Cold One Knights into the Slaves' flank.  No big deal; they're Slaves, right?   Except the flank of the Knights was inches from the front of my slavering, Frenzied clanrats.  It would have been an excellent charge if I  didn't have a unit of slaves taking it from two sides also involved in the combat.  I saw the bad charge coming, but didn't think about its consequences.  I  should have reformed the unit of Clanrats with the BSB, Thanquol and the Bell to face this mess.  Instead, I was an idiot and continued to push forward with it.  

Of course, I  lose that combat (by, like, 12) and his Knights and Guard overrun into the flank of my core Clanrat unit.  It goes... poorly.  The unit loses, again by some ridiculously high number, and gets run down.  I  lose 1,058 points, plus two standards and my general in that mess.

It was a pretty brutal fight.   At the end of the game, I  had two units of Giant Rats, a pair of Ratling Guns, and most of my Jezzails left.   Everything else was dead.  Mike had his characters (except his BSB), a RBT, his Hydra and maybe a lone Knight.

What was great about this game is that I didn't get smacked up and down the table just because I came with the wrong book.  I  didn't run an unfun list that just stood back and shot his units up.  I  lost because of a very poor tactical mistake (that I should have seen), which is how things should be.   It was a very good note to end the league on.