BabylonBastardCon 5 :
"Where the tears of your opponent are like sweet sweet wine."
The frequency with which we're getting these BCon weekends in is increasing, but I think that's unfortunately misleading. We really just tried to squeeze this one in before folks all disappeared off on summer holidays or other family commitments; if we hadn't made this one it likely would have been Sept before BCon5. That's too long a wait seeing as the last one (March '11).
"Wait, what?" say you, "You can't just start posting again after a whole
month without saying anything."
Eh. Whadya gonna do. Excuses? None to be found here.
Hopefully
you few, you happy few followers kept yourselves warm with each others bodyheat. Now, back to BCon.
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"Godzilla posts always three
time bigger! RAWR!" |
It's at this point you should duck out for your coffee. What was going to be 3 posts (bcon + 2 battle reports) has become a Godzilla like post. Don't worry, there's plenty of pictures.
Unlike BCon4, we had a format where the total possible you could get for winning a game was 20 points, total loss 0. At the end of the battle, tote up you and your opponents victory points and use the ratio between them to award the 20 points between you.
There 8 of us and everyone got in two games. We took it handier this time, with longer lunches. The games felt harder fought and we all thought we deserved the break. :)
There was a good mix of armies in attendance:
- Dwarves : Craig (me)
- Ogres : Dec
- Dwarves : Tom
- Lizardmen : a late delivery of Tomb Kings meant the Lizardmen were in attendance for JK
- Chaos Dwarves : MrSaturday
- Dark Elves : Vic
- Beastmen : Noel
- Daemons of Chaos : Paul
My two battles were against the pin cushion experts, the Dark Elves; followed by the straight in no kissin Beastmen.
Rules:
2400 point army lists.
ETC rules in attendance. The major one which affected me was the 450 point max per unit, which I have to say if fair enough. It keeps the stupid o'clock sized units down a little bit. The power dice affecting limit worked in my favour as well, so no complaints here.
Limiting war machines to a max of 5? With two templates? Done. Easy. I wasn't even going to take 5 until I saw that was in the rules. :)
Scenarios:
For each round of battles we rolled a single scenario, and each table had to play it.
Terrain:
We setup terrain at the start of the day on each table, the first battle players setting it up for their own table. We decided to keep the same terrain for the rest of the day after it had been setup. It would turn out, this was kind of foolish...
Battle The First: Dark Elves
Scenario: Battle for the Pass
...we setup the terrain completely for our benefit to suit the Battle for the Pass scenario, so when it came to the battle #2 - things got ugly, but interesting!
Turn 1: setup fun. Remember it's battle for the pass, the length ways battle field. Each sides deployment zone is still only 12" from the centre, but you can deploy waaaay back if you so wish.
I wished. It happened. The Dark Elf dealt with it.
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| Turn 1 - the setup. |
You'll notice the massive unit of dwarves in the top left. A large block of 39 Rangers. GWs. I wasn't sure about placing them here, I figured that the DE would turn around and munch them easily as I was coming at him piecemeal. That's not quite what happened though.
The Dwarves got to go first, the turn was spent moving the all inf blocks forward, then firing ineffectually. Pretty much did next to no damage. Both grudge throwers missed. Cannon missed the Hydra, killed a few BlackGuard. BoltThrower missed. Orgun gun out of range. etc.etc.
DE's advance, and don't turn around to face the scouts. Phew.
Turn 2:
The Rangers get their above average distance charge against the DE bolt thrower, wipe it out and overrun into the back of the two units: Corsairs and BlackGuard. Mental State? Tasty happy with the overrun, but very uncertain about how the rangers would stack up against those two units.
The rangers did good. Over the two turns, they took heavy losses, but wiped out the corsairs (except for that damn last man!) and took out 15 out of 20 blackguard.
Unfortunately they still lost on wounds in the second round, and fled. Corsairs have the
Slavers ability, which meant that I had to re-roll the highest D6 for my flee roll before they make their pursuit roll. They caught the rangers, and then did nothing for the rest of the game.
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| as things stand at the start of turn 4 |
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Turns 3 & 4:
Shooting still ineffectual.
DE fast cav playing silly buggers, Hammerers can't get into combat.
DE wipes out war machines, the Manticore gets an overrun from the Bolt Thrower and on into the Grudge Thrower.
The Hydra triumphantly
marches (I know, march and shoot? wtf!) down beside the Warriors, and flank flames the unit. Luckily the cannon had caused it 3 wounds, so it's breath weapon strength was reduced to 2. Not a dwarf was lost!
The shooty phase finally comes good, the cannon gets a shot off and takes out the Manticore and it's expensive character rider. There was some (understandable) desperate straw grabbing, about how the cannon could hit both the mount and the rider.
Bye bye DE general. Those tears tasted good.
The Hammerers wanted so bad to charge the Hydra but couldn't as they would have come into contact with the fast cav first. You can't come into contact with an enemy you haven't charged, so I had to charge the fast cav - and of course they fled. I'm not sure of the rules here, more than half my unit could easily see the Hydra, but I agree that they'd wheel and hit the fast cav first. Does the ranked unit skirmish it's way around and charge the target? 8th Ed has certainly simplified the rules, so possibly...
The Hydra obligingly charged the hammerers, and got munched - mainly due to the cannon doing those 3 wounds to the Hydra earlier in the battle.
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| start of turn 5 |
Turns 5 & 6:Clean up.
Hammerers wipe the floor with the Spearmen.
DE Scouts flee the Warrior charge.
DE Fast cav fails to rally (hah!).
Game ends with only the surviving corsair and blackguards hiding behind the ziggurat.
Final Score: 14-6 to the Dwarves.
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WorldsEndRadio - great name
for a podcast |
Battle #2: The Beastmen:
Scenario: Dawn Attack
The one where you roll to see which flank the unit can be placed in. Scout Rangers were totally worth it in this scenario, being able to place them wherever I needed to plug the gap.
Rather than an in depth turn by turn summary, I'll just go with some highlights.
First off, we were still playing with the
Battle for the pass terrain. Bummer. It pretty much divided the board in two.
Second off, you see the ship wreck in the middle there? That's a
Haunted Mansion, right, smack, in the middle of my deployment zone. Every turn, if a unit within 6", that unit takes D6 S1 hits with no armour save. That gets pretty annoying I'll tell you.
Third point to note, that black altar on top of the hill, is an Altar of Khaine. Units within 6" gain frenzy.
This battle was definitely of the straight in no kissin variety.
Cool stuff:
- Centiguars are badass. Be Afraid. They charged my GW Warrior horde of 40, and held them for a turns before help arrived. They're in the next pic, the unit that looks like it could be cavalry which has charged the Dwarf Warrior unit in front of the Shipwreck.
Now, the Centiguars performance was boosted by Khaine as they were within 6" of the altar, thereby gaining extra attacks and frenzy; but still, holy cow they did the deed!
The Minotaur unit and a chariot charged the warriors to help finish them off.
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| ~end of turn 2 - centiguars taking names, "Simon? Here!" |
- Target those Minotaurs:
The orgun gun and stone throwers did the deed, and killed off all the other Minotaurs except for the character - who is still an awesome force to contend with.
- The Gors(?) showed up with the ambush rule. The cannon tried for grapeshot, only 1 kill.
- In a rather tasty move, the Hammerers and the Rangers charged the main unit of 40 UnGors (?) which contained the general, BSB and a Shamen. The skirmishing Gors left enough of a gap to charge around. 24 wounds later (see next pic) and that unit is outta here.
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| ~end of turn 4 |
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| ~turn 5 |
- the skirmishing gors finish off the warmachines
- the remaining centiguar taunts my stone thrower, forcing indirect fire by sitting in front of it!
- the rangers chase down the remains of the BSB unit, which rallied, and wipes it out (woo!)
- The Hammerers turn and face the Minotaur who charges them, this time Frenzy is on the Dwarf side and they turn the Minotaur to a red paste.
Final Score: 14-6 to the Dwarves - yep, same result again.
He killed a lot of warmachines, and that warrior unit.
Job done.
When we added up the points, myself and the other Dwarf player both had 28. He had faced the Chaos Dwarves and I think the Demons, so fair play to him.
We intend on playing the final against each other in Dublin, some evening soon.
The Sunday game? That's a different story, most definitely deserves a fluff based post.
