Fantasy Battle Rep: Dark Elfs vs Chaos Dwarfs

Ok so another game in as many months.. actually.. I have probably played more Fantasy games ( tournaments aside ) this year than I have last.. and both were at my place! Wowzers! Even better, is that the Dark Elf player brought his terrain with him, so we had real trees instead of paper saying trees on them, and other real pieces of terrain. Of course, we still improvised with some other aspects like the Brush Restorer bottle as a well, and the boards being without sand or flock on them. But that aside, it was still better, and gave a better impression than the previous game.

So.. why the game? Well quite simply we were all gathered in Istanbul by chance, and since I am in the process of painting the Dark Elf army, it seemed like a good thing to play against them also. Why Chaos Dwarfs though since we do not have a fully painted army of them yet? Well simple answer to that is because we could! And it was a good chance to do another test army with them and see how they do. Also why did we do 3000 points? Well again.. just because we could...

Now what were the armies?

For Chaos Dwarfs we had:

• Prophet, lvl 4
• Deamonsmith, lvl 1
• Castellian BSB
• 2x 34 Chaos Dwarfs, Hand Weapon and shield, and Full Command
• 4x 20 Hobgoblins with Bows
• 2x Deathshriekers
• 1x Magma Cannon
• 1x Hell Cannon
• 1x K'Daai Destoryer
• 2x 5 Wolf Riders

For the Dark Elfs he had:

• Dreadlord on Cold One
• Mage Lord, lvl 4
• Cauldron of Blood
• 35 Dark Elf Warriors with Spears, Full Command
• 15 Dark Elf Warriors with Spears, Full Command
• 2x 20 Dark Elf Repeater Crossbows, Musicians
• 10 Cold Ones, Full Command
• 8 Shades
• 7 Shades
• 20 Black Guard, Full Command
• 33 Executioners, Full Command
• 5 Harpies

Set up of the board was quite simple, though for some reason we keep rolling for so many pieces of terrain. We had 3 forests, a marsh, 2 hills, 1 building,  1 Dwarf Alehouse, the Wyrding Well, Idol of Gork, 

Set up was decent, with my Chaos Dwarfs setting up with the main units sitting in the middle, with the destroyer between them. Archers spread out, deathshriekers to my left, magma to my right, Hell Cannon to my far right, and wolf riders to the left and middle. 

Dark Elfs had Repeater Crossbows on the hill to my right, and behind the forest to my left. Black guard on the left, Execuitioners in the building, Cold Ones in the center with the dreadlord inside. Large spearelf unit in the middle, with the Mage, with the smaller one in the rear. Caudron somehow fit in this area also, with the Harpies behind the building. 

At first glance it was surprising to see no Hydra, but it was not finished being painted, so that was a plus for me I guess, and a negative for him. Though the dreadlord on Cold One, with the reverse ward save and 2+ armor was going to be a problem.

Normally I would write up a big fancy battle report, and honestly I have tried to do just that, but due to the time it took to play I will just cover off on the highlights ( or low lights if you will ) of the game.

One of the biggest questions we have had since the FAQ came out, was how deadly was the K'Daai Destroyer, and how would it fair against the Dreadlord with reverse ward save, and a magic weapon. Well it just so happens that my opponent did just that, but also put him on a cold one, so that I could not use the Thunderstomp on him also.

This one fight actually took 7 rounds of fighting to conclude, and the K'Daai destroyer did lose in the end, however it was only with the help of the Hex spells that this occurred. The Destroyer was constantly being Hexed with at least a -2 to WS, and a -1 to Toughness. It was in the last combat round that the Destroyer was at -3 T, and basically wiped off the board. He did however help to take out some Cold ones that for some reason decided to join in on the fight. Without the hexes, I do believe that the destroyer would have stuck around for a lot longer, and this would have held up both units for the entire game. Basically a stalemate between them, and just waiting on luck for wounds to go through. The dreadlord did walk/ride away with 2 wounds against it though.

Other things that I have learned is that the Hell Cannon misfire chart is pretty scary. In the second turn, it misfired so nicely, that my Deamonsmith's head exploded due to all mages having to take a miscast roll, and he being the unlucky one. The others were just lucky enough to just kill some of their own troops.

Hobgoblin in groups of 20 with Bows was a pretty good deal. For 100 pts, they were good at harassing the enemy, and dwindled the enemy units a bit. In the future, I might take more in a unit, and put them into horde formation also. To be able to roll more dice per round. Not overly effective, granted, but decent for the small points cost when playing larger games. In this game however, I think I should have replaced one of the archer units with another deathshrieker as they were much more effective especially with such a crowed table. 

Chaos Dwarfs vs Black Guard. This was probably the only really good fight that occurred in the game, aside from the dreadlord and destroyer fight. We thought it might be a good match up, as the CD unit was HW/SH, 34 dwarfs strong, with Deamonsmith, and BSB. More ranks, so also stubborn, which in hindsight was not required since they were within 6 inches of the Dwarf Brewhouse, so would have had stubborn anyways. Could have done more damage if I had gone into horde formation like the Blackguard unit had. This fight lasted many rounds, took many strange turns, but in the end, the BGs won, taking both banners with it, but only with a size of 4 or 5 models in the end.

For Warmachines, the Deathshriekers were pretty good. When firing they usually hit their targets, and the magma cannon is a deadly Warmachine indeed. However it blowing up on the second turn did not help me, as it was in the perfect spot to cause some major pain to the Dark Elves had it just gotten that last shot off.

In the end, the Chaos Dwarfs lost once more. And quite badly as well. With only the Cold Ones being completely destroyed in the end, though the Dark Elf army was in shambles as a majority of the units were down to 3-5 models each ( aside from the Executioners who drank from the Wyrding well and got back quite a few people, then getting greedy and becoming stupid for the remainder of the game ).

Things I would have done differently can be seen above, but mostly it would have been to avoid the Dreadlord with the Destroyer, and let it run off killing other targets. Grouping the Warmachines together more, and using the re-roll of the deamonsmith to better effect. Removing a unit of archers and adding another Deathershriker. And playing more aggressively, as this game my guys hardly moved, and this was a completely different play style than I am used to. My Night Goblin army is used to running forward screaming with all its might at the enemy, however this was just not to be this time around.

Oh and in the end, I lost.. I killed only the his Cold Ones.. and severely messed up the rest of his units, but that doesn't count now does it? He in turn pretty much killed everything.. save for the hell cannon which he ran away from cause um.. I guess its scary?

Now some photos of the game..

First turn after the Chaos Dwarfs had begun their movement, and causing some damage with their warmachines.

Another angle of Turn 1.. 

Turn 2 shot..

Epic fight between Spider Riders pretending to be Wolf Riders hacking down some Shades

Epic fight between K'Daai Destroyer versus Dreadlord. Ararchnarok was the stand in here.. just as scary.

You can see the dwindling of Dark Elfs on the left flank here. As you can see the Black Guards look to be dying nicely, however that also was not to be. Also the Shades are sneaking up on my Deathshriekers.

At first you see lots of Dark Elves in the middle.. 

.. and then you see that they lost a lot of models. Thank you Deathshriekers!

Wha? Where did the K'Daai Spider go? Oh thats right, he got the beat down from a pansy elf on a lizard.. 

My causalities.. which was pretty much my entire army.. made the clean up process faster for me :)

Dark Elf dead pool.. a very scary sight, as all those Executioner Swords and Spears.. very pointy line there. 

Look.. its a Giant.. Hell Cannon stand in.. and is that 4 Hobgoblins still? Wow.. Chaos Dwarfs did well here.. 

And that is that.. was hoping for another game, but my other buddy decided he needed to work on Sunday instead of playing a good game of Fantasy!! I mean.. really?? Lame.. oh well.. there is always next time I guess..