Fantasy Battle Rep: Dark Elfs vs Chaos Dwarfs.. when will I learn?!?

.. or I guess the title could be more like "How to simulate slamming your head into the wall while playing table top games!".

Yes, this means that I have played with the Chaos Dwarfs once more, and against my now regular opponent who is playing the Dark Elfs I am currently painting up. With more units being painted up, more units are taking the field. This time the Shades came to play ( blog post coming on them soon enough ) and painted up they do even better than when they were unpainted.

In this game, we played 2000 points, and for the Chaos Dwarf army, I tried to max out on the war machines to see how well they can do. You can judge for yourself how well that played out from the bat rep below. Restrictions we placed upon the game was no Dreadlord and no Destroyer. See if we could play the game without having to rely on our big hitters so to speak.

One major note to make, we took some good notes ( I hope ) this time around in order to take better reps. Thank you evernote! Allowing me to take both the photos, and do a small voice recording of each turn so that I can remember what happened better for next time.

Game set up

Armies used:

Chaos Dwarfs:

• Sorceror Prophet Lvl 4, Lore of Hashut
• Deamonsmith Lvl 2, Lore of Fire
• Castellian BSB
• 2x 34 Infernal Guard, Full Command, HW/SH
• 2x Deathshrieker
• 2x Magma Cannon

Dark Elfs

• Sorercess Lvl 4, Lore of Shadows
• Cauldron of Blood
• 5 Harpies
• 30+ Spearelfs
• 2x20 Reaper Crossbows
• 30+ Executioners
• 6 Cold Ones
• 10 Shades

Somehow, the Chaos Dwarfs got first turn once more. This seems to be a regular thing for them.

Chaos Dwarf Turn 1

Turn 1 Chaos Dwarfs:

Moved both Infernal Guard units forward full march. For Magic, not much happened. Some fireballs, and other direct damage spells, but no real effect anywhere. Both deathshriekers fired, one misfired and could not shoot for this plus next turn. The 2 Magma cannons fired also, both rolled a 10 for distance, overshooting the unit it tried to hit. The Deamonsmith decided to give it a re-roll on the second one, however this just amounted to it misfiring instead, and then rolling a 1 to blow itself up. Deamonsmith needs to go back to artillery school it seems. Note to self then.. only re-roll artillery dice when and if it misfires on the first roll. Otherwise, just leave it as it is. 

Dark Elf Turn 1

Turn 1 Dark Elfs:

The entire Dark Elf army moves forward. Shades come out of hiding, Harpies fly out to my left to get into place to set up some nice assaults on my war machines. During the magic phase, the Dark Elfs suffer from few power dice. So no real effects made here. With regards to the repeater crossbows, we saw that they took out a few of the Chaos Dwarfs, but again not as many as you would think from potentially 80 shots. The shades attempted to take out the deamonsmith, and originally they were wildly successful.. however then we actually read the rules on deamonsmiths and warmachines, and find out that they can take the Look Out Sir rule if they are within 3 inches of the war machines, and be treated as if they were in a unit. So we back tracked a bit, I rolled for the 2+ against the 17 shots that hit him, and moved all of them against the Magma cannon. Which in a nice move for the dark elves, meant that the magma cannon was destroyed in a hail of crossbolts. Now down 2 war machines, and its just the final part of the first turn!! Already am re-thinking if the war machine route was the best thought for this game.. 

Chaos Dwarf Turn 2

Turn 2 Chaos Dwarfs:

Both infernal guards move forward once more. Both moved to straddle the wyrding well.. this damn piece of terrain has been popping up into the battles too much. Always an interesting to see the results of this. IN previous games it has rebuild up entire units, and in others it can completed crippled units. In this game, both Infernal Guard units drink from the well, and both roll a 5! So both are now stupid and but are unbreakable! Wonder how this will play out. Both units have ld 9 or 10, so should be able to pass stupidity tests easily enough, but still. Magic, for whatever reason, we got a great amount of power dice! The prophet and deamonsmith cast plenty of spells, however nothings off due to bad rolling or dispel dice being good for Dark Elfs. From the deathshriekers, only 3 elfs die! Really need to work on the war machines. I think they need to be better tuned for future games.. or just removed from future games. So just a horrible turn in the end. 

Dark Elf Turn 2

Turn 2 Dark Elfs:

Movement sees the Harpies charging the left most deathshriekers. The crew defended well against the harpy invasion nicely enough. Executioners get into combat with the Prophet unit. Really tight fight here, but then 9 attacks jump up on the Prophet.. normally this would not be a problem, but with their killing blow ability, it was just too good of a fight set up for the Executioners. 2 of the attacks get through with killing blow against the prophet, and even with a 4+ ward save, I just needed to fail one for him to die. And yeah.. it happens.. so turn 2 and my general and magic source is gone. Wow this game is going good for Chaos Dwarfs.. Thankfully with all this happening the unit is unbreakable, so they stuck around even though so many of them died in this combat round. Since both CD units were in combat, no real magic occurred, no shooting happened, and the turn was over. 

Chaos Dwarf Turn 3

Turn 3 Chaos Dwarfs:

Turn goes quite quickly. Free IG unit moves forward to get ready for a charge from the cold ones, and spearelfs and possibly shades. The deathshrieker kills 3 shades with a well aimed shot at them. My other deathshrieker dies to the harpies this round, ready for them to charge the other war machine next turn. Not much done in the magic phase, though again plenty of power dice were available. 

Dark Elf Turn 3

Mega battle between Spear Elfs, Cold Ones and Shades vs Infernal Guards

Turn 3 Dark Elfs:

So harpies vs deathshriekers, and another harpy is dead. The combat I was expecting occurred also. 3 Dark Elf units came into the Infernal Unit.. thankfully they are unbreakable, and actually double unbreakable since they tried to drink from the well again and got the same result. In the magic phase, they were "blessed" with -3 Toughness from the sorceress. Even with this effect against this unit, they were only losing from -4 or 5 in the end. Armor saves, and parry saves helped a lot. Very few casualties The biggest lose here though was the deamonsmith taking too many hits to the head from the cold ones and spearelves. So now we are down both casters.. and pretty much shutting down my magic phase going forward. But the end of the combat shows that they Infernal Guards are sticking around for a while longer.. thank you Wyrding Well!!!

Chaos Dwarf Turn 4

Turn 4 Chaos Dwarfs:

Even faster round now.. Combat vs the executioners ended with me losing more dwarfs but stickig around.. again thank you damn well.. in the other combat the mass forces of Dark Elfs converging on the Infernal guard are stunned by their staying power! In the end, they actually lose.. yes.. lose by 1.. however he also has a really good leadership so sticks around for another few rounds of combat. So not really much happening here.. 

Dark Elf Turn 4

Turn 4 Dark Elfs:

The repeater crossbow unit charges into the CDs, and killed them with the help of the executioners. The mega battle continues on, and the second deathshrieker goes down to the Harpies. The last Shade somehow survives the battle and setting it up so that if he dies next round, the repeater crossbow elfs can charge into that mega battle themselves. Thank you unbreakable though, as that caused me to stick around much longer than I should have.

Chaos Dwarf Turn 5

Turn 5 Chaos Dwarf:
Well in a strange turn of events.. and with only 1 unit left on the table, I begin to look to Hashut for some advice.. and he says.. take out the Shade, kill more spearelfs, and you will win this fight.. so I do exactly that! Winning by 3 overall, I cause the Cold Ones to run away, but the damn spearelfs stick around due to ld of 10, and re-rolls thanks to the BSB.. so it was quite interesting to see them still there.


It was at this point that we gave up on the game. Not because of the outcome, but because there was little else that could be done. Plus we wanted to play another game and had limited time. The next battle rep to come up next week once I get around to painting it up.

Lessons learned from this game are:

• Infernal Guard in Horde Formation, drinking from the Wyrding Well, and then becoming Stupid and Unbreakable is a very good thing! Infernal guard with Hand Weapon and Shields are a force to reckon with against Str 3 troops.
• Taking 4 war machines in a 2000 point game, really really bad idea. 
• Re-rolling a successful Artillery roll with a Deamonsmith, again, a really really bad idea
• Letting your prophet go against killing blow units.. again a really really bad idea. 
• Need to still read more on the core rules for the Chaos Dwarfs, so that I do not forget something as formidable as Deamonsmiths getting "Look Out Sir" rolls when within 3" of a war machine. 

Overall I think I did a lot of bad moves in this game, and a lot of poor decision making as well. Dice rolls were not in my favor, but at not time was I really setting them up for optimal chances also. So no one to blame for this loss but myself. But seeing what was working for me against what wasn't well.. that is all it takes to do better next time yes?