After the success in round 1, we moved up the tables to find our next opponents: the Old WiseMen (Vieux Sages), comprised of french tournament veterans. As luck would have it, I’d get to fight another very experienced player,
@humblr , who was part of the very successful 2016
ETC team France.
He had brought a Daemon Legion list that frankly nobody wanted to face:
Scourge of Wrath,
Eternal Fury,
Eternal Sword,
Shackles of Reality, Elixir of Souls
Harbinger of Pestilence on
Blight Fly,
BSB, Apprentice (
Evocation),
Bloated Putrefaction,
Halberd,
Nauseating Aura
11
Slaughterers,
Onslaught
10
Slaughterers,
Onslaught
2 x 10Horrors,
Champion
5 BlightFlies, Standard,
Champion,
Flaming Standard
3 CrusherCavalry
5
Furies ofWrath
2
Plaguelings
BloodChariot
So basically a list revolving around a
Blight Fly unit and the
Scourge of Wrath.The latter is really bad news if you haven’t got cannons, and I was worried that he could take on the Warrior block and come out on top. Our scenario would be
King of the Hill, which was a small consolation; I would have hated to play breakthrough against this.
Going into the game, my objective was to try and deal with the scourge by throwing my
Seekers at it, and I knew that the Rune of Storms would be very important for that. The
Blight flies also worried me, and I made a note of trying to achieve two things: prevent the flies from outflanking and try to isolate them from the Scourge.
The
deployment type was
Encircle, and my adversary picked the defender role,getting a big central
deployment zone. I elected to protect the forest that was right in the middle ofthe board, while the Daemons had to protect the hill to my right. The way this was playing out,I thought I could try and win the objective with my
vanguarding units and
scouts: I started by placing warmachines, placing both cannons in range of the forest that the daemons were supposed to desecrate. One of the flame cannons was placed at the 15” mark of the left flank, which prompted my opponent to drop his entire force to get that charge off.
We ended with the
Scourge of Wrath and
furies ready to charge the
flame cannon, with
Seekers waiting right across them, the Flies and
BSB in the center squaring off against the
King and
Hold Guardians, and two small
scoring contingents on each daemonic flank. I responded by weighing my right flank with the Marksmen and
Rangers, confident that the two fighter/shooting hybrid units could easily take on anything the daemons had to throw at them on that side of the board, and score the objective.
For
spells,the
Evocation Harbinger took Spectral Blades, and I picked twice the runes of Resilience, Gleaming and Oaths. The
Hold Guardians took yet again +1S/+1AP, andI nominated the Scourge, Flies and Crushers as the targets for my Ancestral Grudges.
TURN 1 – DaemonicLegion
The Scourge drank his potion of souls, and combo-charged the
Flame Cannon with the
Furies. Both units made it in, unfortunately: had only the scourge succeeded, theSeekers would have had a very nice countercharge into the greater daemon. Withthe scourge threatening the left flank, the Flies relocated towards the right flank to prevent my
rangers and marksmen from overrunning it. The scorers advanced slowly towards the central forest.
In the
magic phase, a
Hand of Heaven killed four marksmen, but I managed to stop the same spell cast on the
seekers. Shooting was ineffective.
The Scourge predictably made short work of the
Flame Cannon, and elected to pivot to threaten both the
Seekers and the
Hold Guardians. Since the
furies also made it in, they were able to overrun right into the
seekers, preventing them from countercharging.
TURN 1 –
Dwarven Holds
The first Daemon turn had put me in a defensive position: I couldn’t advance aggressively with the
King’s block as long as the Flies were threatening to outflank me and the Scourge could easily countercharge. So I advanced cautiously with them,making sure that the Flies hiding behind the impassable
terrain had no space to land out of sight. The
Hold Guardians angled themselves to threaten the Scourge if he charged the
Seekers, and the marksmen/
rangers stay put for fear of getting charged by the flies.
Magic saw me put -1 to wound on the
Seekers, to help in a potential fight against the scourge. In the
shooting phase, the
Flame Cannon, Marksmen and
Rangers opened fire at the
Blight Flies and managed to kill one of the daemonic elite.
The
seekers swiftly dealt with the charging
furies and angled themselves to try and trap the Scourge while also supporting the
Hold Guardians.
TURN 2 –Daemonic legions
At the start of the
DL turn, the king used his Rune of Storms to ground the Scourge:my opponent debated whether to charge, and in the end passed his march test and settled for a small fly move to the left of the
seekers and out of LoS (it wasa very…
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