So with a week to go, whilst I had an army physically assembled, other than a couple of pieces that were finished to my satisfaction, most of the army was just primer sprayed... a frantic weeks painting was ahead of me!
Thankfully this was timed nicely with the school holidays so I managed to score a few days at home (big thanks again to wifeypoos who filled in for me at work too) on 'baby sitting' duties, allowing me to also break out the paintbrushes :)
By Friday night I made managed to get the army presentable and tidy, and had even finished off my centre piece beastie - The Exhalted Greater Demon of Slaanesh, from ForgeWorld.
The tournament had an interesting format in that you were allowed to take 2500pts worth of troops to the event, and once you knew what the other army was you were facing, you would select which of the units you would take to field a 2000pt force for the game.
To be fair, I am not a very experienced player in AoS, having only had a handful of games whilst I trialled using my Chaos/Slaaneshi force. And not wanting to slow up the better players I had prepared a spreadsheet of all my units with stats and buffs and abilities by Game phase, so I knew what each was capable of at any given phase of the game, which worked pretty well.
The force I decided to use was Slaanesh Chaos themed Demon and mortal mixture.
Leaders:
Chaos Lord of Slaanesh on Demonic Mount.
Chaos Sorceror Lord (I need to find a suitable mount to convert him)
Demon Prince
Herald of Slaanesh
Herald of Slaanesh on Exhalted Seeker Chariot
The Masque of Slaanesh
Battle Line:
30 Chaos Warriors with Shields and Hand Weapons
30 Demonettes
10 Hellstriders with Hellscourges (Can be Battleline if army Allegiance is Slaanesh)
Behemoth:
Exhalted Greater Demon of Slaanesh
Other:
10 Seekers of Slaanesh
1 Chaos Spawn
Total 2500pts
Slaanesh Armies also get an interesting choice of styles resulting in options for army command traits etc. I quite like the "Pretenders" giving my general two traits and an army wide buff of being able to reroll 1s to hit for units of 10 models or greater.
Plan was if I needed to deal with a big beastie, I would take the Exhalted Demon, and lose the minor slaanesh demons from the Leaders, and the Spawn. If I needed to deal with hordes, I'd lose the Exhalted and take all the minor heroes.
First game was against James McPherson's exploding Skaven rat hordes. I got a little lucky here and with getting first turn by deployments, and having a speedy army managed to grab the two centre objectives immediately and hang on to the them for the game, pushing the battle into James side of the table. I took a fair pummelling and had lost more of my troops than James had of his I think, but I had kept him off the objectives, and managed to win a 6-0 decision, earning a rather unexpected Major Victory!
Game two was against Shaun Bates Stormcast army. There didnt seem many of them and no big biggies so I kept the army the same leaving off the Demon. I camped my Chaos warriors on my objective, the hill to right, and sent everything else forward apart form the spawn that lurked in my backfield keeping teleporters a little further away. My attack went up my left flank mostly and whilst I got there quick and did a bit of damage I largely bounced off Shauns Tanky units. Shauns main thrust was with his two minor dragon rider thingies down my right flank... which took out my Chariot. I decided discretion better part of valour and withdrew my attack back to centre to try and deal with this threat. We then battled it out around the centre of the board and I steadily lost troops to Shauns Stormcast. By end of Game we each still held our own objectives, but Shaun had killed more of my troops than I had of his so he got a minor victory out of it.
Games three was against local mate Matt Barker and his Beastclaw Raiders. Though local I'd never played Matts Army before, I had heard it was pretty tough to deal with. The mission had us with 3 objectives in our deployment zones. Seeing Matts relatively small but tough army I decided to try out the Exhalted, and sent her down my right flank with my demonettes, whilst playing a watch and see game on my other two objectives. I managed to break down Matts left and take out a unit of ogres and capture and destroy the objective there for a rolled 3 VPs. Matt responded trying to beat off this threat and did so rather well. I had hoped to be able to pull back my force to delay his approach to my uncovered flank objective, but my flank slowly collapsed and in the last turn of game Matt managed to take it but only rolled a 1 for VPs, giving me a victory by 1VP! This still earned me a 'Major' victory, though it didnt feel major, with lots of my army battered and destroyed!
Posts on Facebook that night from Nick showed I was in joint second place with Lee Wilmot! I had never expected to be anywhere like that in the positioning so was rather chuffed :)
I would face Lee next morning.
Lee was fielding a Sylvaneth army of teleporting treemen amongst their materialising woodland. I had seen from some battle reports that these seemed quite a tough army.
And sure enough it was!
Again with my Armies speed I managed to make an early grab for the objectives, and launched an assault down my right flank again. Crucially I missed the opportunity to send another fast unit down the left flank to easily grab some more victory points there early on (hindsights a bitch!).
My right flank assault went in lead as always by the Seeker-missile, but they mostly bounced off the wall of dryads and then got flattened by a bunch of supporting medium treemen with hooked scythes! So again this lead to me falling back and trying to hold on to the ground and objectives I had captured, gaining VPs each turn they were held before I was beaten off them. We played over time to get a reasonable number of turns in each, and Lee managed to sneak victory right at the end, beating me by 1VP. If I had gone for that early grab mentioned above it would have been my 1VP win. A close fought and enjoyable game but sadly leaving me with a Major defeat.
The final Game was against Matt Brittons Beastman horde. This game would see objectives dropping from the skies in turns 2 and 3. The first would land somewhere in the centre line and the last two land randomly in each of our deployment zones. Again an early surge by me had me covering the centre line but Matts beastmen were no slouch on the speed front either quite surprisingly, and he quickly charged my Battle line. But perhaps made an error engaging along the whole battleline at once. Attacking my Chaos warriors first on my right they largely soaked up the damage and in my turn my demonettes and demon heroes on my left wrecked his other main battleline unit, leaving a large gap in his line there. As luck would have it that gap was where the first objective landed and I was able to claim it and push on to stop any real chance of counter attack claiming it back. When the other two objectives dropped, they both landed centrally in each of our deployment zones, and while the battle raged on in the centre right with my chaos warriors, one of Matts archers rear flanking units made a grab for the objective in my zone. He managed to claim it and also form a small screen around the one in his zone. I fought hard to claim the one back in my zone and despite pummelling the unit that took it, they still held on with more models there than I had there to keep claim of it. My chance was then to grab the one in Matts zone, and my demonettes were eager poised to strike... the only hassle, starting next to mystical terrain, ... and sure enough I rolled a 1, and was unable to move! Arggghh!
Another game lost by 1VP! And another Major defeat. I had finally got a game where I destroyed more of the enemy than he did of mine, and yet still lost, curses!
My final position was 8th out of 14 players. Not too bad a performance for my first AoS tournie. And one I thoroughly enjoyed. Nick Jebson did a great show of running the event and participating too, no mean feat.
And all the players I played were great to play against. Wonderful to meet some of the local and wider AoS players and have a great weekends gaming. Will definitely be participating again next year!
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