Friday, December 30, 2011

Black Sheep Brawl Rulings and Scenarios


Black Sheep Rulings


  • If an item or ability grants a special rule to a unit or model, it affects the whole of the models in the unit or model.   Example:  Mark of Khorne and Banner of Rage affect both mounts and riders.
  • Open Terrain is a terrain type for spells and abilities.   Example: Curse of Anraheir from the lore of Beasts.
  • No More than 12 power dice can be generated in a magic phase.   Even abilities that would allow you to add dice beyond the total of 12 are affected by this.  Examples are Focused Rumination, Sacrificial Dagger, Death Magic’s ability, etc
  • Scouts count towards deployment. If you deploy scouts and your opponent does not, no +1 to going first for you.




Scenario 1: Head them off at the Pass.

Battle for the pass with the additional special rules:

At the center of the table, a dwarven pony cart will be set up.   The cart may not be targeted by spells, shooting attacks, or abilities that function in similar ways.   If charged, the cart always flees 3d6 inches in an opposite direction.    The cart may only be captured if successfully charged.
A unit that successfully completes a charge against the pony cart will capture it.  Place the pony cart to the back of the unit, indicating that it has been captured.   If the unit that has captured the pony cart flees, is destroyed, or broken in combat, the pony cart will flee 3d6 inches away from whatever caused the capturing unit to flee or be destroyed.   The pony cart may be captured by overrun moves.
The army that has possession of the pony cart at the end of the game is awarded an additional 500 victory points.




Scenario 2:  Take it to them.

Battleline with mysterious terrain rules in play.    



Scenario 3:  Something’s Burning


The third game in the Brawl is a Blood and Glory Scenario from page 148 in the basic rule book As a special terrain feature during the game, each table will have 3-4 Smoke Markers.

The Smoke Markers have the following rules:

1) Each turn the smoke clouds will move 1d6 inches in a random direction. If a hit is rolled on the scatter dice, the cloud does not move this turn. If the movement would take the cloud off the table, remove it from the game. Clouds can also be moved by the Heavens Spell: Wind Blast.

2) Smoke Markers affect line of sight. To see if a friendly unit is affected by a smoke cloud, draw a line from any point on your unit and an opposing unit you wish to take an action against. If a line would pass through the smoke cloud, the unit will be affected by the smoke. Models affected by the smoke will be affected by the following rules:

A) Missile weapons which use ballistic skill are at-1 to hit due to the obscured visibility. This stacks with other modifiers, such as cover, range, etc.

B) Stone Throwers and models that use the Stone Thrower rules (page 114 of the basic rule book) count as firing indirectly.

C) Cannons, and other attacks that fire using rules for cannons will add 2d6 inches to their initial artillery dice roll due to inability to find range.

D) The range of magic missiles will be halved.

E) Models attempting to charge through a smoke cloud will roll an additional d6 and subtract the highest result from the rolled distance. Models with swift stride will roll four dice and discard the lowest and highest results. Example: Swiftstride unit rolls a 2, 3, 5, and 6 when attempting to charge through the cloud. The unit would add 8 to its movement for the charge, discarding the 2 and the 6




 Any questions about these, please don't hesitate to ask.



Here are all of the people who I have signed up for the Brawl.   Confirmed means you have verbally said you are coming.   Maybes are people who expressed interest.   Lists in are just that.
Please see if you are on the correct list.   

Also remember that I need army lists by Wednesday, January 4.   You can email them to me at Journeyman72@yahoo.com or you can drop it off at Borderlands Games.   I will try not to penalize late lists much, but getting it in will go a long way to helping us out due to the number of players we have attending.

Without further ado:
List in:
Vince


Confirmed:
Raindog
Rudra
TJP
Obscure Reference
Obscure Reference’s Lady Friend
Sylvos
Derk & Friend
The Jones Clan (3)
Jim Emerick
Beaverbeliever
Horde_o_Seaguard
Iraf
Diomedes
Taylor
Ollie
Fogg
John E.
Gustav
Ryan J
Ryan O
Burlock and Bro
David D.

Maybes
Lustriangod
Brehk
Maurice
Clayton
Agent P
Exile

Monday, December 19, 2011

Warhammer Armies: Norse


I've been playing my Lizardmen army exclusively for a long time.  I like the idea of starting another army, but none of the other armies currently offered by Games Workshop interest me much.  I stumbled across a fan produced rulebook for a Norse army, and that interested me quite a bit.  It is available at Warhammer Armies Project - click the Norse link on the top bar.  I've decided to embark on a journey to assemble an army of Norse that I can use at relaxed events and casual games.  Last Saturday, I got a game in using the Norse book and other models to proxy the Norse units.

I played against Iraf, who brought a formidable 2800 point Vampire Counts force.  Here's what I brought in my army:

  • King on foot - The venerable lord general.
  • Jarl on Fenrir Wolf - The hero with a frost breathing mount.
  • Vitki - The lord level wizard, I chose shadow magic.
  • Skald #1 - Hero that counts as a musician and can give an ability to his unit for a turn, ran in the Reavers unit.
  • Skald #2 - Another one for the Huscarl unit.
  • 24x Huscarl - This is the main elite infantry unit for the Norse.
  • 24x Reavers - Basic humans with weapon skill of 4.
  • 36x Marauders - Great weapons!
  • 30x Bondsmen - Basic human troops
  • 6x Snow Trolls - Armor Peircing and stupid.
  • Ice Drake - Mini dragon you don't want to stand next to.
  • 3x Valkyries - Flying ethereal awesome chicks.
Iraf had a couple of huge units of skeletons, a horde of ghouls, a big unit of Grave Guard, a Terrorgheist, a couple of Wight kings and Vampire lords, and one Necromancer.   I think Vampires are a pretty good match up for the Norse army, and I didn't feel like I was totally unprepared to deal with anything, but the unit of Grave Guard was very well equipped.  Everything I threw at it just got smacked around, as expected.  It was a good test to get a feel for my units though.

The Norse army has a lot of special rules to keep track of.  On top of the two special rules for the army in general; Counter-charge and Bezerkergang, the wizards and musicians have special effects they can temporarily bestow on friendly units which you have to remember to use and track.  I'm guessing these things will become second nature after a few more games though.

Lessons learned:
  1. Jarl with Trolls - I set up my mounted Jarl with some melee bonuses including an item that forces the opponent to accept his challenges and placed him in the unit of trolls.  I figured this will give the Trolls some leadership and put the huge wolf base in a similar sized unit.  On second thought, there were a couple problems with my plan, the character is not the same troop type even though he is the same size, and will not get look out sir.  Also, the breath weapon ability of the Fenrir wolf mount isn't best utilized in a challenge, so I didn't really do his build well.  In the future, I think I will remove the troll unit, and run the mounted Jarl with a regular infantry unit and a different build, making him not challenge focused.
  2. Proper use of units - The Norse has many different types of infantry.  I am not used to this, Lizardmen only have three types of basic infantry, only two of which is viable in melee.  I need to think more about how I deploy and use each unit.  I did not get enough use out of the Huscarl.  The Norse don't have a lot of tricks like war machines or special unit types, so getting the most out of the varied infantry types will be important.
  3. Basic Marauders are great - I ran my 36 marauders in a horde formation, and they did great, this choice will stick around.
  4. Valkyries are useful - The idea of this unit is awesome to me, but I was unsure how useful they would be considering how expensive they are and I only took 3.  I don't have much experience at using units to hold up the enemy as Lizardmen don't have much for that.  The Valkyries ended up holding up the Terrorgheist for the entire game with only one of the 3 dying to a scream.  I think that turned out to be a huge help for me.
  5. Skalds are as cool as I thought - I liked the idea of these hero musicians enough to sacrifice enough points to fit a couple in, and they were well worth it.  The abilities they give are very helpful, and can't be stopped like spells.
Time to revise my army list and give it another go!

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Escalation League Final Results

The dust has settled, and the awards have been awarded.  For those who could not make the ceremony, here's how it turned out.  Vincent took home the Grand Champion of the escalation league award.  Gustav catapulted up to take the Exalted General award with a combination of a win and other people who were at the top for best general getting a loss the last week.  Ben took home the award for Palette Master for his consistently and well painted Chaos Warriors.  Storme came out on top with the Favored Opponent award (no surprise there).

Micheal Fogg pondering
RankPlayerGamesTotal Score
1Baughman, Josh11196
2Vincent12191
3Willworth, Paul11165
4Storme12155
5Douglas, David11151
6Flesch, Taylor11150
7Maurice12120
8Bailey, Chris10119
9Oliver10118
10Sathrum, Ben8116
11DeRemmer, Jeff799
12Kem, Eli897
13Schwarz, Gustav786
14Johnson, Ryan785
15Macintyre, Kyle676
16Evans, John966
17Kingon, Wiley665
18Odam, Ryan558
19Flickinger, Jordan457
20Guzman, Issac749
21Fogg, Mike949
22Jones, Nate448
23Kinyon, Matt548
24Hines, Clayton742
25Bathke, Tony M.535
26Rosenous, Chris233
27Devyn333
28Holt, Ian232
29Kersey, John119
30Dustin B116
31Scott, Terry110
32Johnson, Quinn18
Paul's Lizardmen vs. Clayton's Tomb Kings

BEST GENERALS         
1.  Josh Baughman
2.  Chris Bailey
3.  Gustav Schwarz
MOST PAINTED         
1.  Ben Sathrum
2.  Vincent
3.  Josh Baughman
BEST SPORTSMEN
1.  Storme
2.  Jeff DeRemmer
3.  Kyle MacIntyre

Chris describing the various ways he is going to defile his giant model with demon markings to Ryan.