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Thursday 9 April 2009

Skaven vs Lizardmen 4999 point battle report

warhammer fantasy battle report :-

Almost 5000pts of Skaven - that's a lot of rats ! Where's rentakill when you need them :)

(almost every Lizardmen / Skaven unit in the army books are used in this battle)

source : warhammer.org.ukcredit : David L09-Apr-2009


Lizardmen Army list (edition 6)

Sacred Host of Quetzl:
2nd Gen Slann (duh!)
BSB, Totem of Prophecy, Plaques of Protection and Tepok, Diadem of Power
fireball, Conflagaration of Doom, little death missile, big death missile, Unseen Lurker

Oldblood, la, sh, Quetzl, Tepok, Chotec
Scimitar of the Sun, Jaguar Charm, 5+ ward

Oldblood, la, Quetzl, Itzl, Old Ones, cold one
Sword of Might, Maiming Shield, Curse Charm of Tepok, 4+ ward vs S5+

Scar-Vet, la, sh, Quetzl, Huanchi
Sword of the Hornet

Scar-Vet, la, sh, Quetzl, Sotek
Bane Head (Grey Seer on foot)

Skink Priest, level 2, Blood Statuette of Spite
little magic missile, cause fear

Skink Priest, level 2, two scrolls
big magic missile, Doom and Darkness

17 skinks (all skinks have javelins)
13 skinks
13 skinks
10 scouting skinks
20 Temple Guard with Jaguar Standard
23 Saurus Warriors of Quetzl, full command
23 Saurus Warriors of Quetzl and Huanchi, full command
4 Kroxigors with champion
4 Kroxigors with champion
5 Terradons with chamiopn
7 Saurus Cavalry, champion, Huanchi's Blessed Totem
3 Salamanders
Stegadon
Stegadon



Skaven Army list

Warlord, two weapons, Enchanted Shield, Regeneration, Bands of Power

Grey Seer on Screaming Bell
extra power dice, 5+ ward save, one re-roll

Grey Seer on foot, 4 dispel scrolls

BSB with Storm Banner

Assassin with +2 strength hidden in Bell unit

Engineer with Storm Daemon and 4+ ward save

Engineer with Tenebruous Cloak, Death Globes

Plague Priest, Liber Bubonicus, Warpstone Token

30 clanrats, full command, rattling gun
30 clanrats, full command, rattling gun
30 clanrats, full command, rattling gun
30 clanrats, full command, rattling gun
28 giant rats
28 giant rats
5 globadiers
5 globadiers
4 Plague Rat Swarms
29 stormvermin, full command, war banner, rattling gun
29 slaves, musician
28 slaves, musician
6 night runners, two weapons
6 night runners, two weapons
6 night runners, two weapons
6 night runners, two weapons
10 jezzails
1 rat ogre
1 rat ogre
1 rat ogre
1 rat ogre (yes, four units of 1 rat ogre each. these actually work pretty well)
29 plague monks, extra weapons, full command, Burning Hatred
10 Plague Censer Bearers
Warp Lightning Cannon
Warp Lightning Cannon


I suspect people will question the 'lack' of slaves. I'm not sure if Raf was remembering this, but we played this matchup a couple years ago at perhaps 3000 pts. Quetzl skinks, especially in range of a Slann, can hold slaves forever or even beat them. That blocks up everything behind, including playing havoc with LOS. I clogged up a chunk of his army with just skinks and slammed tons of hitting power into other stuff.


Setup

We put two standard 6 ft tables end to end. The meeting point had a slight gap and wasn't perfect, so I put down the cloth top to cover that, then some stuff to mark the edges of the battlefield. Intentionally not measuring, it ended up 107 inches wide (just short of 9 ft). We took turns placing terrain, then rolled for sides.
Two impassable cliffs in the middle, one with a river (difficult) with bridge (open) draining to the table edge. Couple forests, couple of hills, and a square swamp on his side.



I set out to turn his flanks, but this didn't work very well so the battle largely split into 3 pieces divided by the impassable cliffs.

On my right, the terror causing Stegadon hoped to send various enemies running. The Huanchi Saurus would take advantage of the forest to engage quickly and maybe even charge. Raf's hugely superior numbers left me expecting more drops near them while they ended up facing almost nothing and never saw combat. Kroxigors with screen made the inner edge of my right flank.

I faced giant rats, clanrats with rattling, night runners and two rat ogres. Plus a warp lightning cannon.



The center had the Temple Guard, other Saurus with scar-vet, the JSoD Oldblood, two skink screens, Terradons and Salamanders.

I faced Plague Monks with priest, Plague Censor Bearers, night runners, two rat ogres, Stormvermin with BSB and Grey Seer, clanrats with Bell, slaves and more clanrats.





My left had another stegadon to make things run, plus cavalry with skink screen.

I faced giant rats, slaves, clanrats and the globadiers.



The Warhammer Game

He won the first turn, moved up a bit, and started magiccing. I survived the first turn okay, losing less than half the big skink screen and one dispel scroll. Slann also failed a 2+ ward against Jezzails, but the toad has 7 wounds left.
I move up on my turn and try to Unseen Lurker Terradons into Jezzails. This draws his first scroll and leaves the Terradons screwed. Magic missiles did take out 2 rattling guns.

He activates the Storm Banner on his turn 2, which he took principly to negate Terradons killing his wizards. The Storm banner will refuse to burn out until turn 5, which ends up hurting him a lot more than me. The Terradons had to flee a charge on his turn 2, then fail to rally (despite the Slann), fail to rally again (on their own) and leave the table, so that goal of the Storm Banner was unnecessary. To make the Storm Banner even sillier, the Bell rolls a '13' on turn 3 which panics the Salamanders, leaving the banner having almost zero affect on the Lizardmen.

Also on his turn 2, the plague rat swarms charge the remaining big screen which is joined by the JSoD [Jaguar Saurus of Doom - Ed]. I figure the 4+ close combat save on the skinks will reduce his damage enough for the 7 attacks Oldblood to chop the swarms to pieces. I think the skinks should even get in a couple wounds, since even the Oldblood is swinging first after the charge. Plus any combats I lose will be near the Slann. Instead, it will take that worthless Oldblood until turn 5 to wipe out the swarms and he takes 2 wounds in the process. He then survives one round against the assassin, but does no damage and dies to 3 strength 2 hits from Vermintide. 301 points of total waste.

-----

On the right, the Stegadon manages to terror away the clanrats and chase off the giant rats, but the rattling gun hangs around a while. The Storm Banner stops some of its shooting, so it only takes a skink off the top and does one wound to the Stegadon. Eventually the skink javelins take out the rattling, and the Stegadon charges the WLC on turn 6. The WLC did no damage. My 4 Kroxigors step forward and take a charge from 2 rat ogres and 6 night runners. The Skaven do 2 wounds, I do lots and get a pursuit move. Various rallied rats will get in the way of the Kroxigors and slow them down, but eventually they turn towards the center.

-----

On the left, a cautious advance with the Stegadon and use of the skinks keeps the globadiers from doing anything. But I cannot get past things quickly and end up using the Blessed Totem just to charge giant rats. The rats get obliterated, and one globe unit panics, but I don't pursue far enough to hit the globadiers that pass panic. The skink unit will finish off the globes and the giant rats. Not pursuing into another target leaves the cavalry to take Warp Lightning from an Engineer that wanders over this direction. Dispel attempts fail and Storm Demon plus the main spell wipe out the unit in one magic phase. The Oldblood, despite his 0+ armour and 4+ ward, takes 2 wounds when I let warp lightning hit him the next round.

The Stegadon starts with some better luck, getting a slave unit to fail terror. But it makes too many "skink saves" against magic and shooting and the crew is shot off the back while the Stegadon only takes 1 wound. It then fails the reaction test and rolls "whimper", leaving him standing around uselessly in great position to turn towards the middle. So close!

-----

With the leadership failures of the Terradons and Salamanders and the inept Oldblood, my center is not as powerful as I expected. That gets worse as I am steadily blasted by magic. His 10 total warp tokens will never roll a '1'. All the warp lightning he casts all game will produce two total hits on himself. With 17 power dice a turn, plus 10 tokens, he will never miscast. Over 100 total casting dice without a miscast. I miscast at least 3 times and get only two IFs, both on spells that don't matter much. Unseen Lurker is scrolled three times, miscast twice, and a priest ended the magic phase before it was attempted the other turn (Dumb order on my part, but I rolled the Slann's dice for the heck of it and he miscast anyway). The Plague spell injures the scar-vet and kills half the Saurus unit, then kills several TG as well. Other damage reduces the Saurus to 11 guys and the Temple Guard to barely more before combat. I lose a Kroxigor and various skinks.

My skink priest gets his big magic missile off early and takes out half the censor bearers. Salamanders wipe out a night runner unit which panics slaves.

The last 11 Saurus in the middle arrange to charge the 5 Plague Censor Bearers and also hit night runners in the process. I expect to chop them up pretty good, especially with rank, banner, numbers. I then can pursue into the plague monks directly behind, or just sit and flee their charge. Nope. I kill 1 on the charge and lose 4, actually losing combat the first round. On the positive side, this does block the plague monks from doing anything and gives the Salamanders another shot at them. Plus the Saurus do hold and eventually break the rats. Salamanders are never too impressive and even cause a panic test on themselves by eating skinks. Thankfully they pass that one. Obviously, the few remaining Saurus flee when the plague monks charge.

By the start of my turn 4, the inept Oldblood and the rat swarms are clogging things a bit, and I've fled with Kroxigors and Saurus. The Temple Guard were just charged by the Stormvermin, who then got frenzied. They were joined by the general (which I foolishly didn't notice) and abandoned by the Grey Seer (skitterleaped himself into the forest). My scar-vet fights with his shield, letting him hold onto his last wound (toughness test earlier) for a couple rounds, until I forget the Bands of Power. I'm losing that fight badly, but the TG are holding and hoping for help. No wizards have been killed at this point, although my statuette priest took a wound with a miscast and one engineer wounded himself once with warp lightning.

All the Saurus on the table being largely inept, on turn 4 the Slann and priests finally step it up a notch. The Slann cannot see the Grey Seer in the woods, but the priest from the left side can. Ahhh, telepathy! Okay, first the Slann has to take out the rattling gun blocking LOS, but that is helpful anyway. One little missile gets the gun, the other and conflag are stopped. I get the 2d6 missile off at the Grey Seer, but it produces only 4 hits and the rat lives. With the dispel dice gone and me somewhat desperate, I finally use the Statuette of Spite and the Grey Seer fails the test! The left wizard then fires off his own magic missile, killing the Engineer that blew away the entire Saurus Cavalry. I still fell I've got big problems from my troops (and characters!) getting outfought by Skaven, but two dead wizards and the last rattling gun improve the situation a lot.

-----

In the end game, the Kroxigors from my right manage to come around the central cliffs and reverse direction. With the frenzied plague monks chasing fleeing Saurus, the Kroxigors hit them in the rear and wipe them out. The Screaming Bell unit, with assassin on the correct corner, jumps into the front of my TG (already fighting Stormvermin) on turn 6. 3 Skaven characters kill the last 5 Temple Guard and break the Slann. (The Bell had rolled Terror causing, so I was autobreaking anyway). But the fat toad displays unexpected nimbleness and flees 9 inches, escaping the clutches of the evil rats. The Slann rallies in the bottom of the turn and has a shot at earning a massive victory by Lurking the victorious Kroxigor into the Stormvermin flank .... but miscasts.






Battle Result & Victory Points

Lizardmen Casualties:
Oldblood of total incompetence
Scar-Vet
Saurus Cavalry
Temple Guard
half core Saurus
Terradons
Kroxigor
two skink units
injured mounted Oldblood of some incompetence
injured skink priest
two captured banners

Skaven casualties:
Grey Seer on foot
Engineer
Plague Priest
5 rattlings
2 clanrat units
both giant rat units
censor bearers
plague monks
all the night runners and globadiers
both slave units
one WLC
Jezzails (panic from magic)
half Grey Seer on Bell (self inflicted. Bell doubles got 1 wound, doubles or warp lightning for the other)
half Stormvermin (magic on turn 6)
half BSB (a TG got a swing in)
one captured banner
one table quarter claimed by Lizardmen (my right, the stormvermin aren't far enough to my right)

Lizardmen win by about 1100 points!

Total time to play, including unpacking, setup, and repacking = just over 5 hours.

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