For Whom the Bell Tolls?

I played an interesting game on Thursday, and I chose not to take pictures as I wanted to focus fully on the game and give beating my friend's bell list a really good try. I sort of regret it as it turned out to be an absolute rollercoaster of a game, I'm going to talk about some overall points and post my list at the end.

I was up against a variant of the bell list, in which he dropped the gutter runners and warlock engineers to put a plague furnace in the monk unit, the 'two towers' list. It was brutal, but I think easier to deal with than the extra warp lightning casts, condensor power dice and scouts. You'll see my list had more chaff which made a huge difference, I got to pick my match ups in deployment and my chaff performed fantastically despite losing the fell bats for two turns thanks to the storm banner (they were out of general range, moving one inch hardly seems worth it).

Factor one: The A-Bomb

He deployed the A-Bomb as usual on a flank with the intention of using it to roll down one side of my army. He put it to my left, which was deployed as my weak side with dogs, bats and vargheists then crypt horrors towards my middle as a blocker for my centre. He chose to run the A-Bomb right on the edge of the board, attempting to get a first turn charge on my dire wolves that had vanguarded up along the edge of the board. He missed by about four inches, and as he got first turn it let me put the wolves on his A-Bomb's flank to block his pivot. He was not facing exactly forward, he was at an angle pointing to the edge of the board with one corner on the edge. Therefore, the A-Bomb cannot move until the dogs are cleared. The dogs got lucky when charged by that weapon team that does artillery dice S4 hits, he rolled a lot of ones to wound and I killed it.
     The crypt horrors and vargheists killed the doomwheel, then the vargs took over the dog's position letting me hold the A-Bomb for the full 6 turns.

Factor two: WLC

First turn he blocked his own pivot on the cannon, so the varghulf raced over out of it's front arc, getting into the cannon and blocking it's pivot on my turn 3. I forgot to charge it, so it was turn 5 before it was killed, but killed it was. It shot off one vargheist and one fell bat all game, solid trade for me.

Factor 3: Skeleton Bus chooses it's match up

Thanks to my chaff, I got to deploy my skeleton unit with my fighty vampire in front of his monks & furnace unit, he blocked me with slave chaff but I had my own zombies and wolves to help, the slaves only delayed the inevitable, and the vampire crushed one unit of slaves, the furnace & unit and the clanrat bunker (who he deployed no characters in this game) who were protecting the cannon. Incidentally, the skeleton unit with the character build worked out great:

Rank 1:Wight king /// Vampire Lord /// Skeleton champion /// Skeleton /// Cairn Wraith
Rank 2:Level 2 Vampire on shadow w/ Cursed Book
Rank 3: ///50 skeletons

So you are limited in how many skeletons you can kill to get combat res, the front rank are well protected, the vamp in the 2nd spits out loads of hexes, you're not likely to get steadfast.... It's brutal. The vampire lord chops up plenty and most of the enemies hitting him are affected by the nightshroud. I think it could have taken on the bell unit, but I went for the small win with less risk over trying to take on the big bad bell. He also made the mistake of being out of range of his BSB in this combat.

Factor 4: The bell didn't see combat

He deployed back, opposite my left flank, and blocked himself in with the doomwheel.. He stayed back so the DW would shoot me, meaning it was turn 4 before he got to my lines. He went for the horrors to try and grab their points, letting me park my level four and his zombies out of their arc, but in range to vanhels bats in his way, and to raise zombies to block him, letting me keep shuffling the horrors back (who were down to 3/8 after all the shooting/magic/doomwheel combat). The bell unit saw no meaningful combat all game, while I locked down the A-Bomb and mopped up the rest.


Final score: +1003 victory points to the Vampires, just about a 14-6 win in tournament scores. I think that's realistically the best case scenario win for me, without him doing something like cascading the level 4 or ringing triple 6 on the bell. It was a really fantastic, intense game though, definitely the games we look for in this hobby!


My list:

         Combined arms/Chaff list (2396pts)

Selections:

Lords (595pts)

• Master Necromancer (200pts)
  Lore of the Vampires, Wizard Level 4 (35pts)
• Vampire Lord (395pts)
  Great Weapon (10pts), Quickblood (30pts) (Quickblood), Red Fury (50pts) (Red Fury), Wizard Level 1
  • Magic Items (85pts)
    BRB - Glittering Scales (25pts), BRB - Talisman of Preservation (45pts), BRB - The Other Trickster's Shard (15pts)

Heroes (490pts)

• Cairn Wraith (60pts)
  
  
  Necromancer (90pts)
• Lore of the Vampires, Wizard Level 1
  • Magic Items (25pts)
    BRB - Dispel Scroll (25pts)
• Vampire (211pts)
  Aura of Dark Majesty (25pts) (Aura of Dark Majesty), Heavy Armour (4pts), Lore of Shadow, Shield (2pts), Wizard Level 2 (35pts)
  • Magic Items (40pts)
    AB - The Cursed Book (35pts), BRB - Ironcurse Icon (5pts)
• Wight King (129pts)
  Shield (4pts)
  • Magic Items (40pts)
    AB - Nightshroud (40pts)

Core (600pts)

• 10x Dire Wolf (80pts)
• 10x Dire Wolf (80pts)
• Skeleton Warriors (300pts)
  Champion (10pts), Musician (10pts), 51x Skeleton Warrior (255pts)
  • Standard Bearer (25pts)
    BRB - Banner of Eternal Flame (15pts)
• Zombies (70pts)
  Musician (5pts), Standard Bearer (5pts), 20x Zombie (60pts)
• Zombies (70pts)
  Musician (5pts), Standard Bearer (5pts), 20x Zombie (60pts)

Special (536pts)

• 8x Crypt Horror (304pts)
• 3x Fell Bat (48pts)
• 4x Vargheist (184pts)

Rare (175pts)

• Varghluf (175pts)