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| Courtesy of GW |
Well, I got to play my game as the ringer for my friend's tournament today. I only played one game as the wife wanted some help in the afternoon with the boy. My friend obligingly let me play one game and had another ringer lined up for rounds 2 and 3.
My instructions were to make a sub-optimal army that would be easier to win against. Thus, I went down my check list of things that make a Dark Elf army nasty. 1) Unkillable Lord TM, 2) double hydras, 3) cauldron of blood, and 4) insane volumes of fire. Easy enough. I decided to start out by taking no ward saves whatsoever on my characters. Thus, I took a single level 4 with the darkstar cloak (+1 casting dice). I then decided to forgo having a fighty lord as my general at all and instead took two slightly less fighty hero characters. One had a S6 weapon and armor that got better the more he killed and the other had a S5 armor piercing whip and a 2+ armor save. Nothing special. Next, every army needs a BSB in 8th. Let's take a BSB with naught but a bathrobe for protection, a Death Hag. I gave her a sub-optimal setup with the hydra banner (+1 attack for the unit on the charge), touch of death (killing blow) and cry of war (on the turn I charge, you take a leadership test or lose a point of WS). So, yeah my character selection is fairly blah, though I did take the obligatory level 4 and shadow lore as it is a good beater lore. Here's the character setup.
Level 4- darkstar cloak
Master-crimson death, blood armor, seadragon cloak
Master-whip of agony, dragonhelm, heavy armor, seadragon cloak, shield
Death Hag BSB- hydra banner, touch of death, cry of war
Next I looked at core. Well, I needed to limit my shooting, so instead of multiple units of shooty, I took a 40 man spear unit (dun, dun, dun, horde unit), two ten man crossbows units with musicians, and two dark rider units with crossbows. This produced 60 shots and a fat unit of squishy elves to chop up.
I skipped to the rare selections then and did exactly what I was supposed. No double hydras. So, I took a single hydra and two repeater bolt throwers which everyone says are crap now. They are.
Finally, I looked at my elite slots. In order to make the army look dangerous but not actually be, I decided to sink a 5th of my total points into a unit of naked, screaming witches. That's right, I took 21 witch elves with an assassin. They had an armor piercing banner, the assassin had the venom sword (which I am told was a waste) and the hag had +D3 extra attacks. In all, this unit usually folds like a wet tissue.
To round things out I took a 10 man squad of black guard with a banner and the ASF banner.
So, sum total for my ringer army, I had:
Level 4- darkstar cloak
Master-crimson death, blood armor, seadragon cloak
Master-whip of agony, dragonhelm, heavy armor, seadragon cloak, shield
Death Hag BSB- hydra banner, touch of death, cry of war
40 spears- full command
10 crossbows- musician
10 crossbows- musician
5 dark riders- crossbows
5 dark riders- crossbows
21 witch elves- armor piercing banner, hag with rune of khaine, assassin with extra handweapon and venom sword.
10 black guard- standard, ASF banner
Hydra
2 bolt throwers
So, in all I had 1,000pts of my army with no save at all. The best armor save besides my hydra and masters was a 5+. What did I take that was good? A single hydra, a horde unit of spears, and shadow lore. That's about all I needed.
I, interestingly enough, played against an Orc and Goblin army with no casters. It had a bit of everything. Lord, BSB, warboss on boar, horde of gobbos, 18 black orcs, 18 savage orcs, 5 savage boar boyz, 3 trolls, 20ish orc boyz, 2 x 5 squig hoppers, 4 bolt throwers, 2 giants, 2 mangler squigs. So, what's a ringer army supposed to do when his opponent is less optimal than he is?
The tournament used some of the BRB's scenarios and we played Blood and Glory which created a system where you had a Break point (equal to 1 point for each 1,000pt. of army rounding up) and Fortitude points ( 1 for banners and BSBs, and 2 for general) When your fortitude number reached the same number as your break point you lost, no matter what. So basically, when your fortitude number reached 3, you lost. My opponent and I both had 8 fortitude points, so I needed to kill/capture 5 points worth of generals and standards.
The game ended in turn 3 when his general, bsb and 18 man black orc unit charged my witch elf unit. My assassin challenged and drew the BSB, who he subsequently slipped one wound through and killed via the venom sword. Then my Death Hag put all of her attacks on the general garnering one killing blow. Finally, the witches killed some 8 or 9 black orcs due to poison, armor piercing and just plain rolling tons of attacks. In the end, the unit fled only dealing about 5 wounds to my witches. We decided to keep playing as if it were a normal victory points mission. In the end, the unit that worked for me the best was the horde spears with level 4 using okkham's mindrazor (use leadership value for strength). I even threw units forward carelessly at the midgame point just to create some fun for my opponent. In the end, I came out with a win in victory points as well. A big thing that helped garner the victory here was no shooting to speak of. My witches die in droves to shooting, but they were never shot until the end when my opponent got a nice flank shot with two of his bolt throwers that killed about 6 witches.
So, looking at this from a whole game perspective and not just the scenario, the thing that won me the game was the level 4 with buffed spears in a horde formation. Which happens to be the perceived successful build for most units in the Fantasy these days.
I failed miserably as a ringer.
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