Pre Chinese New Year Battle Against Tsui

I arranged a battle with Tsui yesterday. As I have the tradition of playng lots of wargames in the Chinese New Year season and as the coming holiday break is a long one, not to mention that I had not play warhammer for weeks, the game was arranged.

My army is as follows

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Dreadlord on Manticore – unkillable combo
Hero on chariot – whip of agony and 1+ armor
Hero on steed, with the seal and a sword of might
Lvl 2 Scroll Caddy
6 Harpies
5 D.rider
12 Rxbmen with shields
10 rxbmen
6 Cok with FC and ring of hotek and warbanner
6 Shades with GW
5 Shades w GW
1 Hydra
2 Rbts

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His list,

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Daemon Prince, MoT, lvl 4 and stubborn
2 x Nurgle mages on Chaos Steed
6 Knights (nurgle)
12 Chosen (Slannesh)
10 Marauder (Slannesh)
12 Marauders (Slannesh)
2 x 5 Marauder Cavalry (Nurgle)
2 Chariots
2 units of five dogs

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The list is very competitive and on the verge of cheese. His 2 level 2’s are the main threat, sniping my characters (i did not lose my heroes to them but many lost 1 wound. The hero on steed got killed by this cum the lion roar from the daemon prince) and forcing me to hide behind the hills. I cannot merely charge as he is using chaos and his troops are rock hard. Neither can my shooting do much (i nearly did kill one mage in turn 1 due to his mark of nurgle marauder cav (and also the fact that my 2 shade units failed terror and panic in turn 1, ironically they survive the game). The game only went in my favour when his daemon prince got greedy and made the mistake of getting into the charge arc of knights and shades. 2 wounds caused by the knight champion and 2 wounds from miscast led to the death of his general - which thus yield 300 – 400 VP.

It was fortunate that due to the hero on chariot (I think), Tsui only charge his hammer units in at around turn 4 thus leaving little time for him to create havoc. I was also aided by the fact that when one of his mage charge into my rxb w/o shields, i held him up very long thus preventing him from using Nurgle spell 1 (although to be fair there isn’t many targets left). With my rxbmen holding back his nurgle mage, I only lose my sorcerous and the superinfantrymen unit to combine charges by his mage, knights and 1 chariot. Thus although I lost my center consisting of 2 rxb units (the shieldless unit finally got destroyed in turn 6) and a sorc, its merely 400 points.

Thanks to rbt and rxb shooting, his chosen unit was weakened to 5 men and were dispatched by my noble on CoC, whipping up 250 VP in my last turn (unit was already half strength, total VP of unit is 300 pts plus banner).

When the dust settled,it turn out that I was the winner. Apparently, i did better in the skirmishing stage and did not lose many men (lost 6 harpies and 5 darkriders while he lost 1.5 marauder units, 2 x 5 dogs, 1 maurauder cav). To make the matter worse, his nurgle cav failed terror in his last turn. It is strange that I won...probably due to my damage control.

So in the end it is a victory....the Darkspears beat off a powerful chaos list!
But what do I learn from the game?

1) Mass Nurgle Magic is cheesy....severe bombardment post a great threat on my character dependent druchii army. It is also hard to mage-hunt Chaos mages.

2) Damage control is important especially since the chaos player rarely have more than 2 H.Cav/Ogre units. Once again its the duty of the melee characters to take them out. The key is to enable my characters to inflicting damage while still avoiding the Nurgle magic.

3) Mark of Nurgle hampers shooting. But I must still continue shooting if it matters!!! Fortunately shades have higher BS now.

4) Dark Elf heroes still have problem fighting skirmishing enemy mages (aka his daemon prince that flies abt and blast people with magic – will rely on rbt and shades to take these out...I can expect him to make mistakes all the time).

5) Using Power of Darkness to generate PD for dispelling remain in play spells!!! (use 1 dice can liao)

As said, all these sound easy but the tactics do not gel smoothly in place...thus it is a matter of skill to pull off all these manuveurs.

Once more...VICTORY!!!