Dark Elves

A couple weeks ago the new Dark Elves were released, and I've played a few games with it. With that freshness in mind, like to share my thoughts on the changes and then put together a list!

Lord Balewind & Co. advances at the head of his army for what will probably be the
last time in a long time. Given that his precious Executioner's axe was confiscated by
the state, I can't see him being that useful on foot. 

A Skirmish and A Battle

A week or so ago I played a small game of Fantasy against a friend at the local GW. For the purposes of this blog he shall be known as Lord Karathess or L.K. for short. L.K. hadn't played fantasy since 6th so this was just a refresher game and an update on the rules. I played a small force of Tomb Kings and L.K. fielded his detachment of Empire. The whoreson employee of GW was rushing us along so I only took pics of the first turn and then we had to finish quick.

As the photo evidence shows the Empire deployed on the hill in an attempt to leverage full use of the artillery advantage, which would have proved effective if the cannon hadn't exploded upon firing its first shot. With the artillery out of the picture the Tomb Kings charged in for the kill and were in the thick of a bloody combat when the invisible hand of GW taint came and declared "pack it up, the stores closing in 15 mins and I wanna go home."

When I went home for thanksgiving (canadian thanksgiving which I would like to declare as the real thanksgiving in an effort to piss off any of our american viewers, suck it) I got to play a huge fantasy battle against Darko and Wooster. We played a 4800 pt game on our realm  of battle, which proved to be dismally small for that many points. I played both my Tomb Kings and Lizardmen against Wooster's Wood Elves and Darko's Dark Elves (alliteration yay). 

I seem to have misplaced the actual list I wrote but it was something like this:

Lords

- Grand Heirophant Khatep (Lore of Nehekhara)

- Slann Mage Priest (Lore of High Magic)

-->Scroll/magic resist (1)/loremaster/lizardchannel

Heroes

- Chakax (scar vet name character)

- Gor-Rok (scar vet name character)

- Scar-vet

-->cold one/piranha blade/light armour/shield

- Tomb Prince

-->Chariot/Armour of Destiny/Great weapon

Core

- 30 x Skely Archers

- 20 x Saurus

- 24 x Skink cohort

--> 3 x Kroxigor

- 7 x Skely Chariots

--> Banner of Swiftness

Special

- 30 x Temple Guard (horde)

--> Jaguar Standard

- 20 x Tomb Guard

-->Banner of the Undying Legion

- 7 x Cold One Riders

- 3 x Necropolis Knights

- 2 x Khemrian Warsphinx

- 2 x Tomb Scorpion (proxy)

Rare

- Casket of Souls

I leave it to Darko and Wooster to add their lists if they so choose.

At the start of the battle I felt I had the upper hand as the elves had precious few combat blocks and I had stretched my battle line across the entire table with very few holes. But as the game progress it became abundantly clear that I had underestimated a key factor that my opponents were counting on for victory.....Darko's witchery.

Prior to deployment Darko and Wooster spend a mind numbing amount of time debating spells as I declared that both my casters were in fact loremasters.

As the deployment phase began, I soon realized I wouldn't have a chance to counter deploy anything as my entire army was almost down and they had maybe one non-chaff unit on the table. This isn't a foreign concept for me but in this instance it was exaggerated as I had less than half the number of units that were arrayed against me.

I won the roll for first turn, a rare sight for me, and advanced across the board. I needed to cross the open ground as quickly as possible to negate their shooting. The first signs of witchery came in the magic phase when my slann rolled irresistible force on arcane unforging (on 4 dice I rolled 1-6-6-6) and exploded killing 6-8 temple guard, drained the power pool, and to top it off rolled a 1 and failed to destroy the magic item. After losing power dice I believe I threw the rest at the casket which was dispelled but I may be forgetting something. I don't recall anything significant happening in the shooting phase.

In the bottom of turn two, the elves advanced a marginal amount in an effort to reorganize their line and leverage their shooting advantage. I don't recall anything particularly exciting happening apart from some shooting related deaths on my side. (Note for the elves, feel free to edit and correct me if I'm forgetting something important)

At the top of turn two I made my first charge, my Temple Guard had been secreting the Jaguar Standard which gives them swiftstride. The temple guard leaped across no-mans land and crashed into Wooster's tree ogres, surprising to say the least. The rest of my units advanced except the chariots as they were in danger of a flank charge. I also brought on my two units of deep strikers (entombed beneath the sands) a group of 3 necropolis knights and 1 tomb scorpion, they surfaced behind the tower in the middle of a bunch of chaff. 

The second sign of their powerful witchery came in the magic phase, I decided to start with the movement bubble for tomb kings. Khatep rolled irresistible force (on 4 dice 1-6-6-6, AGAIN FUCK), blew up some archers, and drained the power pool. I realized now that I had wasted 800 points on magic because both my wizards were incapable of doing anything except sucking Darko's large witchy member. I think I got off one other inconsequential spell that turn, but I remained stalwart as I could still rely on my hordes of elite combat blocks to butcher the puny elves. Little did I know that the full extend of the cursed witching would be revealed. I was excited to smash tree ogres in the first combat of the game, but I was about to find out that Darko's witchery extended beyond the realm of magic. My temple guard proceeded to wiff almost entirely and get thumped by the tree ogres.

The rest of the game was dominated by the elves, I managed to fail every important roll, neither of my 2 warsphinxs manage to land a single thundercrush attack (thunderstomp template style). I conceded at the end of turn 3, I'm not interested in reliving the death of my beloved army but Darko or Wooster may be persuaded to boast their victory.

The above pictures are Wooster's Wood Elves arrayed on trays waiting to be deployed

Darko's Druchii Dark Elves

My disorganized Lizard/Skeleton horde

The elf battle line from a few perspectives

My fearsome battle line of elite combat units

Koptor Kans!!!

Look at these Krazy Koptor Kans! Dakka dakka dakka! I know there is no rules for them, but I think they're awesome anyways. I'll probs play them as Killa Kans if the guys let me.

 This one has a biting jaw, a twin assault cannon, and a twin heavy bolter with enloudener. Dakka Dakka Dakka.

 This one has an impressive array of rokkits! Fwoosh! It also has a handy dandy buzz saw for trimming off heads!

This Koptor Kan has a plethora of flame throwers. These augment the power-snippier-chainsaw-combo.

Croozin over the battlefield looking for stuff to bisect.

Run Devilfish Run!

These Crisis Suits are having a Krazy Koptor Krysis

In conclusion giant battle robots are awesome!

Two Stompas?

Yes, you read that title right. The ever so handsome Jed McFred now owns two stompas. They are both made as Big Mek Stompas; one has a Krazy Krushing Klaw, and one is kind of disappointing. I built the dark green one from scratch and the light green one from a Games Workshop kit. Details on the construction are under the pictures. When I first started everyone (including myself) had reservations about me picking up such a large, insane project. That said, about 3/4 of the way done I would have given up if it weren't for the support of my fellow gamers. I thank them for their support and bits.

The body of the stompa is a jug of laundry detergent. I glued plates onto it until it became nigh unrecognizable. 

The claw is mostly bits of sprue built up. I have some tires there to act as joints. The buzz saw fingers are extra tracks from Flames of War models. 

I wanted the crew to be as ridiculous as possible, so a single pilot seemed in order. This ork only controls movement, one lever for stomp left, one for stomp right. The gaze of mork is a missile launcher from that new Space Marine AA vehicle.

The lifta-droppa is a series of toobs with a spiked light bulb on the end. I bent paperclips to look like crazy lightning. I should add more crazy lightning.

The Huge Ass Cannon is a tube with a pipe fitting. The giant ammunition is for a toy gun. I'm gonna add some smoke to make it look like it is ejecting the round out of the back.

Some of the parts, like this front piece were actually taken from the stompa box. We don't really like to talk about that though.

Here's the side to side comparison. It's hard to see but mine is slightly thinner and slightly longer, but overall it is on the same scale.

I also made this little Gretchen shrine of sorts.

A Flurry of Activity

I would add all sorts of colourful comments but I'm off to play a game of fantasy so fuck that shit.

Paint scheme selected

I'm just gonna leave this here, more to follow

Apocalypse: Double Stompa Style

Some apocalypse was played a while back. Just now getting around to posting these pictures. That lovable Darkster has some turn summaries, so I won't try to remember what was going on too specifically. I'll mostly stick to a biased opinion of what was going on and let someone else flesh out the details (VPs and such).

This horror tower lived up to its image by hosting 4 creepy crypteks and a pair of obliterators at deployment.