2500 pts O&G Swedish Comp 11-12

There is a tournament coming up in the middle of April that I shall be attending. This will mark the first full-scale tournament that features the Swedish Comp System. For this tournament, players must have armies that comp between 10-15, which is about average. For each full point of comp you have more than your opponent, you get a 'free' 100 VP (so a comp 15 army going up against a comp 10 army will get an extra 500 VP). Therefore, I'm planning to field a list that comes in at around 12, to give me an edge against the filthiest lists out there (while still liking my chances against them) without giving up too many free points to the softest lists.

With that said, I will be trying out a few creative solutions to still get a competitive army on the table without it comping too hard. I'm thinking something along these lines...

Mini-units of Squig Herds

Anyone who's tried using minimal sized units of Squig Herds with any success? For the same cost as a Mangler Squig, you can get 7 Squigs and 3 Herders. However, for an even cheaper cost, you can get 8 Herders and 2 Squigs.

The top O&G hammer units

Following up on my previous post on What makes a good Hammer unit? I decided to list my top choices from the O&G army book. In the right player, almost anything that hits hard can function as a decent hammer unit, but I feel like the units below are the ones most likely to find consistent success hitting the flank of your enemy while your infantry blocks fight them head-on.

What makes a good Hammer?

The Hammer and Anvil strategy is a very old, yet highly successful military strategy going back to Alexander the Great (and probably even older than that). Small wonder then that it's a popular strategy in Warhammer as well. But while it can be extremely effective, rarely do I see armies that bring an ideal army setup to execute on the strategy.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of the Hammer and Anvil, the idea is that two hostile infantry units engage to the front while being unable to break one another, while the cavalry would come from one of the sides, smash into the flank of the enemy and help turn the tide of the combat in our favor.

Although actual cavalry can be very effective in this role, I've come to depend on a number of different units to serve as the role of the Hammer for this strategy. Here are some of my qualifications for being a good Hammer unit.

2600 pts O&G Fast, Wyvern & Boar Boyz combo

I've been playing around with the idea of creating a very fast and hard-hitting army, with enough infantry backing it up to create an interesting synergy. The idea is to outdeploy my opponents and then stack one flank with a hard-hitting one-two punch that won't give up too many wounds (by Greenskin standards) while dishing out enough pain to clear a flank before the start of round 3. Meanwhile, the slow moving footsloggers will make their way across the field to backup my hard-hitters against the heart of the enemy army, allowing me to attack them from two sides.

Review: O&G Magic Items

One of the reasonable yet frustrating points about the 8th edition army books has been the removal of all the fun and cheap magic items from previous editions. That being said, the O&G book still contains some of them, and a few can actually be useful! Overall though, they are generally overpriced and rarely useful against all-comers. I've listed them all with a short review and provided a sample character and unit that I would most likely field as the designated wielder of that magic item.

A 5-star item means that item is better than anything that you can find the rule book and is somewhat of a no-brainer for competitive lists. Meanwhile, a 1-star item means the item is either extremely overpriced, poorly designed and would rarely ever find a solid use in a competitive list, so you're better off with several other combinations from the rule book.

O&G vs Dark Elves, 2600 pts

So I went into town for a friendly game against a player I hadn't faced before. My opponent had decided to field a Dark Elf army led by a Dreadlord on a Black Dragon. Because of his, he was only able to field a level 2 Sorceress of Shadow and a Master BSB on foot.

The list looked pretty aggressive, with a unit of 10 Cold One Knights, a Cold One Chariot, 5 Dark Riders and a Hydra, but at the same time somewhat defensive with a large unit of 50 Spearelves, 2x10 Crossbows and 6 shades. The potential symbiosis between the Black Dragon and the Hydra or the Cold Ones scared me a little bit, although I would have probably tried to find the points to put my Master on a Cold One for the additional punch to the Cold One Knights.

To make sure I wasn't going to surrender an early flank charge to his faster moving force I deployed with my Trolls on the right flank and my Night Gobbos on the left flank, while my two Orc mobz went in the center. Meanwhile, my Giant joined the Night Goblins to the left to force the Cold One Knights there to be honest, as the Giant is a lot more mobile and almost as fast.

The Hydra and the chariot deployed in center opposite my Black Orcs and the Black Dragon started in the back, behind the Dark Elf army.

2600 pts O&G vs All-Comers

This past weekend I went into town for some gaming. With the new ETC restrictions set to be used in a few upcoming tournaments, I wanted to try out a potential tournament list. This is what I brought:

Stompin': Nurgle Daemon Prince

Twitter is blowing up with plenty of ideas for the new Warriors of Chaos Daemon Prince. I'm very happy to see that one of my favorite units finally got a set of rules that makes it competitive, but looking through my green lens - how are the O&G supposed to defeat it?

Over at the Bad Dice Podcast, Ben has listed his top five DP builds. The first four do not scare me very much - I have enough units to withstand a breath weapon and usually plenty of high strength attacks to deal with two T5 monsters. However, Ben's top one is scaring me.

Daemon Prince
Mark of Nurgle
Daemonic Flight
Glittering Scales
Scaled Skin
Flaming Breath
Soul Feeder

While the Lore of Nurgle is fairly easy to deal with as a tough Orc, Lore of Death is not, and this guy can choose either. He is also flying into a combat of his choosing where there is not a single thing in my army that will hit him on better than 6+. I would never fight him with a character, not even on a Wyvern, and my usual monster-hunting Black Orcs will not be able to deal with him on their own. There are three, possibly four things that I would bring if I'm confident that I'll go up against a Nurgle Prince.

New ETC 2013 rules draft released

The ETC team has released an early draft of the next ETC army rules. You can read them here. Although I'm no ETC player, this will impact my tournament experience as many of the organizers trust in the ETC rules for their own tournament rules.

Newsworthy for Orcs & Goblins is that we're awarded an additional 200 points to our army total, while still having to calculate our losses similar to other 2400 point armies. Although I'm not fully familiar with how much more competitive the ETC tournament is, looking at it from a local and national level, I don't feel we need those extra points - I'd happily face any other army on the same point level and will expect to do decently against them.

That being said, as any Greenskin worth his name, I will take advantage of these added bonus points. At 2600 points, it is possible to comfortably field your Orc Great Shaman as well as an Orc Warboss on a Wyvern, with both bringing a sufficient amount of magic items. The new ETC changes might just tempt me enough to bring out the flying beasty once more.

A Cunning Scheme: Feigning and trapping

I wanted to share a strategic move I performed while going up against a Beastmen army down at the gaming club last week. My opponent was running a Gor Horde of around 40 models, joined by a Beastlord, a Wargor BSB and a Great Bray-Shaman. They had the Beast Banner for +1 strength and was backed up by three shamans with the Wyssan's Wildform signature spells (granting them 1+ S and T). So they were almost certain to have somewhere between S and T 5-7. With Primal Fury for re-rolls and a higher initiative than my troops, defeating this Horde was certainly non-trivial. I went about it with a cunning scheme.

Trolls and Savage Orcs prepare to take on a Gor Horde

New Warriors of Chaos - what will it mean?

As many of you have probably heard, Warriors of Chaos is the next army book to be released for Warhammer Fantasy. I won't be posting any leaked pictures of units or a compiled list of expected rule changes, as I'm quite convinced that those of you interested in such can find that quite easily if you haven't stayed up to date (my blog list is a good place to start, for example).

Rather, I wanted to look at some of these rumored rule changes and new units through the green lens of an Orc (or Goblin) player and ask the question: what will the new Warriors of Chaos mean for the Waaagh?!

Rogue Trader Club Championship 2012

The club championship at Rogue Trader was a tournament played over the course of a day, with three games set at 2000 points. I brought an Orc-led Goblin army outlined in a previous post and was eager to put it to the test against some of Stockholm's finest generals.

Game 1: Dark Elves

My first game was against a Dark Elf force consisting of a Dreadlord riding a dark steed and backed up by a Dark Magic-wielding Sorceress at level 2 and a Cauldron of Blood with the Battle Standard. Two fairly large units of Executioners made up the main combat units. who were in turn supported by two large units of Corsairs with two hand weapons and a Cold One Chariot and some Dark Riders without their crossbows.

Bowgobbos deploy by the building, flanked by Wolf Chariots and Shieldgobbos on each side

2000 pts O&G for Club Championship 2012

Just before Christmas I partook in a club tournament at my new gaming center in Stockholm, in order to determine the Club Champion of 2012. Having been part of their scene for about a month leading up to it I felt a bit strange competing against people who had been there for most (if not all) of the year leading up to it, but the people there are friendly and welcoming so I quickly got over it.

What was (and still is) a bit weird to me, however, is that this particular club (called Rogue Traders) tends to play using the Swedish Comp System for army building rather than the ETC rules I'm used to. This essentially means that instead of having a unit point cap or army restrictions, all units and many options and items will subtract points from an army point pool, with the final score determining how 'ard your army is, which later rewards the player whose army is the "weakest" by additional bonus points when calculating the victor. It's a bit complicated and I'm not a huge fan of the system, but those were the rules and I was fine with them. The tournament was to be played with 2000 point armies with a hard comp cap of 18 (pretty soft lists in general). This is the army I brought:

O&G vs Wood Elves, 2500 pts

After disposing of a Skaven list in my first match with my Orc-heavy army, the Greenskins elected to go pranching around in the forest in search of foes, where they ended up finding some! A Wood Elf army came at them, led by a Highborn flying a Forest Dragon, flanked by two Treemen and two small units of Dryads. In the back were three units of 10 Glade Guards, joined by two Spellsingers of Athel Loren and a unit of Glade Riders. Overhead were three Eagles, two of them carrying Nobles with trinkets and great weapons. An interesting list for certain and I was curious to see how my slow-moving infantry army would be able to tackle a Monster/Skirmishing force.

The two armies after deployment

2500 pts O&G Defensive, Orc Heavy

Lately I've been planning a more orc-heavy, defensive army. Please note that by "defensive" I do not mean "dwarf-like" with no movement and lots of shooting, no. What I mean is an army with less risky elements in it. No Warboss flying on a Wyvern, no armies with big Troll units led by a Shaman with lower leadership. No big Squig units that can be shot up, no big monsters that can be killed by a well-placed cannon. Just a list with a lot of synergy, units working together, each one with a specific purpose, that can wade through shooting, crazy spells, take down dangerous monsters, kill annoying characters, soften up and redirect nasty units, before finally rolling over them in a tide of green. This is an infantry-focused, orc-heavy army with solid leadership and a lot of punch. They may not provide the sheer hitting power of Trolls or Squigs, but I have a feeling they might prove even more solid as an all-comers army list.

O&G vs High Elves, 2500 pts

Remember, remember the 5th of November, because that is the date Troll Tales returned!

It's been quite some time since last I wrote here and trust me when I say I've missed it. It turned out that keeping up a gaming blog while you're in grad school for gaming proved too much for me. However, I'm back in Sweden but no longer in the wonderful city of Umeå. Instead I've moved myself and the missus south to Stockholm, because that's where videogames are made.

So as my first test of the local gaming scene here, I went down to a place called the Dragon's Lair that apparently has a thriving Warhammer scene. I was happy to find a High Elf opponent willing to suffer my smelly Greenskins at 2500 points. I was a little bit surprised to see an Elven list containing two maxed out (at 450 points give or take) units of White Lions, one of them carrying the Banner of Sorcery, backed by not one but two Archmages wielding the Lores of Life and Death, alongside a Noble with the Battle Standard. Rounding off the force was a massive unit of Spearmen (around 35), 12 Archers and a small unit of 10 Spearmen. Four Great Eagles were flying overhead.

2400 pts O&G for Swedish Championship

It's been a long time coming, but Troll Tales is finally back. If you've missed reading it, trust me when I say I've missed Warhammer even more. Things have finally slowed down a little bit with grad school, enough to at least take the time for hobby blogging.

With the semester break coming up in April, I've been preparing an army list for the next Fantasia Fanatic tournament on the 28th of April. It will be for the Swedish championship, with the latest ETC rules at 2400 points.

A drop from 2500 points means there is no possibility of including a Warboss on Wyvern and a Savage Orc Great Shaman, which presents an interesting dilemma. Do I get an infantry Warboss for killing, or tanking, or do I stick with a Shaman as my General, despite running Trolls, and field all three of my special choices (Trolls, Squig Herd and Black Orcs) for the additional points? For now, I think I'll try a Shaman-lead army.

Orc Arrer Boyz painted

Still continuing on with the Orc theme; here are my smaller mob of Arrer Boyz. I wanted to capture some of the greenskin squabble, as per usual, along with some orc brutality, so I included the metal animosity scene from the GW Collector's range. I think it works quite well alongside the rest of the boyz.

As you'll probably notice, most of these are the old metal boyz, but I've added in two plastic boyz with bitz from the Orc Boar Boyz kit; the musician, as you can see, has got a horn to blow in courtesty of said Boar Boyz.

I usually want my Arrer Boyz small, to go on a flank and shoot down diverters before supporting charging whatever is fighting my larger mobs. Arrer Boyz are, after all, one of the best shooting units in Warhammer at fighting in close combat.

Orc Warboss painted

Since we're doing another string of Orcs these days, I decided to paint my Orc Warboss and his Snotling squire. This model is from Games Day 2007 (I think) and ties in nicely with other releases. The shield (on his back) is quite similiar to the Black Orc Warboss model, and his choppa fits well together with the choppa on the Orc Shaman model. You also have the typical orcish scale on his clothing, much like the Giant, and his face reminds me a lot of both the Shaman and the BSB from yesterday.

He's also quite big compared to his Orc Boyz - finally a Warboss that stands out from the crowd!