Jeremy's army is pretty solid. He has 2 blocks of Chaos Warriors, 2 blocks of Marauders, 2 units of Chaos Knights, a BSB and a level 4 Sorcerer of Tzeentch. Now immediately you think - what is my target priority?
The mission was Battle Mission no. 3 - Battle for the Pass. I had decided to set up a themed board with a chapel destroyed by war surrounded by forests. Foolish idea.
Rule no.1 - Setting up a themed board and then rolling a mission will only come back to bite you in the ass.
Here is a picture of our deployment. As you can see I must have been smoking some good crack to set up this badly. Looking at these images I really don't understand what was going through my head. A Wood Elf army should never attempt to split up and allow themselves to be isolated. As you can also see Jeremy set up very well. His units prevented a flank charge and he put a unit of Knights out to the side to tempt me to concentrate on that as opposed to the main section of his army.
Rule no.2 - Deploying badly only helps your opponent, especially when they are Warriors of Chaos cause we all know they don't need any help.
Terrible deployment - still saddened by this.
Now when you are playing Wood Elves you have to obey three simple maxims in order to be successful.
A. Never diminish your archery capabilities by poor deployment or obstacles blocking line of sight.
B. Never put yourself in a situation where you can get charged unless you plan on it.
C. Never attempt to solo charge any unit - Wood elves need to focus fire a single unit one at a time.
What did John do this game?
I will show you the image of the top of the second turn and you can see exactly what he did badly.
As you can see my Glade Guard were split up, my Waywatchers were in the center of the battlefield in range to be charged by 3 units. My Great Eagles were in pretty good position but my Dryads were poorly placed. The Treekin which should have been supporting the Wild Riders - no check that my Wild Riders that should have been supporting my Treekin and Dryads charged his Knights and ended up not wiping them out. Just all in all terrible, terrible playing.
The magic defense was also ridiculous. I should have allowed that stupid anti-leadership spell Pandemonium to go off every turn and just dispelled it on my magic phase instead of wasting dice on it during his. This poor dispelling allowed him to summon his Exalted heroes which made a huge difference. Just generally poor decisions made all around.
Check that - poor decisions made by me. Jeremy made all the right ones.
To summarize:
1. Treekin died because they sacked out in close combat with the Chaos Knights and got run down.
2. Wild Riders died because they failed to kill the other Chaos Knights and resulted in getting combo charged by 2 units.
3. Waywatchers died because they were charged by Marauders.
4. Dryads died because they got overrun into by the Wild Rider battle.
I just threw in the towel after that - my dice decided to go on strike because they got sick of trying to mitigate poor playing.
Winner: Jeremy's Warriors of Chaos.
Things to do next time.
1. Proper deployment - In the three games I've deployed poorly in 8th edition, I've been massacred. You would think I would keep this in mind when playing.
Note to self: Don't deploy like a tard. - check.
2. Roleplaying rule no.1 - Never split up the party. This works in wargaming. Never split up your units. No good can come of this. You can't depend on rolling hot to always work for you. I don't know why I've been attempting to solo charge units lately. Foolish.
3. Proper target priority - Splitting fire between 3 units is just dumb. Focus Fire.
4. Pay the hell attention. Allowing poor dice rolls and a few bad decisions to distract you and make you forget the entire point of the game - to have fun, is silly. Yes, sometimes you roll poorly. It's a dice game, you'll be ok. You made some mistakes? Learn from them, don't belabor them over and over.
Until next time.
No comments:
Post a Comment