Pilgrimage - 2300 Points of Skaven

Over the past couple of years Pilgrimage has joined DogCon, Convic and Orktoberfest as one of the Big 4 Australian tournaments. It is hosted by the Battle Pilgrims in Sydney and this year was the debut of Castle Hill College as the new home for Warhammer tournaments in Sydney.

A particular attraction this year was that it was the first big Australasian tournament under 8th Edition. I posted my list on Friday so scroll back to their to find it.

Briefly my games were as follows:

Game 1 - Dave Kinsey (Dark Elves)

Dave weathered a first turn onslaught that saw the majority of his Witch Elves and Black Guard die to a combination of shooting and magic. My Abomination charged his Hydra and prompted died but my Furnace was able to withstand the combined attentions of remnants of Black guard, Dreadlord and Hydra. Dave's Pegasus Master cleaned up my warmachines and gutter runners.

16-4

Game 2 - Katie Garbutt (Lizardmen)

Battle for the Pass. I was small up in this game going into the last turn as a result of picking off the weaker Lizard units. Unfortunately I was unable to get the last remaining Saurus in a block I had decimated and was looking at probably a 12-8. My Furnace was into the Temple Guard block and they were being buffed by Slaan-driven Light magic. I concentrated all my attacks and was able to remove the last Temple Guard removing Stubborn from the unit. This meant Katie had to make a Ld 7 test with a re-roll. She was very unlucky and failed both. This gave me an extra 1000 VPs.

20-0

Game 3 - John Salter (Lizardmen)

I knew early on that I would find it very difficult to get points out of John's list. A Focused Rumination Slaan with Life means I have to kill multiwound creatures outright in a turn to get any points or hope for unlucky rolls on any Ld tests he does. As it happened I killed one Stegadon and later in the game misfired a WLC to eke out a very narrow win.

11-9

Game Four - Paul Clague (Skaven)

This would have to rate as one of the strangest games I've ever played. My Grey Seer was sucked into the warp trying a three dice Warp Lightning on Turn One. So no Magic Defense and no Leadership. I retaliated by throwing as much as I could at Paul's General's unit and managed to panic it off the board. End of Turn 1, no generals left.

Paul was marginally ahead when a moment of Warhammer Gold occurred. I got off Plague with IF and when the dust settled there were 250 missing rats. The Plague had hit four different units (three of Paul's and one of mine) and then the miscast was resolved. Given the lack of Leadership on the table we saw a practical example of the "ripple effect". Paul took about three times the damage that I did and this turned the game. With the numerical advantage I ground down Paul's army to a Vermin Lord, three slaves and a BSB.

16-4

Game 6 - Sam Moore (High Elves)

Battle for the Pass. I had a horrendous numerical advantage over Sam's army. He did have the tools to hurt me with magic superiority (Life & Death) and 3 units of Archers plus a big block of Lothern Seaguard with the Flaming banner.

The key decision was activating the Storm Banner early and getting off Warpgale on Turn 1. This meant that Sam was an additional -3 to hit and I was able to close the distance to his line. My warmachines targeted first the Seaguard and then the White Lions. Both were depleted sufficiently that when my line hit my numerical advantage did the damage.

18-2

Game 6 - Ken Ferris (Warriors of Chaos)

I have been playing Warriors of Chaos a lot recently and when I saw Ken's build I did not think it was as strong as the armies I had played. It appeared to rely very heavily on its Magic Phase to do the damage, the rest of the units not really being big enough or hitty enough to do real damage (his Chaos Knights excepted). Now I might be mis-reading Ken's army but that was my assessment. I was therefore quite confident in the matchup and felt I could play a considered game which would try to deplete units from a distance then hit the weakened parts.

Ken did not have great dice over the course of the game but I felt my plan was sound and would have prevailed regardless. At the end he had a knight and his BSB left while I had lost a unit of clanrats and two units of slaves.

20-0

That gave me six wins and 100/120 Battle Points. I suffered a comp modifier relative to my opponents of -6 which reduced my Battle Points to 94. This result was enough to place me 5th out of the 84 participants. To say I was happy with this is an understatement given what I thought were realistic targets going into the weekend.

The list performed extremely well and I thought I always had credible options in forming my battleplan. No particular unit stood out as best performer, all having their victories and defeats.

I am looking to make some changes to the list prior to my next tournament in 4 weeks time. These will significantly change the way the list operates and is part of an evolving process after seeing some of the other armies perform over the weekend.

The icing on the cake was picking up the trophy for Players Choice for Best Presented Army.