A Bright Beginning?

Over the last week I've managed two games against my sons, Tom and Jack. Both made the NZ Masters in 2010 so they are always tough games.

We decided that we would play 2400 points for the next few months.

First up was Tom. he is still using Daemons of Chaos but has changed his list to include a GUO and two big (30) Bloodletter blocks. These are backed up by Flamers, 2 single Fiends, a block of 10 Horrors and three Heralds (2 Khorne, one Tzeentch Lvl 2 toting Fire).

This was a strange game. After my Turn 1, Tom was calling me a "Hobby Killer" and threatening to "Rage Quit" and start playing Warmachine. My Skaven had one of those turns where everything went right. Both Bloodletter blocks were depleted and the Flamers were now furry rats. Unfortunately (for me) that was as good as it got. From that point onwards Tom completely outplayed me and only by fortuitously taking down the GUO in the last turn did I manage to make the score respectable. Before that it was looking like 20-0 to Tom.

This is becoming a bit of a trademark of Tom's. At the Masters he lost all his magic defense Turn 1 yet inflicted a heavy loss on the eventual winner. I saw a similar fightback in his recent game vs. Harry Dixon (who won last year's ETC singles event). Certainly I know i don't have to travel far to get a tough game.

The second game was against Jack's Dark Elves. It was the first game since the new Skaven book that I have played without a Plague Furnace. We were playing Watch Tower and though I "won" the right to occupy the tower, I chose not to. Throughout the game I was always on the backfoot. Both of us had misbehaving dice - the highlight from my point of view was a Slave block killing 7 Witch Elves in combat. I was lucky in that the game continued to Turn 6 and at that stage I was able to transform a depleted block of spearmen occupying the tower into some cuddly rats. Although there were "only" 15 in the tower I rolled 6-6-5-6 for my conversion roll.

Prior to that Jack had killed my HPA who came back to life with a single wound. A fireball ensured there would be no third coming. The dice we both rolled ensured a far chunk of incompetence on the side of both armies.

Nice way to start the year. I'm going to continue to experiment with my list. I've just finished painting a bell.