Skaven at NZ Masters - Day Two

Day Two dawns wet and bloody cold…..I thought this was meant to be the Tropical North. I’ve run the numbers and I reckon that I need to score at least 34 points to be in with a chance of winning. To date I’ve dodged the two armies I don’t want to play but I know that at least one of them is going to tap me on the shoulder and introduce itself.


I arrive at the venue and am greeted by a nice surprise….

Game Four – Henry Poor (Orcs & Goblins)

I’ve never played Henry but I was happy with the Orcs & Goblin draw. The key thing for me was to get Henry’s warmachines as they were the things that could really hurt my army, read HPA, WLC and Furnace. Unfortunately for me I didn’t get them fast enough and they started taking wounds off my Furnace and WLC. While I scorched his Black Orcs, Henry pushed his wolf heroes forward. I mananaged to gas one and the second wore a brass orb to the head. However then his Wolf Chariots charged the HPA and did 11 impact hits. Henry didn’t inflict too many wounds and the big guy had his way with them.

The funniest moment of the battle was when Henry got Foot of Gork off on my Furnace unit and then continued to hit it three more times. Somehow (Henry rolled 1s to wound twice on Furnace) I survived and the unit was charged by Night Goblins and the Wyvern. The rest of the Plague Monk unit was killed off and both Wyvern and NGs were separately charged by Slaves. The Slaves saw off the NG unit but Wyvern survived.

Win 12-8


Game Five – Joe Dixon (Warriors of Chaos)

Now the last four tournament games Joe and I have played have finished 10-10. So we were both expecting a tight game. Joe’s army was awful for me as it comprised 5 units – 2x 10 Knights, 1x 25 Warriors, 2x 5 Marauder Horse plus characters. I knew it was going to be hard to get more than 150 points out of him especially as he had the Puppet. For the only time in the event I took Plague Magic plus the 13th Spell on my Seer.

Game started badly as Joe Chain-Lightninged my WLC off which caused a unit of Slaves to panic off the board. Over the next few turns we very tentatively eyed each other – my HPA getting a unit of horse before dying while his other horse went down to Magic and Shooting.
In the middle turns I tried to reduce one of Joe’s Knight units with Plague but he managed to pull them back out of range while he killed a unit of Gutter Runners. Going into my last Magic phase I worked out Joe was 447 points ahead. So having reduced his Warrior unit in Turn 5 I picked up my Magic Dice and rolled 25 for 13th Spell. Joe’s four dice were not enough and I turned them into rats. I got to yell the immortal words “TAKE THEM OFF”.

This gave me a 3VP win.


Win 10-10

While all this was happening Dan was giving Henry a 20-0 bashing which meant he had leapfrogged me into 1st Place, 8 points in front. Now I knew that Joe and he would do the dance of delicate flowers so I need a big….18+….win to take out first. However, my opponent was Antony Kitson with his Ogres. We were both on the same points.
Game Six – Antony Kitson (Ogres)

I hated this match-up. One of Skaven’s best tools is removed from the mix. However I had a plan. I was going to deploy back and let Antony come to me and then look to reduce his characters and big blocks with a mix of WLC, Crack’s Call and the Brass Orb. The game started off well. In the first turn I managed to get off Skitterleap which drew out his ‘add a die to Dispel roll” toy. Going into Turn 2 I had survived his first Ironblaster shot and then it had blown off its cannon but as in all these situations I cauld pinpoint the actual point it started going wrong. My WLC landed a Str 10 shell on his Mournfang cavalry and I failed to wound one which subsequently cost me the warmachine and opened my flank.

Antony came forward and I saw he had a charge on my Furnace and potentially my Grey Seer. I then made a decision which cost me any chance of the game. I got greedy. I needed to get off Skitterleap – option Seer or Brass Orb Engineer – and instead of throwing six dice at it I threw three dice at Crack’s Call first. Antony let it go – lost one out of three Ogre Bulls and BSB – and held three dice against my three dice. He stopped the Skitterleap and that was the game. The brass orb engineer would have thrown his orb and diverted off the Iron guts while all my units hit the Bulls.

Twice in the last two years I’ve lost 20-0 and both times they were when I didn’t throw six dice at Skitterleap. To be fair it still needed to go off with IF as Ant was holding a scroll. From there I played catch-up and though I forced some flees etc Antony rallied three units on 7 and one on 4 to rub salt into the wound.
Loss 0-20


Wrap Up

So I had a shot at glory and I blew it. Henceforth I’ll be known as the stepladder that Antony climbed to Masters’ glory. The maximum win was enough for him to leapfrog Dan for 1st Place. I felt that Antony really deserved the win in our game because he got up in my grill. I had a plan but I couldn’t execute it and he took full advantage. Well done to him and to both Dan and Joe who finished 2nd and 3rd. Fourth Place was Mal.

So I mightn’t be a Master but if you scroll down you’ll see I can pick them. My three picks for podium finished 1st, 2nd and 4th. Back to the Commentary Box for me.

An excellent event. I had six enjoyable games against strong opponents. Seriously what more can you ask for?