Timely Reminder

On Saturday I had an excellent game with Mike and his Lizards. We played Dawn Attack using our Equinox armies in a hit out for next week.


I was able to keep my army together and bring early pressure on Mike who had his army far more spread. This led to me building a strong early lead as I cleaned out an expensive Skrox unit, both Salamander units and various Skink units in the first couple of turns. Things were looking very good for the Ogres as I turned my army around to create a pseudo-Battle for the Pass.

And then disaster struck. Mike picked up six dice for a spell and rolled Irresistible Force. He then resolved his miscast getting the Dimensional Cascade result. One Cupped Hands later and my Slaughtermaster, the mighty Spiky Five-Bellies disappeared into the warp.

Now I could have ranted and raved and cursed my bad luck at having a solid winning position pulled back markedly. However what ensued was a great last four turns where I battled against the Slaan’s magic assault to try and re-create my advantage. I thought I had done it when I got bulls + BSB + Ironblaster into Mike’s Saurus. However he made not one but two Insane Courage rolls. This effectively held me up and allowed him to get a last turn charge off onto my Ironguts. While his Skrox were unlikely to lose I didn’t expect them to win and stood to receive the charge. Mike won the combat by one and ran them down.

In retrospect it was poor play by me – by that I mean I should have fled the charge – putting a unit at risk I didn’t need too. It cost me 500+ points and gave Mike an advantage of about 100 VPs. If I had fled Mike could have re-directed into a second unit that would have got away by fleeing through the Ogre Bulls. In that instance I would have had to make a Leadership 8 test with a re-roll and would have preserved the win.

To me it was a salient lesson in not thinking things through and a good reminder before next week’s tournament.