Small Caledor Force :)

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tdc
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Small Caledor Force :)

#1 Post by tdc »

Hey, I'm working on a themed Caledor army, however the initial limit is about 800.

I was thinking of something along the lines of

Lvl 2 mage, silver wand, (shadow)
20 Spearmen + FC
5 Dragon Princes
5 Dragon Princes
2 Drakes (great eagles)

Which leaves about 50 points spare (another dragon prince plus either drakemaster or a couple of extra spearmen).

I was wondering how anyone might consider improving it. I guess my two concerns are hordes, shooting and high toughness opponents.

The eagles would be used as redirect / speed bumps / warmachine hunting, but anything high toughness would really need to be killed in one round by the princes, same with hordes really.

The mage can use shadow to either lower toughness/Initiative + pit/mindrazor units which would help, but it does rely on the fickle winds of magic, an alterntive would be a DP noble with great weapon and helm of fortune (3+/5++ would be a possibility but seems substantially worse than a 2+ re-roll unless the strength is 7 or greater or the hit ignores armour saves - which i think is unlikely at less than 1000 points. This however would take me out of the magic phase... which might be a bad plan...

An alternative would be to go for 10-13 (14 if i loose the silver wand) count-as white lions/phoenix guard* instead of one of the DP units but i'm not sure how effective they would be in comparison to the dragon princes.

The other thought would be to swap out the spearmen for archers, but again that would leave me with a distinct lack of block troops... and banners...

(*) The only 2 things I'm particular against are repeater bolt throwers as the force is meant to be a mobile/reinforcing one and sword masters as i'm somewhat stumped as to how to convert someone holding a two handed sword... (wish they did plastic multi-part swordmasters!)

Obviously the main proviso would be the force must include 1+ units of dragon princes and 1+ drakes
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38061]Warhost of Caledor: The 3 houses of the Darkspine Descent[/url]
Andrew_uk
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#2 Post by Andrew_uk »

Fire works nicely at lower points and is more thematic. I think with the pace of the dragon princes I'd rather have archers than spearmen too
Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log
tdc
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#3 Post by tdc »

Had the first game with the Caledorians this last weekend, 1000 points of

Lvl 2 Fire mage with silver wand,
20 Spearmen,
10 Archers,
3 x 5 Dragon Princes
2 Eagles

They faced off against orcs and goblins
Savage orc shaman,
19 Savage orc boys
10 Savage Boar Boys
2 x 5 Spider riders
2 x goblin chariots
1 x savage giant

I won the first turn and brought the battle line up to just within the charge range of the orcs, mage destroyed one spider rider unit, eagle engaged the other.

Orcs then managed to get double 6s on the giant, orcs and boars allowing the boars to engage one DP unit and the other two to hit the spears. The orc shaman then decided to IF taking out half the orcs and spearmen in the magic phase, combat was a 3 dead on either side for the DP vs boars (the DPs then Ran and got run down :( ) very little happened in the other combat. Though the spearmen ran.

My second turn had one DP unit and an eagle hit the flank of the giant and the other hit a chariot. Magic was un-eventful, combat saw the giant wounded and the chariot destroyed.

The orcs then went on to charge the spearmen again, and the remaining chariot joined in the fray with the giant. The mage once again IF and destroyed himself, my mage and almost the rest of both units. In combat the giant was taken down (and consequently squished a prince...) and the spearmen fled to be run down.

My turn saw the remaining full strength unit of DPs kill the spider riders (for a loss of 2 :( ) and the chariot was finally finished.
For the orc turn, the boars mopped up the archers for little to no loss.

We called the game here with the elves left totalling 4 dragon princes and the orcs having 5 boys and 7 boars.

Luck was definitely not on my side considering how many 6+ ward saves were made!! The army itself seemed to perform reasonably well though :)
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38061]Warhost of Caledor: The 3 houses of the Darkspine Descent[/url]
Baeronvonbleat
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#4 Post by Baeronvonbleat »

With archers and the fire mage, you have the range dominance. Take the time to sit back, let him come to you, and clear out some of that chaffe. I think pushing up gave him the opportunity to control the flow of the game. I like the 3x5 dragon princes at that point level. Would it be worth it to put the spears a little out front and take a charge, allowing the princes to sweep in the flanks and counter hit on your turn?
tdc
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#5 Post by tdc »

The Caledorian in me doesn't like to sit back ;)

The idea was to push up the spears in turn 2 to receive the charge and possibly get a couple of charges off on the flanking chariots as well, get the reform from wining in order to flank the other units.

Contemplating for next time switching the archers and a DP unit for a second spearman unit (and bulking up the other two DP units with the left over points)

So along the lines of
Lvl 2 Fire mage with silver wand,
2 x 20 Spearmen,
2 x 6 Dragon Princes
2 Eagles
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38061]Warhost of Caledor: The 3 houses of the Darkspine Descent[/url]
tdc
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#6 Post by tdc »

Myself and a friend are going to the warhammer doubles tournament in May, and last night saw the first of our doubles tournament practice games.

Our list, Dwarves and Elves
Runesmith, rune of spellbreaking, master gromril rune
25 warriors, standard
19 hammerers, standard
grudge thrower, accuracy, penetration
grudge thrower, penetration, penetration
organ gun

Level 2 Mage, Seer staff (High: Shield, flames, drain)
20 White lion, standard, musician fire banner (7x3)
25 Spears, Full command, Gleaming pennant
5 Dragon Princes,
2 Eagles


Their list, Dark elves and Vampires
Pendant Dreadlord on horse
level 2 mage
14 Dark riders, Musician
5 Wyches
5 Shades
Hydra
Vampire with tricks to make Ld tests on 3 dice at -1
lvl 4 Necromancer
20 Zombies*
20 Zombies*
20 grave guard
30 Skeletons*

*Numbers may be off... they kept growing/shrinking/appearing ;)

It was a battle for the pass, we turtle up in one corner on an anvil of vaul, elves on the edges (white lions on the side nearest the hydra) with the double penetration in the other guarded by the dragon princes and the eagles at either top corner of our deployment zone to stop the scouts from being a pain. They sat spread across their front line elves heading towards the loan thrower, undead and wyches the other side and the shades sat in the middle of our deployment area. The scenery worked out so that we had a bottle neck into our turtled area.

Turn one saw them moving up, a new zombie unit appearing and a couple of white lions and shades disappearing to shooting. The grudge throwers ended up targeting the horses and the hydra (My partner was quite worried about the hydra despite my assurances)

Turn 2 saw Everything enemy moved up, new zombies appearing. One thrower disabling it self and the other missing. My wizard went nuclear casting drain magic and took out a couple of lions. And an eagle tried redirecting the horses at the white lions,

Turn 3 Saw more moving up by the enemys, Failed charge by the lord on horse at the princes and the hydra at the eagle. had more ineffective shooting by the loan working grudgethrower (we really should have targeted the mass of undead that were piling into bottle neck). The dragon princes charged the lord, 2 fell discovering that he was actually quite hard. The Dwarf warriors charged one zombie unit, the other two infantry blocks failed. Wyches disappeared to organ gun fire.

Enemy Turn 4, Eagle was finally eaten by the hydra, darknights set up a pincer with the hydra so that a flank attack would happen which ever unit was charged by the lions, 2 more princes fell. The vampire/skeleton unit charged the dwarves

Our Turn 4, an eagle rear charged the back of another moving through a forest killing NINE including crumbling, Lions charged the hydra and killed it in one refacing to take the cavalary, spears charged the vampire unit, A Thrower finally targetted the mass of undead killing a lot. The other missed the horses. Final dragon prince died.

Enemy Turn 5, dreadlord charged lions, lost and ran away! (Inflicted a single wound on the mage after failing it's fear test!!) Dark riders moved around the lions to bear down on the grudge thrower. Grave guard charged the hammerers, More things died in combat and the dwarf warriors ran away!

Our turn 5, lions charged the fleeing lord, it ran away too far. Dwarfes raillied, The eagle holding up the zombies in the forest finally died! More things died to combat/magic

Enemy turn 6, Darkriders charged the thrower, it died. Dreadlord rallied. Grave guard were wiped out. Elf spears were reduced to 4! and passed their lost combat check on snake-eyes!

Our turn 6, Mage left lions to a) protect them incase he miscast, b) get close enough for the spears to get a shield of saphery.
Skeleton unit was almost wiped out leaving just the vampire and 3 left... arg!, 2 spears now left! Zombie unit almost wiped out by shooting.

Overall we lost
5 dragon princes,
2 Eagles
Grudgethrower

They lost
Hydra
Graveguard
Zombie unit...

we win by 110 :)


Things that we learnt were target the mass of troops with the throwers... as that's why we decided to take them!
White lions are awesome!
We need to speed up our game (end of turn 4 was about 2 hours.)
Focussed fire/attack is what is needed for undead. Eliminating one unit is better than 2 injured units.
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38061]Warhost of Caledor: The 3 houses of the Darkspine Descent[/url]
Andrew_uk
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#7 Post by Andrew_uk »

Dwarves and Elves joining sides? But how can this be???? Naturally being a fellow Caledorian player it was clearly your superiority and generalship that clinched the win in the end, that and the Dragon princes.
Bring me my bow of burning gold, bring me my arrows of desire, bring me my spear O' Clouds unfold, bring me my chariot of FIRE!

Check out my rather slow caledor themed painting log and my dragon project... also my faster moving nurgle themed Warriors of Chaos themed painting log
tdc
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Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:21 pm
Location: England :) Home of Dragons!

Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#8 Post by tdc »

Andrew_uk wrote:Dwarves and Elves joining sides? But how can this be???? Naturally being a fellow Caledorian player it was clearly your superiority and generalship that clinched the win in the end, that and the Dragon princes.
It's all finubar's doing! He made them say sorry ;)
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38061]Warhost of Caledor: The 3 houses of the Darkspine Descent[/url]
tdc
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Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2011 12:21 pm
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#9 Post by tdc »

So the Doubles tournament is in two days, and I think we've finalised our list (through about half a dozen games, silly real life being busy :/)

Level 2 Mage, Seerstaff (High: Drain, Fury, Flames)
20 Caledorian Spearmen with bows *cough*seaguard*cough* musician, banner, gleaming pennant
21 White lions, full command, flaming banner
4 Young Dragons (Eagles)

Rune Smith with shield and dispel scroll
20ish Dwarf rangers with greatweapons, banner
19ish Hammerers with banner
2 Grudge Throwers (+1 Str, Rune of Accuracy)
1 Organ Gun

1 Anvil of Vaul, we sit on it and shoot everthing with magic flaming everything, when it gets close enough, the lions chop it to pieces :) Anything that we don't want for a while gets sent a baby dragon to entertain them :)
So far this list/tactic has not lost in the last 3 games, and only drew against a mildly illegal chaos/daemon list (the daemon half wasn't a legal force, had a BSB instead of a general and only 2 units) It would also have been a win had the entire elf army not run off after being flanked by ambushing marauders... (moved an eagle that was preventing the ambushers to come on the board into our flank... cost us dearly...)

We'll have to see how it goes now :)
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38061]Warhost of Caledor: The 3 houses of the Darkspine Descent[/url]
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Elessehta of Yvresse
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#10 Post by Elessehta of Yvresse »

You have more shooting than the dawi, how odd, have fun.
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=34506][i]Lord Elessehta Silverbough of Ar Yvrellion, Ruler of Athel Anarhain, Prince of the Yvressi.[/i][/url]
[quote="Narrin’Tim"]These may be the last days of the Asur, but if we are to leave this world let us do it as the heroes of old, sword raised against evil![/quote]
tdc
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#11 Post by tdc »

Elessehta of Yvresse wrote:You have more shooting than the dawi, how odd, have fun.
No, we have the same, plus he has the warmachines (the rangers come with crossbows)

I'd have preferred doing an all archer core and include the Ruby ring on the white lion champ but I have no archer models and wouldn't be able to get them painted in the time we had left (as well as all the other bits I still had to do at that point...)
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38061]Warhost of Caledor: The 3 houses of the Darkspine Descent[/url]
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#12 Post by Elessehta of Yvresse »

Your spears look amazing anyway, why wouldn't you want to use them ^_^
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=34506][i]Lord Elessehta Silverbough of Ar Yvrellion, Ruler of Athel Anarhain, Prince of the Yvressi.[/i][/url]
[quote="Narrin’Tim"]These may be the last days of the Asur, but if we are to leave this world let us do it as the heroes of old, sword raised against evil![/quote]
tdc
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#13 Post by tdc »

Elessehta of Yvresse wrote:Your spears look amazing anyway, why wouldn't you want to use them ^_^
There is that :D
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38061]Warhost of Caledor: The 3 houses of the Darkspine Descent[/url]
tdc
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#14 Post by tdc »

Well we had a great time and came 52nd out of 114.

First game was battle for the pass and we were up against a dual empire list. They won the first turn and promptly turned both grudge throwers into piles of rock! From there on it was an upward battle and we never quite recovered from it. Their steam tank decided to make all of it's saves from white lions time and time again which really didn't help, failing maybe 4 out of about 30 wounds put on it!

Second game was meeting engagement and most of our troops turned up, but not the organ gun! We were up against a dark elf/high elf combo gunline which included a big blocks of executioners and swordmasters and 4 bolt throwers. The might of caledor caused much damge to their alliance taking out much of their army (flames of the phoenix on the executioners and then white lions equals a very dead unit!) Unfortunately it wasn't quite enough and we could only scrape a draw on VPs.

Round 3 was the watch tower against high elf/wood elf alliance. The dwarves being dwarves decided they'd like to sit in the tower and shoot things as they approached. This worked fine until treekin came a knocking on the door... the dwarves promptly failed their stubborn ld 9 test and fled, next up the hammerers moved in to the tower to show them how it was done... apparently they don't like trees either and fled out again. Finally the white lions stepped up to the mark and sat in the tower for our turn 3... In their turn 4 I then made my team extremely worried by not dispelling a cast of fury of khaine on his quarrellers in favour of trying to dispel the vaul's unmaking which i knew was going to happen on the white lions (with flaming banner... important against trees!) The high mage the IF cast it which was a pretty typical example of how the rest of our luck was going (as mean while the rest of our army had fled off the board or was about to be eaten by dragon prince/eagles flanking us.)

The combat was brutal, but the lions held! despite heavy losses for little in return (damn trees and their ward save! He was constantly making it in all combats..) could this be the end of the game? Turns out it wasn't... Turn 5 starts and the treekin once again charge into the tower, dragon princes and eagles finish mopping up the remains of our force, now it really is down to the lions, and they really show what their axes are for! Killing all but one treekin, and heavily wounding it they sit in the tower for out turn 5... which miraculously is the final turn! A totally undeserved win considering how little of our army was left compared to theirs but still, the first win (and the best game to boot, hilarious watching so many failed ld tests and seeing everyone flee!)

Sunday morning saw our forth game blood and glory, against lizards and brettonians. This was a hard match, although quite lucky for us as their cannon either missed our grudge throwers or failing to wound them when it did hit. The forth turn started with them needing 1 more bp and us needing 2... but how the game was looking this was actually really close, his warrior priest was running away from dwarves and we had a unit with banner down to just a handful. Through some miracle the battered dwarf unit survived an onslaught of magic and cannon fire and held it's ground with just 3 left! Our turn came and the speedy dwarves overran the warrior priest general and beat him to death winning us our second game!

Fifth game was a straight forward pitched battle against ogres and vampires... we one the first turn and the grudge throwers proceeded to kill a mournfang cav champion (failed lookout sir) who then fled of the board! and then killed another ogre. The organ then minced 7 wounds off a scouting group of ogres... leaving an eagle blocking them from assaulting our lines in the following turn. There's was fairly uneventful with things moving up, although the combat did see the eagle slaughter the remaining ogre from the scout unit. The hammerers went out to meet the last of the ogres whilst the seaguard shot a large group of ghoulkin and the lions waited for the ghouls and mortis engine to turn up. A turn later saw the mortis engine and ghoulkin engage the seaguard (the former through over run, the later was already in combat) and in our turn the hammers and whitelions charged into the fray. 12 wounds on the mortis engine later (white lions are phenominal!) and all that was left was the ghouls and a necromancer to mop up... and the only unit we'd lost was the sea guard (from the exploding mortis engine)... and 3 of the eagles, but that's the fate of redirectors...

Unsurprisingly the ghouls were destroyed giving us our 3rd win :)
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=38061]Warhost of Caledor: The 3 houses of the Darkspine Descent[/url]
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Elessehta of Yvresse
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#15 Post by Elessehta of Yvresse »

Some bad luck there, glad you had fun.
[url=http://www.ulthuan.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=34506][i]Lord Elessehta Silverbough of Ar Yvrellion, Ruler of Athel Anarhain, Prince of the Yvressi.[/i][/url]
[quote="Narrin’Tim"]These may be the last days of the Asur, but if we are to leave this world let us do it as the heroes of old, sword raised against evil![/quote]
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Re: Small Caledor Force :)

#16 Post by Jimmy »

Thanks for the report, sounds like you had a great time, well done! :)
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