Monstermashbash HE vs. CD 2400 points

[Viale]

My mate and I played a game last month and he usually takes notes and scribbles down a Battlereport of our games, this time I wrote a long essay detailing my army, the battle and final thoughts so I feel it might be proper to include it here as well(I'm Racso).

Originally written by Bloodbeard on Chaos Dwarfs Online. Check out more battle reports or see Bloodbeard army project on his Army Blog

2400p: High Elves vs Chaos Dwarfs
“As Prince Anouilh of Tor Arabak soared above the clouds on his trusty dragon he spotted the high spires of The Black Tower in the distance. Now was the time for avenging the many fallen elves the degenerate dwarfs had slain in the preceding years. Hundreds of innocent souls had been lost, all the potential these could have added to the world forever lost to the rampages of the spawn of the ruinous powers.

As Anouilh’s host “The Avengers” moved through the valley little did they know a Chaos Dwarf army led by a Sorcerer-prophet on a crude imitation of the majestic dragons had set up an ambush behind a nearby forest.

Battle was about to commence…”

This battle report has been delayed a bit due to me starting work and my bale taurus still being a secret GH entry at the time of the game. So the details might be a bit fuzzy on that account.
Luckily Racso has joined the forum and will add his comments to the game as well. ... might call for some debate. In the case of disagreements always side with the Dawi Zharr - the High Elves has a tendency for lying (Malekith and all that).

Armies
High Elves
Racso the High Elf general brought the following army to the battle.

My army as a whole is a continuation of my old 2000 points army which Bloodbeard has faced before and also written a battlereport for in this blog(page 1, post 19). The main purpose with this army is getting to use a dragon. In order to fulfil this I need it to survive long enough to get into combat hence the two Phoenixes and the large unit of Silver Helms. Fast and hard hitting tough targets all over the place. He would be too tasty/easy a target if he was the only monster.

Prince Anouilh: Star Dragon, Lance, Shield, Heavy Armour, Dragon Helm, The Other Tricksters Shard, The Golden Crown.

Noble: Barded Steed, Dragon Armour, Charmed Shield, Sword of Might, Ironcurse Icon

Magnulion the Mage: level 2(High Magic), Steed, Khaine's Ring of Fury, Dispel Scroll.

16 Silver Helms: Shields, Full Command Group.

5 Ellyrian Reavers: Spears, Bows, Musician.

5 Ellyrian Reavers: Spears, Bows, Musician.

3 seperate Tiranoc Chariot

1 Lothern Skycutter: Boltthrower

1 Frost Phoenix

1 Flame Phoenix

2 seperate Great Eagle

That is one super fast army roster! And I have 3 units with Thunder Stomp - and there is not a single thing to tramble in the list.

Chaos Dwarfs
I wanted to try out my Bale Taurus and I always bring my hellcannon. So it was all about filling out the gaps there. Again I found core hard to not overfill because I still need painted hobgoblins. But after the battle, I think it was the right choice not to bring them.

Prophet on Bale Taurus lvl 4 lore of hashut, talisman of preservation, dragonhelm, earthning rod. A Castellan with BSB, mask of the furnace. A lvl 2 daemonsmith lore of metal. 20 IG, hand weapons and shields with full command. 25 Blunderbuss IG, with full command. Hellbound Iron Demon. Deathshrieker. Hellcannon.

I haven't brought the chalice this time. Racso doesn't think it's fun when playing RAW (I get that) and we haven't found a way to tweak it so that it's not just bad or useless. We play Warhammer friendly and nice, so I can play just fine without that item.
[hr]
Scenario and setup
We rolled a standard pitched battle.

I tried to set up in one corner. But didn't angle my troops enough. That is a mistake that cost me a lot of needed movement. And I still haven't figured out my Hellcannon, it seems that no matter what I do - those bloody reavers manage to lock him in with the 1" rule. My Prophet deployed away from the main battle line, hiding behind a hill. Not very epic, but that position and his flying ability opened up the entire battle field.



The High Elves and Racso had lots of chaff and units. Eagles and chariots dropping all over the place. The Silverhelms and Dragon deployed away from my blunderbusses, ready to smash into the standard Infernal Guard regiment.


And here the armies are deployed in front of one another. The battle is about to begin. The High Elves win the roll off - after a lot of re-rolling.

[hr]
HE 1
The Elves advance over the entire line of battle. Not much to mention there. The mage use drain magic on himself and then manages to take a wound of the Iron Demon with the unforging spell. Most importantly the silverhelm regiment now has a 5+ wardsave.


CD 1
I do a bit of manouvering, marching my blunderbusses toward the high elves, turning my Iron Demon. Most daring my Bale Taurus and Prophet fly into the middle of the battlefield, trying to march block the elves. Making sure he won't get charged by any of them.



The winds of magic are fickle and the only spell the Prophet get through is Ashstorm - which is promptly dispelled by a scroll.
A demolition rocket hits directly on the dragon and prince. The dragon takes 3 wounds and the prince is forced to use the magic in The Golden Crown.
The Hellcannon fires and goes for a direct hit on the Prince and Dragon (hoping to take them out), but despite a daemonsmith re-roll it scatters off. The template hit a unit of reavers - but is does 0 wounds on them.
The Iron Demon steams 4 reavers to death, but the last one passes his leadership test and remains on the battlefield.

[hr]
HE 2
This is bassically just another round of moving around the units on the board. Getting ready to hit me with force with everything at the same time. The bloody reavers being all fast and constantly reforming moves to prevent my Hellcannon from pivoting by 1" rule. The lvl 2 mage is inferior to the might of the prophet and doesn't manage anything in the magic phase. The scycutter fires its boltthrower, but it fails to hurt the bale taurus.
The Reavers and Chariots all fire their bows at the daemonsmith or the prophet, but the armor of the Dawi Zharr is too strong - no lucky arrows this turn.


CD 2
I try to turn my entire battle line, because the High Elves are gonna hit my left flank. The blunderbusses are too far out from anything and as things look at the moment, they won't get to do the devastating stand and shoot reaction on anything. The Hellcannon is completely locked by reavers, so it can't turn at all. And it's not fast enough to move away from them (happens every single game! What do you guys do?).
The Prophet and Bale Taurus are still hiding behind a skull, but a chariot is ready to charge them, so he moves away to safety again.
Magic is weak again, I get 2 bloody dice - and fail to get any spell through.
The Iron Demon hits the Prince and takes 2 wounds off him. Another demolision rocket hit the prince as dragon as well (again with no help from the daemonsmith.) Prince Anouilh is slain! Though I bet he survived the encounter and fights me another day. The dragon (unfortunately) ain't hurt any further.
[hr]
He 3
The Frost Phoenix charge the Infernal Guard with handweapons close to the Iron Demon. The Dragon (who had a nice monster reaction for my opponnent) and the silverhelms charge the Iron Demon. A great eagle on the right flank charge the daemonsmith protecting the hellcannon and deathshrieker. I have forgotten to move the way he faces - so it's a flank charge. Not a great start for that little dwarf.
The magic phase sees nothing happen at all. But the winds of magic are strong enough to give both Phoenixes a 4+ wardsave.
No elves manages to hurt any dwarfs with arrows in this turn either.
The Star Dragon (and that's one nasty dragon!) does 1 wound on the Iron Demon, the silverhelms cant do any damage to the metallice beast and the crew obviously fail to do anything in return.
The Frost Phoenix kills a couple of Infernal Guard, but being steadfast the remain in the fight.


The Great Eagle and Daemonsmith fight eachother, but neither manages to hurt the other. Despite being 2 points down on combat resolution the daemonsmith holds his ground and reform to face the eagle.
One this picture you can also see the rather bad situation for my Hellcannon being locked in place and prevented from firing its deadly shot.


CD 3
The Prophet and Bale Taurus charge a chariot in front of them. Racso is in doubt wether to choose 'flee' as a charge reaction or 'hold'. But the change of me redirecting my charge into the flank of the Silverhelms is too great. He holds, hoping I end up overrunning into the Flame Phoenix. The Hellcannon charge the eagle in front of it, fighting the daemonsmith.
The Wind of Magic are again not on the side of the Dawi Zharr and I roll a 2+3. THe prophet uses the power to cover the flame phoenix in an ash storm! Preventing the monster from joining any combat the next turn.
The death rocket launcher scores its third hit in a row and blow a great eagle (next to the flame phoenix) to a bloody mist of pink feathers.


The Great Eagle in combat with the daemonsmith manages to take 1 wound from him, before getting eaten be the enraged Hellcannon. Unfortunately my Blunderbuss unit are in the way of the helcannon, preventing it from overrunning far into the battle field (always make sure the Hellcannon has room for this - being slow as it is!).
The Prophet and Bale Taurus does 2 wound on the chariot and it fails to hurt them in return. The crew turn their chariot around and flee over a hill and over a cliff wall. But the craftmanship os sturdy and the chariot doesn't take any wounds from the dangerous terrain. The Prophet repositions his taurus facing the Silverhelm/Dragon/Iron Demon fight. He has a chariot to his rear, but the distance is rather long - so I cross my fingers and hope for a failed charged.
In another combat the Frost Phoenix kills 1 infernal guard but stomp another 5 to death - they Dawi Zharr fail to hurt the phoenix. Still steadfast they stay in the fight - I love the stubborness of the dwarfs.
The Silverhelms and dragon does nothing to the Iron Demon and that combat is a stand still.

[hr]
HE 4
The fleeing cheariot continues it's run and almost makes it to the board edge - but misses by a few inches. The Chariot behind the bale taurus tries to pull of the long charge. He needs to move 16" and only manages to roll+move 15" - so it ends up gettin 3" forward. Real great news for the prophet and bale taurus.
After the Hellcannon charged forward, the reavers are free to charge my deadly death rocket launcher.
The Elven mage try to cast Arcane Unforgeing on my Castellan . it dispel it right away not wanting to loose Mask of the Furnace.
A large bolt fired from the flying chariot hit and hurt the bale taurus, but the amazing blazing body re-roll save him.

The reavers fail to hurt the crew of the deathrocket, but the bloody horses do a wound and kill a crewmember. The crew do one wound in return, but it is saved. The BSB cloes by prevent the crew from abbandoning their machine.
Again the Frost Phoenix wins combat and kills two more infernal guard. The BSB re-roll also let these guys stay in the fight a bit longer.
Only the Star Dragon hurt the Iron Demon. Neither crew nor Silverhelms does any damage. I simply love this hellbound machine.

CD 4
The Bale Taurus charge the Silverhelms in the flank. The Infernal Guard with blunderbusses charge into the front of that combat as well.
The winds of magic again gives me only 4 dice (1 being from chanelling), but it's enough to keep the flame phoenix covered in the Ash Storm. Very important spell, if that monster charged into the big combat, it would have quite the impact.
The Hellcannon doesn't have much space, but he can see the chariot (who failed the charge earlier). He scores a misfire/hit, the daemonsmith manages to turn that into a pure hit. Unfortunately I roll a 1 and the chariot is not blasted to pieces.

Lots of dice to remember in the major close combat. Good thing the initiative is on the elven side - makes it easier to remember. The noble leading the silverhelms call out a challenge and the Deathmask Champion of the Blunderbuss regiment accepts it. Neither does any damage.
The elves fail their fear test this round and hit very badly. The combined might of the Bale Taurus, Blazing Body, Infernal Guard and two breath weapons (rolled 2 for my dark forged weapon) kills 9 Silverhilms - the great weapon wielding Castellan and the Prophet does nothing with their own attacks. The loss is so overwelming that the Silverhelms break and flee. It should be noted that we play with some house rules (no steadfast if disrupted, monsters can disrupt). The Dragon stays in the fight.
These Cluster Fudge battles can be a real pain to figure out. As the Silverhelms are gone, but was part of the battle between dragon and iron demon as well - so what happens to the bale taurus and infernal guard? It's all one big fight. We decided to break it up.
My Bale Taurus and prophet overrun into the flank of the Dragon and my Blunderbuss unit reforms to face the lone chariot in the middle of the field.


The Frost Phoenix kills 6 infernal guard (5 with stomp) and they finally break and flee from combat. The phoenix reforms and faces the rear of the blunderbuss regiment (I really hoped my IG would have stayed for another round of combat). My deathrocket crew are slain y the reavers.

[hr]

HE 5
Freed from combat with one Infernal Guard unit the frost phoenix promptly charge the blunderbuss unit in the rear. The reavers having killed the death shriekers crew take out the fleeing remnant of the IG regiment. The bale taurus and prophet are charged by a chariot and the skycutter chariot.
There is no magic as the high elf mage is dead. Some reaver loose some arrows on the lone daemonsmith, luckily he is saved by his armor.

The frost phoenix only kill one infernal guard and my Castellan manages to do a wound in return (finally!), but once again thunderstump kills 2. The Castellans stubborn rule prevents the regiment from fleeing.

Blazing body does 1 wound on a chariot. Both the Skycutter and the other chariot makes but a single impact hit, causing a wound on the Bale Taurus. The crew of the chariots try to kill the prophet, but his armor and talisman saves him. The Star Dragon takes another 2 wound of the Bale Taurus.
The Bale Taurus kills the skycutter and the prophet takes a wound of the other chariot. This is a defining moment for the battle, as the elves loose the combat with 1! But everything stays in the fight (worst is the Star Dragon!).


CD 5
Almost everything is locked in combat.
Ashstorm is finally dispelled this turn, leaving the Flame Phoenix free to do something this late in the game. The Prophet tries to augment himself and the Bale Taurus with Breath of Hatred - but it fails. The lone Daemonsmith tries to get of Final Transmutation on the reavers near him. Knowing we must be close when estimating Victory Points. It fails.
My Castellan looses a wound to the Frost Phoenix and it stomps two blunderbuss guys into the dirt, it's not hurt in return. Despite having a low leadership, I manage to reform the IG so they get some ranks and look the Phoenix in the eyes.
Blazing Body is fantastic as it takes a wound of the chariot and destroys it - freeing up all my attacks for the Star Dragon. But the Dragon kills the Bale Taurus and the Prophet fails to do any damage to the beast. My Iron Demon is still in place, but is doens't do any damage. This round of combat is a draw.
[hr]
HE 6
The last remaining chariot (then one who fled many turns ago) charge my prophet. The (finally) free flame Phoenix charge the blunderbuss regiment in the side.
Come on talisman of preservation! My prophet manages to save the impact hits hitting him. The dragon wounds him 3 times and he ony saves 1, so looses 2 wounds. He does 1 wound on the chariot, but that is saved. Finally the dragon does 2 stomp hits on him and he fails his saves - crush! My general is dead. ... I fear the battle is lost. The chariot overruns into the Iron Demon.



The Flames phoenix does 0 wounds and the frost phoenix only do 1 on the castellan but his wad save protects him. Then my Castellan manages to hurt the forst phoenix. Finally there's a chance of winning the bloody fight against the giant birds. But the frost phoenix (master of stomps) kills 4 with a thunder stomp. Thankfully the BSB let's me stay in the fight.

CD 6
My Hellcannon charge the lone reaver (who has been running solo since turn 1).
My daemonsmith tries searing doom on the other reaver regiment, it's dispelled. Final Transmutaion kills 2 of them however they pass their panic test.
The Hellcannon eat the reaver quickly.
The chariot does 6 impact hits on the Iron Demon, but the tough little train only takes 1 wound. The dragon takes another wound of the Iron Demon - but it's still alive.
Again the phoenixes fail to do any damage on the infernal guard and I manage to hurt the frost phoenix 2 times (despite it's bloody 4+ ward save!). Again their is a fair change of winning this round of combat, but again the frost phoenix kill 4 infernal guard with a thunder stomp. The battle is over and the combat is still doing on.


Victory Poits
We do the count. I get zero points for the High Elf general as I was unable to kill the dragon.
High Elves end up with 1102 VP and the Dawi Zharr has 1133. A small 31 points difference after all that bloodshed and close combat.
DRAW!

What a cool game! Racso has written up some comments on the game, gonna insert them as quotes here. Some good analyses of the game. My thoughts?

I hate that frost phoenix! It has a great wardsave (often enhanced by the magic phase) and you get -1 strength when fighting it.
I need to learn to use my blunderbuss regiment better. I wasted 150 points giving the regiment blunderbuss and I didn't get to fire them once!
I need to figure out how not to get my hellcannon trapped by freaking reavers. They do it every single game. Lock me in with the stupid 1" rule.
Perhaps the thing to do, is bring a khan to run right into the face of the bloody pony boys. Or should I simply stop using the hellcannon as a flank protecter? Tips are welcome (even though Racso is now spying!)

Wow! This was a nerve-wracking and thoroughly tense game all the way through. Most memorable moment for my Elves was perhaps the pissed off Star Dragon which, having lost its beloved Prince Anouilh, ends up killing the Bale Taurus and afterwards smashes the now mountless Prophet to a pulp.

It surely has earned a proper name by now, with the suffix “Balebane”.

Army Break-down

The keen-eyed observer might immediately notice the lack of a Battle standard. The reason for such an unorthodox move is simply because I don’t have one painted. So he’s out until I get around to making one.

Splitting up the three chariots into three single units sadly makes too much sense. They look awesome lined up next to each other in one great unit but misses out on a lot of manoeuvrability and creates an unnecessary all-in-one-basket scenario. And such a unit is in general damn hard to move around the table. Three single chariots on the other hand have much more presence, threat-range, three extra throw-away units as well as two more units during deployment.

My noble and mage goes with the Silver Helms. The primary purpose of the mage is to carry a scroll, and with the High Magic lore attribute combined with the noble’s Ironcurse Icon I might be better equipped to handle warmachines shooting at my knights.
The noble is there to add some leadership, carry the Icon and perhaps kill something in a challenge. Also I love the model, so I almost always try to include a mounted fighter.

Lastly I had totally forgotten the new rules regarding character percentages. This is why Prince Anouilh kept his family heirloom at home at only brought along a lowly lance.(to keep him at 25%) Otherwise I would happily lose a chariot for the Star Lance.

Comments on the game
I felt the game went very much back and forth on who had the upper hand. I could not in any easy way pick off Bloodbeards’ tough as nails Infernal Guards, warmachines(or those acting like, without being warmachines) or Prophet on Bale Taurus. Fliers are a pain to catch. At the same time the amount of disposable units and fliers of my own in my army made it extremely hard for Bloodbeard to use his two units of Infernal Guards.

During the first few turns I tried to engage the Bale Taurus with my Flame Phoenix. My thinking was that its fireborn(2+ ward save against flaming attacks) special rule could keep the Bale Taurus engaged for a while.

The Hellcannon was, as in previous battles, prevented from doing its best by being blocked by 5 Ellyrian Reavers, thereby preventing it from pivoting and thus seeing much of the battlefield for most of the game

The Deathrocket was quite the sniper in this game. It managed to explode poor Anouilh into very very very tiny bits as well as inflicting three wounds on the Dragon. Luckily it passed its Stupidity Test(Leadership 9 on a monster is really strong in that regard). That warmachine is golden due to having two different firing modes.

My biggest mistake during the game was forgetting/underestimating the Iron Deamon and just how hard it is to shift. My Silver Helm and Dragon charge was intended to kill it/break it on the first turn, thus overrunning the Dragon into the Infernal Guards engaged by the Frost Phoenix. Little did I know that a) it has god damn 8 in toughness and b) it's unbreakable.
This blunder resulted in the Sorceror-Prophet getting a very favourably Flank Charge into the Silver Helms, resulting in an almost complete annihilation of the unit(poor armour save rolls didn't help in that matter either).

In the same turn Bloodbeard charged his Blunderbusses into the Front of the Silver Helms – In hindsight this was probably one of the more important moves because I would otherwise have been able to challenge the Sorceror-Prophet and Bale Taurus in three consecutive turns with my Silver Helm Champion, my mage and finally noble. This, in turn, would have prevented me from losing too badly on combat resolution and subsequently breaking(perhaps). And the aftermath would have seen my Flame Phoenix charge his Bale Taurus as well as chariots giving me both flank and rear charge bonuses in combat resolution.
Alternatively I could have made way with my three guys and forced him to divide all his attacks and breath attacks between only 3 targets – drastically minimizing his potential kills.

Surprisingly the Frost Phoenix managed to single-handedly kill an entire unit of Infernal Guards only through its Thunderstomp. We were both dumbfounded by its sheer killing power through that alone since it fumbled its regular attacks horribly every turn.

The only unit/model I was somewhat unimpressed with was my skycutter. It failed to do anything that an ordinary chariot wouldn't have been able to do. But on the other hand I still need to paint my crew so it probably let me down due to not being painted. The boltthrower is harder to use than one might expect because of its short range(24”) and usually moving it tends to only hit on 5+.

We had the most low-profile magic phases I've ever encountered, not a single miscast/irresistible force dice roll during the entire game. This was due to two factors I think: I only had a single level 2 High Magic mage and Bloodbeard kept rolling the lowest dice possible when rolling for winds of magic. So we had very few opportunities for going all in.

Final Thoughts and Army Evaluations
One aspect I found really great about this game was how much was decided in the movement and close combat phases. Neither magic nor shooting was conclusive, but still influential on the final outcome of the game aka. Poor Anouilh being rocketed to death and my Flame Phoenix having to spend two consecutive turns in an Ash Storm.

The large unit of Blunderbusses also single-handedly decided my deployment, as well as where I wanted to engage. Those guys, even though not firing their guns a single turn, had much more influence on the game than one might get the impression of. They decided my deployment and cut off half the table from me.

The Bale Taurus, I feel, adds a whole lot of pressure on the opponent and allows the Chaos Dwarfs to be proactive instead of reactive and combined with the Hell Cannon, Iron Deamon and/or Destroyer I think they can be quite aggressive in forcing the opponent's moves. This wasn't too prevalent in this game because I brought along my newly revived fliers-to-the-face army.

I believe my own army would be much improved by upgrading the level 2 mage to a level 4 arch mage the issue then becomes whether or not to keep High magic or substituting it for Lore of Life. It's a tough call to make because it comes down to lore attributes and Throne of Wines. Healing wounds on so many multi-wound models has a certain synergy, and Throne of Wines would grant me some security from blasting half my Silver Helms away on a miscast. On the other hand a level 4 High magic wielding Elf has +5 to casting rolls, and High magic is in general a very low-casting-value lore(Arcane Unforging is only 13, so quite easy for a lvl 4) and combined with the ward save he grants to the knights it seems very sexy.

One matter that was really hammered home in this game was deployment. I had twice as many units as Bloodbeard(and most of those were fairly inconsequential units – great eagles, reavers and chariots) this meant I hadn't even begun placing the important stuff when he was down to placing all his characters. That is an amazing advantage.

I think Bloodbeards army would gain a lot from having just a few hobgoblin archer regiments, because I keep getting cheap units in the way of his Hell Cannon and subsequently his flanks and he lacks any sure ways of removing those units. I wonder if 2*3 firedeamons(those djinnlooking guys he's built) could be useful in securing his flanks, also I like them and they ought to be used all the time.

Finally, it feels strangely empowering having units being able to do stuff without the aid of magic, unlike my core-based army, which only really worked if the magic phase was favourable.

If you have any comments fire away. Maybe you guys could help me decide what lore to use with my soon-to-be level 4 mage.

Thank you for reading.