Dwarves, Dwarves, Dwarves: Runefang Day 2

Day 2 of Runefang is over, and so i present to you my wrap up of day 2 of Runefang Day 2.

Game 4: John Murrie

Dwarves from Stumpy Heaven (John's Blog) complete with flaming cannon fun! The scenario was Battle for the Pass, the long table edge deployment scenario. I put both units of Dryads at the front of my deployment zone with both Treeman/Kin/Highborn units behind the Dryads for missile protection, and placed the Glade Guard with BSB and Lifeweaver on my far right flank facing down John's Crossbow Dwarves.  He placed both his Organ Gun and Flaming Magic Death Cannon on a hill close to the edge of his deployment zone, he placed his Hammerers with Lord in front of said hill and both big warrior blocks to ether side of the Hammerers with both unit of Crossbow Dwarves facing down the Glade Guard.  My opening move was to push everything bar the Glade Guard forward with one of the Treeman circling round the circle undead hill thing. I HODAedTM a unit of Crossbow Dwarves to little effect oh and John smashed a Treeman to death with the Flaming Death Cannon. John also moved a Dwarf Helicopter around the hill thing to face down my sneaky Treeman.

Deployment and Early game (1-2)

For Athel Loren: Runefang Day 1

Day 1 of Runefang is done, and so to continue of habit for writing day 1 tournament reports before day 2 even begins here is my report for Runefang Day 1, enjoy.

Game 1: Neil Wiliamson

Game 1 was the always potentially hilarious Dawn Attack against Neil and his Warriors of Chaos. Frequent readers of this blog, and warhammer players in general, will know that Wood Elves have a bad track record against the mortal servants of chaos. The scenario did me no favors by throwing my Treekin and general on the left flank with very little to do. The deployment rules then proceeded to place Neil's Dragon Ogres, Shaggoth, Chariot, one spawn and a unit of Marauder horse on the right flank facing down a unit of Dryads, the BSB (who in a leave of sanity i decided to not put the Glade guard unit) and a Treeman. The opening turns were indecisive with Galrauch miscasting and hurting himself and ,most notability, Neil charging the Treekin with a Chimera, breaking them and being unable to run them down.

Deployment and opening turns (1-2)

The Forest Got Scary

The floodgates have opened and out of them have flooded forth a tidal wave of Wood Elf rumory goodness! So far most of it has been good news, some of it has been exceptionally good news and a very small amount has been bad news. The aim of this post is to cover what we know, what we think we know and my views on all of it. So get a nice hot beverage, sit back and read on.

So what do we know (i.e what rumors have evidence to back them up)

-Wood Elves will have access to all 8 rule book lores in addition to the High and Dark lores with new lore attributes.

-The forest spirit ward save will drop to 6+ but works all the time, otherwise the forest spirit rule stays the same.

-Wood Elves have ASF

-Durthu is back! With a sword.

-Stag Riders are a unit in the Wood Elf army 

So lets start at the top. The access to all 8 lores is great, no longer will Wood Elf players fear 1+ armour save, with access to the lore of metal all you need is a level 1 metal mage with the signature spell. And of course the idea of using death magic to hit a enemy unit with Soulblight right before unleashing a volley at them is very amusing, the possibilities are endless. Now the big news is that we gain access to both the High and Dark lores and the importance of this cannot be understated. Those lores are good on their own but combined in the same army they are exceptional. Walking a Treeman between worlds whilst hitting the enemy with Shroud of Despair will be something to watch. Turning back to High magic and we now have a way to deal with things like The Banner of the World Dragon, or the Banner of Eternal Flame. This is one of the best pieces of news to come out yet.

All the evidence you need

The Forest Awakens!

What an exciting 24 hours it has been for all us Wood Elf players/fans. It started with the 36 second teaser (which featured the sleepy treeman yawning a some Bretionna Men at Arms) and now we have this:

Its a Treeman, but not like we know them (Turns out is the Durthu Model)

Fury of the Forest

What with Runefang just around the corner (next weekend) i decided that today i would get in few practice games with the Wood Elves. My opponent for these practice games would be Jayden from the Imperial Patrol blog. For one game he would use his Empire and for the second game we would swap armies for variety. He took:

A Empire General with Full Plate, Shield and Runefang

A Level 4 Heavns Wizard

A Master Engineer

A Level 2 Light Wizard

20 Halberds

60 Crossbows (in units of 10)

24 Reiksguard Knights

3 Cannons

1 Helblaster

I was using my Runefang List, which is more wood than elf, and is reprinted below:

Highborn (2#, 335 pts)
   1 Wood Elf Highborn, 335 pts (General; Wild Rider Kindred; Hand Weapon; Longbow; Spear; Volley Fire)
      1 Great Stag (Stomp)
      1 Glittering Scales
      1 Stone of the Crystal Mere
      1 Crown of Command

Spellweaver (1#, 265 pts)
   1 Spellweaver, 265 pts (Level 4 Upgrade; Hand Weapon; Longbow; Volley Fire)
      1 Channeling Staff
      1 The Lore of Life

Noble (1#, 140 pts)
   1 Wood Elf Noble (Battle Standard Bearer), 140 pts (Hand Weapon; Battle Standard Bearer)
      1 Gambler's Armour
      1 Hail of Doom Arrow

Glade Guard (22#, 292 pts)
   22 Glade Guard, 292 pts (Musician Mus; Standard Bearer Std; Hand Weapon; Longbow; Volley Fire)
      1 Banner of Eternal Flame

Dryads (15#, 192 pts)
   14 Dryads, 192 pts (Causes Fear; Skirmishers)
      1 Branch Nymph

Dryads (15#, 192 pts)
   14 Dryads, 192 pts (Causes Fear; Skirmishers)
      1 Branch Nymph

Tree Kin (6#, 410 pts)
   5 Tree Kin, 410 pts (Causes Fear; Flammable; Scaly Skin; Stomp)
      1 Tree Kin Elder (Stomp)

Treeman (1#, 285 pts)
   1 Treeman, 285 pts (Causes Terror; Flammable; Large Target; Scaly Skin; Stubborn; Thunder Stomp)

Treeman (1#, 285 pts)
   1 Treeman, 285 pts (Causes Terror; Flammable; Large Target; Scaly Skin; Stubborn; Thunder Stomp)

Codex Cadia

What with the recent release of the new Imperial Guard Codex i have been hearing a lot of positive reviews about the book. However i heard a more balanced review of the book from the hosts of the Jaded Gamer Cast ,a podcast that i have recently discovered and been enjoying immensely. In the episode that covers the IG release , episode 172, the hosts look at both the good aspects and bad aspects of the book and manage to deliver a very balanced review of the codex. They bought up several points that i would like to elaborate on.

The Imperial Guard, Masters of Cover Art

One point bought up early on in the episode was that there were a ton of missed opportunities in this book. Codex Space Marines allowed space marine players to take chapter traits for 7 (40k players correct me if i am wrong) different space marine chapters, allowing a huge amount of variety amongst space marine armies. Now you would think that for the imperial guard, an organization made up of thousands of unique armies, we would see a similar system allowing players to take army traits for Tanith, Death Korps and many more famous imperial guard regiments. Instead imperial guard players got none of that. They were given no variety, they have been forced to play the same army type with no nod given to the thousands of unique imperial guard regiments in 40k lore.

Branching Out

Whilst Listening the the Jaded Gamer Cast i became interested in a game the host kept mentioning called Firestorm Armada. Now i was a fan if the idea of Battle Fleet Gothic (having never actually played a game), the idea of fleet based space conflict in a wargame has always appealed to me and i have always been on the lookout for a (affordable) sci-fi fleet combat wargame. Well Firestorm Armada from Spartan Games looks like it will be the game.

Time for a change, and a customer friendly wargames company

A Fantasy i Wouldnt Play

Hot off the back of 7th ed 40k rumors comes 9th ed Fantasy rumors, i will repost them below for context. (once again the rumors comes from the blog Faeit 212)

- the next fantasy edition is no continuation of the 8th edition. It uses a  variant ruleset of 40k now  
- Fantasy has no movement value anymore, but a armour saving profile - there are still armour savings modifiers
- all special rules use the 40k rules
- units move like 40k units, but can assume one of three formations, block,  tortuga and arrow
- fantasy flyers can only be hit with minus three to the ballistic talent  and can hit models under their flight path  
- there are allies in fantasy
- war machines are their own category like special and core now, 25% of  points can spent on war machines  
- there is a system to buy terrain
- warlord tables, but can choose which trait to get 
- weapons have a profile like 40k but no armour ignore column

Scions and Supplements

The Scion codex has released to much fanfare (I refuse to call it by its Latin name as I don’t speak Latin and as such have issues pronouncing it). Imperial Guard players seem to like it, but I don’t. The scion squads look nice, the taurox looks like the boxiest box that ever drove out of the box factory, and that’s about it model wise. The entire release is 2 kits and 77 (NZD) dollar codex. Really just a entrée before the main meal of the new IG book.

Box wheels, box grill, box windows, box powered

So what is my issue with the entrée? My issue is that I see this as a money grab, it’s a 40k army with 2 HQ choices, 1 troops choice and 2 fast attack options (40k players feel free to correct me if I am wrong). It needs allies to function as a army which means you need to have 2 army books and 2 armies just to make it work. Also there is a typo, not a lore typo or flavour text typo but a rules typo. Apparently in the wargear section of the rules the Hotshot lasgun has gets hot, yet in the reference it isn’t. Now which one is it? Scions players will now have weeks, maybe even months of confusion before GW releases a FAQ to correct a mistake that shouldn’t have been in the book to begin with.

The First Light of Spring. New Wood Elf Rumors

After getting into work today i took a look at my blog roll and happened to notice a post of the blog Faeit 212 about the up coming Wood Elf release, here is the meat of that post:

Wood Elves are coming in May, and we have some details to the extent of the release, and hints on how a 9th edition will work with skirmishers. There are three new plastic kits, an armybook, and magic cards coming. It looks like a good release for Wood Elves.

Please remember that these are rumors, but are from a good source. As with all rumors a little salt is always required.
 
via an anonymous source on Faeit 212
Wood Elves are out in May. They get only a two week release - armybook, magic cards and three plastic kits. It is not a total overhaul and their finecast kits - even the cavalry plastic-finecast-kits - stay valid. The only exception is the eternal guard. They are dropped completely. The models can be used as war dancers.

One of the new kits is special because it can be used for several different units. You can build either three hawk riders, which are one hawk and two surfers now, or three giant owl-like monsters called stonefeathers and six waywatchers. On top of that you can build a hero on hawk or on foot. 

The second kit is a war dancer combokit. The second unit wears varying animal masks and shields made of pelt on wooden frames. They have animal claws as weapons. 
The last kit is tree ancient and meadow hag. The former is a giant-sized tree man with a huge beard made of bark. The latter has a crown of leaves and she has a skirt of roots instead of legs. Her hands grow into a web of thorns. 

The rest of the range stays as it is, the finecast kits probably mail order only.
The wood elves have very dynamic poses because almost all their units are skirmishers again and the sculptors didn't have to worry about spacing. Skirmishers work seamlessly 

 with other regiments in 9th edition, so there will be no problem with this play style

Runefang Preparations

On the 26/27 of April this month i will be attending Runefang VII. Now the reason why i will be going to this tournament is because it will be using Swedish Comp to restrict what players can take. For those who don know Swedish Comp gives each unit in fantasy a points value. You subtract (or in some cases add) the points value of each unit in your army from 300 and once thats done divide the end result by ten, giving you a number which will be your Swedish Comp value for your army. Power gamy ultra fifthly lists may get a number as low as say 6, and super soft fluffy armies may get a number around 14 -16. For Runefang players arent allowed to bring an army with a SC vaule lower than 11.

Dark Elf Warlock Redux

Back when the Dark Elves were released i wrote a post in which i stated that i thought that the Warlocks would be of limited use selling as power dice pools aren't as reliable as they once were and that the unit would be competing for valuable power dice, also without their magic role they were "Dark riders with a ward save". Well after a far few games Vs the new Dark Elves and their Warlocks i have deiced to return to this argument, this time with Evidence!

The Warlocks in question