Win in the movement phase

More than anything else, movement is where Warhammer is lost and won. Magic, shooting and combat help, but without a solid grasp of movement you're really doing yourself out of any chance of a win.

What's a movement phase?

At the most basic level your movement phase will be used to put your units in a position to kill your enemy. A shooting unit will try to get close enough to shoot the enemy, a combat unit will charge or attempt to get close enough to do so in future turns. If only that were your only concern the movement phase would be nothing to worry about.

As well as thinking about how your units are set up to kill your enemy you have to plan for what your opponent will do in their own turn. He's going to be trying to get in a position to kill your units, and there are going to be plenty of times that you'll be better off passing up the chance to kill some of his guys to prevent him from doing more damage to you!

If that's not enough to keep your mind busy, don't forget to anticipate what the board will look like in a couple of turns time. If you can accurately judge where your opponent's units will be located in future turns you can position your own army to maximise damage at that point.

Something a little different - Fast Cavalry

A great way to enhance your ability to get your army into position and to complicate your foe's plans is to use non-standard movement. I've recently started experimenting with Dark Riders in my Dark Elf army. This unit has the Fast Cavalry rule, giving it access to a range of interesting new ways to move around the board.
This unit, with its high movement value and ability to fire on the march, can go almost as far as a flyer and still make full use of their crossbows. The added advantage of free reform means you should have little trouble getting round to the flank or rear of enemy units where you can shoot them without fear of being charged next turn.

Once they're in this position the enemy may divert units to stop you running riot behind the main battle-line. However unless his unit has similar rules you'll be able to just dodge them, forcing him to send more units in an attempt to corner you. On the other hand he may just ignore them, considering them nothing more than a distraction. In this case you're free to stand just behind a large section of his army forcing them to roll leadership if they want to march, and adding a rear charge to the fray when the two armies do eventually reach combat

And another thing - Skirmishers

Skirmishers function in a similar way to fast cavalry, but lack the movement to rush the enemies rear. Instead you'll find these units carrying out a similar roll on the flank of your opponent's units. The lack of movement means you'll have to be slightly more careful in anticipating which units may be sent to hunt you down, but these units are typically cheaper and with the light troops rule your foe will struggle to shoot them to death.

Pirates 3-0 Marauders

The Pirates made up for their lacklustre first game with a 3-0 win over Skaven last night. I've not got a lot of commentary to add, so I'll just forge ahead with the match report.

Pirates vs Marauders

After winning the toss and choosing to kick the Pirates lost no time at all blitzing right through the Marauders line of scrimmage with Helehuiwen (#4, Witch Elf) cracking the skull of the Skaven ball carrier and relieving him of his burden. Turn two saw her finish what she started with a short sprint into the end zone to put the Pirates 1-0 up.
Kicking again the Pirates tried to blitz the ball carrier a second time, this time from the flank. But overconfident Arnon (#10, Linesman) ended up going headlong in his attempt to reach his target. Thurichir (#2, Blitzer) made up for his team-mate's mistake by knocking the Skaven down next turn, but Maenven (#8, Linesman) couldn't get a grip on the ball, sending it straight into the waiting arms of a nearby rat. The startled Skaven player was unable to take advantage of his good fortune, failing to make the pass to his team-mate. Helehuiwen (#4, Witch Elf) saw this chance for another touchdown and raced right into the middle of a pack of Skaven, but tripped in her haste which allowed the Skaven thrower to get his paws back on the ball. It wasn't to last, as Thurichir (#2, Blitzer) bowled over yet another Skaven ball carrier, recovering his opponents drop and making it down the pitch for a turn 8 touchdown to leave the Dark Elves with a two point lead at the end of the half.

The second half started with a Dark Elf push down one side of the field, but Himchir (#6, Linesman) was stretchered off after taking a solid blow and missed the rest of the match. Undeterred the Pirates managed to break away with the ball, then spent the next five turns tossing it back and forwards next to the end zone while the remainder of the team held up the Marauders on the scrimmage line. As the referee prepared to blow the final whistle Maethoranu (#1, Runner) stepped over the line to make it 3-0, with only two Skaven left on the pitch.

The start of the season

Tuesday night saw us getting the Blood Bowl league started at the club, and it was certainly eventful. The dugouts were packed with the dead and injured by the end of the night, and a good time was had by all!

Week one results
A good week for physical teams, with wins for Dwarves and Orcs. There were three deaths; a Dark Elf Lineman for the Pirates, a Dwarf Slayer and a Human. On top of that not a single team escaped serious injury.

Karak Yermaw (Dwarf) 2-0 Pynk Nightmares (Dark Elf) - 23,000 attendance

The Nob Fumblers (Orc) 3-1 Horny Horny Hippos (Human) - 19,000 attendance

Graveyard United (Necromancer) 1-1 Karond Kar Pirates (Dark Elf) - 25,000 attendance

Karond Kar Pirates vs Graveyard United
(I didn't make any real notes on this, so some of it may be slightly out of sequence)

Two strong wins in pre-season had left me confident going into my first league match, though aware the Necromatic Undead team was going to have a different style of play than the Humans I'd faced so far. Despite kicking in the first half my Dark Elves, true to form, had soon stolen the ball and managed a rush down the centre to the end zone.

Kicking off after this I pushed for a repeat, getting one player within spaces of the endzone. Unfortunately my ball-carrier was blitzed out-of-bounds by an Undead Ghoul who went on to catch the ball when it was thrown in, setting the Undead up to push up field and even the score at 1-1.

Going into the second half I only had 5 players to set up. Of my original 11 two were still unconcious, 3 were out for the rest of the game with injuries (though none of those were long-term), and I'd had a Linesman killed. It wouldn't be easy in that situation, but receiving the kick and with my good speed I'd still have a chance of a touchdown. A combination of luck and good dodging kept my players from taking too much of a beating, but two turns in a row my Witch Elf failed to pick up the ball on 2+. As a fast team I almost managed to bring it to 2-1, but a last turn desperate attempt to dodge tackle zones, pick up the ball and throw a pass into the end zone failed, leaving the game drawn at 1-1.

Lessons so far

1. Dodging out of a tackle zone takes penalties for the square you're moving into, not the one you're moving from. Makes it really easy for my Dark Elves to pull back from the enemy line (typically 2+) and avoid getting into trouble.
   
2. Bring an apothecary. Dark Elves aren't the most physical team, so if your opponent gets the chance he'll try and land blows.
   
3. Stay away from the sidelines. There's nothing worse than getting within one turn of the endzone when the opponent makes a lucky blitz with the only player in range to threaten you and throws your ball carrier out of bounds.
   
4. The dice hate you. If you're making a major play and just need a 2+ to score a touchdown you'll roll a 1. If you've got a re-roll you'll roll another 1.
   

Blood Bowl - Karond Kar Pirates

Because I've clearly not got enough unpainted Dark Elves sitting around I'm now starting a Dark Elf Blood Bowl team for the club's upcoming league. It'll be a few weeks before the leagues starts properly, but I managed to get a bit of pre-season play in at the club last night.

The list I'm currently running looks like this:

Fan Factor: 2
Re-Rolls: 2

7 Linesmen
2 Blitzers
1 Witch Elf
1 Runner

Unfortunately my players are still un-named, but I'll get around to that.

After playing around with a few different lists I've settled on this one, that closely follows what comes in the standard Dark Elf box. However the box comes from an earlier version of the Dark Elf list, so comes supplied with a Thrower which no longer exists. On the other hand, the list has a Runner which there's no model for. Easy solution then, use the Thrower as my Runner and I'm sorted!

I'd hoped to have more gold available for an Apothecary, some Cheerleaders and Assistant Coaches, etc. but the Dark Elves are an expensive team. In the end most of my gold went on just getting my basic 11 players. Because of that I'm likely to be spending the earnings of my first few games on those types of extras, starting with an Apothecary to keep my frail elves out of the graveyard!

So I played the list in a practice game last night, playing a half game against a Human team where I managed to pull off a 2-0 win. Won't go into much detail over what happened, but was really stunned at just how fast the Dark Elves can get about the field. At one point I had my Runner boxed in with the ball on one side of the field, but after the Humans broke the front of the box open he managed to rush across the field and hand off to a Blitzer who ran the ball down the other side of the field.

High agility is a fantastic thing, I had players pulling off most moves (picking up the ball, throwing and catching) on 2+ or 3+, which means I can move the ball about even faster than I can run. With agility 4 on the whole team it means that anyone can be used to make passing plays, so there's a lot of adaptability. Although not as physical a team as Orcs or Dwarves, the Witch Elf and Blitzers can hold their own in most situations if supported by runners so I'm still able to land a few blows.

The biggest thing I'm worried about once the season starts is losing players to injury, as I've got no reserves and no spare cash to spend on them, but careful play until I can afford an apothecary should keep me pretty safe. Expect more updates as the league progresses!

Long, sharp and pointy - Dark Elf spears

A bit of an aside about spears.

When I was picking up Warhammer one of the things I really wanted was an army with loads of spears, pikes or other polearms. I do a bit of medieval re-enactment and use the spear, and I generally think they're pretty cool weapons.

Most obvious choice in that case was High Elves, they've got plenty of spears and are even able to fight in a further extra rank with them. But they're a bit too clean and shiny for my tastes. So eventually I ended up drifting to the Dark Elves instead.

Dark Elf spearmen are cheap and plentiful, which is a good start. A high initiative gives them a good shot at landing plenty of hits before the enemy fights back, and their weapon skill is respectable too. As you'd expect from an Elf the strength and toughness is lacking, but there's ways to get around this with magic if needs be. And while we're on the subject of magic a good leadership combined with Occam's Mindrazor on all those spears will cause some quality pain.

As a unit they're defensive - the spears won't get that extra rank if they charge. This makes for a good anchor unit, a big block of spears to stand in the way and block enemy movement so that a more powerful combat unit can charge the flanks or rear to cause casualties and boost combat resolution. As the spearmen are mostly there to hold the enemy in place you don't actually need to worry too much about causing casualties with them; instead you can reform for extra ranks to remove the enemy unit's steadfast as well as getting a bit of extra combat resolution for extra ranks.

In a Dark Elf army spearmen have another role, as ammunition for the sorceress' sacrificial dagger. If things get desperate then you've got a fantastic pool of potential power dice waiting to be used. Of course with more power dice there's more miscast opportunities, but with spearmen as cheap as they are it's not so big a loss.

All that said, I've not actually got a lot of spearmen in my army. I'm putting a bit of thought to reworking my list and either bulking up the spearmen already there or adding another unit. Coming from 40k I still look at units of 20 or so as a big unit, and really have trouble getting my head around units in the 40-50 model range. I guess it's really the type of thing I'll only get used to with time.

Khainites

The advantage of actually sitting down and getting some painting done (spear block mostly finished now) is that I can put some thought to what's actually in my army, and what else I might need.

When I'd just started the army I was leaning towards a corsair/raiding-party idea with few if any Khainite units. The idea being that this army was concerned more with getting out there and getting rich instead of acting on behalf of anyone else. But this gives a pretty one-dimensional type of Dark Elf force, missing out a huge part of Druchii society.

Executioners

Of all the Khainite units, in fact of most of the Dark Elf range, the Executioners are the nicest models. They look utterly deadly. Although I could probably have made better use of some Black Guard the models just don't do it for me.

So I've now got 10 Executioners waiting to go into my 1500pt force. Against Shrooms' Goblins I'm not expecting huge results here; I'm not bringing many attacks, and striking last. However against tougher foes, particularly those in good armour, this unit will be a great little tin-opener. Tie up a tough unit with a mass of spears, then hit them in the flank or rear with Executioners and they should start to crumble before too long.

Cauldron of Blood

Reading up on tactics at Druchii.net puts the Cauldron of Blood pretty far up the list of awesome units. For a bit over 200 points you're getting a battle standard with multiple wounds, ward save, gives nearby units stubborness and one unit gets a nice buff. Now that I've got other Khainite units in my army (See the Executioners above) I wouldn't feel so bad taking a Cauldron. In fact, I expect the Executioners would be the ones most likely to get the buff from it, particularly the armour boost as striking last with two-handed weapons leaves them a bit vulnerable.

Witch Elves

Longer term I'm giving some thought to a decent sized block of Witch Elves to deal with large units of cheap troops. Frenzy, multiple weapons and poison attacks should carve through anything lightly armoured without too much trouble. And against something like a huge block of Goblins an attack boost from Cauldron of Blood will clear through them in no time.

Synergy

Most of what I'm thinking about here involves pretty heavy synergy between whichever units, the Cauldron, Sorceresses, etc. It's got me thinking that these types of combos may be worth a seperate blog post, so I won't go into them too much here and now. But what I will say here is that's a big thing that's changed moving from 40k to Fantasy, I'm thinking a lot more about how my units will cooperate.

Cold One Knights

I'm still thinking through how I want to set up my Cold One Knights. I've got 10 of them so far, but until I decide what I'm doing with them only five are built.

The original plan was to run a single unit of 9 Cold One Knights, a Battle Standard Bearer and a Sorceress. Or potentially 8 Knights and add a Dreadlord. The danger there is that there's a lot of points tied up in just 11 models; a good hit with a cannon, rock lobber, magic, etc. could make a real mess of things. Throwing in a magic item like Ring of Darkness would help protect from shooting, but I'm just not convinced it would be enough.

I've also considered running two units of five. This way I could have a small unit on either flank which would hopefully be able to clean up any skirmishers or bypass the enemy battle line and pick off war machines and shooty units lurking up the back. The down side here is that both units will suffer Stupidity without the Battle Standard Bearer re-roll, and the Sorceress could only accompany one of them.

Despite the vulnerabilities I'm still liking the idea of the big unit. A Battle Standard Bearer with the Hydra Banner in a unit like this is a devastating charge, and a Shadow Sorceress to debuff the enemy Strength is going to go a long way to help survivability in combat. Alternatively metal magic can boost the units ability to hit (Enchanted Blades) and survivability (Glittering Robe). And let's not forget the BSB reducing the risk of failing Stupidity, taking it from a 17% chance of failing to less than 3%! Add to all that the fact that at two ranks of five they're capable of disrupting flanks and you've got something pretty heavy-hitting to roll down one flank.

Akhrin always strikes first

Or at least strikes with higher initiative than my fellow bloggers. Yes, Akhrin has picked up the start of his army. Into Games Workshop after work (allowing myself to be delayed only by a quick pint down the pub with Shrooms) to spend silly money on toy soldiers.

I've now got my Dark Elf army book, battalion (28 Warriors, 20 Corsairs, 5 Cold one Knights), an extra regiment of 16 Warriors, another 5 Cold One Knights and a Reaper Bolt Thrower. I'm also waiting for my Sorceresses to show up from mail order and I can start getting this army well and truly together!

Unfortunately (from the hobby point of view, at least) I'm away on holiday for the next fortnight or so, but you'll be left in the capable hands of my co-conspirators (and maybe another blogger into the mix, with any luck) until I get back and can really grind on with my army.

Nagarythe, here we come!