Azhag Takes On Aroscon, vs. Lizardmen, Empire, dwarfs, 2xVamps

Well, my verdict is actually that he is surprisingly good! Even if you don't get spells off he's a beast in combat. 5 S6 attacks, hitting with ws 7 and rerolling to hit. He killed the vampire in a single round of combat (a bit lucky, but on average he should score some wounds) Against infantry he's brilliant. Now couple this with purple sun or soulblight, and you can really do a world of pain. the lore attribute on lore of death is so good! if you get purple sun of in close combat you're bound to get 4-6 powerdice in return.

only problem is that he can't cast the snipe spells into combat, which is a bid sad, cauz that means he can't start fighting whoever he want to kill.

I think the best trick with this guy is fly over you enemy, snipe a character and then sandwich him in your next turn. If the enemy turns to face Azhag, just don't charge him in. and the let boys get a rear charge.

I think trolls are essential though. Whenever you face cannons you need the meat wall! so far I haven't lost him to shooting. although it was a close call game 1

Oh, a thing I haven't even mentioned is the reroll to animosity! I did not fail animosity a single time in the entire tournament. In the first game alone my big 'uns rolled a 1 three turns in a row. If he hadn't been around, I might have lost that game by substantially more. It's so important when you want to hold a battleline.

I enjoyed reading that, thanks for posting it.

I've always liked Azhag (although haven't used him yet), and I think Death Magic is very scarey to have used against you. Since having it used on me I won't usually go to battle without some sort of magic protection in my general or bsb's unit. Initially I went Savage Orcs + an Obsidian item of some sort to give me a Magic ward of 2+ or 3+, but now for a little more flexibility I'm just putting a night goblin warboss in my generals unit with the Obsidian Lodestone for a 4+ ward instead as it gives me some more options and means I don't have to worry about being diverted.

My current army is 90% goblins and squigs, but I think after reading this it's time to invest in a Wyvern or two for some extra support.

Once again your reports show that wolf riders are essential to any Orc and Goblin army

Thanks mate Really glad you liked it! You find spending so much points keeping your characters/units safe is worth it? As you might notice, all my characters (except Azhag) is as cheap as can produce them

Alright, so:
Fifth game against Vampire counts (again)
First of, we rolled dawn attack, and I feared having azhag partened from the trolls so I used a reroll (all armies have one scenario reroll in the turney). This would prove a very bad choice as we rolled the tower scenario afterwards.

Magic:
- I rolled 2 snipe spells and purple sun for Azhag again again, and the goblin shaman got sneaky stabbin.
- He had Manfred von carstein (on a flying pony) so had loremaster vamp lore and death. His necromancers had raise spells

- He also have krell in the graveguard unit.


Deployment and vanguard moves:



Turn 1:

- He got first turn, which was vital... I need to get the trolls into the building.
- I want to block the zombies movement into the building turn two by moveing wolfriders in front of them, but he sees it, and moves Manfred between the horde and the house.
- He gets purple son of to force powerdice from me in my magic phase.

In my phase
- I charge two units of wolf riders int othe dogs that threaten my doom diver.
- The spider boss charge the spirit host.
- My trolls fail stupidity, so that plan is all out of the window now...


- My spider boss does three wounds to the spirit host.
- I dispel purple sun.




Vamps Turn 2:

- His ghouls charge the spider boss.
- The skeleton bus is capable of clipping Azhag.
- Terrorgheist and manfred advance.
- The zombies take the house.

- In combat everything is stalmate. He doesn't challenge Azhag, so he takes out some skellies.

- his terror gheist sceams at the doom diver but only rolls a three.


Orcs Turn 2:

- My black orcs charge the skellies.
- Trolls charge the ghouls.
- I sacrifice my shaman to avoid a terror gheist rear charge on Azhag, but I misplace him, så the beast is in his flank rather than his front.

- In the magic phase I get sneaky stabbin of on the black orcs, but he uses a dispel scroll.



- In combat my black orcs and azhag goes to town, but it's not enough to take the unit down. Sneaky stabbin would have made all the difference.
- The trolls slaughter the ghouls and overrun into the grave guard. Spider boss reform to face the terror gheist.
- make a bad move with the spider, not noticing that the engine is capable of clipping my black orcs.



Vamps Turn 3:

- His engine clip the black orcs.
- Manfred charge their flank.
- Terror gheist charge my gobin shaman in the flank.

- In the shooting phase he screams at Azhag, putting one wound on the warboss and 4 on skull muncha... Auch...


- After combat... He slaughter skull muncha, and the black orcs are broken and run down.
- The trolls wiff all their attacks! They kill two grave guard, breaks, and gets away.



Orcs Turn 3:

- The Big 'uns charge the engine.
- The Arachnarok charge the flank of the grave guard.
- The trolls rally.
- Wolf riders charge the flank of the Terror gheist.


- My doomdiver finally hits manfred and scores three wounds... One more and I would have killed the bastard...


- Now this was amazing! Azhag actually survives both attacks and stomps from the terror gheist... He wounded twice at this point...

- His skellies are lost, but the banshee survives stalling everything.


And at this point the game ends. We're nearly out of time and there is no way I can win. I have two rounds too charge the building. It holds 30 zombies and a necromancer. He can spent his next turn sacrificing everything to ensure that I get no charges, so I had lost the game.

I was really sad that I chose the reroll on dawn attack. This was the only scenario I knew that beating the vampires would be really tough. They're so hard to remove from a building.


So I ended up five out of ten. It's an okay placing, but I really think I did better in my games than the result shows. Any who, I had a great tournament, And look forward to attend this one next year again.

Thanks for following. Leave some feedback if you liked the reports!

Cheers!

Nice batrep . I would suggest for next ones to include at the beginning the list of your opponent.

Thanks mate

Yeahr your right about the army lists, I don't know why I didn't get those!

I think that I'm going to try making a youtube battle report next time, simply to save time! then people can listen to them while painting as well

That's a good idea too! You can comment what happened at the end of each turn.

BTW, what you recommend against vampire counts? How to deal with them in general, with an all-comers list. Haven't played against them in this edition

Thanks mate

Yeahr your right about the army lists, I don't know why I didn't get those!

I think that I'm going to try making a youtube battle report next time, simply to save time! then people can listen to them while painting as well

Agree with pretty much everything in that post. Excellent battle reports, concise, but enough detail to know what happened every turn and just generally a good read.
Seeing the oppo army list is always useful. Means you can look at what combo's other armies are rocking and gives you a better Idea of why things went the way they did.
Youtube battle reports are cool to listen to when painting, I used to do this a fair bit, but now find myself listening to podcasts such as bad dice, the black sun and heelanhammer more often.

As for the battles themselves, I just enjoyed seeing how playing azhag developed. Its a damn shame about that terrorgheist misalignment rear charge in the last match though. If I had any tactical comments about your tournament as a whole, it seemed like you were playing a little bit cagey, when you perhaps could have been more aggressive. I kept wanting more of your army to be in combat, earlier in the games.

Well... I would recommend monsters! Well generally, things that grind and are tough! Trolls are great, usually... Arachnarok is great as well. But dammit watch out for those spirit hosts

The hardest thing about vampire counts (that I have experienced) are the Vampires, the grave guard and the Terror gheist.

Here is how I try to deal with it:
- Vampires: Avoid! Target everything else than his unit, and the do combo charges late game! do expect the vampire to do 6-7 wounds to anything in close combat. wardsaves/regen does help though.

- Grave guard: The problem with graveguards are that they're both S6 and hit on 3+ against nearly anything other than black orc warbosses. They have killing blow as well. They just tear through anything! So avoid! or hold up with lots of ranks!

- Terrorgheist: I try to charge with cavalry. Wolf riders are great for this... It has 3 or 4 attacks, doesn't get thunder stomp. It easily holds it up for a turn! But be carefull! unlike banshees it is capable of screaming out of combat!

Oh, and then avoid those zombie hordes with anything that you need against his dangerous units. You're gonna get stuck!

Thanks mate

I actually prefer the youtube battle reports, but the main reson to those would simply be to save time. I mean... it takes a few hours per report.... I could paint instead!

Year, I had some real blunders in the last game... First of, I shouldn't have taken the chance of reroll a dawn attack. My priority had been to avoid the tower scenario until that point, so I don't know why I did it.

Second, misalignment of the wizard was just a blunder, the same goes for the arachnarok. That would have saved the black orcs and crushed him I think.

I actually try play pretty agressively, But I really wanted Azhag to pick his battles. I did reserve the Spider a bit to much in last game for sure. Next game is agaisnt wood elfs, so I'm probably gonna be pretty aggressive in that game... Unless I decide to go for lots of warmachines and magic...

Thanks for the comments

Yeah, I usually take a couple of goblin big bosses with magic weapons in case I face etherials.

I saw that grave guard can become pretty nasty! And even more with a vampire and wight king inside . Wolf riders will have fun redirecting it .

Yeahr that's my usual approach as well. The last army didn't have neither a nasty combat Vampire, nor a graveguard horde, and I actually looked at the match-up pregame and thought that this army suited me so well! I actually think I could have taken this army pretty easilly, haven't I gotten the stupid tower scenario. Even with my mistakes in that game, odds where that I would kill of pretty much everything he had outside that building...

The main idea in watchtower scenario is not letting your opponent get a unit inside first. Wolf riders and goblin big bosses on wolf can help a lot on this task. Then, get inside with your strongest stuff (SOBuns are the best I would say). That’s the best way and even more against armies like vampire counts or daemons. I’ve played the map against daemons and you really don’t want a bus of bloodletters inside the tower trust me . I used the wolf riders to delay his way to the tower and it worked completely!

Yeahr, I wanted to try that as well, but Manfred got in the way of the wolf riders.... Dammit I should have charged him!!! Never even considered that! I might have gotten lucky, and the wolf riders would have survived and stuck for a single round

Still, I failed stupidity with the trolls turn 1, so That would have ruined the plan any way As I saw it, it was going to be an uphill battle, unless i could get my trolls in there Neither black orcs, nor big 'uns could make it in time. Problem was that I got to hold the tower at the start. And since I haven't got any infantry unit that is only 20 man strong, I had to start the game without any models in the tower, and he got first turn...

Yeah, even charging Manfred, it wasn't an easy task to avoid him to get the tower first.

I don't think it's a problem not having a unit of 20. Even having a unit of 20, I prefer not leaving that unit inside. Just armies with potent and unbreakable units should leave a unit inside, since it won't flee if they lose the combat. If you leave 20 Buns for example, that unit won't last long against a good fighter and it will lose steadfast very fast. For trolls is the same and even worse. Only 3 trolls would fight and that's not much.

But all infantry/monstrous infantry are stubborn in the building, so almost any infantry unit is good to have starting in a building! the BSB and general should be withing range before any combat is going down...

This post has been edited by Morten C on May 14 2012, 01:18 PM

I forgot that a unit inside the building is always steadfast, right.

Well you can start with a unit of 20 and then get out and annoy anyone who wants to get the tower and at the same time getting your awesome sauce troops inside .

This post has been edited by mickkk666 on May 14 2012, 01:49 PM