How to Counter Teclis...
At our local gaming club we've been playing quite a lot of Fantasy lately, what with 8th ed coming out. One player has been having a run of success with his High Elves (not to mention a few jealous glances at the shiny new models he has to play with) and has been showing just how powerful a choice Teclis is now. He still get's his irresistable force trick, can ignore the first miscast, and is quite frankly a magical powerhouse. So it came to my turn to take him on...
Now I used to play a guy who used Teclis in his Elves (though he has since sold the army and moved on to Lizardmen) and I found the way I killed him most often was to hit him in the face with a cannonball. The first time it was a complete accident - I was aiming at a dragon, overshot and by fluke he failed his "look out sir" roll and died. That inspired me. Henceforth I just kept chucking cannon shots at him, reasoning that he had to fail his "look out sir" roll sooner or later. I used the same tactic for other characters I didn't want causing problems in my Empire lines (Skulltaker for instance)
So it comes to our game. I'd drawn up a gunline list to test out a few shooting principles with a mind to drawing up a list for a tournament a few weeks from now. I took Balthasar Gelt in this list - I'd not used metal magics yet, and while I didn't expect the wounding against armour save to be much good against lightly armoured elves I thought the other spells could yet prove handy. By taking several small units of missile troops rather than the hordes my opponent has been more regularly facing, the big spell Dwellers Below lacked the devastating effect it might normally have. But to be on the safe side I didn't let him get too many magic phases in. My opponent had manouvered his unit out of LOS of the first cannon, and the second cannon fell short... luckily this gunline list had three cannons, and the third shot nailed him! His comrades, if they saw his impending doom, didn't feel inclined to save him. Maybe he'd been bragging too much about how he'd won every game pretty much single handed up to that point and they'd had enough. Either way, Teclis was paste. From that point, I had absolute magical dominance, and wiped out half his largest unit by turning them into gold (taking his Battle Standard Bearer with it!) It didn't help his cause that of his remaining 4 units (all needing panic checks) three of them failed! My opponent conceded as we were starting the third turn - he'd lost half his army while I'd lost barely anything. I don't normally like such one sided games, but it's always fun to kill Teclis! It was also good to get one over one of the expected strong challengers in the upcoming tournament.
Of course, sods law when it comes to the actual tournament my cannon crew won't be able to hit a barn from inside it, though I have joked in the past about modeling a sniper sight onto my cannon barrels. Perhaps I should do this in time for the tournament, to try to inspire my troops.
In the meantime, I will admit "shoot him with a cannon and hope he rolls a 1" is fairly limited advice for dealing with Teclis, but in every game I've ever played against him, I can't recall killing him any other way. On the flip side, I seem to recall achieving it a disproportionate number of times... to the extent that we swear he's hard of hearing.
"Look out sir!"
"Huh?" SPLAT
For those who were hoping for some more tactical insights, an ogre player I know has a trinket that makes Teclis miscast more and roll on the ogre table (though he still ignores the first one) whilst the lizardman player has the ability to pass his own miscast on to someone else (and Teclis CAN'T ignore that one!) I think Feedback scroll isn't the best way (how often do you get the chance to dispell a Teclis spell, he IFs nearly everything) and of course if you could get the Ring of Hotek close enough that may cause a few problems. But beyond that, I'll keep to my guns ;oP
Now I used to play a guy who used Teclis in his Elves (though he has since sold the army and moved on to Lizardmen) and I found the way I killed him most often was to hit him in the face with a cannonball. The first time it was a complete accident - I was aiming at a dragon, overshot and by fluke he failed his "look out sir" roll and died. That inspired me. Henceforth I just kept chucking cannon shots at him, reasoning that he had to fail his "look out sir" roll sooner or later. I used the same tactic for other characters I didn't want causing problems in my Empire lines (Skulltaker for instance)
So it comes to our game. I'd drawn up a gunline list to test out a few shooting principles with a mind to drawing up a list for a tournament a few weeks from now. I took Balthasar Gelt in this list - I'd not used metal magics yet, and while I didn't expect the wounding against armour save to be much good against lightly armoured elves I thought the other spells could yet prove handy. By taking several small units of missile troops rather than the hordes my opponent has been more regularly facing, the big spell Dwellers Below lacked the devastating effect it might normally have. But to be on the safe side I didn't let him get too many magic phases in. My opponent had manouvered his unit out of LOS of the first cannon, and the second cannon fell short... luckily this gunline list had three cannons, and the third shot nailed him! His comrades, if they saw his impending doom, didn't feel inclined to save him. Maybe he'd been bragging too much about how he'd won every game pretty much single handed up to that point and they'd had enough. Either way, Teclis was paste. From that point, I had absolute magical dominance, and wiped out half his largest unit by turning them into gold (taking his Battle Standard Bearer with it!) It didn't help his cause that of his remaining 4 units (all needing panic checks) three of them failed! My opponent conceded as we were starting the third turn - he'd lost half his army while I'd lost barely anything. I don't normally like such one sided games, but it's always fun to kill Teclis! It was also good to get one over one of the expected strong challengers in the upcoming tournament.
Of course, sods law when it comes to the actual tournament my cannon crew won't be able to hit a barn from inside it, though I have joked in the past about modeling a sniper sight onto my cannon barrels. Perhaps I should do this in time for the tournament, to try to inspire my troops.
In the meantime, I will admit "shoot him with a cannon and hope he rolls a 1" is fairly limited advice for dealing with Teclis, but in every game I've ever played against him, I can't recall killing him any other way. On the flip side, I seem to recall achieving it a disproportionate number of times... to the extent that we swear he's hard of hearing.
"Look out sir!"
"Huh?" SPLAT
For those who were hoping for some more tactical insights, an ogre player I know has a trinket that makes Teclis miscast more and roll on the ogre table (though he still ignores the first one) whilst the lizardman player has the ability to pass his own miscast on to someone else (and Teclis CAN'T ignore that one!) I think Feedback scroll isn't the best way (how often do you get the chance to dispell a Teclis spell, he IFs nearly everything) and of course if you could get the Ring of Hotek close enough that may cause a few problems. But beyond that, I'll keep to my guns ;oP
Brilliant, although probably not the most reliable method. Glad it worked for you though.
ReplyDeleteAs an update to this, the Teclis lead High Elf army last night faced off against another opponent, a khainite based dark elf army. The high elf player tabled his opponent without suffering a single casualty. Ouch!
ReplyDelete