Ominous Signs

So, just to let you know, Stephen the newest Fantasy player at the club, who can barely buy a win in the campaign, beat me AGAIN. Now the first time, I could see it was a bad combo of a sneaky trick he had as a random event roll combined with the worst possible mission (playing lengthways down the table and several key parts of my enemy being forced into reserve) In the summer campaign game, he won by stealing the initiative. Literally. He'd placed a scouting unit next to my Helblaster. Ok I thought, that's some easy points turn 1. No, he seized. Now by the odds, that's still easy points turn 1. They have ten shots needing 3s followed by 6s. He got 7 hits. About average. He got 4 wounds. What the ACTUAL fuck?!? Dead helblaster. I figured I'd ignore the unit till his Bolt throwers were dead then turn something to deal with them. It took 5 turns of shooting by my three cannons to kill his three Bolt Throwers... And do bear in mind that two of the Bolt Throwers were killed by Bolts of Magic fired by one of my wizards, so ten cannon shots to kill one Bolt Thrower. Meanwhile that small skirmish unit chewed it's way along my line, eventually eating about 600 points of my army. In a game I lost 1200 to 1000 that is a big chunk.

Annoyingly, despite all that, I was still looking at pulling off a win as I'd got my knights into a slugging match in the middle. His ward save was mostly keeping him alive, so I was slowly chewing through him, but my armour save was deflecting nearly all of his hits. Until his wizard miscast. The wizard that was in the front rank and had flukily survived several punishing blows from great weapons due to his sodding ward save. He miscast big, putting a large template on his head at Str 10. For his infantry with a 3+ ward, painful but not devastating. For my knights however... It took them all out. The few wounds that went into the surviving characters for the remainder of the game took out the BSB. Were it not for the explosion (which didn't even have the good grace to kill the sodding wizard, I had to do that myself eventually) the BSB and the unit would have survived the game, meaning I'd have lost about 400 less points than I did... enough for a victory again.

So in summary, my opponent beat me by rolling a 6, followed by four 6s, and then a double 6 followed by a double 1. Motherfucker...

However, I am set for Revenge. I had told my opponent I would be heading for the mine he nicked off me to regain it. But then the flying fortress passed over, and I didn't fancy sending my cavalry army (which only has a couple level 2s) into a Storm of Magic game. So I turned away from my mine he captured, and have gone to try to steal his mine instead. The mine he had captured from me duly collapsed. Because he rolled a 1. Karma for you right there motherfucker... :-P

In the fight we have lined up, I get to force some of his units into reserve, so a fitting revenge. However he does get to pick the scenario. To make sure he doesn't get too much advantage from this, I have committed an extra 500 points to the battle. That should hopefully do the trick. Unfortunately I shall have to include some infantry, as it is almost inevitable he will go for the Watchtower against my cavalry based army. I shall just have to make sure I include a small unit of something else, so that if I get the win and get a regiment of reknown again, I don't end up stuck with a large block of infantry in the middle of a cavalry army, like I did until Stephen was gracious enough to beat me the other week (one of the few upsides of the whole affair, losing that sodding regiment)

Overall in the campaign The Dwarf player is still steaming ahead in relics, one of the Dark Elf players is on about half what he is on (and that's second place) while Everyone else has between 9 and 11. That's made things very interesting as we enter Autumn...