Kings of June Game 1 - Pillage! vs Abyssal Dwarfs

The resolute men of Westhaven clash with the Legion of Desolation

I drew Tim N & his Abyssal Dwarfs for Game 1, playing Pillage with 6 tokens. Tim is a regular in the Canberra KoW scene, and usually finishes at or close to the top of tournaments when playing his Abyssal Dwarfs.

My List:

Discussed here.

His List:

Horde Blacksouls
Regiment Immortal Guard with Diadem of Dragon-kind
Regiment of Decimators with Heart-seeking Chant
Horde Lesser Obsidian Golems with Brew of Courage
Regiment of Abyssal Halfbreeds with Maccwar's.
Horde of Abyssal Grotesques with Blessing of the Gods
2 x G'rog Mortars
Dragon Fire-team
Overmaster on Great Abyssal Dragon with Medallion of Life
Slavedriver with Healing Charm
Abyssal Halfbreed Champion
Supreme Iron-caster on Great Winged Halfbreed with Surge (10) and The Fog
Greater Obsidian Golem

This was his 'softer' list, for more casual games. Usually he runs three heavy mortars and two dragons.

Deployment:

Deployment

He chose sides, and deployed his units in a modified version of his infamous 'Cube of Despair' formation. The large amount of blocking terrain made things difficult for me to find firing lanes, but otherwise I thought I did ok. I had 6 extra drops, putting down my tank, knights, general and shield wall horde after he was all out.

Turn 1

Abyssal Dwarfs Turn 1

He moved his cube slowly forward, and his mortars landed 5 wounds on one of my knight regiments.

Westhaven Turn 1

My shooting didn't do much, a wound here or there. I moved forward, hoping to secure better position to flank his cube as it moved forward. My hero rode off hoping to get into the war machines or Decimators maybe.

Turn 2

Abyssal Dwarfs Turn 2

His Cube held in the centre, his flanks advanced, and his shooters put a few wounds on my right-flank spearmen, as well as my wizard. His halfbreeds routed my halberds on my left, but his champion was only able to wound the other troop. His dragon only managed to waver my mounted scouts on the charge, but we was able to move out of my horde's charge arc, the diagram is slightly wrong. The charge on my scouts suprised me, for some reason I thought he'd either charge my shield wall horde or back off.

Westhaven Turn 2

I continued to advance on the cube, shooting heavily at his Abyssal Grotesques. I double charged his Abyssal Halfbreed Champion on my left, hoping to overrun him and get my general to charge into the halfbreed regiment. Alas we were only able to waver the blasted thing. I pivoted my shield wall on my right, setting up a rear charge on his dragon. At this point I thought that I'd definitely be able to get into his flanks.

Turn 3

Abyssal Dwarfs Turn 3

This turn I really got to see some innovative maneuvering. On my left he backed his wavered halfbreed champion out of the way, and then charged my General with his Halfbreed Regiment, landing 4 wounds on me. In the centre his blacksouls continued to advance, as did his Greater Golem. His wavered Grotesques gummed up the works though. But on my right he really surprised me. I was expecting him to charge my wavered scouts, kill them, and then reform to face my shield wall horde. Instead he pivoted and backed up, landing beside my shield wall (well out of charge arc). Then he used his breath attack to finish off my scouts.

Westhaven Turn 3

My shooting went pretty well and I managed to take off his grotesques. It really was death by a thousand cuts, my rifle troops just kept peppering away at it, and I think my cannon managed to hit it for 4-5 wounds as well. His healing was very unlucky, I think he healed 1 wound out of 9 rolls.

On my left my General and halberds troop did a few wounds to the halfbreeds, but not enough to waver them. I sent my mounted ASB over there to start healing up my General.

On my right my shield wall pivoted, setting up a flank attack on the dragon. This time, surely. My spears charged his Greater Obsidian Golem, and I think they did one wound.

In the centre I decided to engage his blacksouls. I knew this was probably a mistake, but I felt that with the grotesques gone, I might have a chance. I did 15 wounds to his blacksouls, but they held steady thanks to an inspiring re-roll.

Turn 4

Abyssal Dwarfs Turn 4

He shot my spears to pieces on my right, hitting them with his dragon fire team, the diadem of dragonkind from his Immortal Guard, and lightning bolt. I had moved my spears out of inspiring range and they popped. This allowed his Greater Golem to get a flank charge on my Steam Tank ._.

His dragon continued to play funny buggers with my shield wall horde, again flying just out of charge arc and this time fire breathing on my wizard. My wizard is a tough little dude though and he only took a couple of wounds so sucked in dragon.

In the centre his golems charged my greatswords and crunched them, his blacksouls charged my knights and did a couple of wounds, disordering them. His halfbreed regiment routed my halberds troop on my left, and his champion slapped a couple more wounds on my General, wavering him. Things were getting dicey.

Westhaven Turn 4

I continued to chase his dragon with my shield wall. I was parked on an objective, so I didn't think it was a ~total~ waste of time. My General was wavered on my left, so I pivoted and backed him up, out of arc of the halfbreed regiment at least. In the centre I double charged his golems with my greatswords and a knights regiment, while I triple charged his blacksouls with the other knights, my spears, and a steam tank in the flank. That was wasteful overkill, I should have sent the tank into his immortal guards.

I took the blacksouls off, but the golems held. Def 6+ is tough hey.

Turn 5

Abyssal Dwarfs Turn 5

Things just started to get ugly now. His halfbreed champion routed my wavered General. His Halfbreed Regiment took out one of my rifle troops, and pivoted to face the rear of my units. His golems crushed my greatswords, his shooters finally routed the wounded knights, his greater golem took out my silly steam tank, and his dragon decided it wanted some of the action too and flanked my spears.

I was expecting Tim's counter, I really was. I did ~not~ expect to lose damn near a third of my army in a single round though.

Westhaven Turn 5

I did what I could. I charged his Immortal Guards, but couldn't pop them in one go. My Shield Wall did their favourite thing and pivoted and sat on an objective.

In a pleasing turn of events my cannon managed to hit his halfbreed regiment for 6 more wounds and they popped so take that.

Turn 6

Abyssal Dwarfs Turn 6

He just mopped up from here. We went to turn seven, by the end all I had left was one standard bearer with 4 wounds, my wizard with 5 wounds, and my shield wall with 6 wounds. 

Result

He held 3 objectives to my contested half of one, 17-3 to him. I never expected to beat Tim, even with his softer list. The dude plays his Dwarfs like a fiddle. But I had hoped to make a better showing of myself. I should have placed my shield wall in the centre, and left the flanks to my more mobile spear regiments. I should have made him engage with his blacksouls instead of charging them. I should have backed the halberds troops on my left with something more substantial than a single General on a Winged Beast.

I did notice how patient he is. He could have moved his cube forward quicker (for dorfs lol), but he calmly waited for me to make mistakes. He did the critical damage to me in Turn 5, instead of trying to get in earlier. I could probably learn from that.

My shooting did pretty well, the 4 troops of rifles are a lot more effective than the single horde.

Any suggestions on how I could have won this game (other than 'roll better') would be much appreciated.

Thanks for reading, Game 2 should be up later this week.

Thoughts on MSU army design

Since jumping into the hobby and Kings of War in February, I've played a number of tournaments / competitive games at 2k & 2.5k. Inspired in part by Pawel's blog, and in part by my own experience, I wanted to give Multiple Small Units (MSU) a try.

First up, I have to declare that my list building philosophy is more influenced by the models that I have than some strategic ideal. I purchased 90% of my WHFB Empire models as a bulk lot. I've shelled out for the odd bit or piece, but I'm (trying) not to spend more on this project. So, while I like the idea of running three halfling volley guns or a horde of demigryphs, I ain't gunna.

Anyway, on to my post hoc list justifications.

Up until now, I've run as many hordes as I could. A horde of Foot Guard or Shield Wall, I was building another Spear Phalanx Horde too. The keystone of my offence was my Horde of Arquebusiers with Brew of Keen Eyeness. 20 shots hitting on 4s with piercing 2. It's a pretty intimidating unit to be sure.

But it's just too easy to deal with for experienced players. Individuals can disrupt it from Turn 1-3 (depending), and if those individuals are say vampires or pharaohs that's it for the game for my Horde.

With reload, Cavalry can wait till I move the Horde and get stuck in then. With about half the scenarios I can't afford to leave my most expensive unit static the whole game.

24" is an annoyingly short range, and can be worked around. With clever positioning a flyer can get into the flanks of a shooting Horde without once exposing itself to fire.

My Horde at best could delete one unit per Turn, and that's great until your opponent comes at you with a range of stuff.

And while 20 attacks is a lot, there were too many occasions where I would only end up applying <5 wounds due to poor rolling. I can't afford that. KoM are a hard army to play to begin with, can't afford to expose yourself so much to the odd fail roll.

It loses to bows in a shoot out. Elves especially can take them apart. Def 3 means they melt. The Dwarf version at least is Def 4 and has headstrong.

So I decided to split my rifle Horde into 4 troops. It's much more expensive (400 points for the troops compared to 270 for the Horde) but it's much more versatile, and gives the enemy harder choices. With my Horde, they had no choice. They had to deal with it.

And I decided that while I was at it I'd split up the rest of my stuff as much as possible. My spears Horde became two regiments, my halberds Regiment became two troops. I left my knights as Regiments because I'm not insane and I left my Greatswords as a Regiment because I couldn't bear to split the base up, I really like how it turned out.

So anyway.

Part of my intent is to create headaches for my opponent by giving them a heap of options, by making them choose and second guess themselves.

At the moment my obvious hammers are my 2 Knight Regiments, my Beast of War / Iron Beast, my Foot Guard / House Guard Regiment, and my General on a Winged Beast / Duke on an Ancient Aralez. But that's 5 targets. All worth about 200 points, but none critical. Then I've got two war machines and 4 shooter troops. That's a lot of targets worth roughly 100 points each.

So theoretically my opponent won't have any obvious targets. From experience they will go in hard on my Steam Tank in the early turns. People love shooting at that thing. Doesn't matter if I'm running it as an Iron Beast (Def 6) or a Beast of War (5). Arrow magnet.

Out deploy. I have 16 drops at 2k, and 21 at 2.5. I'm going to have 3-5 more drops than most of my opponents, which means I can drop my hammers last, after everything is down. Will I stack one flank or the other? Both? Will I hold them behind my infantry line? Who knows hey. But dropping 33 - 50% of my army by points value after my opponent has completely deployed should give me some advantage you'd think.

With so many units, it becomes extremely difficult for an enemy to engage in melee without giving up flanks or even rears.

The weaknesses. A lot of low nerve units means that I am extremely vulnerable to an enemy who has many sources of ranged damage. My troops can take 2 wounds before an average nerve roll will waver them.

I'm not worried about the Ogre shooter Horde, or heavy Artillery. I'm worried about the Ogre warlocks. The Goblin wizards. Elven bolt throwers. Night stalker mind flayers. Silverbreeze Cavalry. I can ameliorate this a little by making sure I have inspiring bubbles all over my units, but only a little. Unfortunately my local meta has a few armies that run these sorts of units, so I'm going to have to learn the hard way.

I will also struggle against high def individuals. Most of my anti armour comes from shooting, and shooting at individuals sucks.

Other challenges:

I have a lot of infantry, and it is easy for them to get in the way and act as a reverse screen. Inspiring doesn't stop units from wavering. If I don't have my units in position to counter punch with flank attacks or at least multiple front charges I'm going to get absolutely pantsed.

Game play speed. With so many drops and sources of shooting, I'm going to really have to move quickly to finish games in a timely manner in a tournament environment. I'm not the slowest player in Canberra, but I'm up there hey. I need to train myself to make the correct decisions quickly. And making the correct decisions will be more critical with this army than usual.

I'll have an easier time in the pillage scenarios, I'll struggle with dominate, and who knows about the others.

Oh man I'm going to get slaughtered hey