2500 Ogres vs High Elves: featuring Alarielle!

Ogres vs. High Elves
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Overview
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Date played: Tuesday, February 25, 2014

We had an asymetric board this game.  The river was normal, and the building in the center was a wizards tower.  Nothing else was overly special.

Ogres
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General: Slaughtermaster
  (I) 13 Ironguts
      - Includes BSB, Butcher (Maw), and Slaughtermaster

  (G) 10 Gnoblars

  (S1) Sabretusk

  (S2) Sabretusk

  (SaH) 2 Sabretusks and a Hunter

  (SL1) Scraplauncher

  (SL2) Scraplauncher

  (M) 5 Maneaters

  (SH) Stonehorn


High Elves
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General: Alarielle
  (WL) 22 White Lions
      - Contains Alarielle, Level 1 mage, Level 2 mage

  (S) 14 Silverhelms and Noble BSB

  (SoA) 10 Sisters of Avelorn and Handmaiden

  (R1) 5 Reavers

  (R2) 5 Reavers

  (R3) 5 Reavers

  (FP) Frostheart Phoenix

  (BT1) Bolt Thrower

  (BT2) Bolt Thrower

  (BT3) Bolt Thrower


Deployment
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I got to go first on deployment.

My army was as follows (from left to right):

1 Sabretusk
2 Sabretusks and my Hunter (with longstrider, dragonhelm, and ironcurse icon)
10 gnoblars
2 scraplaunchers
5 maneaters with brace of pistols, sniper and poison
13 ironguts with my Slaughtermaster, Bruiser, and Butcher
Slaughtermaster (Talisman of Preservation, Crown of Command, charmed shield)
Bruiser: BSB, Runemaw, heavy armor, ironfist
Butcher: Hellheart, ironfist
1 Stonehorn
1 Sabretusk.

My opponents army consisted of:
5 reavers
2 bolt throwers
5 more reavers
14 silverhelms and a Noble
1 frostheart phoenix
another bolt thrower
22 white lions with 2 mages and Alarielle
Alarielle
Level 2 light mage
Level 1 light mage
10 Sisters of Avelorn and a handmaiden with multishot (3) bow
5 more reavers.

Turn 1 - Ogres
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After vanguards, I started moving all my units forward (with the exception of scaredy kitty to the right.  He saw what was coming for him and hid in the ruins instead).

Magic went alright.  Cast bonecrusher on the silverhelms and took out 3 of them.  Bubble cast toothcracker, resulting in a miscast.  Managed to avoid having the slaughtermaster jump down a hole, but he did put a wound on a maneater and the bsb (failed his lookout), as well as taking out an irongut.

Shooting went pretty well.  The maneaters took out one bolt thrower, and the one scraplauncher that could fire took out 3 white lions.  The second one rolled a miscast, but only had to skip firing this turn.  Finally, the hunter got a reaver kill using a blood vulture, netting me a new achievement

Turn 1 - High Elves
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On the elves turn, he adjusts all of the reavers to 5 across and sets them next to my stone horn and my scraplauncher.  The silverhelms set themselves up 16 inches from my ironguts, and get ready for a charge.  The white lions move next to the wizard tower, and get ready for a nasty magic phase.

Fortunately for me, his level 1 got the loremaster bonus.  He rolls poorly: 3-2.  He channels once, then pops the staff on his wizard, giving him 9 dice this turn.  The world dragon banner prevents the wounds.  His opening shot is a str 6 banishment on my stonehorn.  He takes 5 wounds.   He then follows up with a pha's on his white lions to end the magic phase.

For shooting, his bolt throwers take shots at the hunter group.  The ironcurse icon stops 3 out of 4 wounds. Next comes the volley from the sisters, who peg the stonehorn for 1, killing him.  One of these days, he'll live beyond turn 1.  His first group of reavers puts a wound on one of the scraplaunchers.

Turn 2 - Ogres
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This turn wasn't super interesting from my side.  I adjusted one scraplauncher to face its reaver assailants, moved my warmachine hunters closer to their target, and pulled the scaredy kitty out of hiding to stop the reavers from marching.  The ironguts fail their charge against the silverhelms.  The maneaters make a small adjustment to get out of the ironguts way, then prepare to fire.

Magic went well.  I had a lot of dice, so I decided to play around.  My first cast is bubble toothcracker, hitting the ironguts and the maneaters to boost their toughness.  With my remaining dice, I flipped between bubble casting troll guts or trying to take out a bunch of silverhelms with the Maw.  Since I had never casted the Maw before, I gave it a try.  My butcher miscasts it.  It is a bullseye, and hits 5 silverhelms and the phoenix.  Every single model made their initiative test (I had a 50/50 shot on the bird), then makes their armor/ward saves for no wounds.  My butcher then explodes, taking out another irongut.  Yes, I am doing more damage to myself than to my opponent.

For shooting, my maneaters take out another 2 silverhelms, bringing them down to 10.  The scraplauncher facing the reavers takes a potshot at the white lions and misses due to drift.  The second one misfires, but again, it only prevents one round of shooting.

Turn 2 - High Elves
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Finally, some close combat.  Lots of charges here.  The first group of reavers charges the scraplauncher, the second group charges the sabretusk, and the third moves in the way of the ironguts to be a road block.  The silverhelms charge the maneaters, and the phoenix actually fails his charge into the same.  The white lions move closer to get ready to charge next turn.  The sisters march forward, since they have nothing to shoot at.

Magic was a resounding success on my part.  I pop the hellheart when I am 14 inches away, and roll a 5, catching all three of his wizards.  Each one explodes in one way or another, though I was not luck enough to have alarielle jump down a hole for me.  These explosions take out 6 white lions, and suck away ALL of his dice.  Went from 11-5 (thanks to channels) to 0-5.

Shooting went well for his bolt throwers (well, as well as any bolt thrower can really expect, I guess), and took out both of my hunter's sabretusk companions.  He passes his panic tests, and vows revenge for Fluffy and Rex.  My maneaters did a stand and shoot and took out another 2 silverhelms on the way in.

In close combat, most things generally held.  The reavers did one wound to the scraplauncher, and the scraplauncher responded by taking out two of them, resulting in a tie for CR.  The sabretusk that got charged did one wound, took a wound in return, and got run off by one CR.  The reavers chase him into the wall and take him out.  The silverhelms take out 2 maneaters, and I take out 3 in return.  I still lose, but stick around thanks to my BSB reroll.

Turn 3 - Ogres
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I get a few charges in.  The hunter and remaining sabretusk charge the bolt thrower, and the ironguts blow up 4 of 5 of the reavers with impact hits.

For magic, I have yet another explosive round of casting.  I get 11 dice to play with.  I cast toothcracker on my ironguts first, then miscast on bubble guts.  Yet another explosion, yet another irongut down.

I had one free scraplauncher, which took its turn to take out 5 sisters.  No panic, sadly.

Close combat was ok.  My ironguts smash the last reaver, then reform to keep the phoenix and the white lions in the front arc.  The maneaters take out one silverhelm, and they take out one maneater, resulting in the maneaters running.  Everyone makes their panic tests, and the silverhelms chase into the gnoblars (which were put there for that exact purpose).  The second scraplauncher takes out the rest of the reavers, and reforms.  Finally, the hunter and the sabretusk take out the second bolt thrower.

Turn 3 - High Elves
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My opponent is starting to run out of stuff.  He combo charges with the bird and the white lions.  He tries to charge the sisters in, but fails.

Magic wasn't fun for either of us.  He gets a lot of dice, but miscasts his bubble cast speed of light.  So, the good news is that Alarielle is now a level 1 wizard with only Pha's known.  The bad news is that the white lions and the bird are going to be stupidly hard to hit.

The bolt thrower takes a shot at the hunter and cause a wound.  He still has 2 more at this point.

Against all odds, the gnoblars hold the silverhelms up this round.  5 die, but they are steadfast.  More embarassingly, they killed a silverhelm (which is the worst way to go: death by gnoblar).  The white lions fail at killing anyone, and my champ kills his.  Stomps take out a second.  One wound is caused to the bird.  I win combat by one, but everyone stays put.

Turn 4 - Ogres
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Only one charge: my scraplauncher got a flank charge into the noble.  The hunter and the sabretusk move toward their last target.  The maneaters do not rally and keep running.  The second scraplauncher moves forward a bit.

Magic wound up with both of my spells getting dispelled.  I now have weak ironguts.  This is going to hurt.

Shooting was a wash.  The scraplauncher missed the sisters.

For close combat, things went ok.  The scraplauncher only did 1 impact hit.  The noble puts all of his attacks into the scraplauncher, but does not manage to kill it.  The rest of the silverhelms only manage to take out 2 gnoblars.  Terrible rolling on his part.  The ironguts take another wound off of the bird, but Speed of Light is killing me.  I lose my BSB, but take out his level 2.  Combat is a close win in my favor thanks to stomps, but stubborn keeps them right there.

Turn 4 - High Elves
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He charges his reavers into the side of my ironguts.  I think this was a terrible idea, and let me win combat again thanks to the extra CR I got from it.  The sisters move forward, but have no one to shoot.

Magic is screwed for him now.  Alarielle fails to bubble cast Pha's, and his other wizard casts light of battle on the phoenix (autopasses leadership tests).

The silverhelms take out the rest of my gnoblars, but the scraplauncher manages to take out the Noble BSB.  They still lose, and the silverhelms chase down and kill off my scraplauncher.  My ironguts take out 3 of his reavers and puts a wound on Alarielle.  My slaughtermaster has been tanking the bird like a boss.  They are both at 3 wounds at the end of this round.  I lose my butcher, but make up for it with white lion kills.  I win combat by 2, but everyone sticks around.

Turn 5 - Ogres
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I charge the hunter into the last bolt thrower and move my scraplauncher forward.  I get off both toothcracker and troll guts.  I kill off the bird, kill off Alarielle, and completely whiff on the reaver.  I win combat, and the white lions break.  I chase, but don't catch them.  My opponent concedes.

Hey LawGnome

Thanks for posting the battle report, I understand how much time it takes to put one together and how it can be a frustrating affair so hats off to you!

I'm writing this as I read the report so forgive any comments that you've already answered.  I want to talk about your list and how good it is to see a Hunter with his dogs running about.  Do you normally run this list or is it a bit of tailoring for your opponent?

Turn 1 seemed to go fairly well for you with some magic and ranged damage.  Although the High Elves certainly dominated with their magic phase pinging so much damage on your Stonehorn! ouch.  Have you had much luck with this unit in previous games?    What do you find is his major downfall?

Turn 2 - Unsure why you'd ever take The Maw against Elves (or nearly anyone for that matter).  Lesson learned I would hope?  How did the Reavers close the door on the Eastern Sabretusk with the Reavers in the way or was your map a little off?  Nice shut down of magic phase and great timing.

On Turn 3 you'd have to glimpse over the rules for the charging warmachines but I'm sure only a few of the models can attack, not sure if it holds relevance here but worth mentioning.  Awesome about Gnoblar killing a SH!! 

In turn 5 you're absolutely right, he fed you combat resolution by charging the Reavers in.  I don't understand your character placement?  Where were they? 

Beautiful work on sealing the win.  I honestly didn't think there would be much of a chance against a list like that however I don't think your opponent played his list to it's greatest strengths and that's sitting back and taking out units with magic before engaging in combat.  Had your Stonehorn lived I think again you would have cemented the game a turn or two quicker.

Congrats again!

Jimmy:

Glad you enjoyed the report.  It took me three attempts to finally get everything to work, but I like the end result.

This game was more about helping my friend test his list than it was about anything standard on my part.  In fact, had I been playing my normal list (heavens slaughtermaster with 2 units of 4 leadbelchers and 2 ironblasters), I would have been completely stomped due to all my characters having magic weapons.  My friend has been using variations of this list for the past month, and has utterly CRUSHED absolutely everything another friend and I had thrown against it.  The purpose of this game was to see how it did against something specifically designed to hurt it.  Now that he's seen what can cause him to lose, he's going to be readjusting to make it nastier.  So, yay, I think.  In fact, had he kept his list from last time, I think I stood a very good chance of losing.  He traded out a lot of white lions and shooting to get the phoenix, and I don't think it really paid off for him.

The hunter was something I decided to pull out after having no success just running sabretusks for warmachine hunting.  The one time I had ever pulled out a hunter before, he made a complete mess of the opponents back line.  For some reason, though, I just haven't used him since.  I think I will continue to use him.  He's really durable for his points, and deals a lot of damage no matter where he his.  I'll be building a hunter model for the contest, so everything seems to be coming together well.

Every time I have ever brought a stonehorn, it has been taken out without causing a single wound.  The first time, he got charged by a frostheart phoenix and failed to cause a single wound.  I lost by 1 from the charge and got run down.  The next time he got popped by skaven cannons before he could get in range of anything.  This game was the first time I had brought one since.  Poor Stompy is now 0-3.  I think his biggest downfall is that he appears to be the biggest threat on the table, but can't really be protected by anything without a hunter on him (and even then it is a matter of luck).  He's just too expensive to take as pure bait when you need those rare points for cannons/ stonethrowers (depending).  My other army is Lizardmen, and with them you can easily take 4-5 big monsters to give opponents too much to shoot at, but here, not so much.

The Maw was taken on a whim.  Both the level 4 and the level 2 took LotGM.  The SM had bonecrusher, bullgorger, toothcracker, and troll guts (I rolled well).  The butcher got Maw and a double, so he took braingobbler.  Not much point in taking stubborn since I already had a crown of command.  I really wanted to make sure that I had access to troll guts and toothcracker, and since I needed a hellheart caddy anyway, I took a butcher.  On turn two, I wasn't sure if he would be charging or holding back for another nasty magic phase (this was before he moved into HH position), so I figured I would give Maw a try since I had it anyway.  Had it worked, I had a good chance of really messing up the phoenix, and I might have gotten lucky on a silverhelm.  I'm not planning on taking it again, though.  Way too weak against most armies, and way too dangerous for us to risk a misfire.  It was fun to say that I took it once, but it really wasn't worth it.

The map is a little off.  It was tough to get the sabretusk in the exact position, so I just decided it was close enough.  I had set the tusk so that he could charge the reavers next to him while avoiding taking a charge to the flank.  The way we played it, the reavers got in, then the kitty closed the door.  Did we play that wrong?

I don't think there is any issue with the 2 attacking the bolt thrower.  At that point it was down to a single sabretusk and my hunter.  It seemed like there was enough surface area.  I'll take a look at the rule later, though.  Was super pleased with the gnoblar taking out the silverhelm.  I really wasn't expecting them to survive a full turn, much less kill anything.

I'll better display where the characters were the next time I do one of these.  The SM was on the far left corner of the ironguts, then the champ, then the bruiser, then the butcher.  For most of the combat against the white lions, my butcher (and the guy behind him) were swinging at either the level 2 light mage or, after he died, Alarielle.  The bruiser and the guy behind him were mostly swinging at RnF (since the level 1 mage only had light of battle.  Not really worth focusing on).  The SM and the 3 guys surrounding him put most of their attacks into the phoenix, and the phoenix focused on the SM, rather than on ironguts.  The ward save prevented a lot of wounds, and I could heal a few back using the lore bonus.

I agree that he didn't play his list to its full strength.  Just goes to show the strength of the list that it can be the dominant force among my playgroup even with mismanagement.  Like I said before, I think he would have been better off with more white lions, sisters and bolt throwers than with the phoenix.  Were I playing his list, I would have Alarielle take at least 2 high magic spells to boost the white lion's ward save to 3+.  I would use my superior magic power to shoot down chaff, then take my nigh unkillable white lions in to kill off whatever is left.  I think he got too focused on the potential power of the wizard tower, and prevented half of his units from acting effectively.

Nice bat rep.  I love seeing the High Elves get crushed.