Skrag list wins Moonstruck

Hello everyone, I'm going to attempt to post a recap of a tournament i attended last weekend, the tournament was a win/loss/draw scoring system with a win giving 15 points a draw 5 and a loss giving 0 points, there was also 1 point for holding a table quarter with a unit that has fortitude.
It was a panel comp event with armies being scored from 1-5, the comp would give points to the player with the higher comp and subtract from the player with the lower score. Also you could get negative points for a game. Most importantly you only needed to be up by 150 victory points to get a win. Below is what i took.

Skrag the Slaughterer 425               
Bruiser, BSB, Rune Maw, Great Weapon 201                     
Firebelly, Level 2, Additional Hand Weapon, Ruby Ring of Ruin, Dispel Scroll 210                     
9 Ironguts, Full Command, Look out Gnoblar, Banner of Swiftness 437                                 
3 Ogres, Additional Hand Weapon, Bellower/Standard 113
10 Gnoblars, Standard 35
10 Gnoblars, Standard 35
10 Gnoblars, Standard 35
8 Maneaters, 4 Additional Hand Weapon, Banner/Musician, Gleaming Pennant, Scout/Poision 433                 
4 Leadbelchers 172
Gorger 90
Gorger 90
Gorger 90
Sabretusk 21
Sabretusk 21
Sabretusk 21                     
Ironblaster 170                     
                           
GRAND TOTAL:            2599

The majority of the armies i saw at the event seemed to be based around getting 150 points quickly and giving up as few as possible themselves. My army on the other hand was designed to push right up into the opponents side of the board and hold them there so i could catch my 2 table quarters and hold them in place for the gorgers.

First game i was up against a comp 1 eternity king army with a lvl 4 shadow and i resigned myself to a loss straight off the bat, i assumed he would just Pit my maneaters to death and i would never be able to get the points back. Knowing who i was up against a week before the event had some advantages and i planned to just throw all my units at him and at least make him work for it. It worked really well. Having 7 chaff drops i got to see his entire army before any of my decent units went down and i won the first turn luckily. I rushed him as fast as i could and with some bad luck on his magic phases which saw him not get a single spell off until turn 4 i locked him up and tabled him with the exception of his dreadlord. I scored 21 points off this game getting 3 points for the comp swing and 3 table quarters. Already doing better than expected and i go straight to table 2.

Where i went up against a comp 4 Leigons of chaos list with 2 well geared doombulls, a ghorgon, giant and a Minotaur bus, the key here is he had no magic whatsoever. This was an army i loved and it looked fantastic on the table with heavy conversions everywhere. He had come with the same idea in mind as me, just get in there and smash. I could respect that. The scenario was Meeting engagement and we both deployed as close as possible. He won the first turn and advanced pretty aggressively, i met him head on and my magic tipped the balance, got off toothcracker, trollguts and managed to braingobbler off a chariot turn 1 (best spell ever amiright?). I chaffed his bus and cannoned off the ghorgon. He killed my chaff in his turn and placed circled a chariot and giant around my ironguts to get the flanks when i went into the Minotaur. I charged him and with a big magic phase again got off enough buffs to not take much damage, i broke and ran down his bus and that was that. Got 19 points and went to table 1.

Played another interesting list, seemed to get to the top tables early you had to have a big win and a high comp score as the comp 1 armies were all battling it out on tables 5-15. So i was vs an Orc and Goblin player with 4 wyverns, 3 were warbosses with various gear and 1 was a lvl 3 shaman. He also had a savage orc big un unit and 2 arachnaroks. Once again having 7 dead drops meant i saw his entire deployment before i chucked down my cannon or ironguts and i deployed aggressively. I put my maneaters 12 inches away from an arachnarok and he failed the charge first turn, i pushed really hard and mostly held him in his board, my gorgers came on and ate all of his small night goblin units. The pivotal moment was when he charged 2 warbosses and an arachnarok on 2 wounds into my maneaters who had trollguts up. I allocated all attacks on the wyverns and arach, killed the big spider and won combat by 4 sending his general fleeing. He failed to rally and went off the board. The next heartbreaker was a gorger failing a frenzy test and charging his savage unit in the rear, i won combat by 1 and he failed his breaktest and 1 gorger on 1 wound ran down 30 savages. Got 20 points.

Game 4 was vs a comp 4 host of the eternity king army with End times Allariel and Durthu, the rest of his list was mostly shooting with a decent unit of sisters some sea guard bolt throwers and a lvl 1 undeath. This game was  cluster fuck to be frank, i again deployed aggressively secure in knowing that dwellers below couldnt hurt my ironguts and i needed to close quick before he shot off to much. I got firs turn and marched up, he then charged durthu into my ironguts and allocated all attacks on skrag, rolled like a boss and killed him, putting me 525 down turn 1. The ironguts and BSB got durthu down to 1 wound and next turn a dimensional cascade from my firebelly killed off the last wound and he went down the hole, i was magicless from turn 2 onwards vs a level 5 loremaster of life, i thought i was boned. But in miscasting i put a flame cage on Alariels unit and two gorgers charged into the back of the unit with what was left of my ironguts going in the front. I had nothing left to lose and i got lucky, he failed enough regen saves that he was on snake eyes and i got the points. Got 17 points.

Game 5 was vs a Comp 3 warriors of chaos army, with a lvl 4 death on manticore, 3 skullcrushers a big block of warriors with a general on foot, hellcannon and a unit on knights with bsb, i thought this is it, my luck has run out 1 purple sun and its over. So again i had nothing to lose by running at him so i did. Put my maneaters on the flank to go after the hellcannon, and the ironguts to go right up the middle. The cannon failed to bring down the mage but i dispelled his first 2 purple sun attempts, i chaffed his warrior block and got both my ironguts and maneaters into the hellcannon turn 3, bloody hellcannon lived! so he came right up my arse with the lvl 4 and put a purple sun through both my units, he also charged my ironguts in the flank with the bsb and knights. The purple sun killed 6 of 9 irontguts and a maneater. I accepted the knight champions challenge with skrag and got alot of overkill thanks to killing blow, it was the difference, the knights broke and were run down. Got 19 points.

Last game was vs a comp 2 empire army with a lvl 4 of heavens, a lvl 4 of life, steamtank, hellblaster with engi, cannon, 5 demi's, big block of inner circle knights, he deployed on the back edge and i deployed right up, i knew he was 9 points behind me in overall and that no matter what i was going to get 2 points from the comp swing, so i just needed to get two table quarters and if i lost i'd still end up 1 point higher than him, so i pushed all my stuff into his side of the board to keep him from contesting my side. I did play to win the game though, my maneaters ate a small unit of knights and overran into the steam tank, i planned to chaff the knight bus to stop them from counter charging but a unit of crossbows fled a gorger charge and blocked my sabretusk, i lost the game but got 2 quarters, he got 1 and my ironguts contested the 4th. Tournament ended with my opponent on 98 points and my on 99.

This sums up my overall thoughts on my tournament
I suppose afew factors swung things in my favor, i out deployed every game, i caught alot of people off guard with how aggressively i played and i went into it with no expectations, but by game 5 and 6 i was feeling the strain . 
Hope you enjoyed, any feedback or questions are always welcome.

Thanks for the write up!  Congratulations

Good job nice to see a Skrag list doing well.

Your army was well set up for capturing table quarters with those cheap Gnoblar blocks.

Seems like the Gorgers did ok.

Just wondering where you placed your BSB in the IGs? or Maneaters.

I could have asked you on the day, how did you deal with Skrags inability to fit inside the unit. were you flanked at all and skrag was unable to fight?

Just wondering where you placed your BSB in the IGs? or Maneaters.
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Yeah all characters went in the Ironguts, as they couldnt scout with a char in there.

Yeah got flanked twice during the tourney but i just either accepted the challenge with Skrag or declared it with him, so he got to fight. On the whole, my excess chaff made the opponents ability to flank me negligible.

What was your comp?

I'm struggling to wrap my head around the idea of the tournament: all you needed was 150 points and was everything from end times allowed? I would have brought the worst comp 1 filth imaginable.

No crown of command? With frenzy that seems a huge risk.

How did the gorgers work out for you? They have to ambush, right?

Most of the major endtimes characters such as KFA Nagash and Malekith were not allowed, at moonstruck there was 1 Imrik list, 2 Allarielle, 1 Glotkin and about 9 Maggoth lord lists.

Yet the lists seemed rather wacky and tame to me. I've played with End Times allowed minus the big guys and seen horrors like the silver helm bus with BotWD fronted by DE characters and Wood Elf magic meaning that if you ever got a wound through they just bounced it. Soul destroying.

For that first game Mr Cloak ... you said you were afraid for your maneaters. Were you not tempted to put your characters in with the maneaters? Yes you can't scout but the big benefit for Skragg is Ld9 so you're not tied to one unit with the standard of discipline.

My army was a comp 4, which was what i was aiming for. I figured to get a high comp i would have to take minimum toys, so 1 ironblaster was mandatory i thought, then i had a good think about taking either runemaw, hellheart or crown, settled on the Runemaw as i know there is a hell of alot of final trans and dwellers in my meta.

Your not wrong about most people taking the worst stuff they can, but the TO's were pretty strict on resubing people and i believe there were atleast 12 resubs sent out.

The gorgers preformed better than i expected, they didn't kill much but i liken them to finding a bee in your car when your driving on the freeway, they distract the shit out of your opponent and ruin most of their plans, and can be pretty hard to kill off with just shooting or magic.


As for the lists, i will say i was amazingly lucky, there were so many lists at the tourney i thought i had 0 chance against, but of the 6 armies i played i'd say only 3 of them had me sweating. Those being the first game and the last 2.

I've had a chat to the TO's since and they pointed out to me that there were afew people who didnt lose a game all weekend but came nowhere near the top because of comp and a lack of table quarters, of those who won their first games the people on comp 1 only ended up on around 15 points after their -comp swings and table quarters, were as the people on tables 1 and 2 with me all got 20+ because of our high comp. the dude i played game 6 had comp 2 and he didn't drop a game but his wins were all 15-16 where all mine were 19-21 which was the difference in winning the tournament.

Cool. Well, it seems the system worked, eh! I'm not used to end times stuff being allowed at GTs nor panel comp so it's interesting to see it work.

So a comp 1 is effectively limited to 16 point wins?

The TO's wanted to do something different and i think it took some balls to go so far off the beaten track in such a large tournament.
A comp 1 army can get a max of 19 points vs a comp 2 army, 18 vs comp 3 ext..... And that would be with 4 table quarters which is really really hard to do consistently.

Seems to me that the big jump i got on my first win put me above all the really hard lists and it took them 2-3 games to work their way to the top tables.

Its good to see skrag can still deal some hurtiness,even against end times stuff.

Being a complete newb to fantasy tournies,what is this comp thing you keep mentioning?

A comp is short for composition, its a system attached to tournaments to balance the armies people bring, as we all know Games Workshop does not balance all aspects of their games so people have taken it upon themselves to balance it. In the tournament i attended a group of 5 people gave your army a score out of 5 and they take the average score. That score is then used to dictate who you face in your first 1 or 2 rounds and can add or subtract points from your total score.

Just a quick question Mr Cloak. Obviously you are happy with your overall result.

Is there anything in your list which you thought over performed, or under performed, or you would change for next time you use this style of list?

Any of you coming up for Gronkcon?

Congratulation on a great performance Mr. Cloak! Really, really well done! I really like your style too, so many units

Btw, you can expect a report from the player who had Allariele and company at some stage here:

http://hoodlinghole.blogspot.com/

Another of your opponents provided his stories on wargamerau forum:

http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=178966

It is absolutely fantastic to see so many players posting highlights of their games.

I have one question at the moment, how do you find W/L/D system? I have never played under such and it is quite interesting, also because this is how the games are resolved by the rulebook.

Once again, congrats and thanks for the write up!

RE: Bob the butcher
I guess most of my units over preformed the majority of the tournament, the leadbelchers for example made their points back in 1 round of shooting on afew occasions, the maneaters i suppose did exactly what they say on the box and just wrecked everything they touched.

I won't be attending Gronkcon, I am but a poor student.

I quite like the W/L/D system but i think this incarnation was a bit to harsh with 0 for a loss and being able to go into negative score. With people coming from around the country for this tournament i found the thought of them losing 2 game and effectively having no chance of getting to the top tables pretty hardcore after forking out so much.

Congratulations sir, well done. 

How did you deal with Maneaters and the opponent trying to redirect them with chaff?

How did you deal with Maneaters and the opponent trying to redirect them with chaff?

Well I made sure to scout the Maneaters either into a position that would be hard to chaff or used them as a sort of magnet to pull all the opponents attention. It wasn't that big a deal as my list had more chaff than any other list i played so if they did chaff the Maneaters my chaff would chaff their big units and seeing as i had more i'd usually get to dictate.

How did you deal with Maneaters and the opponent trying to redirect them with chaff?

Well I made sure to scout the Maneaters either into a position that would be hard to chaff or used them as a sort of magnet to pull all the opponents attention. It wasn't that big a deal as my list had more chaff than any other list i played so if they did chaff the Maneaters my chaff would chaff their big units and seeing as i had more i'd usually get to dictate.

I run my maneaters the same as you but sometimes get a bit scared to drop them right in the face of the enemy.. but then if i don't they struggle to get into any meaningful combat until very late game, that's why I asked. I think being the aggressor is the way to go with them..

Yeah totally agree, if you are taking scout you have already invested in an aggressive play style so why not run with it. Don't get me wrong you shouldn't be chucking them infront of black knight buses with blenders in them or hordes of witch elves, but if you can get a trollguts off or a toothcracker then they are pretty damn reliable and will chew through most things.