The Vampire Counts battled the forces of Chaos at 1500pts a piece in Pitched Battle last night. Due to a single stupid turn on my part I managed to snatch a Draw from the jaws of Victory. If I’d managed to dispatch 48 more points of Chaos (ahem, or preserved some more of my recklessly spent troops) it would have been a minor victory. All in all it was an exciting game though and I think both Generals enjoyed themselves.
The Black Coach was fielded for the first time as well. Not an ideal choice against an army that’s mostly Frenzied and/or immune to Psychology but having just assembled it I had no choice! It did manage to see off a unit of mounted Marauders and a couple of Knights.
Thing I need to do:
1) Review the Terror/Fear rules. As we read it last night the only advantage Terror has is from the 6″ ranged effect and what’s up with the whole Terror/Fear thing?
2) In future games completely ignore the Chaos Warriors. Brent fields them in one massive block that is basically unkillable. However due to their Frenzied rule and the fact that Vampire Counts can create new units on the table in the Magic phase, they are (as the web pundits point out) very easy to ‘drive’ around the tabletop. I was partially successful at this last night. My mistake was to actually try charging the Chaos Warriors once they had their back turned – when I should have just created more Zombies in front of them to drive them away from the centre. Brent will no doubt wise up to this and remove their Mark of Khorne, or split them into smaller units. Both of which are perfectly palatable options from my point of view!
3) Magic items continue to be a crap shoot. Most of the time I carry spell casting items I seem doomed to actually roll the same spell for my Necromancer(s). They are however handy for sucking away the odd dispell dice from your opponent. Tried out a few Power Stones last night as well..they were fairly ineffective in this particular game but I can see they have their uses.
4) Speaking of Dispell dice I must remember that once a Mark of Khorne unit is removed from the table their extra Dispell dice is *also* removed. We determined this last night.
Damn and that’s only like the first turn and a bit. I suspect I need to edit these photos somewhat…