Ghosts N' Goblins Ride Again

With school winding down I'm making a push to get back into the hobby, kicking it off with a tournament at Coliseum of Comics in Kissimmee. This was the first time I did any playing since the first tournament I went to at CoC last September. .

I brought the Ghosts N' Goblins to do battle with, since they were the nicest looking army that were not outdated by recent books and editions thus could still put on the field as is, without much work. They didn't let me down (off the field anyway) as I got loads of compliments on them

 

My first battle was against a young player named Jonathan and his Warriors of Chaos army.  As an aside, I remembered Jonathan from a couple of weeks ago went Alice and I went up there for boardgame day and they were running a 30 man game of "Are You a Werewolf?"  I think everyone voted to string up poor Jonathan early on (who turned out to be a normal villager) I lasted a while longer before my date with the leafless tree (another innocent villager. We were pretty stupid in our village apparently).  My wife ended up being one of the damn werewolves eating everybody..

On turn 1 the ebon chaos chimera swooped in to draw out the fanatics from the night goblin units and found it bit off more than it could chew.  It backpedaled a little after the initial hits but still got smeared at the beginning of my next turn.

 

The Chaos monster vanquished, the enboldened goblin army marches out to meet the enemy.  Well, some of them anyway.  The night goblins archer unit on the right flank decided they were going to keep trying to pick a fight with the big black orc unit.  Not sure if this should have happened, and this may be just be me getting bit in the tail for deciding to forego the $50 on the latest army book for the tourney since I was using basically the same list as last edition and I had all of the special rules/spells/etc. in the Army Builder printout, but it just said 'closest eligible unit' and I decided to eat the bullet and assume the black orcs met that requirement, being the closest unit to them.  They actually managed to kill four black orcs over two turns of the "Get Em!" result on the Animosity table, and another orc was killed by a fanatic clipping the unit, and this would come back to haunt me.

The goblins on the left flank were getting routed, but the fanatics they disgorged killed off all but one of the mighty dragon ogres, just leaving two warrior units that were weathering multiple rock launcher hits with minimal casualties. The warp beast took some fanatic love too at some point for a wound or two. Things were looking pretty good still till the last dragon ogre and the warp beast charged my black orc unit. All the black orcs and the big boss used a pair of choppas for the fight giving them S5 in the first round with an extra attack. When they attacked the dragon ogre had 2 wounds and the warp beast had 3 or 4.  My crack unit couldn't even put the T4 dragon ogre down, with the BSB and his giant spider helping out.  They managed to do a wound to the dragon ogre and two to the warp beast and then took eight losses, mostly from the dragon ogre who I had put most of my attacks trying to kill. I had a rank, standard, BSB, and War Banner, so I only lost combat by one and was stubborn from having more ranks with the general right there, but I rolled a 9 which I rerolled with the BSB and got an 11, and that was it. That was the last turn, I think, and resulted in a major loss.

My next game was against Tim, a goofy and easygoing young man that reminded me a lot of Scruffyface, otherwise known as the offspring of Brother Francis. (I miss you Scruffyface!). He was using Bretonneans, which was fun for me since I very rarely get to play them.

In the first turn, Tim's courageous Bretonnean knights charge into battle with the Ghosts N' Goblins, despite taking heavy losses from the ghost fanatics. Armored knights were dropping like flies. The fanatics were definitely earning their points.

Then something happened between the movement phase of the top of turn 1 and the close combat phase. Something dreadful.

 



What was in the first picture that wasn't in the second picture.  Here's a hint: it was just to the right of the general's chariot and it had my BSB and black orc boss in it. It's funny because when I went back to look at the pictures the next day I saw something in that first picture that made me laugh. Here it is zoomed in.

 I didn't even realize my catapult had tipped like that, but that was some pretty heavy foreshadowing if ever there was. The first Bretonnean trebuchet shot hit the unit, killing a few black orcs and catching the BSB in the blast radius. BSB failed his ward save and was dealt 3 wounds. The unit had to make a panic test, once again with the general standing right next to them. They fail, then run right off the edge of the board.
Needless to say, the abrupt and unexpected loss of the battle standard bearer and his elite black orc unit in the first turn dramatically shifts the tide of the battle and the unsupported goblins very rapidly find their battle lines collapsing. By the third turn the battle is all but lost and the Goblyn Queen soon finds herself alone against the Bretonnean army. Her and the orc shaman go out in a blaze of glory in a daring suicide charge against the stalwart knights

And now it's game three and The Battle for Last Place begins now with both armies wishing they could be in the saloon and whorehouse on the neighboring battlefield seen in back.

 (when the tournament runner was putting buildings down on the table I said "why do they get the saloon and we get stuck with this crapshack??")
My third opponent was a Sylvanian themed Vampire Counts army commanded by a very friendly and fun opponent named Brian (not Scruffyface). The undead take the fight to the Ghosts N' Goblins early, using their vanguard dire wolves and bats to draw out all the ghostly fanatics. This was the only of the three lists I faced that day that really had a good way of dealing with the fanatics.

The Ghosts N' Goblin meet the vampire challenge head on, paring down the grave guard unit to less than half under withering fire from the pumpkin chukkas.

 The next couple turns are pretty much me doing my best to keep Brian from casting Invocation of Nehek to heal his army (and succeeding, with the help of a dispel scroll) while the vampires held their troops back as the fanatics swarmed over the center of the battlefield. The Goblyn Queen used the opportunity to send her trolls and goblins to sieze the two objectives. (actually the trolls failed a stupidity test and ended up stumbling into the objective while shuffling aimlessly forward. Trolls..)

Once most of the fanatics have been vanquished, the vampire counts charge en masse, sending vampire led skeletons into both buildings in an attempt to drive out the Goblyn Queen's forces

 A goblin unit finds itself squished between a unit of black knighst and the fearsome black coach which was fully powered up with the power of arcane sorceries. The knights continued to charge on into the flank of another goblin unit but found themselves destroyed when they are charged in the rear by the Goblyn Queen's black orc bodyguard (who really needed to make up for their pitiful performance in the first two games). The undead ultimately drove the goblins out of one objective while the trolls held the other, killing the attacking vampire with their acidic troll vomit. The battle ended in a hard fought draw

I had a really fun time playing and while I ended up most likely at the bottom of the heap in the standings, I won best painted army and a $25 gift certificate!  I'm excited about WFB again and especially about the 1600 pt league that's going to be starting there at the end of the month.  I think this time I'm going to go with something a little... furrier.