Sheffield Slaughter Review

January 26th brought us Sheffield Slaughter. I went last year and I absolutely loved it even though I was terribly ill and had to be sick during my first game against Annie [something that happens a lot in her games] It's a great tournament one of the best and its up there with midlands, scgt and the incursion series. Held at the Davey's sports venue in Sheffield there is a bar and loads of space to roam around. Located centrally in the country its very accessible allowing players from as far as Scotland to head down. It was a very well run weekend with games finishing on time, the food was decent and the bar was open for as long as there were people willing to buy alcohol. Some of us on who had arrived on the Friday were greeted by about 6" of snow, we had a lot of fun building a snowman and dragging team wales legend Matt Yeo through it, we pretty much bullied the poor guy but he was a good sport. Andrew Lewis had his lip split by a bin lid and then ran off like forest gump only to return about an hour later after wandering around the roundabout shouting "i'm not batman" to the rest of us below. On the Saturday morning there was a huge backlog of bacon sandwiches and they were ill prepared but that was my only gripe really. The Saturday evening was great and involved around 18 of us all playing perudo for a good few hours that saw Tom Hale lose his rag and smash a glass. On the whole everyone was in great spirits and I personally had the best time at a tournament I have had, it's just a shame Sean Gill, Chris Appleford and Rapey Dave couldn't make it.

The Winners:
Overall - Mark Wildman, Skaven
2nd - Jack Armstrong, Lizardmen
3rd - Will Goodwin, Empire

Painting:
1 - Graham Radden, Empire
2 - Wayne Kemp, Skaven
3 - Dave Grant, Bretonnians

My Result:
23rd and Best Wood Elf General

My List:

Lords and Heroes - 540pts

Spellweaver LvL 4 (Life) Wand of Wych Elm, dragonbane gem - 310pts

BsB, Asyendi's Bane, Hail of doom, dragonhelm - 140pts

Branchwraith, Cluster of Radiants - 90pts


Core - 862pts

8 Dryads - 96pts

8 Dryads - 96pts

13 Glade Guard + musician - 162pts
13 Glade Guard + musician - 162pts
13 Glade Guard + musician - 162pts
13 Glade Guard + musician + Standard Bearer + Banner of Eternal Flame - 184pts

Special - 520pts4 Treekin - 260pts
4 Treekin - 260pts

Rare - 573pts

6 Waywatchers - 144
6 Waywatchers - 144

Treeman - 285

Total - 2495

A massive thank you to Tom Richards @tmrichards for lending me his army as my own is still stuck up in York and I haven't been able to go back up and get it yet. I realized with an hour to go that I hadn't put my list in and I had no army, I messaged a few people begging to borrow their armies, Mark Borland was one of them and he accepted but stated he had no eagles so I wrote a list with no eagles in it then Tom offered me his army...anyway basically I had a Treeman instead of eagles so I figured anything between 50th and 60th would be a reasonable finish. I took the banner of flame because double hydra is allowed at slaughter and I figured I would probably need it.

I have no dispel scroll as with death magic being so rife in the current game I thought more dice and re-rolls to dispel would be much more useful as I could match my opponents 2 dice casts with 2 and a re-roll and if they rolled really low on a cast I could even use less dice and rely on the re-roll. The rest of the list is pretty much the same as I always take, the Tree kin to deal with Skaven, VC and the vast amounts of 1+ and 2+ armour save flying around. Below I give a brief rundown of the games I played.

My Games:

Game 1 Chaos Dwarfs vs Alex Read

I was drawn against CD first game which I was very unhappy about. Kdai, Kdai fireborn 3 war machines and a load of 3+ armour saves on the dwarf warriors, my only saving grace was that he had a lord on a lamassu . My plan was to run around and deny as many points as possible and threaten the lord with the waywatchers aiming for a 15-5 was basically the best I thought I could manage here.

Basically Alex spent the whole game trying to shoot off my waywatchers and Treeman which he eventually did. I managed to shoot off all his hobgoblins, Dwellers went off on a war machine and I killed his kdai with the Hail of Doom by taking 3 wounds off it. The kdai had inflicted 3 wounds on itself after failing a strength test in turn 2. After a close fought game we ended up with a 10-10 draw.

Game 2 Empire vs Will Goodwin

Game two was even more worrying, after my good friend Dave Pyle had also drawn his first game with a similar victory points tally I was hoping to play him but alas I drew Will Goodwin's Empire and his 11 demigryphs 12 inner circle knights (or whatever they are) and a few bits of chaff...oh and 3 cannons. Do I even need to say anything about this game? I lost. Badly. 20-0. I didn't even do anything remotely entertaining or make any funny jokes.


Game 3 Tomb Kings vs Some ELG guy maybe called Dale but not actually the cool dale who moved to Canada?


So the third game was on the near bottom tables, as terrible as it is I have actually forgotten his name but I've met him a few times and I do love all the ELG guys. His list contained 3 war sphinx's which to be fair is yet another shite match up for me, sure TK is a decent match up but with the flaming catapults and the sphinx it was going to be pretty difficult to say the least.

 So ELG guy won the first turn and surged (I say surged I mean moved everything 4") towards me. I had deployed with the majority of my combat units on one side and the shooting on the left in the hope of creating an arc of shooting on one side to force him into the corner and whittle him down over time. I deployed the treeman out of catapult range and left him there for the entire game. He did nearly kill the treeman with those weird snakes things that pop up out of the ground and shoot based on the targets initiative (stalkers) I managed to shoot off all the sphinx and even took 3 wounds off one of them with the hail of doom. I then forced him into the corner, dwellers was used on his archer bunker and I shot off the rest. In the end he had a few bits of bad luck and I ran everything away once I realised I had the game in the bag. 19-1 win. All joking aside Dale Bennion was his name and he was a great guy :P

Game 4 Dark Elves vs Ol (og games)

Well what a strange turn of events, I spent the evening chatting, playing perudo and drinking with the Og Games guys and was drawn against Ol for the game in the morning which was set to be a lot of fun as he doesn't really care about gaming too much but we were both doing better than expected. Like most of the Dark Elf players Ol was running the double Hydra and a load of chaff along with a level 4 on a peg.

 The game went back and forth a little with me shooting off all the chaff as his Hydras ran towards me, the rest of his army was bunkered up behind a hill. I set up with my Treeman near to his Hydra and my flaming banner in the middle. The game really swung in my favour when I rolled 16 for the Hail of Doom against a Hydra with only 3 wounds left, I killed it and it panicked the other Hydra off the board (I found this a common problem with double monster lists, I often kill one and the monster next to it out of BSB range runs away) With the Hydras out of the way I pressed forward, Killing blowed his Lord (which Ol later realised he could have put in a unit vs bs fire) and controversially Dwellersed off the couldron. I say controversially because I used 5 dice killed it then realised I had 6 dice on the table (one of which was a wound marker for one of my tree kin) we added up again and weren't too sure, I offered to roll to cast the spell agian but Ol said he wasn't really that bothered and just took it off. With 2 more turns I probably would have got it anyway but either way Ol proved why everyone like to play against him and why he is a well like guy in the community, because he really doesn't give a shit about winning or losing. He did concede though so he could go and grab another £8 bottle of Shutter Home Cabernet Sauvignon. 20-0 win.

Game 5 Lizardmen vs Dan Heelan

I had the privilege of playing Dan for all my hard work. Totally gutted, I have never liked Dan really and I don't really know why, I always thought he was a bit of a warhammer snob. I didn't want to play him and I know he is a good player and I fully expect to lose the game. What happened was completely different, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. He had becalming on his Slaan, lots of temple guard and saurus, some scar vets on foot and the usual ton of chaff. I deployed my lvl 4 riiiiiiiight on the right hand side a good 40" away from his Slaan in order to push forward 10" in turn one and 6 dice skills Dwellers, I saw this as my only chance to cast it in the game due to bacalming. I won the first turn and did exactly that, killed 15 out of 30 saurus (well above average) the proceded to shoot the unit down to 6 models. The miscast saw me roll dimensional cascade but my wizard survive. the rest of the game was usual wood elf cat and mouse tactics with me feeding his temple guard units as and when I needed to. I shot off a lot of chaff but the game changing moment was when I used Hail of Doom on the unit of 3 Salamanders, along with the bow shots from the unit I reduced the unit to 1 wound. Dan used regrowth on the unit and they were back up to near full. Completely gutted. Those salamanders proceeded to get Dan the points he needed to draw the game with me, but in fairness we both played well and a draw was a fair result.

 As for Dan I couldn't have been more wrong about the guy, an absolute gent to play, a master with the rules, I learned a lot and he was good fun and a great sport complimenting me a number of times on certain decisions and I gave him my best sports vote, it turned out later he had done the same for me. I honestly can't believe I was so wrong about the guy, that's what you get for being judgemental I guess.

Game 6 Dark Elves vs Luke Rooney

I was delighted to be drawn against Dark Elves again for my final game as they aren't a bad match up for the age old defenders of Athel Loren. Luke had supplied all the scenery for the event and was a nice guy.

He was running death magic which I had a really hard time dealing with. He killed my lvl 4 in turn 2 and my BSB in turn 3. I thought the game was over at that point but somehow my desperation push came off, I had shot off most of his chaff and with a volley of arrow fire and  Hail of Doom I had also taken out a Hydra, I set up a counter charge for my Treeman which he fell for and I got into combat with the other Hydra using my Tree. I won that combat, the Hydra fled but I didn't catch it. Eventually I got the Tree in again with only 2 wounds left he killed the Hydra. The Tree died next turn but the opening created let me charge his bunker with 8 Dryads and the Branchwraith, between them they killed the lvl 4 and a load of spearmen. Masses of combat ensued with Dryads vs Spearmen, Tree kin vs the Pendant BSB and even Glade Guard vs Repeater Crossbowmen, the outcome was a bloody mess with very little left on the board. Great game and a great last game to have. 10-10

Roundup

So there you go that was Sheffield Slaughter 2013, I will definitely be going again. The next event for me will be the Mersey Meltdown in 3 weeks. I will be taking my wood elves again and anything above a half way finish will again be a great result for the forest dwellers.

Jay