BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

How to beat those cowardly High Elves?

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Archamedius
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BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by Archamedius »

So I am going to a team tournament over the summer and playing my beloved Druchii mostly because I doubt I will have anything else ready in time. Druchii (and Skaven) suffer from probably the worst rules in the game, with degenerative alliances meaning that likely by turn 3 you are at best in an uneasy alliance and far more likely a desperate alliance. I think probably the worst of this is splitting the dice pool in the magic phase (both power and dispel!). Perhaps there are other more penalizing pieces to this, but the magic part sticks out to me.

My partner right now is either going to bring O&G or Wood Elves (WE only if the new book comes in may and is good). If we go WE/DE we plan to say FU to the alliance chart and deal with it from the beginning. O&G/DE probably has a different feel to it.

So has anyone got any experience working with our deficiencies in Team events?

The rules we are going under are 1000 pts per player, no lords choices. I was thinking of taking a level 2 and using her to snipe out the opposing magic users with death magic, as leadership 9 vs. most other army magic casters should give me a +1 on the roll. (It would be awesome of course if I could get a magic banner on dark riders here for standard of discipline but such is not my luck) Put her on a dark steed and in either a unit of warlocks or dark riders for protection. If it goes my way, by turns 2 or 3 when we have to start splitting the dice pool evenly between us, the opposing magic should be gone and we won't have to worry about splitting our dispel pools (which is the real downside since once you start splitting your dispel pool, the opponent just picks the guy with less dispel dice and throws all their magic dice at him, making for a bad day).

Additionally my thought was to bring a larger block of elite infantry and surround it with fast cav and harass my opponent down with my superior mobility and then hit them hard with the elite infantry along with my opponent's strong stuff for a good counter punch.

Any thoughts on general strategy?

Any other tips?

Thanks for all the help!
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Dyvim tvar
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Re: BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by Dyvim tvar »

I am also bringing Dark Elves to a 1000-point team tournament (teaming with Warriors of Chaos) and here's what I am using:

HEROES

Death Hag - 115 points
Witchbrew

CORE

20 x Darkshards - 270 points
Light Armor, Shields
Musician

5 x Dark Riders - 95 points
Repeater Crossbows

SPECIAL

29 x Har Ganeth Executioners - 393 points
Draich-master, Musician, Standard Bearer
Standard of Discipline

RARE

5 X Doomfire Warlocks

My thought process is as follows. First, due to limited points, I don't want more than 1 character. Since I don't have a BSB, I decided to take a Brew Hag as my general. I put her in a big block of Execs, making them really nasty in combat and also Immune to Psychology until beaten--no failed Panic tests for me! Standard of Discipline is in the unit to boost the general's leadership to 10 for the benefit of the rest of my troops. Since I don't have a Sorceress, I have a small unit of Warlocks. My partner will be taking a level 2, so that if we are forced to split the power pool, we each have something to cast with.

Personally, I don't like taking a level 2 in small games -- there is too much risk of wasting points if you get a bad selection of spells. Warlocks are a better option in my book. You can't take a scroll, but they are much harder to kill, can perform multiple battlefield functions, and you know your spell selection in advance and can plan around it. In this case, since I know I am getting Soulblight, I have a big unit of Darkshards as core who can shoot up a unit when I drop its Toughness.

If you are going to take a mage, Death is a good choice since enemy magic defense will be limited. If you do that, I think you REALLY need to get her up to Leadership 10 for Spirit Leech purposes since that is the only spell you are assured of getting. Put her in a unit of Leadership 9 infantry (since she then borrows their "unmodified leadership" per the crazy GW FAQ) and give them the Standard of Discipline for Leadership 10.
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Re: BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by dms505 »

Actually I had planned on taking a lvl 3 Slannesh Sorcerer Lord Mr. Tvar. I also checked the rules and we are free to divide the dice as we choose until/if we become Desperate Allies. Which is going to be (probably) at least 3rd turn. The plan is to use Slannesh magic to pull the enemies out of formation and allow nasty charges with halberd Khorne Chosen or the Execs. A large block of 20 Chaos warriors with shields will be a heavy anvil.
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Re: BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by Dyvim tvar »

Ah yes -- didn't have your list in front of me so I was remembering a Level 2.

Frenzied Execs and Khorne Chosen with Halberds -- thinking about all those attacks sends shivers down my spine.
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Re: BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by Setomidor »

An important detail about the Fragile Alliance is that _each_ player in the alliance rolls a die at the start of his turn, so you will probably reach a desperate alliance status very quickly (on average, at the start of your second turn since you by then will have rolled for for the Fragile Alliance four times). In essence, this means that you can only count on at most one magic phase where you can share the dice freely, then you'll have to start dividing it evenly.

I think your list is very solid Dyvim, the only thing I would consider is exchanging the Crossbowmen for another two units of Dark Riders (stay mobile!), and then use the last 70 pts for a Bolt Thrower.
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Re: BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by dms505 »

Yes hopefully it will only go down 1 in the first turn if any. On the bright side our armies really aren't dependent on magic at all. It's more of a bonus. However the main issue will be for the Warlocks since they may only possibly have a couple of dice in the 2+ rounds. Slannesh on a lvl 3 can cast a few spells on 1-2 dice and the rest unless boosting on 2-3. My main issue will be probably not being able to use 5-6 dice later on to boost if I had Chior. The Chaos Sorcerer is no slouch in combat and the Warlocks are also nasty in combat. Other than some chaos warhounds I don't think opponents will want to fight any unit we have. We just have to quickly deal with war machines and with each player only allows 1000 we won't see as many war machines.
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Re: BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by dms505 »

This is just an update on that tournament Dyvim and I were in this past weekend. Everything went as expected in most games. The Big Exec block did die to a hoard of I think 40-50 empire Halberders one game but that's probably their bad matchup due to the sheer number, hatred from a priest and 3+ to wound. He put 5 attacks on the priest first, hit 3 and he saved the other 3 of 5s and 6s. But the sacrifice wasn't in vain because the next turn my chaos anvil and chosen hammer went into them and did about 20 wounds to finish the game. The opposite happened in the last game as well. I used up every bit of my troops wearing them down but the execs came in and destroyed the enemy unit holding the objective in turn 4. WoC and DE are just too elite. I almost feel bad/cheesy using them together and probably won't next time!

Per the point of the thread, we did end up desperate allies on average by the 3rd or 4th turn but I was doing the magic dice rolling and we averaged about 6-8 dice each phase so when we did have to split them it was still decent. But the point was that neither of us really needed the other characters are back up so we just played it as two separate armies who worked together. The ONLY downside was the magic really which wasn't even that big a deal. Just don't build you list around a lvl 4 or a lore with generally higher casting costs.
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Re: BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by Dyvim tvar »

dms505 wrote:This is just an update on that tournament Dyvim and I were in this past weekend. Everything went as expected in most games. The Big Exec block did die to a hoard of I think 40-50 empire Halberders one game but that's probably their bad matchup due to the sheer number, hatred from a priest and 3+ to wound. He put 5 attacks on the priest first, hit 3 and he saved the other 3 of 5s and 6s.


I actually put 8 attacks on that stinkin' Warrior Priest and couldn't kill the bastard. The warrior priest was on a corner with the BSB next to him, I couldn't hit straight on due to another unit in the way, and I had some of my models hanging off to the side. I was frenzied in horde formation, so I had 6 (2 touching and those behind) models attack the Warrior Priest to try to get rid of Hatred, and I had 3 models attack the BSB. All those strength 6 attacks and I left both of those 2-wound characters with 1 wound each. I didn't do myself any favors by forgetting Murderous Prowess during that combat.
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Re: BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by Archamedius »

Where did you finish in the overall rankings? Was this at the Indianapolis Adepticon Primer? (I wanted to go but couldn't make my schedule work for it)
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Re: BRB Team Events - Compensating for being Druchii

Post by Dyvim tvar »

We went 3-0. Finished 2nd by 1 point.

We actually beat the 1st place team in game 3, but they won overall in part because we voted them our favorite opponents.
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