2400p tournament list this weekend

[Kheel]

General
Master
-SDC, Shield, HA, Beastmaster's Scourge
-Dragonhelm
-Dawn Stone

Sorceress
-Level 2 Shadow
-Pendant of Khaeleth
-Tine if Furion
-Dark Pegasus

Death Hag
-Cauldron of Blood
-Battle standard bearer

Core
30 Black Ark Corsairs
FC, Reaver with rptr handbow pair upgrade
-Sea Serpent Standard

10 Crossbows

25 Warriors
FC

Special
21 Executioners
Champion and Standard

21 Witch Elves
FC
-Manbane on the Hag champion

15 Black Guards
FC
-Armor of Darkness on Tower Master champion

Cold one chariot

Hydra

Reaper Bolt Thrower

This lands on 2400 points on the dot.
I don't want to rely heavily on magic, which I normally tend to and almost force okhams mindrazor to appear with level 4 and tome of furion. This level 2 with 3 spells has a great chance of getting it, but if I don't I won't obsess about it. I have plenty of killing force anyway.
I am concerned however about fighting armies heavily on the ethereal side, as I do not have any magical attacks except for pure magic or the manbane on witch elf champion. So I'm leaning towards changing the gear on my general Master.
I don't really know what to do, but I want him killy and being able to survive at the same time. To add to the killing part, Beastmaster's Scourge is just too darn good to pass on now since they changed it from being treated as an additional hand weapon. Now it replaces your regular weapon and just adds an attack, which means you get the extra attack even if you equip him with a shield which I do. Now, the Beastmaster's Scourge for its 6 points is a pure find, however, it is not magical and can not help me kill ethereal enemies. So what I was thinking is to combine it with Dagger of Hotek, this excludes any shield builds, since I'll be having my Scourge in one hand, and the Dagger in the other. This adds up to a total of 5 attacks on the Master. And since he will have ASF with the daggers, I'm thinking of combining it with the Blood Armour for that easy 1+ armour save after a few kills the first round of combat. I think I can rely on killing something with 5 attacks, st4 with armour piercing. I'm also leaning towards running this guy with my Corsairs for the extra Frenzied attack, which sums it up to 6 attacks from a mere Master Hero choice. Not too bad I don't think.

Thoughts?

[Kheel]

It's especially the 5 magical st4 armour piercing attacks build I'd like feedback on, they go to 6 with frenzy from corsair units banner.
Dagger of Hotek plus Beastmaster's Scourge

My first match is tomorrow at 6pm.

[Creedence]

I think I am missing something. Where is the dagger?

[A.andersson]

Actually i would just equip him: Armour of darkness whip of agony.
I think your core setup is not very effektive. The corsairs seems a bit excessive. You all ready have plenty of killing power and i dont see them doing much. If you have the models i would swap the corsairs for 10 more spears. The other mandatory core points would be invested in crossbows.
That way you could remove the boltthrower an put those points in black guard. 15 is a bit too small imo.

[Kheel]

I think I am missing something. Where is the dagger?

I explained in the text below the list, some thoughts.

Actually i would just equip him: Armour of darkness whip of agony.
I think your core setup is not very effektive. The corsairs seems a bit excessive. You all ready have plenty of killing power and i dont see them doing much. If you have the models i would swap the corsairs for 10 more spears. The other mandatory core points would be invested in crossbows.
That way you could remove the boltthrower an put those points in black guard. 15 is a bit too small imo.

Some rules are installed to "balance" the armies. For example, only 1 rare choice of the same type for every race, and some equipment restrictions for Dark Elves, such as Pendant of Khaleth is not allowed on Lord choices, Armor of Darkness is now allowed on Lord or Hero characters on foot. (No restrictions for it on champions however).

I played my first two matches today, and I took the following list:

General
Master
-Beastmaster's Scourge, SDC
-Dagger of Hotek
-Blood Armour

Sorceress
-level 2 Shadow
-Pendant of Khaeleth
-Tome of Furion
-Dark Pegasus

Death Hag
-BSB
-Cauldron of BLood

5 Harpies
5 Harpies

5 Darj Riders
(no additional equipment of upgrades of any kind)

30 Corsairs
-FC
-Frenzy Banner

25 Warriors
-FC

21 Executioners
Champion, Standard

21 Witch Elves
FC
-Manbane on Hag Champion

15 Black Guards
FC
-Armor of Darkness on Tower Master Champion

Chariot

Hydra

2396 points

[Kheel]

First game was against a Savage Orc oriented O&G player, his list was with one big horde unit of Savage Orc Big 'Uns with a level 4 in it. He had 5+ ward and a lot of nasty stuff. 50 crazy frenzied orcs with 5+ ward save, on paper it looks nearly unbeatable. More he had 80 Night Goblins with nets and FC and 2 fanatics, one or two spear chuckas, (I don't remember, my harpies took care of all his war machines in turn 2). 1 Doom Diver, 1 Rock Lobber, Arachnarok and a large unit of 12 savage orcs boar boyz. There were some more characters, but I can't recall them. They were not so hard hitty compared to the brutal horde unit, which I focused more or less everything on from the get go.
As I mentioned, my harpies did a great job at his war machines, so there was next to no threat from shooting.
I pulled out the fanatics with my dark riders as early as turn 1,they died because he had them behind a hill. As I understand, they die if they cross from one type of terrain to another, did not know that myself before.

Skipping ahead to what mattered, my witch elves and black guards took care of his boar boyz. Corsairs got charged by his savage orc horde. He killed 2 elves, and I killed 4. That was due to malcogs mistyfying miasma. I tried okhams mindrazor, but failed it or if he dispelled, but miasma came into effect. Because he lost the comab, he also no longer had the frenzy bonus and went down to S4. I stroke victory right then and there. He was not at all pleased and then my turn 3 I casted Okhams mindrazor on the corsair unit and obliterated his orcs, who fled and he gave up after that. His arachnarok never saw battle due to the threat of nearby executioners. So a fast win there at turn 3.

The second game was against a mostly etherial Vampire Counts army. He had two units of 7 hexwraiths, one solo wraiths, a unit of 3 wraiths and a banshe and 2 spirit hosts. He managed to lock my executioners and black guards with spirit hosts, and more or less everything else I had died at turn 5. This game took a rather long time, but since he lost his first game, against the orc player, we all would have advanced to the second round, but counting points it was me and the VC player who advanced. Tomorrow is first one game, if I lose that, I'm out, if I win its over to the finals on sunday.

[Yeasir]

Congrats on the win vs. O&Gs and good luck tomorrw. Make Pit of Shades your friend as most of the ethereal stuff is initiative 1-2. Also, make the most of using your harpies as movment manipulators for the hex wraiths. Fly them up in his face then flee and make him fail charges. Even if they get caught, opening up flanks for your units this way will help you win just through combat resolution even if you don't get your magic weapons in the fight.

[Kheel]

Congrats on the win vs. O&Gs and good luck tomorrw. Make Pit of Shades your friend as most of the ethereal stuff is initiative 1-2. Also, make the most of using your harpies as movment manipulators for the hex wraiths. Fly them up in his face then flee and make him fail charges. Even if they get caught, opening up flanks for your units this way will help you win just through combat resolution even if you don't get your magic weapons in the fight.

Excellent pointers there. I did not know what to do with my harpies vs the VC player, it was my first time playing against VC. It's an interesting army, and I would like to see more people play them.

Todays match was against the very same VC player, and it ended in another loss for me. It's hard to tackle something you've never had in your face before.
So I have sunday off... Can finish painting my harpies or something along those lines.

The game was not as one sided the second time since I knew what he had from the get go before we even deployed. But the troubles was again ethereals and the fact that I one single spell off before my sorceress was drawn into another dimension with the roll of 2 on miscast table. My only two magic users then was the general in the corsair unit and my witch elf hag champion with manbane. Sometimes I wish I had the magical poison properties of Skaven... But all in all, it was interesting.

[Yeasir]

It is easy to miscast, especially when you are able to roll more than 6 dice at a time. I always take Earthing Rod with my level 4 sorceress. It is 25 points that can hopefully prevent the void suck if you do miscast.

Anyways, I'm glad this game went better than the last. I truly think we are the better army, so hopefully your next meeting will be a victory.

[Kheel]

have a pretty tight fit on this sorceress. It's a level 2 so 25 points for arcane is quite extreme when I need a defensive item too such as pendant of khaeleth. But I totally understand what you mean. However, result 2 on the miscast table is 1:35, the odds are rather small that it would happen, so I usually just go with sac dagger for the sheer convenience.
I did some painting though now so its was not all bad that I got the day off.

Thanks for following my short experience in this tournament. Hope to do better next time.
Cheers

[Yeasir]

Dimensional Cascade is 2-4 and Power Drain is 10-12, so the odds of rolling something potentially devestating are 12/36 or 1 in 3 if I did my math right. So Earthing Rod may be more useful than it seems. I do like Sac. Dagger alot, though, and can see why you would choose that over Earthing Rod.