Leadership 2

After attending the annual international potluck at work, I ducked out early to make the drive up to Donovan’s place in South San Francisco.  We loading up his pimptastic ride with board games (that we never played) and the rest of our shit, and swung by Ed’s porn studio to pick him up, along with his young ward Cameron.  We decided Johnny’s last minute decision to skip SAWS was unacceptable, made a stop at his lab in Emeryville, threw him in the trunk, and hit the road. 

Traffic was kinda horrendous, but expected, and somewhat mitigated by the DVD player in Don’s ride (Fellowship of the Ring).  We arrive in Sacto around 6:30, check into the hotel, drop our armies off and make a run to BevMo, in that order.  Johnny buys his soft cheese and crackers, along with a gross amount of beer, which he plans to drink by himself the following day when the rest of us are playing Warhammer.  Donovan decides to eliminate his competition via alcohol poisoning.  More on that later.  Our beverages of choice in hand, we head to the pool.

Conversation hovers around the topics of virginity (Cameron’s), abstinence (mine) and therapy (or lack there of)… as far as I remember anyway.  We were all pretty tossed when we got kicked out of the pool at 11, including the Colonel and Dave (decided not drunk) who arrived around 9:30 .  Which brings us back to Donovan and his nefarious plan: shove mass quantities of After Shock down the gullet of his greatest perceived threat (Ed).  The (huge) bottle eventually broke on the pavement near the pool, spilling perhaps the last third of its cinnamony sweet poison upon the ground.  I’m convinced this fortunate accident saved Ed’s life.

We head back to the room to begin the board games, but lack the manual dexterity to open the boxes.  So we continue drinking.  Our intelligence network eventually pinpoints the location of the Barbarians (Cole, Mike, William and friends) and the Low Comp Crew from Santa Cruz (TJ, Rex and friends).  We bust our way into their rooms, throwing drinks in faces and igniting wrestling matches (no shit).  Hotel security eventually threatens to call the sheriff if we don’t quiet down.  We head back to our respective rooms and crash.  In summation, everything seems to be going smoothly until around 1:30 AM.  I’m sitting on the toilet finishing up some last minute business before bed, and nearly fall off after Ed tries to force his way through the door (I’ve learned to lock it behind me over many years of rooming with Ed and Scaletti).  He frenziedly bangs on the door for a few seconds, followed by a rather disturbing moment of utter silence.  Then the vomiting begins, violently audible through the bathroom walls.  It continued through the night, filling up the ice bucket and a good portion of the trash can.  I slept quite well.

The next morning sees Ed so wrecked he’s unable to move.  I leave him in bed, literally whimpering with his arms around the trashcan.  I enjoyed a pleasant waffle breakfast downstairs, and Johnny decides he’ll play Ed’s army round 1, as we didn’t bother to bring his own Dark Elves when we kidnapped him. So we were off to Round 1:

Round 1:  Rex Olivieri, Dark Elves

Rex is one of the Santa Cruz Low Comp Crew, and a pretty cool guy.  He also schooled my VC at KublaCon a few months back, with pretty much the same DE list, so I was looking for revenge.  The scenario gave 250 points for each table quarter instead of the usual 100.  VC have a pretty huge advantage here, what with Raise Dead shenanigans.  Rex’s list is a pretty standard combat/punchy DE army: Lord on Dragon w/ reverse ward save and Potion of Strength, Master on Dark Peggy with Ring of Hoteck, Scroll Caddy, Hydra, couple RBT’s, some Cold One Knights, a Chariot, some Dark Riders, couple units of Harpies, some repeater cross bows, small unit of Shades and a shooty Assassin (Manbane+Stars).  Because of the scenario, I think Rex felt obligated to spread out his units a bit more than he otherwise would have.  This limited the protection of the Ring of Hoteck, as only about half his shit was w/in 12”.  I decided to slow play it, keeping back and throwing magic missiles at the unprotected flank and Winds of Undeath (which is never gacked by the ring unless the bearer is w/in 12” of  the caster), then moving up and raising zombies to contest table quarters in the last round or 2.  This ended up working quite well, and after a couple rounds of bearing my magical offense Rex got a little desperate and shoved his Dragon and Hydra into the front of my army.  The dragon eventually broke and fled into impassible terrain (a house).  Win (and vengeance) for the VC!

Round 2: Donovan Gilliland, VC

I should mention here, before getting into my match with Don, that Ed, after much poking and proding, pulled himself together enough to start playing in round 2.  Johnny played his army round 1, to a draw.  Ed was on his own from here on out.  We assumed he’d be ruled ineligible for any award involving battle points… more on that later.

Don’s bloody abortion of a list has its weaknesses, and I’m fortunate to be well acquainted with them.  My Lord went Lore of Light (absolutely rapes armies composed of small elite units like Blood Knights and Zombie Dragons).  My 2 lesser vamps each defaulted one of their spells to Raise Dead, the better to control his frenzied Blood Knights.  The scenario was magic flux.  Each player rolls all their power/dispel dice every round and gives any 1’s to their opponent’s pool.  We both had a lot of dice, so I figured it would about even out.  I do pack 2 Balefire Corpse Carts though, which, as usual, proved invaluable against VC.  He gets first turn shambles fwd about 8 inches with everything, keeping pace with his infantry.  Some Dire Wolves bunker his Blood Knights, which is totally the right thing to do, but with the proper placement of speed bumps like my own Dire Wolves and raised Zombies, it’s also exploitable, and it can take awhile for him to bring his Knights to bear.  This was my plan.  I wanted to slow the Knights down with as many layers of speed bumps as possible, and blanket the area with Cleansing Flare, all the while tossing Burning Gaze and Gaze of Nagash at the Zombie Dragon.  I won’t go through a play by play of what was actually a very tactically interesting chess match, but I will describe a few of the more silly things: I gave Don 4 of my 10 casting dice through magic flux nonsense, twice (each time he only gave me 1 of his dispel dice).  I failed to successfully cast Cleansing flare 6/6 times (once rolling a 7 on 4 dice).  One of my lesser vamps earned his own Countship, single handedly annihilating the Zombie Dragon with but 1 casting of Gaze of Nagash (5 hits, all randomized onto the Dragon, all wounding…on 5+, no saves on a 6+ = DEAD DRAGON!!).  Also the fact that Zombies can never overrun proved pivotal, preventing a unit of Blood Knights from completing their own overrun and exposing a flank to my Grave Guard.  Ended in a very hard and well fought tie.

Round 3: Andre Feliz, Skaven

Brad Feliz’s brother… I was prepared for the worst.  Turns out his brother is a totally decent human being.  More than decent, really.  Kind of jolly… reminded me a little of Joe Duran, only more quiet and not nearly as inebriated!  His Skaven list was very tame: General with the Weeping Blade, BSB with a Warbanner, Scroll Caddy, Assassin with the no armor save blade, a bunch of Clan Rats, Storm Vermin (static combat res 8, like Dave usually plays) Warp Lightning Cannon, big unit of Jezzails, 2 Ratling guns and a Warp Fire Thrower, 1 Tunneling Team, a few small units of Gutter Runners, Plague Monks with Hatred Banner and some Censer Bearers.  Huge army, but doesn’t really have the tools necessary to deal with VC very efficiently.  The Warp Lightning Cannon very nearly took out my Vargulf on round 1 with a S10 zap to the nuts… luckily his balls have regeneration and he rolled a 4.  After that, magic missiles and Wind of Undeath made short work of his shooting phase, and decidedly bad dice on his part made the remote chance he had in close combat a no go.  Win for the VC, and a pretty glaring example of why a tie on day 1 is actually a pretty good thing as far as matchups are concerned.  Andre got my second best opponent vote.

End of Day 1

Ed was REALLY hungry.  Understandable, since we had a liquid dinner the night before, and he’d been too busy heaving it all back up thus far to keep anything down. After YET ANOTHER failed attempt to get into Red Lobster, we all pile into Bucco’s for ridiculously huge portions of pasta and pizza, which Donovan quietly paid for.  We keep the evening pretty tame, going to see District 9 at a nearby theater (fantastic).

Round 4: Doc Glenboski, Dwarves

Doc’s a great guy, and I knew almost before we played he’d be getting my favorite opponent vote.  But it was a slaughter… a capture the objective scenario (worth 500 points!) with Dwarves vs Vampire Counts… riiiiight.  His list : Fighty Lord on Shield Bearers, 2 Fighty Thanes, Rune Smith w/ Spellbreaker, 2 Bolt Throwers, 2 Organ Guns, 1 smallish unit of Warriors, 2 big units of Longbeards, 1 big unit of Hammerers.  The Thanes had Oathstones, and both the Hammerers and 1 unit of Longbeards were immune to fear and terror, but it didn’t help much.  His shooting failed to do much before we closed, and Curse of Years worked over his Hammerers something good.  I broke and ran down the one unit of Longbeards that wasn’t immune to fear, along with the Thane in them.  His dice were pretty asstastic, but I’m not certain it would have made much difference with the matchup, especially given the scenario, which grossly favors VC.  Win.

Round 5: Larry DeTomasi, Bretonnians

Larry's a pretty chill guy, and I always enjoy our games.  Unfortunately this one was very 1 sided.  He plays 3 big Errant lances, and 1 big Knight of the Realm lance, along with 2 units of Archers, 2 units of Ranked up Peasants, a large unit of Grail Relicque, a Trebuchet, a Lord with the no armor save great weapon, rerolls most everything in a challenge vow and the item that makes his challenges indeclinable, a BSB with the Gromril Helm, a Paladin with Sword of Might and Virtue of Duty, and a Damsel Scroll Caddy.  Larry weighed his right flank very heavily, with all the Errant Knights and his General and BSB deployed there.  He stuck his Realm Knights with the Damsel and the Relicque in the middle, and a bunch of peasants on the left flank.  I stuck my Vargulf in front of his peasants, hoping to wreak some havoc with terror, my Grave Guard and a unit of Ghouls in the middle, and tried to cut off his weighted flank with Zombies, my other unit of Ghouls and some Dire Wolves.  It worked quite well... except for the Vargulf: The Trebuchet scored a direct hit on my Vargulfs nuts.  Having shrugged off a Warp Lightning Cannon the round before, the large rock did little damage.  However, after the Vargulf finished ripping the Trebuchet to pieces, the 20 archers next to it turned and promptly shot the poor bastard to a flaming pile of ashes.  Poor Vargulf.  Larry had prayed of course, so I got first turn.  I chewed through his dispel dice with the threat of Curse of Years and Winds of Undeath.  Note*** I really like starting my Ghoul units at 24 strong.  It means I don’t have to worry so much about summoning more of them in the early game and can come right out of round 1 throwing the big gun spells.  I’ve found it makes a big difference in the middle game, since my opponents are often out of scrolls for what they should really be afraid of (Dance Macabre).  Anyway, Brets REALLY need to get the charge, and once his scrolls were gone, I was the one dictating charges/counter charges… and that was pretty much game.  4^th Win for the VC.  Larry went on to get Best General despite this.  Bretonnians really do comp extremely well in the SAWS system (Larry got a 27/30 on their checklist, and top marks from his opponents, including me).  I have the dubious distinction of rolling the Best General on round 5, and not getting 2^nd or 3^rd place Best General myself!

Ed went on to win Best Overall, claiming his “Sword of Power” and a bunch of High Elves as his prize.  I think he’s the only person in GT history to do so without actually playing all 5 of his own games!!

Love,

Derek