AoS 1000ish points Seraphon V Seraphon

[Crowsfoot]

Opponent

Scarvet on Cold one General
5 Knights
10 warriors
Oldblood on foot
Troglodon
Basilidon
Skink priest

My List

Skink chief General
Skink priest
3*10 Skinks
2*5 Chamo skinks
3 Rippers
3 Kroxigor

We are both fairly new to playing so this was a very casual game both of us want to learn what Seraphon can do. We just played annihilation.

Setup

Shannon set up everything dead centre while I left my Chamo skinks and Rippers off the board and set everything up far left behind cover to avoid getting blasted first turn.

Turn1

Shannon goes first and moves everything towards my skinks, forgets to use the priest!

I place the toad right in front of her General,move my skinks in 3 groups up 8 and put them into cover Krox are behind a building, I call in 2*5 Chamos and setup in cover ready for shooting, rippers arrive ready to cause mayhem. I don't shoot this round!

Turn 2

I win the roll, I leave the skinks and Krox, I shoot with my Chamo and take 6 wounds of the General, rippers dive in and kill him, these are sitting ducks now.

Shannon piles in with the knights on the rippers and kills them out right, trog charges my chamo skinks as do the warriors!
Trog goes for gold and hits with 5, +3 save on the Chamos and I pass them all, warriors have 8 hits again I save them all and Chamos kill 2 warriors in melee! (what the)

Turn 3

Shannon wins, she uses the priest for the first time and gets reroll charges etc, Basi shoots at the Krox and kills one (ouch) Trog spits at my Chamos and fails all, Knights charge my Chamos, these guys now have a Trog, 10 warriors and 5 knights on them, not looking good, Melee erupts a total of 14 hits on my Chamos and guess what, yep they pass all, kill a warrior and take a wound of a knight!

I cast shield on my krox, General gives +1 hit to 10 skinks, I blink out with the Chamos (pay back) blink back in cover in range of the basti and Trog, I move everything up 8 and Basti is in range.

I shoot with one unit of Chamos at the Basti, 4 wounds caused, so with the other unit I stupidly target the Trog 7 wounds caused! this is going well, all skinks shoot and do nothing, I charge the Basti with my 2 krox 2 wounds caused, Basti fights back 3 wounds caused (ouch)

Turn 4

Shannon wins the roll and goes for it Basti shoots at my chamos, all failed, she charges 10 skinks with warriors and the trog charges my General, warriors kill 2 skinks, skinks kill a warrior, Trog destroys my General.

I cast shield on my Krox and blink out with the Chamos, I go for it and blink into cover but in range of everything next turn (I'm praying here) I shoot with all my skinks taking a wound of the basti, he is on one wound my Krox have him!, the Chamos take the trog down to one wound! Oh yes this is good.

Turn 5

I win the roll, come on!
I cast shield but fail, I blink out with the Chamos and blink in behind the knights but in range of the Trog, I shoot with all my skinks all fail! I decide to shoot my Chamos at the warriors and knights I was thinking my skinks would melee a wound of the Trog, Chamos take down 3 warriors and a knight, melee the skinks fail to wound the Trog (gulp) he hits back and kills 1, Krox hit the Basti and all FAIL, Basti causes 2 wounds, 1 Krox left.

Shannon moves the knight, Oldblood and warriors all can charge my Chamos! trog spits at the remaining skinks kills 1 basti shoots at the krox and all fail, oh yes I can still do this...

Charge, Chamos have Oldblood, knights and warriors bashing them with clubs! they kill a unit, I hit back and kill a warrior, trog wipes the unit of skinks, Basti takes Krox to one wound, My turn to hit back, I roll 4 attacks hit with 3! I roll to wound hit with 3!! Shannon rolls and saves all!!!

As the dust settled I have 18 skinks, 5 Chamos, 1 Krox and my priest alive.
Shannon has Basti, Trog, Oldblood, Priest, a few warriors and some knights.

We discuss and both agree I chucked the victory away my Chamos should have focused on one monster at a time they were lethal and in cover quite resilient, we both agreed 2*10 units of Chamos is the way forward.
Skink in units of 10 are a screen and nothing more, I lacked fire power in melee but if you employ hit and run tactics they are good and annihilation was always going to favour warriors and knights.

We both had a great time and learn't alot, we are going to play 1000 points again in 2 weeks but try different units, I think Steggy and Carny will be playing out that week.

 

[Aginor]

I am not sure but.... You can't vanish and appear again with the Chameleon Skinks in the same turn I think.

 

[Crowsfoot]

I am not sure but.... You can't vanish and appear again with the Chameleon Skinks in the same turn I think.

Hmmm now you got me thinking,

They can disappear in your hero phase and reappear in your movement phase?

But the warscroll says "in your hero phase the unit can blend with it's surroundings if it does so remove it from the battlefield, you can reveal it as described above in any subsequent turn"

 

[Aginor]

No, they can only reappear in a subsequent turn.
So that basically means if you let them vanish in the hero phase they can do nothing in that turn. In your next turn you can let them appear again, in the movement phase.

Compare it the the warscroll of Oxyotl, because his special ability allows him to reappear in the same turn. It is slightly different:
"In your hero phase, Oxyotl can vanish from sight and go into hiding. If he does so, remove him from the battlefield. You can reveal him as described above in this turn or any subsequent turn."

So Oxyotl is the same, just better, because he can do that in the same turn.

If the warscroll said "in any of your subsequent movement phases" it would mean the same as Qxyotl's warscroll.

EDIT: And yes, that makes Chameleon Skinks much worse. They are still pretty good though IMO, even compared to other assassins.

 

[Crowsfoot]

No, they can only reappear in a subsequent turn.
So that basically means if you let them vanish in the hero phase they can do nothing in that turn. In your next turn you can let them appear again, in the movement phase.

Compare it the the warscroll of Oxyotl, because his special ability allows him to reappear in the same turn. It is slightly different:
"In your hero phase, Oxyotl can vanish from sight and go into hiding. If he does so, remove him from the battlefield. You can reveal him as described above in this turn or any subsequent turn."

So Oxyotl is the same, just better, because he can do that in the same turn.

If the warscroll said "in any of your subsequent movement phases" it would mean the same as Qxyotl's warscroll.

EDIT: And yes, that makes Chameleon Skinks much worse. They are still pretty good though IMO, even compared to other assassins.

Third DOH! of the day...

I thought last night they were too good for the points, that has changed my view slightly but not much.

 

[Seraphage]

Third DOH! of the day...

I thought last night they were too good for the points, that has changed my view slightly but not much.

Hehe well you pointed it out straightforward from the very beginning "We are both fairly new to playing so this was a very casual game both of us want to learn what Seraphon can do. We just played annihilation." Not a big deal, you ll know next time

Seems like a game where you both got to have lots of fun !

 

[Bowser]

Yeah you played the chamos wrong and gave them Oxyotl's ability! A few errors, but learning opportunities are worth far more than victories. The Krox should have gone for the warriors protected by skinks. Never Krox vs Monsrers or heroes! But that is being discussed elsewhere. Great write up, sounds like it was a blast!

 

[Crowsfoot]

Yeah you played the chamos wrong and gave them Oxyotl's ability! A few errors, but learning opportunities are worth far more than victories. The Krox should have gone for the warriors protected by skinks. Never Krox vs Monsrers or heroes! But that is being discussed elsewhere. Great write up, sounds like it was a blast!

Yeah we made mistakes and Shannon said a few times "go back and do that" but I said no best way to learn is to feel the consequence of a mistake, so in reality she battered me!

 

[Aginor]

In the beginning you make a lot of mistakes, I guess that's just normal.
Here's a funny list of mistakes my friend (Destruction, mainly Ironjawz now) and I made at least once during our first games last year
Btw: Our games take several hours because we still haven't memorized the warscrolls and often have to look stuff up. Two weeks ago we played five rounds of a 2000pt game. All in all it took us more than five hours. Our longest game was a 1600pt, seven round game (we wanted to play to the very end because we were not sure who would win and didn't want to call it a draw) that took us over six hours. Orruks won with three models (a Warboss and two battleline Orruks) still alive.

- Once we didn't remember it was back and forth activations during the combat phase. That one was pretty one sided.
- The (bad) german translation of the rules made us believe that when a unit ran in the movement phase that it would not get to attack during the combat phase. Background: The German warscrolls use the word "angreifen" (which means to attack) as the translation for "charge" (most games use "anstürmen", which is a much better translation). Coming from D&D "angreifen" is the word for hit rolls. We got used to it by now but it really messed up some situations.
- again the bad german translation hit us, we read the "Waagh Drummer" rule on the Ardboyz warscroll as "+2 on all hit rolls" instead of "+2 on all charge rolls". That made them hit on 2s and I thought I was going insane.
- We didn't realize that the "Waagh" ability of the Orruk Warboss only works in that Orruk player's turn.
- I played a Shadowstrike Starhost and actually forgot dropping my Terradons into combat for two rounds.
- I added the "swooping dive" bonus for the Terradons in the shooting phase as well.
- We re-rolled stuff that was already re-rolled
- We messed up the phase sequence and instead of H M S C Co B we played M H S C Co B. It was kinda fun though because it allowed wizards to move first and then cast their spells.
- We applied bonuses from buffs that would have been out of range (Waagh and Astrolith Bearer)
- We forgot mid-game which weapons we had on the models and used the wrong ones
- We forgot to add 1 to the bravery of a unit for every ten models in it.
- We forgot to use abilities, especially ones that don't apply in the hero or combat phases, such as the Destructive Bulk from the Maw-Krusha (charge phase) and the Swooping Dive (movement phase).
- I had remembered the number of wounds on a Bastiladon incorrectly, believing it was 10 instead of 8

So you see, it takes a bit to get used to it and everyone makes mistakes. A lot of them. Maybe my list help you to avoid a few of those.
And if you are still having fun a few mistakes are not problematic.

 

[Crowsfoot]

In the beginning you make a lot of mistakes, I guess that's just normal.
Here's a funny list of mistakes my friend (Destruction, mainly Ironjawz now) and I made at least once during our first games last year
Btw: Our games take several hours because we still haven't memorized the warscrolls and often have to look stuff up. Two weeks ago we played five rounds of a 2000pt game. All in all it took us more than five hours. Our longest game was a 1600pt, seven round game (we wanted to play to the very end because we were not sure who would win and didn't want to call it a draw) that took us over six hours. Orruks won with three models (a Warboss and two battleline Orruks) still alive.

- Once we didn't remember it was back and forth activations during the combat phase. That one was pretty one sided.
- The (bad) german translation of the rules made us believe that when a unit ran in the movement phase that it would not get to attack during the combat phase. Background: The German warscrolls use the word "angreifen" (which means to attack) as the translation for "charge" (most games use "anstürmen", which is a much better translation). Coming from D&D "angreifen" is the word for hit rolls. We got used to it by now but it really messed up some situations.
- again the bad german translation hit us, we read the "Waagh Drummer" rule on the Ardboyz warscroll as "+2 on all hit rolls" instead of "+2 on all charge rolls". That made them hit on 2s and I thought I was going insane.
- We didn't realize that the "Waagh" ability of the Orruk Warboss only works in that Orruk player's turn.
- I played a Shadowstrike Starhost and actually forgot dropping my Terradons into combat for two rounds.
- I added the "swooping dive" bonus for the Terradons in the shooting phase as well.
- We re-rolled stuff that was already re-rolled
- We messed up the phase sequence and instead of H M S C Co B we played M H S C Co B. It was kinda fun though because it allowed wizards to move first and then cast their spells.
- We applied bonuses from buffs that would have been out of range (Waagh and Astrolith Bearer)
- We forgot mid-game which weapons we had on the models and used the wrong ones
- We forgot to add 1 to the bravery of a unit for every ten models in it.
- We forgot to use abilities, especially ones that don't apply in the hero or combat phases, such as the Destructive Bulk from the Maw-Krusha (charge phase) and the Swooping Dive (movement phase).
- I had remembered the number of wounds on a Bastiladon incorrectly, believing it was 10 instead of 8

So you see, it takes a bit to get used to it and everyone makes mistakes. A lot of them. Maybe my list help you to avoid a few of those.
And if you are still having fun a few mistakes are not problematic.

I feel like we can only get better, we are avoiding using battalions for the moment and just learning warscrolls.

 

[Aginor]

That's probably a good idea, not making the learning curve steeper than it has to be.
We do something similar, at the moment we are not using artefacts and allegiance abilities from the GHB because we want to keep the complexity down a bit.

 

[Bowser]

I think the best part of free play is that you really start to learn your army. With mo restrictions, you just test things out to see how they play. So probably a good idea to play without the Batallions, see what buffs you can get without, see how they play, and then move on to more complex builds.