Vassal playtest vs MikeT. Mike was taking a plague tower heavy LATD redux for a spin, I chose the recently approved knights (note, knight world used as approved, with with playtest changes, as it was the LATD that were being tested).

Between us we had 73Dc of war engines, 31 for LATD (plague towers and greater demons) and 42 DC of kngihts.

Armies

Knights
KNIGHT HOUSEHOLD [500]
Baron, 3 Knight Errant

KNIGHT HOUSEHOLD [415]
3 Knight Errant, Knight Paladin, Seneschal

KNIGHT HOUSEHOLD [390]
3 Knight Errant, Knight Paladin

LANCER HOUSEHOLD [300]
3 Knight Lancer

CUSTODIAN HOUSEHOLD [375]
3 Knight Crusaders

CUSTODIAN HOUSEHOLD [375]
3 Knight Castellan

AA GUN BATTERY [125]
3 AA Guns, 3 Gun Transporters

HOWITZER BATTERY [175]
3 Howitzers, 3 Gun Transporters

ROUGH RIDER PLATOON [175]
6 Rough Riders, Aspirant

THUNDERBOLT SQUADRON [150]
2 Thunderbolt Fighters

———

LATD redux
Coven (N) + Plague Tower + Spawn 550
(Demagogue, 6 x mutant, 5 x cultist)

Plague Tower 300

Coven (N) + Plague Tower 525
(Demagogue, 6 x mutant, 5 x cultist)

Plague Tower 300

Coven (T) + 6 land Transport + tech 310
(Demagogue, 6 x mutant, 5 x cultist)

Coven (T) + 6 land Transport + tech 310
(Arch H, 6 x mutant, 5 x cultist)

DoomWings 150
hellfire 200

ZOMBIES!!! 175

greater demon of nurgle, greater demon of tzeentch +5 lesser demons


Deployment
Key to knights on map:
yellow land raider = errant
green land raider = paladin
black land raider= baron
white land raider = lancer
stompa = castellan

The red ork battleforts are plague towers, green based covens are nurgle, white are tzeentch

Nurgle covens started mounted up. Nobody cares about the right flank. Time to pile in!

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AFK with real life, still checking PMs

just realised I have hardly any screen grabs for this, but there is one for the end of each turn at least

Turn 1, no teleport, knight initiative
Knights> howitzers sustain fire on SC coven, they miss the SC but get 6 kills from their single template.
LATD> SC coven marshall, single and remove 5BM
Knights> AA guns enter overwatch
LATD> plague tower doubles to centre and barrages over the AA and howitzers, 1 gun transport destroyed
Knight> errant household doubles to BM the front plague tower
LATD> doomwings ground attack howitzers, AA miss, 1 howitzer dies
Knights> tbolts intercept, 1 doomwing explodes, leaving 3BM on the doomwings
LATD> non-bts tower coven doubles and shoots the forward errants for 1BM
Knights> castellans single and take 3DC from the forward plague tower, now on 5BM
LATD> BTS tower coven fail to activate and single foward
Knights> lancers double and shoot plague tower, 1DC and a crit reduce it to broken and 1DC
LATD> tzeentch coven summon greater demon and double to BM lancers
Knights> errant household double into woods (paladin trips over a squirrel for 1DC) and do 1DC non-BTS tower coven
LATD> plague tower doubles round the side of a wood to avoid crusaders and shoots errants for 1BM
Knights> crusaders single and barrage the tzeentch coven, 3 kills for 4BM
Knights> Baron doubles to BM non-bts tower coven
Knights> Aspirants triple to form a line in between the front kngihts and the deployment area (I was concerned about the possibility of zombies appearing in the gap getting my knight line cross fired)

End of turn: flyers disengage,
broken plague tower fails to rally on re-roll, tzeentch coven fail

situation end of t1:

nice lot of mutually destructive assaults lined up for T2!

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Turn 2 zombies teleport in 13 strong with 2BM, Knight initiative

teleport positioning:



Knights> errants engage nurgle tower coven, they win but lose 2 knights and both sides break

^ the assault

Knights> lancers double and run sideways to BM BTS tower coven
LATD> BTS tower summons great unclean one then fails to activate, shooting errant household in front of it, 1 DC 2BM
Knights> the errant household engages backwards to break the zombies for no losses, but the counter charge from the zombies leaves 3 knights formations ZoC'd
Knights> Baron engages to clip tzeentch formation such that the greater demon isn't in rage. Knights only kill 1 round 1 and the roll off is a tie, meaning it goes to round 2 with with greater demon in range. LATD kill the baron on a critical and take 1DC off an errant, but lose the 2nd round by 1. (not a nice assault, but better to charge and get my FS, then get charges after the coven had had a chance to summon …)

^ aftermath of the assault

LATD> plague tower sustains on what was the baron's formation, killing the 1DC errant and breaking the formation
Knights> tbolts strafe hellcannons, which save on their invuln for 1BM
LATD> doomwings fail to intercept
Knights> crusaders double to BM nurgle tower coven for 1 kill on the broken formation
LATD> hellcannons fails to activate and remove BMs
Knights> castellans spend 375pts of shooting to kill 1 zombie …
LATD> SC coven marches to middle of board
Knights> howitzer fail to activate and hold sideways to get out of zombie ZOC
Knights> AA remain on OW

Baron's formation fails to rally, errant household fails to rally, LATD rally brocken formations with six after 6, but the zombies are still broken.

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Turn 3 knight initiative
Knights> crusaders sustain on nurgle tower coven for 1DC
Knights> lancers engage the 1Dc plague tower and wipe it out for the loss of 1DC themselves
LATD> BTS coven summons and engages the aspirants with the SC re-roll, they win but the greater demon losses 2DC.


Knights> howitzers sustain on BTS coven, 3BM
LATD> plague tower doubles towards objective and shoots castellans
Knights> castellans single and shoot the bts coven, second template clips the bts formation as well for a couple of kills on each
LATD> hellcannons single and shoot the unbroken knight errant household, killing the paladin and leaving them with 4BM
Knights> tbolts plan to come in and break the SC formation … but stand down on a 1
LATD> doomwings strafe errants for 1Dc breaking them

At this point it was 23:45 and we finished turn 4 at 15 mins, which on vassal is not easy. I don't have images past here except for the end game and the notes are a *bit* rushed.

I think it was 1–0 to LATD at this point (or 0 all?) but don't have an imagine. Mike might know …
anyway, onto a speedy turn 4!

Turn 4 knight initiative
knights> castellans sustain on BTS coven, 7BM but no break
LATD> plague tower assaults crusaders and breaks them by running over their does repeatedly, this leaves the plague tower on an objective
Knights> tbolts strafe bts formation, but don't break it
LATD> doomwings ground attack no hits errants
Knights> howitzers sustain to break bts coven
LATD> fail … something?
Knight> left errants single to contest left objective with the plague tower
LATD> nurgle coven assault castellans and wipe them out
Knights> lancers attempt to march to take the LATD blitz … but fail to activate
Knights> errants move up to contest the middle objectives that the nurgle coven is on … (we didn't finalise placement here and none of the remaining activation were done as it made no difference to the result. Pretty sure a couple of t4 activations are missing in the above account.)

At this point it was midnight and we ended on a 0–0 draw. don't know the points as we didn't roll to rally, but i'd assume the result was in mike's favour.

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At the end of four turns the two side had only wiped out a single formation each: LATD had lost a plague tower and the knight a castellan formation.

Bit of a shame this was on vassal – the two armies would have looked great with real forces, 4 plague towers surrounded by a sea of minions against a knight host!

Before the turn 2 rallying I was feeling in a pretty good position. I'd lost my baron but large LATD formations were broken as well, and my aspirants were in range to -1 their rolls. Then the LATD made their 5+ rally rolls and the knights failed their rally rolls! A fun game, it was me who pressed to finish t4 at a rush, as I knew I wouldn't be free until next week.

I'm now 1 turn into an imperial fists playtest with JZ, which we've just stalled after T1, hope to complete that and get a report up next week. So i've got a great gargant looking mork-bolts at me to look forward to …

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Thanks for the report

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www.epic-uk.co.uk - home of the UK Epic tournament scene
NetEA NetERC Xenos Lists Chair
NetEA Ork + Feral Ork + Speed Freak Champion

Thanks for the report!

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Ben Sibbald

Personal & Wargaming Blog: http://www.theancienttrack.blogspot.co.uk

EPIC WIP: Grey Knights, Space Wolves, Eldar

Thanks Apoc. Any thoughts to the effectiveness of Custodians and Errants?

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Dave

Blog

NetEA Tournament Pack Website

Squats 2019-10-17

I'd happily have paid the +10pt for errants over paladins suggested in playtest (in above i had 20pts spare, and id remove character upgrades to get the errants in as needed).

Only reason i can see to take paladins is 1 per formation to ping a BM. Otherwise knight households are a fast assault formation anyway, and erreants get your MW upgraded to TK and a MW FF. Same to hit rolls vs AP/AT in range shooting, MW, just lower range … and knights are there to assault.

No immediate thoughts on custodians, think id want to play more games against a range of forces.

Mike should be commenting on stuff this evening.

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