Why Skullcannons should be restricted - a Sam Campbell tale! 

So why restrict Skullcannons you might ask…

To put this article into perspective, my good friend Sam and I have been having a running “discussion/debate” over the last few months about why Skullcannon's should be restricted to 0-1 and last week Overlord Ratty Pete Dunn posted an interesting blog about the Warmachine Caps in our current tournament environment... so with these 2 things in mind I thought I’d put my rational on paper.

Quickly I’d like to say to Pete, I personally think you've hit the sweet spot for all artillery restrictions in the current competitive environment with the exception of the S.Cannon while preserving the overall player enjoyment level!  

So let’s start this with a comparison of the Skullcannon to his restricted cousin the Ironblaster… But before we do you might ask yourself why did the Ironblaster actually get restricted and I'll tell you why  

1)      Its ridiculous mobility means you an virtually always find LoS to any target you want… having 2 means there is literally almost never a place to hide or way to move that would allow a player to hide monsters or lone characters given our current “true line of sight rules”…

2)      Its killing power both in combat and shooting is ridiculous from a points perspective when compare to other army options that the likes of Empire, Dwarfs and others have access too.

3)      (an extension of 1) It allows an Orge general to pick points where ever he wants, back up with impunity and ultimately steal games in unfavourable match-ups. Double Ironblaster basically restricts an opposing general’s movement and to a degree physiologically causes some players to dble think themselves and their tactics... as they say if you control your opponents movement phase you've won 1/2 the battle. 

4)      These issues coupled with Orges other strengths; long charge ability etc greatly reduced the overall player enjoyment level as a result.

There are I’m sure many many other reasons for its restriction but these are the one I personal see as being the major issue.

So onto our comparison and I'll try to be objective as possible (try!!!)   

	Iron.Bl	IB crew		S.Cannon	SC crew
Cost	170	-		135	-	W
Movement	6	-		7	-	W
Weapons Skill	-	3		5	5	W
Ballistics Skill	-	3		-	5	W
Strength	5	4		5	4	W	+1 Str on charge
Toughness	6	-	W	5	-
Wounds	5	-	W	4	-
Initative	2	2		2	4	W
Attacks	3	4	W	3	2
Leadership	-	7	draw	-	7	draw
Armour	4+	-		3+	-	W
Ward Save	N/A	-		5+	-	W
Range	36	-		48	-	W
Str of Shoot	10	-	draw	10	-	draw
Shoot Wounds	D6	-	draw	D6	-	draw
Grapeshot Str	10	-	W	5	-

As you can see from a purely cost and stat basis the Skull Cannon wins hands down taking out 9 categories of the 16 on offer while only losing 4 and drawing the remaining 3... that alone should be enough to restrict it but lets keep going...

So what about the special rules I hear you say, well lets start with the Ironblaster first since it must do something insane to warrant its restriction when the Skullcannon isn't.

Ironblaster rules: Chariot, Large Target, Fear, Move and Fire, Massive Grapeshot and Volley of Cannonballs.

Chariot - D6 impact hits @ str 5 but again the Skullcannon wins out doing D6 Str6 impact hits.

Large Target – Pretty irrelevant since we use true line of sight and the Skullcannon is similar in actual size (model wise) to the Ironblaster. 1 or 2 minor rules impact here but they have very very minimal impact...

Fear - Irrelevant and Skullcannon has it too.

Move and Fire - This is what makes this unit insane since it allows you to alter your firing arc's minimising the chance of any target your opponent has hiding...but the Skullcannon has it to and again it does it better moving 7" vs the Ironblasters 6"...

Massive grapeshot -  Str 10 grapeshot still at 12" or less hitting on 5+  due to the poor Orge BS (as 60%+ of the time your at long range)... This is only marginally better than the Skullcannons Str5 with Ar piercing but the SC hits on 3+ so is going to hit 66% of the time vs 33% time, the Ironblaster wounds most of the time on 2's while the S.Cannon normally wounds on 2’s, 3's or 4's against everything but toughness 6+.

So I’ll give the Iron Blaster a little win here.

Volley of Cannonballs - When determining the bounce, roll the artillery dice twice and pick the longest bounce. This is a reasonable ability but 2 obvious issue stand out firstly you now have twice the chance of misfire and the added bounce range still doesn't make up for the range differential the Skullcannon has over it... 36” + up to 20 vs 48” + up to 20”

Now for our friend the Skullcannon...

It's rules: Chariot, Fear, Immune to Psychology, Flaming Attacks, Demonic Instability, Demonic Attacks, Daemon Engine, Daemons of Khorne, Gorefeast, Hellblades

Chariot - as above

Fear - as above

Immune to Psychology - never hurts... better to have it than not in general... and in all the games I’ve had vs orges at tournaments I’ve only ever seen an Ironblaster flee intentionally once… and I still cut it down!

Gorefeast - umm you have a chance at recovering wounds when you inflict wounds from impact hits... downside…none! All I have to say is sign me up!

Flaming Attacks - I see this as one of the most debated issues but in my opinion its actually one of the best abilities the cannon offers... Firstly you get to negate regeneration, this is pretty huge since some of the most devastating units have this ability and you simple negate it entirely. You’ll basically never fear Abombs, Chimera's, Hydras, opposing Nurgle Beasts, Trolls etc... The only really back draw to this is vs Characters with either the Dragonsbane Gem and Dragon's Helm (or similar ability) since they have a 2+ ward vs flaming attacks... To those ppl I say who cares 90% of generals in our competitive environment hide their characters in bunker units since there to costly or critical to risk having them shoot off or magic'ed away. Of the models that can actually operate successfully outside of a unit alone there is only a handful that you actually need to fear and the rest are pretty crap because their generally terrible. These are units like the Empire Peg Captain etc… As for mounted lords you can simple shot out the mount from under the rider (yes you don’t get the points but you've now significantly limited that models impact on the game and allowed for it to be easily picked off by other means ie magic/combat etc. Of those that can survive in the current competitive environment only 3 come to my mind that actually concern me and 2 of those are in the WoC army. The Daemon Prince or the 3 + reroll 1's disc Lord or Exalted (who’s nigh unkillable anyway without combat res),  the third is the DE Peg D.lord with pendant which like our Disk lord is nigh unkillable with a cannon either way... of those 3 the “flaming” special rule only hurts you against one of them and that's vs the  Daemon Prince...who still has a Charmed shield (virtually always)and a 5+ natural ward. Eeither way it's not a total lose since vs WoC you need to pick off their Skullcrushers, Chimera, Hellcannon and Chariots anyway… hardly a major concern either way since you can tie up the Deamon Prince with beasts or a block of Plague bearers with steadfast.

Demonic Attacks - magical attacks, these are great, no ethereal can tie you up or stop your attacks, you can now kill a Slann and magical attacks punches though special saves that units like Dryad's have or alternatively it allows you to attack through so special items in other army books. The only back draw I can think of to this is vs a unit with the Banner of the World Dragon and like all Bus unit your going to simply divert it out of the game and take all their other points anyway... so no lose here.

Demonic Instability – the rule that makes daemons ridiculous, you don’t run when crushed in combat, you can’t take more than 10 wounds off a unit even if you beat it by 50 combat res… win/win I say. In a traditional army like Empire, Orges or Orc’s if you break you have about a 55-60% chance of being court and destroyed outright when you’re both rolling 2D6 or 3D6 for flee and pursuit.

Daemon Engine – totally irrelevant.

Hellblades - KB, backdraw- none, not quiet as good as poison but it can mean sometimes you get a random kill against a multiple wound character.

So after all's said and done its pretty clear the Skullcannon is better than the Ironblaster so I'm not sure how anyone can justify it not being restricting to 0-1. Maybe so of the reasons outlined above is why every major event pack I've seen outside of Swedish comp restricts both Ironblasters and Skullcannons to 0-1...

The only possible reasons I can see right now for not restricting Skullcannons is that only a handful of ppl can actually field the current competitive version of DoC. So with only 1 or 2 ppl fielding Skullcannons per tourney it's "yet" to have any significant impact on the NZ tournament scene. One other possible factor is the prohibitive cost of GW models in NZ thus very few ppl are in the market for buying a new army outright or alternatively the fact that WoC and HE have also had new books recently and both these armies have always been more popular than the DoC so they’ve been more readily overlooked...

However after CtA's next weekend I think ppl will learn to appreciate the ridiculous power of fielding an army that can have 2 Skullcannons backed up by 12 beasts, Epidemius, Plague Drones, Furies and Plague Bearers… If Sam can’t top 3 with his filthy (Hamish approved) list he should quit or as I told him the other night put the daemons under the front wheel of his car…  J

Day 2 @ Panzerscrek!

So after a less than satisfactory Day 1 I was sitting on 32 points in the middle of the pack.

Rd 4 - Charlie, Dark Elve's - pure witch elve list with no magic.20-0

So Charlie had to be one of the nicest guys at the event and his army theme and its look was amazing, he got my vote for best painted and sports.We were playing battleline, I deployed between a forest and building with 1 unit of Demi's centre right in front of 1 unit of Halberdiers and the second extremely left looping rd the forest. T1 I pushed my Demi's and mages unit forwards. Magic and shooting I began to feel mean....  1 shoot’ed his Mantacore and rider, second cannon tried for the Cauldron but was warded and I killed about 20 Witch Elves rolling Dble 6's for magic, its safe to say Double Banishment, Shim's burning Gaze and bound Fireball did its job on the largest unit of elves reducing it well below 1/2 strength. T2 saw me charge with the demi's into Charlie’s harpies which then overran into a small unit of witch elves, the centre unit then charged a 20 man Witch elve unit which ultimately fled allowing me an overrun into Charlie’s depleted central unit of witch elves. The first charge was a total mistake as Charlie failed to move his Crones unit up 2 more inches suffling them only 3, then mean he left just enough space for me to get past his Crones unit and take me totally out of her units counter charge arch. T2 shooting and magic took a tool on Charlie’s army; I got the Cauldron of Blood and killed about 14 Executioners. In the end I tabled Charlie on T4 for the lose of an archer detachment, that magic, artillery and demigryph's did their job and I was lucky enough to keep my core out of combat as they would have been torn to pieces had a witch elve unit reached them.

Rd 5 - Caleb and his WoC monstrosity. 13-7 lose.

This was overall my favourite game of the weekend and one of the bloodiest battles on both sides, for the majority of the match I was ahead by about 400-500 points until t4 when a single chariot charged my Arch Lector and his Alter which had been protecting my Halberdiers flank. At that stage the Halberdiers where locked in a prolonged combat with a small unit of Nurgle Chaos Knights (4 left of 7) since T2. Its safe to say that we both failed to wound each other however I found myself down by 1 (given charge) against the chariot needing 9's re-rollable to stand, of course I rolled 12 then 10 and fled off the table. While this was extremely unlucky it turned the game from a certain win to a lose as the chariot reformed then hit my flank doing 7 impact hits wounding 6 of them. this mean I lost combat by 6 rather than being up by 2 against the Knights. I needed re-rollable 8's to stand and of course in true fashion I rolled high and was promptly cut down by the Chariot while the Knights reformed.... the lose of my Arch Lector also put me on tilt a little and I forgot to move my 2nd Halberdier unit out of the building it was occupying the following turn, this provided to be very relevant as they ended up breaking Caleb’s generals unit in the first round of combat but failed to catch it rolling 4" while the Warrior unit ran 10 and eventually reformed, had I engaged the unit a turn earlier I would have wiped it out rather than leaving it rallied on 5 models on t6, OOPS!
While my tactics had only lost to dice rolls my opponent Caleb was a great sport and did nothing wrong the entire match, he got a little lucky in a couple of spots and I a touch unlucky but overall a very very enjoyable game!

Rd 6 - Peter Dunn, DoC 12-8, Meeting Engagement
At the start of the round I'm fighting for 3rd place as Peter Dunn and Peter Williamson are locked for 1st and 2nd unless I can get a 20-0 win and Pete gets less than 5 points but of course I'm pair up against Pete and his filthy Tzeentch Deamons of Chaos list. For those of you who don't know how Pete's list works, it has 5 levels of Tzeentch magic trying to roll Gateway, this is broken on a Horror unit as they can throw 6 dice every turn at gateway with impunity as their ability allows wounds caused to be added to the unit before any miscast results on dble 6's is applied.. and to top it off they still get their wards! to add some additional punch Pete also has a Lord of Change with the Lore of Metal and Wand of Whimsy (great...) backed up with 6 screamers and 6 beats of nurgle and the usual skullcannon...

So I'm stuck with a hard decision the table we're on has multiple buildings (both down the middle of the table on the angle, 2 hills, a largest forest and the biggest march I've seen on a warhammer table and to top things off we're playing meeting engagement. I picked the left side of the table positioning my army between the 2 hills, not ideal but I felt it was the right choice. I was initially going to take the otherside but I felt that the forest and the march in conjunction with the buildings would majorily limited the movement of my army and I needed to be reasonably offensive as I could not sit back and try to cannon him of the table given LoS issues thanks to terrain... plus metal magic and gateway would just rip my demi's to pieces... I roll to deploy and of course my lvl4 mage of Light was off the table along with a large unit of Halberdiers...Pete starts with 1 single beast and small unit of horrors off. his deployment is highlighted by hiding the greater deamon and skull crusher behind a building very much out LoS, knowing this however I had positioned my metal mage with a unit of archers so they could move up to a building and cast Searing Doom (LoC rolled 2+ AS) while being unchargable that turn.

T1 sees me move my Demigyphs up the flanks marginally, bring on my reserves (lvl4 was out of range of anything relevant), magic I cast Searing doom on 5 dice against the LoC, I make a mistake and don’t specify the 2D6 version and end up with 1d6 rolling 2 wounds, 1 being saved by its ward... oops.. Shooting and the cannons take off 3 Screamers and the volley gun does 3 wounds on a horror unit. Pete prodictably moves up his units conservatively with the 2 single beasts moving to divert the demi's, Magic was uneventful, shooting sees the Skullcannon misfire and kill itself (YES! "fist pump") ;).
T2 I throw my Demigryph's into a longish charge against the keeper and move the 2nd unit to flank the screamers on my left. Magic i roll poorly and was unable to cast anything relevant. Shooting I take off another screamer and kill a couple more horrors. T2 is the tuning point of the game for Pete's magic he rolls dble 1's this result in his beast on the right dying allowing my Demi's to get round behind his line. over the next few turns we trade magic and combat, I get Pete's LoC in the end but again fail to destroy over 500 points of Daemons as the Demi's fluff their rolls on our last turn (t5)... Great game I just wish I was able to steal a couple more points from Pete but it was not to be!
In the end I was tied for 3rd with Mike on battle points, ultimately though I dropped to 7th after painting and sports scores were added... painting being the only issue...as i got full sports points.
Ah well a great weekend had by all and the first proper outing for my empire which I thoroughly enjoyed! I officially love having real cannons in a list backed up by good monstrous cavalary and magic… being on the receiving end of cannons was horrid! Last night I ordered 4 boxes of Demigryphs so the Skaven may take a well deserved rest soon! J

So Panzerschrek is now in the books and a slightly disappointing 7th place.... on the bright side I was 3rd equal on battle points losing 4 slots to painting. Overall the weekend was great and Jeff ran a well organised fun event so big ups to him for organising things!

So on to Day 1

Rd1 - Battleline. Sam Campbell, DoC 10-10
So my nemesis, club mate and friend Sam... I was pretty confident I'd get a 15+ win here unfortunately it ended up being 10-10. Overall a good game but a terrible table with tons of buildings and large terrain for Sam to hide points behind... This game was highlighted by me being unable to finish off 2 of Sam's largest units which where greatly depleted. A units of Plague Bearers and Daemons of Slaanesh were locked in combat with my Demigryphs. A few poor rolls, a couple lucky wards and 2 very lucky leadership tests for Sam saw me leaving his Nurgle BSB, 3 Plague Bearers and 2 DoS totalling around 750-800 points. No an ideal start but it could have been worse!

Rd2 - Mike King, Lizardmen. 20-0
This game started and ended for Mike on T1, before I'd even moved or cast Mike used 3 dice to cast a defensive bubble of course miscast and put his Slann down the hole. This then broke his army as the Slann was his BSB and General. By T3 or 4 I had tabled Mike and took 2650 points for the lose of just 190 points. Demigryphs were MVP!
I felt bad for Mike given the circumstances, had his Slann gone down 3-4 turns later it wouldn’t have been so bad but turn 1 is rough. L

Rd 3 - Peter Williamson, High Elves, 2-18.. To be honest I was looking at a big win here as Pete's army was far weaker than my own... but it was not to be.

So after seeing Mike lose to unfortunate circumstances it was my turn to endure a similar fate. Peter's army started 300 points up on me given the comp system and was basically a flying circus list with griffin lord, dragon mage and snow phoenix. I got the same Table as game 1 vs Sam with tons of redicculous terrain everywhere…. So tons of places to hide big monsters…
T1 Peter moved up slowly and then cast a 2D6 Fireball on one of my cannons which I let through, he cracked the Mages pendant adding +1 to wound for this spell, the result was exactly 3 wounds. The subsequent panic tests (Ld9 with re-rolls) saw my Lvl4, 40 halberdiers and another support unit turn and flee off the board... This effectively put me behind by 1000+ points before I'd even moved. Things then proceeded to go from real bad to worse... I throw 6 dice at Searing Doom (casting with IrrForce) then rolling Dble 1's for hits then failing to wound (ward and 1), I then proceeded to wound my wizard and lose the remaining dice in the pool. Shooting... my cannon hit his general and Griffin, 5+ ward saved the general and I failed to wound the Griffin... Halblaster 3 artillery dice.. 2 misfires and 2 turns without being able to shoot. In the end I took off over 800 points of Pete's army, at one stage I should have killed the Dragon and Phoenix but of course I didn’t and my remaining unit of Halberdiers were ground down over 5 rounds of combat.... leaving each on 1 or 2 wounds of course. A totally horrible game but Peter did nothing wrong, he diverted my Demi's as much as possible while the Dice and Warhammer gods kicked my while I was down! lol.

Panzerschrek Draw and Predictions.

So overnight Jeff released Round 1's pairing for this weekends Event "Panzerschrek" NZ first swedish comp fantasy event, I have moved away from my normal WoC and Skaven to playing my up and coming Empire army. I've been painting furiously having this week finished my War Altar (almost) and BSB, pictures below.

For anyone who hasn't seen my list I'm taking the following (below), the choices were pretty simple I fielded what I owned and gave up on trying to tweak the list to 13 pointer and instead ended up with a very strong 10 point list.

Arch Lector on War Alter - Armour of Meteoric Iron, Talisman of Preservation, Great Weapon

Battle Wizard Lord, Level 4 (Lore of Light), Earthing Rod, Ruby Ring.

Captain of the Empire, BSB, Enchanted Shield, Opal Amulet, Iron Curse Icon, Great Weapon, Full Plate

Battle Wizard, Level 2, Dispel Scroll, Lore of Metal

39x Halberdiers, Full Command with 8 Archer detachment

39x Halberdiers, Full Command

10x Archers

4x Demigryphs FC, Banner of Eternal Flame

4x Demigryphs FC

2x Greater Cannon

1x Hellblaster Volley Gun

Swedish Comp Score - 10

Round 1 Predictions:

Table 1: Neil Williamson vs. Adam Richards

Table 2: Stuart Robinson vs. Regan Ridge

Table 3: Pete Dunn vs. Ryan Lister

Table 4: Caleb Rouse vs. Charlie Lloyd

Table 5: Fern Campbell vs. Joel Van Deven Long

Table 6: Sam Whitt vs. Peter Williamson

Table 7: Mike King vs. Nick Munn

Table 8: Sam Campbell vs. Hamish Gordon

Table 1: Adam Richards - I think Adam's artillery will be far to effective for Neil's WoC to handle, I'd be surprised if Valkia lives past T1, I predict a big win for Adam.

Table 2: Regan Ridge - Stuart will struggle to get into combat with 2 cannons and 2 Helblasters raining down on Stuarts WoC, I predict a big win for Regard.

Table 3: Pete Dunn - absolute filth, 5 levels of Tzeentch magic means Pete with throw 4+ dice a turn at Gate Way and the Fire template spell, If the Blood Knights live to T3 I'd be a little shocked, if magic doesn’t work Pete always has 6 Beasts to fall back on and a Lord of Change... Again another big win here.

Table 4: Caleb Rouse - While Charlie’s theme is amazing Witch elves don't do well vs 1+ armour saves especially across 4 fast hard hitting units. While Charlie's Crone will Slaughter Knights in droves I predict the other units of Skullcrushers and Knights will carve through Charlie’s army with relative ease... and the MoN will make it that much harder for the Elves to hit even with re-rolls... 14+ win here to Caleb's WoC

Table 5: Joel Van Deven Long - While I'd love Fern to win I think Joel’s experience will prevail and he will probably out play Fern a little, in Fern's defence she's learning quickly but is still a little green tournament wise. I would love Fern to pull out a little win and be well ahead of Sam after rd 1 but i suspect Joel will win 13+ here...

Table 6: Sam Whitt - Toughness 3 vs light council and duel catapults... enough said... midsize win for Sam, I'm sure Pete will do a good job of points preservation 12-14 in Sam's favour..

Table 7: Mike King - This is the hardest pick for me but I think Mike's skink cloud's will pick off all the rares and Mr Vermin Lord leaving poor Nick chasing points and getting frustrated with DBLE FLEES! Small to midsize win to Mike unless Mr Abomb gets some big rolls early and ends up in combat t1. Whoever gets T1 will be extremely relevant!

Table 8: Hamish Gordon - 15+ win to me, Sam and I have played this out already with me winning 20-0 but things did go wrong horribly for Sam on several occasions however my list is a touch filthier! :)