HE BR #4 vs. VC

I buy them frozen.

Played another game vs. Lucas' VC and this one was a killer game.  Tons of action, a lot of laughs and some horrible dice.

Here's my list..

2500

10 drops

LORDS:

Lv.4 Archmage, High Magic = 285

Book of Hoeth, Golden Crown

HEROES:

BSB Noble = 149

GW, Armor of Caledor

Lv.1 Mage, High Magic = 110

Scroll

CORE:

30x Spearmen, FC, SoDiscipline = 315

15x Archers, Mus = 160

14x Archers, Mus = 150

SPECIAL:

27x White Lions, FC, BotWD = 431

25x Phoenix Guard, FC, BoEF = 405

5x Dragon Princes, Mus = 155

RARE:

Frostheart Phoenix = 240

Great Eagle = 50

Great Eagle = 50

His list..

~2500

~14 drops?

Ghoul King, Red Fury, Quickblood, Peripat, Dragonbane Gem

Lv.4 Master Necro, Scroll

Wight King BSB, Nightshroud, GW, Heavy Armor

Mortis Engine

Terrorgheist

Huge unit of Ghouls that had his BSB and Wight King

Bug unit of Zombies that had his Necro

8x Crypt Horrors or something like that

5x Hexwraiths

4x Vargheists

4x units of chaff dogs

2x units of chaff bats

My beautiful, unpainted models that I've had for 12 years.

My notes:

• Hey, what do you know!  I have pictures this time.. kinda.  Once the action started rolling, I stopped taking pictures and kept on the battle.  I will say that this is probably the last time I'm going to take High Magic.  That lore has been pissing me off like crazy.  I'll tell you guys why:  3x Direct Damage spells and 1 condition spell in the form of Drain Magic.  In a game where I roll all 3 DD and I had to swap my last spell for Drain Magic, I don't know what to tell you.
• First round of magic, I threw 5 dice at Fiery Convocation, IF, lose the spell and a wizard level, and light the Ghoul bunker on fire.  Inside is his Wight King and Ghoul King, but I flat out burn down half of the unit.  On his next turn, he doesn't dispel it and it further burns down half the unit.  He's literally down to 10 Ghouls in that unit.  I deploy the best I can to meet his chaff and I manage to shoot down a bit of the dogs but not all of them.  I move very little on my turn, letting magic do all the work.  He saves dice for his Peripat.
• Next round he makes bold moves and checks various locations with his chaff.  However, he makes the gamble in moving his Terrorgheist far up and gambles 5 dice on Van Hels while I scroll his Wind of Death.  However, I manage to dispel it and now his Terrorgheist is a little closer than he anticipated.
• I punish the mistake with a charge from my Spears and my Frozen Turkey.  I cause 3 wounds from the Spears, 2 from the bird (thanks to S7 from Winds), and I lose 7 of my Spearmen.  Combat res gets recorded and the thing pops into dust.  I move my Eagles around for max annoyance as well as charging and winning combat vs. a Dire Wolf unit.  Feelsgoodman.jpeg.  My magic phase also saw a miscast (again) on from my AM vs. his Lv.4 Necro with the new Vaul's Unmaking.  I find out he has a scroll wtf! and I destroy it.  They tricksies us.

The charge that killed the Terrorgheist.

• Next round his Vargheists charge my Spears.  I hold like real men.  Sadly, I lose combat by one and break like a bunch of stinking cowards because my BSB is half an inch away.  With Standard of Discipline, I break on a roll of 11.  They're caught, run down and I lose 315 points of victorious Spears.  Not feeling so good now.  Magic sees nothing happen from his casting but more of his Ghouls burn down.  I shit you not he's literally down to 4 ghouls now including his champ.  He reforms his Crypt Horrors to receive my Phoenix Guard's eager and surely charge.
• I do exactly that and charge his Crypt Horrors with my Phoenix Guard.  Look at my numbers, here's my Phoenix and watch me clear more chaff.  I SR to meet his Vargheist with my Archer units and shoot at them for no effect.  I feel good about my chances until I roll for magic.  Double 1s; awesome.  My Frozen Turkey is now thawing.  Don't worry guys, I make 2 channels but now I can't cast jack shit because High Magic has 3 DD spells.  Fine, I'll throw Hand of Glory, my only god damn spell with 4 dice.  Guess what?  I miscast again and 3 of my PG eat shit before combat even starts.  Feedback hits my Lv.1 and Lv.4 taking a wound each.  When combat does start, my Phoenix Guard roll a ton of hits but end up doing crap for damage.  The Phoenix also rolls like crap and it's not looking good.  His fat Horror things hit me back and auto-wounds my Phoenix with 5 attacks.  I'm sweating beads and I roll some dice.  I take 3 wounds on the bird.  Caw!  The rest of the attacks and stomps goes into my PG but 3+ ward and WS8 tells them no.  I barely win combat and he pulls another fatty.
• So, that kinda sucked big time, let's see what happens on his turn.  He places some more chaff around because he has a million more deploys than I do and reforms his Vargheists a bit.  They're march blocked, they fail and they only go 10".  His magic phase turns into crap as he miscasts Winds of Undeath onto himself  but they barely kill anything.  He raises some Ghouls with his left over dice before the fires rage again.  This time, only the Ghast remains.  Really?  Shooting from his Mortis Engine sees him scream into the bird and kills it.  I rage, but what can I do?  In combat, I barely win over the Crypt Horrors despite that not going as well as I hoped.  With my bird gone, I'm not feeling too confident.
• Next round sees a bunch of charges by me just to kill some chaff.  I clear it up with my Dragon Princes and I charge my Archers into the Vargheists' flank.  This is where things got a little hairy because the way I overran my White Lions put them far ahead where my opponent and I argued about the Ghoul King's unit getting a flank charge or not.  After arguing like huge nerds, I said fuck it, let him have it.  This kindness turns out to be a mistake later on.  Sometime during this, I combo-charge my Eagles into some Wolves and kill them, but yeah, my Eagles run around killing undead dogs.  Magic saw nothing amazing happen and my opponent stores 2 more dice.  Combat sees my Phoenix Guard utterly obliterate his Crypt Horrors due to some fantastic rolling and I reform to meet his zombie unit with Lv.4.  In combat, my Archers kill his Vargheists and I reform towards the action.
• Since I let the Ghoul King's unit get the flank charge on my White Lions, shit goes sour really quick.  A big magic phase saw him reach 12 die, dispelling the Convocation and getting off IoN twice on the Ghoul unit with nice rolls for bringing models back.  The unit regains like half its number in a single turn from being down to just the Ghast.  Hexwraiths charge the Dragon Princes and they flee because I'm out of position and I can't win vs. that just yet.  The Ghoul King single-handily tears the White Lions a new asshole and I'm unable to combat reform at the end because I took such a beating.  Stubborn stays.

Sure why not, charge my flank I says.

• The Phoenix Guard charge into the Lv.4's unit of Zombies and murder a bunch of them.  I miscast again, the forth fucking time in this game and it's really starting to get annoying.  His Mortis Engine makes me pick the one that feedbacks my wizards and I lose my Lv.1.  My Lv.4 has 2W left as he fails to wound him.  I kill an ass ton of units there, but next round he just brings them all back.  The Ghoul King eats more White Lions and that unit breaks and runs.
• The rest of the game is pretty strange.  I end up losing my Lv.4 to his Ghoul King once combat starts over there, but I keep both Phoenix Guard and White Lions alive to tie the game.  The Dragon Princes rallies and takes another charge from the Hexwraiths, but this time I hold and flank charge them with my Archers.  Combat res does them in and pops a unit I'm otherwise unable to hurt.  We count up points at the end and it's a draw.

I shit you not, that's all that was left.

More notes:

• I am not feeling High Magic man.  Too many DD and conditional spells when I'd rather have 2-3 hexes or Mindrazor.  I'm really feeling that Shadow will be the lore to go to, even if I don't get the +1 to cast or the stacking ward.  I hate not being able to cast into combat and my opponent is throwing out Van Hels, re-roll wounds, raising shit left and right, seriously, enough is enough.
• The Ghoul King, F that dude.  He single-handily just tanks on my White Lions because he knows the unit has the Banner of the World Dragon and I honestly think he knows that by now.  I personally don't think he should of gotten the flank charge, but since it's a friendly game my care factor is low.  We're friends so it's all good.  If you notice, at the end I'm running away with 1 White Lion and my BSB, saving all the points from that unit.  Probably just as stupid if not more than his one surviving Ghast after 99% of the Ghoul unit burned down from Fiery Convocation.
• Miscasts suck, I don't know why.  Oh, and on the one turn that I needed the Phoenix to kick ass along side those Phoenix Guard, I roll double 1s for winds and the Phoenix ends up dying half a turn later.  Ugh, I don't know how I punished his Terrorgheist so hard just to fall victim to back luck.  Karma?  See!  That's why you need two of those damn birds.