# "You Shall Not Pass... Turn 3 With a Chance of Winning"



## Brother Arnold (Aug 29, 2010)

We've all seen one. Really broken lists that you can see no victory against after those devastating charges in Turn 3. There's also the ones where everything is chosen specifically for winning the game singlehandedly.
So what have you seen in those sorts of lists? I can remember a few off the top of my head.
Vampire Counts
Vlad and Konrad. Not fun. And then the guy who uses this army puts them in the same unit of Skeletons. And he brings in a Varghulf.
I've also seen one VC player who has a really mean bunch of troops. In the old edition, he brought on a unit of 20 Skeletons with a large dump of more Skeletons off the field. You could tell from them that he was planning on invocating the (Ne)heck out of them. And 3 Wraiths. This was in a 500pt game. My only character was a Lv2 Celestial Wizard, who proceeded to roll no damaging spells. The game was lost with that roll before the first turn. In another game (using 8th ed), this same player brought on the same... With 2 Varghulfs.

Daemons of Chaos
One of my gaming friends uses a Daemon army for FB. This army includes a horde of 40 Bloodletters, Skulltaker on a Juggernaut and generally the Khornate portion of the Daemons Spearhead set. I forget its name, but in the scenario where you have to roll to see which of your units come on at the start, all his stuff came on at deployment, he set up right at the deployment zone line and he tabled me in 3 turns. Granted, I can generally give this list a beating with my Empire in the Bottleneck scenario as he advances down the board, then my Warrior Priest and 20 Swordsmen, my premium close combat unit, gets into combat and it goes downhill from there.

High Elves
The aforementioned Daemons player and I are the only ones in our group who don't play High Elves. One of the High Elves players used to be a lot more broken, as he included a Prince on Star Dragon, 10 Swordmasters, Dragon Princes and another Prince with some magic item that allowed him to get a spell from the Lore of High Magic. I thought it was a Mage then he told me it was actually a Prince once it was in combat. Then he got IoB, and the Dragon was replaced by Althran. But the Swordmasters were bolstered by the IoB Swordmasters. Sigh. Luckily this HE player is really fun to play against, even if he does drain all my luck into himself when I'm playing him.
He appears to return it every time though, since I have the capacity to table an O&G player who uses Skull Pass and a Giant in a 1000pt game.
Another broken High Elf player in my group pretty much says that HE are the greatest army to ever have had an army book, and refuses to admit any other armies are any good, saying stuff like "Empire is shit" based on their statlines. Big talk for a guy who only has a unit of 15 Phoenix Guard and Caradryan. He's rather annoying, since he just wants every High Elf character, not for his collection but because they're so overpowered. Doesn't sound broken enough? He also has Teclis.

Empire
Of course, I'll admit that I can be a pretty tough opponent as well. I can field any one of four wizards, (fire, light, heavens and death) a Helblaster which I picked over the Helstorm due to its being more reliable, a Warrior Priest with the Hammer of Judgement and Armour of Meteoric Iron, a unit of Outriders, 20 Swordsmen, 10 Handgunners, 8 Reiksguard, a Great Cannon and last but not least, a Steam Tank. I didn't use all of that to table the O&G player. Granted, he had a Goblin archer champ left, but he was fleeing.


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## Blackhiker (Dec 28, 2007)

The last time I saw this style of play was when me and two friends did a 2v1. The 2 was empire and dwarves, both gunlines, unfortunately the 1 was playing a goblin horde. He surrendered on turn 3 with about 5 guys out of about 150 still on the board. I don't think there was a single charge in the entire game.


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## Vaz (Mar 19, 2008)

Brother Arnold said:


> Vampire Counts
> Vlad and Konrad. Not fun. And then the guy who uses this army puts them in the same unit of Skeletons. And he brings in a Varghulf.


That's not a broken army - Varghulf's can't break units like they used to, Terror is pretty useless, and Magic sucks. Only decent thing about it in the long run is Konrad as he's a decent cheap Melee fighter.


> I've also seen one VC player who has a really mean bunch of troops. In the old edition, he brought on a unit of 20 Skeletons with a large dump of more Skeletons off the field. You could tell from them that he was planning on invocating the (Ne)heck out of them. And 3 Wraiths. This was in a 500pt game. My only character was a Lv2 Celestial Wizard, who proceeded to roll no damaging spells. The game was lost with that roll before the first turn. In another game (using 8th ed), this same player brought on the same... With 2 Varghulfs.


How? There's 3 Rare - Wraiths, 2x Varghulf? That's 400 odd points there, add in a Vampire, and 20 Skeletons, and you're way over the 500pt Limit.



> Daemons of Chaos
> One of my gaming friends uses a Daemon army for FB. This army includes a horde of 40 Bloodletters, Skulltaker on a Juggernaut and generally the Khornate portion of the Daemons Spearhead set. I forget its name, but in the scenario where you have to roll to see which of your units come on at the start, all his stuff came on at deployment, he set up right at the deployment zone line and he tabled me in 3 turns. Granted, I can generally give this list a beating with my Empire in the Bottleneck scenario as he advances down the board, then my Warrior Priest and 20 Swordsmen, my premium close combat unit, gets into combat and it goes downhill from there.


Mono-khorne is not a broken army. It's T2 at best, but even then it struggles against other combat armies - a la Warriors, and High Elves.



> High Elves
> The aforementioned Daemons player and I are the only ones in our group who don't play High Elves. One of the High Elves players used to be a lot more broken, as he included a Prince on Star Dragon, 10 Swordmasters, Dragon Princes and another Prince with some magic item that allowed him to get a spell from the Lore of High Magic.


Not very viable choices - Monster's get shot down to easily - even with a 4+ Rerollable. 10 Swordmasters? Is that it?Count yourself lucky. Dragon Princes don't work. Prince with x amount of points of magic? So, you were playing a 3000-3500 game then?


> I thought it was a Mage then he told me it was actually a Prince once it was in combat. Then he got IoB, and the Dragon was replaced by Althran. But the Swordmasters were bolstered by the IoB Swordmasters. Sigh. Luckily this HE player is really fun to play against, even if he does drain all my luck into himself when I'm playing him.


I don't know Prince Althran, but Griffon's are worse than Dragons, especially as they are now weaker "Shoot at me" targets. And he combined his Swordmasters into a unit of 20? Well, that's pretty much halving their capabilities, they're the one unit that works as units of MSU as they can put out so many attacks.




> Another broken High Elf player in my group pretty much says that HE are the greatest army to ever have had an army book, and refuses to admit any other armies are any good, saying stuff like "Empire is shit" based on their statlines. Big talk for a guy who only has a unit of 15 Phoenix Guard and Caradryan. He's rather annoying, since he just wants every High Elf character, not for his collection but because they're so overpowered. Doesn't sound broken enough? He also has Teclis.


Only combination that's bad is Caradryan, Banner of Sorcery and Teclis in Phoenix Guard. Aside from that, use Cheap Heavy Cavalry to break them. They don't have many attacks, and you stop Teclis casting MM's and the like.



> Empire
> Of course, I'll admit that I can be a pretty tough opponent as well. I can field any one of four wizards, (fire, light, heavens and death) a Helblaster which I picked over the Helstorm due to its being more reliable, a Warrior Priest with the Hammer of Judgement and Armour of Meteoric Iron, a unit of Outriders, 20 Swordsmen, 10 Handgunners, 8 Reiksguard, a Great Cannon and last but not least, a Steam Tank. I didn't use all of that to table the O&G player. Granted, he had a Goblin archer champ left, but he was fleeing.


The army is still very bitty, with no real direction. For example - the knights have no ranks, the Swordsmen won't stand up to a stiff breeze in combat, and a Helblaster is substandard to a Mortar and Helstorm in 2K games. Steam Tank's are still nasty, but not like they once were.

If I'm honest, there's not THAT much particularly powerful in these armies, other than that there are a couple of strong units/choices. However, it's more than likely luck and poor decisions/strong decisions on your side played a hand in a "Turn 3 tabling".

Playing WoC, as I'm purely combat, I've never had a Turn 3 table aside from 1000ppts Games or less. No shooting, you see. However, I've had a Turn 3 Tabling in 7th Wood Elves, when I used a Waywatcher army to skip around a Dwarven Battle Line (it was combat based, which was a poor army, but expertly painted). 20 Killing Blow Archer shots a turn backed by a ton of Glade Riders caused unit after unit to be wiped out methodically, and the guy just gave up without causing more than a couple of wounds on a unit of Riders.


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## Flindo (Oct 30, 2010)

lizzies generally arent broken, but when a slann is fielded, it generally gives the lizardmen a higher chance of victory.


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## mynameisgrax (Sep 25, 2009)

The only armies that can reliably annihilate an opponent before the game's even half over are the ones that exploit one of the following: magic, shooting, or abilities/spells that grant extra movement.

It's important to note that in 7th and earlier, heavy cavalry that caused fear/terror were infamous for winning games before they even began, as were flying monsters. In 8th, neither can really break blocks of infantry fast enough to win the game early. Both can still be effective, just nowhere as dangerous as they used to be.

Magic spells that either use templates that move across the board, or target every model in a unit, are THE most broken elements of 8th edition. They're too easy to cast with irresistible force, and can end an army's hopes of winning by as early as turn 2. Some of the most ridiculously powerful spells are Dwellers Below, Purple Sun, Pit of Shades, Infernal Gateway (Chaos Warriors Tzeentch), and the 13th spell (Skaven).

Empire is more or less the only army that can end the game before it begins through the shooting phase, and although cannons help, how they really do it is with mortars. Mortars will annihilate most infantry before they can even get close. Skaven, Dwarves, and Dark Elves can also shoot well, but Empire does it best.

Finally, any army that can use spells or abilities to move large blocks of troops very quickly into close combat can win the game before its even half over. Cavalry may have been toned down, but large blocks of infantry are as powerful as ever. Although Daemons, Orcs/Goblins, and Skaven have some abilities in this regard, it's really the Vampire Counts that shine with this strategy. Using danse macabre on giant units of ghouls is arguably the best strategy they have.


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## Hans Richter (Dec 24, 2010)

Just don't see how a Volleygun is substandard to a Mortar or Rocket Battery. Volleygun is more accurate (no scatter roles) and if you counter the other two's "well, if it rolls right on the scatter or rolls a hit" chances with not rolling a misfire on the 3 barrels, that 5' template would have to get the perfect template placing to do maximum damage.

The volleygun only has to roll an artillery dice and add the numbers up. Max of 30 hits, and the aforementioned perfectly placed 5' template I think can cover 35ish models (especially with no 4+ partials anymore; either hit or no hit). Just seems to me that you'd have better luck of rolling three 10's on the artillery that getting that perfect pie plate hit.

The new Master of Ballistics for Engineer makes rolling for any Empire War machine a ton better. That said, I've seen a few Empire lists here with WMs and no engineer. I know I plan to run 1 Engineer w/Hochland per 3 WMs.


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