December 8th Toys of Tots Tournament

  I have been meaning to write something up on this, but just haven't gotten around to it.  My local GW store had a Toys for Tots tournament that I participated in. Everyone was supposed to bring a toy as entry fee that would be donated so ultimately how I did in the tournament didn't matter.  They finally found a way to make me a charitable person.  *shakes fist in the air*  damn you!!!!!!!!!

  Now lets get down to the good stuff. It was a 1500 point standard tournament.  I believe that at 1500 points Ogres aren't that great.  500-1000 point games, we're great!  2000+ point games, even better!  1500 is that magical spot where once you buy all the characters/core you need to function at that level, you've got no points left to bring the good stuff.  I chose to run a list with a single Firebelly and max out on shooting.  

  The basic rundown of the list was:

Firebelly

1xBulls

1xIronguts

2xUnits of 4 Leadbelchers

Ironblaster

Maneater Sniper/Scouts

Since in this format, you either win or lose (none of that minor victory/loss nonsense), I can choose to fight when I need to, or I can stay at range and play points denial.  

Game 1:  Got any cheese? (Skaven)

  Ahhh the little rat bastards.  I both love and hate playing skaven because it can go either way for me.  I get my ass handed to me, or I do the handing.  

  My opponents list essentially was:

Lvl 4 wizard

Lvl 2 wizard

BSB

Plague Monks

Clan rats

Skaven Slaves

Gatling Gun

Rat swarms

Warped lightning cannon

Jezzails

  They were kind enough to start our morning off with a basic pitched battle, no pesky strategy required that early in the morning.  After we did our regular deployment, I don't think he was expecting me to say.. oh I have scouts.  He had his shooting units on one side of the board and his BSB close by. So the maneaters popped up over there, plenty of potential targets.

  I got first turn so this meant that the Maneaters couldn't charge into the Jezzails, so I moved them forward a bit and took some sniper shots at the BSB.  My thinking here was either, I take out his BSB leaving him to take leadership tests without rerolls or I would at the very least scare him into turning as much of his army to deal with the maneaters as I could.  My sniper shots did that trick, picking off the battle standard bearer top of turn 1.  

  If the maneaters could survive the shooting and magic phase, I would be able to take out the little fire base had on the hill and then my own shooting would be free to sit back and pick him apart.   My opponent knew this as well as I did so he fired everything into the maneaters as well as turning 2 units to face them.  At this point, even if the Snipers didn't survive, getting him to redeploy half his force, taking out the BSB, AND drawing all the rats shooting and magic for a turn meant they did their job regardless if they survived or not.... which was good, because they were cut down to a single man... err ogre.  I rolled boxcars on their panic check and then another pair of 6's on their flee so the boys ran off the board.

  Once all my guns were in range, I was able to unload into the rats.. slowly taking down their number.  My firebelly rolled Flame cage as one of his spells so I was able to force his plague monks to not move.  This made them non factors in the game till the end at which point I had destroyed the rest of his army and sent my entire force to deal with them.   I tabled my opponent at the end of turn 5.  Losing his bsb, and having half his army out of position is what really did him in.  Had he just assumed that his shooting would take out the maneaters, I think the game would have been a lot closer.  

  Ironblaster was a piece of shit this game.  5 turns of firing and it managed to hit ONCE taking out 90 points of lightning cannon.  I only mention this, because be prepared for a reoccuring theme.

Game 2: Dirty Hippies (aka Wood Elves)

  This was the "top table" game.  My opponent had tabled his first round match-up as well.  Wood elves... uggh.  In tournament play, I've only managed to beat elves one time with my ogres so I knew I'd need some luck to beat them... especially since the elf player was actually good!

Lords: [305]

[305] Spellweaver (Lore of Life) + L4 + Dispel Scroll + Hail of Doom Arrow (General)

Heroes: [187]
[187] Noble on Great Eagle + BSB + Light Armor + Dragonhelm + Amaranthine Brooch

Core: [478]
[96] 8x Dryads
[96] 8x Dryads
[160] 11x Glade Guard + Musician + Standard Bearer + Banner of Eternal Flame
[126] 10x Glade Guard + Musician

Special: [195]
[195] 3x Tree Kin

Rare: [335]
[285] Treeman
[50] Great Eagle

Total = 1500pts

  The scenario was deploying diagonally across the board.  For every unit we would roll a die. On a 1, that unit had to come in from reserve.  

  Manditory blurry photo

  This battle was pretty one sided for the most part.  My scouting maneaters didn't phase him.  He sent just enough troops to deal with them and with his speed was able to turn them back into position cause little to no effect.  Most of his units spent their time in the woods making my shooting ineffective, he didn't need to come out of the woods to kill me and he knew it.  I had to press forward as best I could while being shot and magic'd to death.  In another tournament format, I would have hung back and tried to keep the loss to a minor one, but in this all or nothing format, I had to just throw what I could into any fight they could find, and none of those fights were the ones they wanted to be in.  Dweller's below took out my general and most of the ironguts, so my most effective fighting unit was majorly crippled. 

  Again, my ironblaster wasn't worth it's salt.  I managed to get hits on the treeman 3 times... and all 3 times, I rolled a 1 to wound him. That treeman will have a story to tell to his sapling about the time he caught 3 cannonballs out of the air.  

  Aside from the single treeman in my army, I don't have any Treekin/dryads.  After seeing them in action, I think I might have to pick some up.. if I ever finish the laundry list of other projects I'm doing.

Game 3:    Knights Knights and more Knights (Empire)

  My opponents are was:

Luthor Huss

Mounted lvl 2 wizard

Hero on pegasus

HUGE unit of Inner Circle Knights

Large unit of Reiksguard Knights

Cannon 

Mortar

    The game was capture the hill.  After turn 5 we would roll a die to see if the game ends, if not, it keeps going.  This game ultimately came down to me keeping his largest knight unit away from the hill.  The maneaters popped up next to the smaller knight unit and was able to tie them till turn 6, when they finally destroyed what was left.  I lined up some charges for him that would put the large unit out of position at the end of the game and lucky enough for me it worked.  I eventually got tired of my ironblaster failing to wound anything and had it function as a speedbump that ultimately kept the knights away from the hill.  At the end of turn 6, we rolled and the game ended with me having 2 units in control of the hill.  

  I went 2 -1- 0 for the day, and scored the maximum number of points for paint and sportsmanship(aka soft scores) so I was pretty happy.  That would have put me in either a 2 way tie for 2nd place, or sole second place(not sure how the other guy did in his last game) with my only loss coming at the hands of  the overall winner.   

  Fun day, 3 games against new 3 new opponents.. none of which were dicks... and lets not forget the most important part of the day.. Some kid got Rock em, Sock em Robots for Christmas.... which is what someone brought as their donation  (I brought a Barbie doll because I figured w/ the group of nerds that would come to a Warhammer tournament there would be an abundance of boys toys)

Let's do some wizard math!

Let me start off this post by saying, shit's about to get nerdy up in here... and that's coming from a guy who writes a blog about "little army men."

Today we're going to talk about Wizards and rolling for spells.  I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this, nor will I be the last.  I started this quest of nerdiness because I wanted to know what are the odds of getting the spell I wanted for a Lvl 3 wizard vs a lvl 4.  I couldn't find any definitive answers online so I decided to do the math myself.

In case anyone doesn't know, the way magic spells work in the current edition is that there are 6 different spells.  You roll a die for every wizard level you are and you get the spell that corresponds to that number.  (Example: If I'm a level 2, I will roll 2 dice.  If I roll a 1 and 5, I get the #1 and the #5 spell in the list)  Since you can't have the same spell twice, if you roll a double, you get to pick any of the others from the list.  (Example: I roll of two 3's, I can change one of the 3's into a 4.  Thus giving me spells #3 and #4.)

The only way to figure up these odds is to write out all possible dice combinations and see which one meet our criteria.  For the charts below, we are assuming that I want the #6 spell.  This is just for simplicity sake, if you wanted the Comet of Casandra(#5 on the list) the chances are EXACTLY the same.

Level 1 Wizard

I didn't do a chart for a level 1 because you can't roll a double on 1 die so the odds are:

1/6 = 16.66666666666667%

Level 2 Wizard

So as you can see, there are 21 possible combinations and 11 outcomes that give us what we want.

11/21 = 52.38095238095238%

Level 3 Wizard

There are 56 different combinations of dice rolls for a level 3.  40 of which will give us our desired result.

40/56 = 71.42857142857143%

Level 4 Wizard

There are 126 different combinations of dice.  Only 5 of them will not give us a 6 or a double.

121/126  = 96.03174603174603%

Level 5 Wizard

I didn't type out all the different combinations of 5 dice, I don't see the point in it. There is only one combination of 5 dice that won't produce our desired result:

1 2 3 4 5

Anything else will give you the spell you want.  Doing a bit of Googling, I've discovered there are 252 distinct combinations.

251/252 = 99.6031746031746%

So in other words if you have a level 5 wizard and you don't get the spell you want... the dice really are out to get you.

As messed up as this may sound, it was actually kind of fun doing this.  I think my next Mathhammer project will be charge probabilities, specifically for things with Swiftstride (Roll 3 die and discard the lowest.)

1500 point WFB tournament coming up on Saturday.  I hate 1500 points with Ogres because by the time you buy characters and core choices, you either don't have many points less, or you have the bare minimum of models on the table.

Tomorrow, I'll try to post my list... but I'm still working on it.  It was attempting to squeeze a lvl 4 heavens slaughtermaster into a list and that brought on this whole probability thing.