Monthly Archives: April 2024

Daughters of Khaine Vanguard Battles

The hobby room continues its long, arduous completion process. My desk is ready and fit for work; now, I am just putting items away.

In the meantime, I entered into a Vanguard League. My FLGS saw how many people wanted to try Age of Sigmar, so they created a league. The gist is that everyone purchases a Vanguard box. You get bi-weekly pairings and progress through the various missions. In total, there are eight participants. I have fought two battles thus far.

Final Thoughts on Vanguard

For the battle reports see below. The quick summary is I think Vanguard games are just a little small. They work great as an introduction to the game and really allow new players to use and practice the new abilities, but balance wise they just aren’t quite there. I routinely have command points I can’t use and the many obectives and battle tactics are not achieveable. Unit balance is also off. Some large units while points wise are not out of line, when faced with other options, they are just inferior in every way.

I picked the Daughters of Khaine. I was the last to pick, and I wanted a faction no one else was really talking about. The Vanguard list is below.

1 Mulusai Ironscale with Arcane Tome and Master of Poisons
5 Blood Stalkers or Blood Sisters
10 Witch Alves or Sisters of Slaughter
5 Doomfire Warlocks

My first battle I faced Kolten and his Seraphon. His list is below;

1 Sarus Oldblood on Carnosaur
3 Kroxigor
10 Sarus Warriors

We played the first battleplan, Frontal Assault. I have a decent amount of AOS expierence. My opponent had zero. The game started very slow. Getting the opponent used to Grand Strategy’s and Battle Tactics took a significant amount of time. Once those were arranged I won the roll and elected to go 2nd. I felt like a round 2 double turn on the small table could be decisive.

Kolten advanced up the board, but was unable to get a charge in based on my deployment. My round I used my warlocks and archer to eliminate his entire unit of warriors. I then positioned myself to have the witch aelves charge the oldblood my next turn. I wanted to avoid the Kroxigors at all costs until we met on my terms.
Turn 2 the battle went to shit for me. I did win the double turn, and I threw everything I had at the Oldblood. I should have killed it twice according to mathhammer. Timely rolls, timely saves, I reduced him to exactly one wound with all my units execept the Blood Stalkers engaged with it. His turn he was able to withdraw then charge again, plus got a charge in with his Kroxigors, plus healed the maximum with his heroic ability. My Witch Aelves and Warlocks were elminated. I was able to kill his Oldblood leaving only the Kroxigor, but my Blood Sisters were cornered. At this point he managed to get both of his Battle Tactics and Grand Strategy so I was going to have a tough time coming back on points.
Turn 3 I tried to force my way out. But his unwounded Kroxigors took out my Ironscale. I was left with 3 Blood Stalkers against his 3 Kroxigors.

By turn 5 I had whittled down 1 Kroxigor but he still had two left and I was behind by 4 points. Had I gone second I would have tried to charge my unit into his, but because of the turn structure I would have been tabled going first. I think with shooting and charging I could have gotten him down to 1 Kroxigor, but if I missed I would have been completely tabled.

My second game I went against Eric, he and I have played several times in the past, I never faced his Lumineth.

Same list for me. While his list was:

1 Scinari Cathaller
5 Bladelords
10 Wardens
10 Sentienls

The amount of magic he could must scared me, but I also knew how squishy his army was. We played Burn and Pillage. He placed almost all of his units in a single corner of the field. His archers were kind of out in the middle rather than behind his lines which suprised me.

I was able to take the first turn, and put everything I had into the blade lords. I felt like this was the most dangerous unit on the field to me. They were killed on the With Aelves charge.

I only lost one elf for one of his command abilities and I took out two Wardens as well. In the bottom end of the first he wiped out my aelves using his phalanx and killed a single Warlock. I was able to shoot with my Warlocks and do a couple damage to his Wardens.

I picked off a few of his wardens and took three objectives to his zero. I also completed one battle tactic and elimnated his grand strategy so I felt good about where I was.
Turn three I finished off all but one warden and he eliminated my warlocks. I also killed 2 more sentinels.
Turn four I finished off his commander and wardens and put him down to 5 sentinels. He killed my Ironscale and 2 blood stalkers. To be able to kill my blood stalkers he had to move his sentinels forward, a big moment and what I thought was a mistake. I was also 1 VP behind and handnt completed my grand strategy.
Turn 5, I couldn’t get him off the objective by just shooting, my grand strategy was every unit fights and my stalkers hadn’t. I needed my +1 buff and a roll of 8 to get the charge off. Missed my first roll and used my only command point to try again, got an 8. He killed one of my stalkers on overwatch, but after my round of shooting I had him down to 4 models. The sisters did glorious, he was down to one, I had my two snakes left. They struck, he saved one and missed one tabeling his army and earning me the victory.

High School Soccer Officiating

Most of you know I officiate soccer. We are entirely into high school season now, and my weekends are becoming more constrained. I have been the center official eight times over three weeks. I have three more centers coming this weekend. One very interesting part of Wyoming High School soccer is that almost all the matches are played at the same time on the same day across the state.

For example all 34 schools are in action at 4 pm Friday. Some matches start at 3 the rest at 4. The same is true at 6pm. We have two regions East and West. Typically, in the West, matches start at 5, and men’s and women’s teams travel together. So for example Rock Springs travels to Star Valley, the Men’s JV and Womens Varsity start at 3pm while the Mens Varsity and Womens JV start at 5. On the East side the Men’s team stays home and the women’s team travels and two weeks later they switch. The other interesting factor especially on the West Side, very few schools are closer than 100 miles.

As an official who travels, I can rarely do more than 2 matches in a single day. I typically move about 6.5 miles as a center official and 3 to 3.5 as an assistant. If I have to work two matches, that’s a ten mile day. Previously we have been very fortunate to almost always have a 4th official. Referees would either do 2 ARs or 1 Center and 1 4th. This year is different, most games only have ,3 and several we are running 2.

This Week’s Casper Cup

I pride myself on having good control of matches. I specialize in challenging Men’s matches for both men’s and women’s where rivalries occur and tempers can flare. About ten years ago there was a major incident at the state tournament where the two Casper schools were involved in a massive altercation that included parents, players, and coaching staff from both sides. Since that happened I have always done the Casper Cup men’s match.

The last two or three years were simple where one school dominated and I expected that to be the case this season. I was very wrong. The best player for the home school was out with a concussion and they lacked a true leader on the field. The away school fell behind 2-0 early, but came together as a squad. While the home team dominated in the number of chances, the away team put together several strong fast counter-attacks. The score was 2-1 with 25 minutes remaining, and in those last 25 minutes I made all the money from the last three seasons.

I went from 0 yellow cards to 4. Had two confrontations where players faced off ready to brawl. Of my 7.3 miles, (warmups, field walk, etc included) I did 3.2 in the last 25 minutes. I never broke from a decent jog and was running hard for a solid 5 minutes at one point in a thrilling end to end contest. The away team had a pacy winger who ran down seven or eight loose thru balls blowing by defenders and executing a solid cross. His pace meant that the cross usually went harmlessly across the box with no teammates nearby.

Another challenge for me as an official were the three holding midfielders between the two teams. All three players were powerfully built and had strong personalities. These players were constantly engaged in battles for the ball and aerial duals. These battles were fun to watch and I think I only had one or two falls all game from their interactions. The challenge came from the attacking midfielder for the away team. He was out of their class size and strength, but made up for it with skill and quickness. It is hard to manage when you have three big bodies battling for the ball, but when they try and do the same interaction with a smaller player it results in a foul.

I was generally happy with my performance. There were no match critical incidents. I could have given the home team a foul at one point but the player had a tendency of going down too easy. When I wasn’t giving him those fouls he stayed on his feet and scored a goal with several other attempts. On the away end there was a critical attack stopped by a cynical foul. The away team quickly set the ball and played it forward within a second or two. The other officials were asking for a caution there but because of the quick restart I didn’t want to stop their attack a second time. One of the senior officials after the match stated that I could have cautioned it at the next stoppage. I know this is the rule in FIFA, but I don’t think it applies to NFHS.

Otherwise I had a good game, and the coaches complimented my control.