MSU-Battle-Reports (English)

Keine Angst, Tiny! Du machst mir mit den Schlachtberichten immer eine grosse Freude. Swordmaster spielt echt auf einem Niveau, für das man Training und Veranlagung braucht.

Fragen hab ich auch:
- Wie hat er seine Spielweise entwickelt? Ich hab mit meinen Skaven (früher schonmal erwähnt, ich spiele kleine Blöcke) anfangs so oft auf die Schnauze gekriegt. Meine Motivation war bloss, dass ich irgendwas gegen die Kombo B.v.H. und B.d.T (mein Kumpel und ich spielen gerne hart) tun musste. Aber bei den Helfen mit den noch kleineren Einheiten tut jeder falsche Zoll einfach weh!
- Wie sehr muss er dabei auf den Gegner bei der Zusammenstellung der Liste eingehen? Also wie findet er die Balance zwischen eigener Taktik und dem Abfedern der Gegnerischen Stärken ?

Hab natürlich noch mehr Fragen, aber wahrscheinlich müsste man mit dem Typen n Bier trinken gehen, um meine Neugier zu stillen

Hab auch mitgelesen

Ich frag mich wenn er auf Vampire trifft, welche sich so verhalten wie der Ork (also einbunkern und abwarten) da wird er nämlich Probleme bekommen wenn ich micht nicht irre obwohl ich das Spiel des Ork spielers komisch fand, ist es nicht etwas langweilig hinten zu stehen und (wortwörtlich) ein Bier zu trinken?

Ich hab noch nicht alle gelesen aber das kommt noch

Sorry für Doppelpost,
aber der Dämonenspielzug 3 fehlt in dem Bericht vom Sword Master.

tiny.
könntest du die Quelle der berichte dazuschreiben, dann könnte man die Kommentare der engl. Kollegen lesen ?

Ich habe jetzt alle durch. Dem Kerl kann man nur gratulieren. Wirklich klasse Spiele gemacht. Der Verlust des Zauberers (in 3 Spielen) steht wohl einigermaßen im Verhältnis zu glücklichen Würfen wie ich das feststellen kann. Die Speerschleuder welche den Herold und 2 Viecher killt, einige Angriffe der Drachenprinzen etc...

Insgesamt muss ich aber sagen, dass alle Berichte die ich bislang von ihm gelesen habe echt klasse sind. Ich hab immer noch vor diese Spielweise mit den Dunkelelfen zu probieren, bisher leider ohne die Gelegenheit (vielleicht am Wochenende). Wenn mein Gegner das liest weiß er ja schon was auf ihn zukommt.

Fragen... lass mich überlegen...:

eine Frage die ich hätte wäre wie viele Spiele er schon gemacht hat bzw. wie lange er schon spielt. Und vor allem seit wann MSU? Hab nur gesehen dass er z.B. in dem Forum noch nicht so lange angemeldet ist. Aufgrund seiner Spielweise und Taktiken gehe ich aber davon aus, dass er schon eine ganze Ecke an Erfahrung hat.

MSU... hab ich in letzter Zeit öfter mal was gelesen und auf Youtube gibts ja auch das eine oder andere Video dazu. Mit Sicherheit eine gute Möglichkeit den Gegner mal auf ne andere Art anzugehen. Wenn auch bisher nicht so populär in Deutschland.

Was die Spiele angeht, denke ich fand ich das gegen KdC (Nr. 5) am interessantesten. Da hat wirklich mal alles geklappt was klappen soll/muss. Schön wenn man dann noch einen Gegner hat der diese Spiele zu Ende spielt, kommt auch nicht immer vor (also Kompliment an den). Das Spiel war ja durch einige wirklich gute Würfe und taktische Züge schnell entschieden.

tiny: wie ist deine Meinung zu MSU? Welches Spiel fandst du am interessantesten und wo sind deiner Meinung nach die Vorzüge der MSU-Armee am besten zu sehen bzw. wo hat er sie am besten gespielt?

Zitat von tiny

Am deutlichsten fand ich es (als Hochelfenspieler) am Mirror Match gegen Hochelfen auf der CanCon ablesbar

Das stimmt, in diesem Spiel sind einige interessante Züge drin und das Konzept ist sehr gut umgesetzt.

Zitat von tiny

da hier insbesondere die Bewegungsphase zum Zentralenelement der Armee gemacht wird

Das sehe ich auch so. Doch ich denke genauso wichtig ist dass die Einheiten der Armee aufeinander abgestimmt sind. Im den Berichten hier ist die Armee immer ähnlich. Ich denke er wird auch einige der 100 Spiele gebraucht haben um sich auf eine Armee einzuschießen. Die jetzige Kombi ist aber wirklich gut.

Was meiner Meinung nach mit MSU super funktioniert ist über beide Flanken zu gehen um den Gegner zu umlaufen bzw. umkreisen. Dadurch verliert man vielleicht am Anfang ein paar mehr Modelle durch Beschuss, kann dann aber durch die kombinierten Flanken- und Rückenangriffe die Verluste wieder reinholen. Das ist in einigen Berichten recht deutlich. Man sieht aber auch, dass er sich gegen die defensiven Orks richtig schwer getan hat (denke ich). Der Gegner hat 1-2 Fehler gemacht und hatte nicht die optimale Aufstellung gegen MSU. Die Riesen und Trolle wurden glücklicherweise recht früh rausgeschossen. Wenn das nicht klappt, hat er ein Problem. Die Orks waren ja nicht gerade schussstark aufgestellt, und trotzdem hatte er Probleme gehabt. An die 2 größeren Einheiten kam er gar nicht mehr dran da ihm die Möglichkeit ausblieb in den Rücken zu fallen.

Wenn ich meine Schlacht rum hab schreib ich auch mal nen kurzen Bericht und meine Erfahrung aus dem ersten Spiel mit MSU. Bin wirklich gespannt wie das klappt... Hat jemand noch ein paar Tipps auf Lager? Da ich noch nicht so viele Spiele gemacht habe wird das wahrscheinlich richtig schwierig beim ersten Mal, aber mit etwas mehr Erfahrung stelle ich mir das spannend vor.

Greetings!

I would like to thank Tiny for his interest in MSU
concept and the fact he considered my reports worthy re-posting here.
It's a great honor and I am very happy I can provide you with hopefully
entertaining read! Also, thanks a lot to everybody who reads them and in
particular to those who contributed to already interesting discussion.

Tiny did a lot of work with transferring the pictures and maps
here so it is only fair for me to jump in and help him out with the
discussion. Let me try to address the questions he translated for me

Zitat

How did you develop your play style? As I mentioned I stared playing MSU
with my Skaven, because I was looking for a solution against High Elves
Book of Hoeth and Dwellers from Below, which cut me into pieces many
times. I was wondering what was your motivation to start MSU? In
particular for High Elves it must be hard, since every wrong Inch hurts a
lot!

I have played warhammer since early 4th edition but
only with the 8th I started to play regularly and often (at least for me
:)). I was familiar with the concept of MSU long time ago when it was
developed on Druchii.net in 6th edition (I think). Then I found this
topic:

http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=94537

I
was immediately hooked. You see, I was looking for a style of play that
would suit me well and at the same time would not be copy-paste of army
lists other players use. For example, I tried to use cavalry prince as I
like the army but I failed miserably.
What I did is I carefully looked at what Mr. Smith did with his armies
and after an exchange of a few messages I knew I wanted to field HE MSU.
Nobody did that and I had enough models to make a first attempt. The
biggest credit, however, goes to my brother (wardancer or eastern
barbarian on many forums :)) who convinced me it will indeed fit my
style and is great idea to try it out. I did and never looked back!

I
like the game of movement. I think in general I am an aggressive player
but at the same time I don't like the blunt attacks and grinding
matches. I was a great admirer of combat WE a great player and general,
Machiara, used to run some time ago. It was another inspiration.

So
I started with an army that I could build with the models I already had
and was a modification of a first draft suggested by Smith and approved
by my brother One thing I tried to do and that enormously helps me
in progressing as a player is to resist the urge to change the list
often. I forced myself to stick to the army for as many games as
possible to see how I can play against various enemies and in various
conditions. Army list building is easy but I stubbornly refused any
suggestions of changes. I had to actually fight a little against other
forum members on ulthuan as they constantly doubted that type of army
can compete. I was constantly challenged about my unit choices. Nobody
liked sea guard or reavers as apparently they were not optimal and took
away points I could spend on more solid units.

But I wanted to
use them for their flexibility and I think that payed off nicely. I
always encouraged the readers to tell me what they would have done
differently in the very same situation and always tried to look at my
own reports from that point of view. That was also a motivation to write
that long article about HE MSU. it was more for myself to try and
summarize my ideas and have a step back and a look at my experiences. I
still hope to update it because of more games being played in the
meantime and because with new book the dynamism changed a little.

I
like to try new things too but I prefer to make relatively small
changes at a time. Very often the changes I made are not because I
desperately need something but because I am curious. That was the case
when I replaces spears with sea guard. Or when I included a single bolt
thrower. For a very long time I played with High Magic only and refused
the suggestions to change it for Light for example. Eventually, and that
is probably one exception, I switched to Metal to give my army better
chance against armor. And while Searing Doom or Golden Hounds were
awesome against very dangerous monstrous cavalry, it was Enchanted
Blades and Glittering Robes that helped me the most. Oh, and I killed a
vampire with Final Transmutation too!

MSU is not meant to be
some kind of superior style. It simply is another way of playing the
same game. I find it very challenging but thanks to that more exciting.
There is still so much to learn and while I am happy to share my
experiences by no means I consider myself the guy who knows it all. And
yes, one of the challenges lies in the fact that the army can be very
fragile and if you make mistakes you will be punished quickly and
heavily.

Zitat

How much do you have to take your opponent army list into account? How
do you find the right balance between your own taktik and trying to
absorb the enemies strength?

You quickly learn what your
small units can and what cannot do. it is always a team work so I try to
create task forces to accomplish these. Very often I try to plan how to
get rid of the support units of the enemy as they mess up with my
movement and I need freedom in that phase. Because of that deployment
phase is very, very important. I have more units and I can out deploy
many opponents. So I need to know what order of deployment is more
beneficial for me. If I want to focus on combats more then I will hold
my elites before I know where are the units of the enemy I want to
fight. But if I need shooting to do the job better I might switch the
order.

It comes with time and I am still not good at it but what
I try to do is to think how I would like to tackle particular units. If
I want to keep them away from fight I will send my light troops. If I
think I can create a situation where several units of mine can win
against one regiment of the enemy then I form a task force and support
them with each other to get into the position for the charge. I try not
to make it too complicated as there is no time for it and the plans have
to change in the course of battle. That is why writing reports and
talking about your own games helps so much.

So while it is a
little difficult to quantify how much I take into account enemy's army
list and how I adopt my tactics depending on the strength and weaknesses
of respective forces I can simply say that you have a very flexible
toolbox. You have many units that can perform multiple roles be it in
different games or even in different phases of a battle. Don't be afraid
to try different approaches!

Zitat

I was wondering how you would have played against an Vampire army, which
playes as passivly as the Ork army did in your four game durning
ConVic.

It is hard to be very specific without knowing the
list you might have in mind and even then it is all about the details
But it is true that I am still not good at playing against defensive
armies who don't react to my actions. I fully admit I didn't capitalize
on the opportunity I created myself in that game against Orcs. I fought
hordes before and I have tools for the job, I could have been more
aggressive.

But to give you some general remarks on what I think
might be a good idea. First, I would get rid of any fast support.
Wolves, spirit hosts, they all need to die quickly so they don't block
my troops from entering combat on my conditions. The good thing about
defensive armies is that they give up the space. So I can move fast and
freely. I would try to use that advantage to approach with a unified
front, presenting many targets and threatening that I can charge with as
many units as possible if I wanted to. That makes decision making for
the enemy more difficult as they don't know with what I will really
attack.

At the same time I will look for openings (see game
against Orcs) as people when under pressure do make mistakes. Even a
small one that lets reavers to sneak to th rear might be what I need to
crumble that big block faster. I would also try to push my archers and
sea guard to combat as they are very efficient against zombies and
skeletons with their multiple attacks and re-rolls to hit.

Active
character hunting is always helpful. So if there is a chance to charge a
necro in a unit I would do so just to have a chance to kill him. Every
caster less is a great bonus.

But that is of course just a theory

Zitat

Sorry what has happend? Why did the Soul Grinder die?

Nick
rolled 8 for winds of magic. That means Slaanesh gets angry and he had
to test entire army too as according to reign of chaos table he has to
do so for every unit with mark of khorne. He rolled a 6 for Soul
Grinder. And then rolled something like 17 on 3d6 test he had to make.
As a result he killed his own model.

Zitat

How many games have you played so far? And since when do you experiment with MSU?

I
have played more than 100 games in 8th edition (almost all of them
reported) and I have 80 games with MSU under my belt at the moment. I
hope to reach 100 for them too

Thanks again for your
questions. I will try to answer them as soon as possible but be patient
if I don't. Real life is quite demanding too But sooner or later I
will definitely come back to you.

I hope I helped with the very lengthy answers above Please, keep them coming!

Cheers!

Hi and welcome to Germany

first of all - thank you for your great and detailed answers on all our questions. I think there will be more of those in the future as this is a quite interesting kind of playing warhammer. I think it should not be a problem to keep that thread in english if everybody agrees. It should be a lot easier for you and save a lot of work for tiny... By the way - thanks again to tiny for translating all the questions.

I`ve never heard of MSU until I read this thread on the board. I want to try a complete new MSU list with Dark Elves (that I`ve only played with a couple times now) this weekend. It is just to get some practice in different kinds of playing. At first I tried to "transfer" your list into the models the DE can use. But I recognized very soon that this wouldn`t work. So I started a new list. I`m not sure if this will work, but hey, I haven`t played 20 games in total and so there is a lot of training necessary. I will try to make a batrep (but will be in German).

Congrats to your result on the tournament. Hope to read many more of your reps.

You welcome! And thanks for understanding. I do hope it will not be a problem with discussion in English. I can always translate what you guys write but typing is a no no for me, sadly.

As to MSU adaptation I would advise against exact copying as each army has their unique strengths and they do not transfer well across the army books. But that is actually good news as you can develop your own style! I know there is a discussion on Druchii.net about MSU, you might find it interesting if you haven't seen that yet:

http://druchii.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=72079

Just ignore the first link in that topic and also try the link to battle report in the very last post. The guy uses Executioners in small numbers that is an anathema to many players

Let me know if you are interested in some more detailed tactical articles too. My friend KillerK from Druchii wrote two excellent pieces on charges and on dark riders that are really, really good if sometimes controversial.

I am looking forward to reading your report! It may take some time to prepare one but I am sure you will find it very helpful (even on the writing stage) and in my opinion it is much more beneficial for a player and for readers to have a look at a real game rather than endlessly dwell into the realm of theory hammer

Thanks! That was a very good tournament for me for sure. And I will definitely continue with reports!

Cheers!

Some units of HE and DE are comparable but they do really work in a different manner. F.i. Executioners and Swordmasters: Swordmasters have the better skills but if you push the Executioners with the ASF-Banner they can work almost in the same way. The problem is that you can only buff one unit of those and a unit of 10 is pointless with that banner and really too expensive compared to the Swordmasters. So... not good for MSU. I think the biggest advance for the DE can be the Hydra that is currently really cheap for her output. One can also compare the Dragon Princes with the Cold One Riders and the both skirmishing units (don`t know them in english - shadow warriors?).

I think I will have a look into the discussion on Druchii.net. The riders have also been discussed on the board. Many people think they`re too expensive what is also my opinion. But for a MSU-army they will be necessary. I`m going to use some 10-man units of Black Guard for blocking and the Executioners for the flank charges. But I do not know what magic I will use for that game.

Reports are really useful for reflecting what you did and what can be improved. I hope to do some more reports in the future.

Some things that I`m interested in knowing: do you watch betreps on youtube? Is there something you can recommend?

Hi Aem_Kei!

Thank you for your comments!

It is understandable that between elven armies (all three) it is easy to fall into a trap of looking for the exact version of a particular unit. Some of them only look similar, like in your example of Executioners and Swordmasters when in fact they are totally different. Long time ago in 4th edition Executioners were more often compared to White Lions as they both had great axes and S4. (and yes, our skirmishers are called shadow warriors :))

There is nothing wrong, of course, in trying to see if you have similar tools in your army list. And seeing as they are used in somebody's else army, you can simply get good ideas. What you described is a very good example of what NOT to do. Adding a very expensive but very fragile BSB to simply make Executioners to strike at initiative order is not the best option. You risk too much, in particular in a small unit. But that does not mean you cannot use them well and I really encourage you to try!

I am really surprised you think DR (the best light cavalry in my opinion) is too expensive They are extremely dangerous with their crossbows and simply cannot be ignored as they will do damage if left alone. But moving around and keep shooting is just one option. The fact I like light cavalry so much is that their are extremely versatile and can participate at any stage of the game. Here are two links I have mentioned before, the first about DR in particular and what 2 units of them can do. Second one is about charges, a very useful insight for any MSU practitioner (and probably not only :)):

http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?t=71009

http://www.druchii.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=71733

Good luck with your game!

Oh, as to the youtube reports I do not watch them unfortunately. I used to watch Bretonnian guy called OnceBiten but it was some time ago and I don't know if he is still posting. Sorry!

Oh, he's still uploading lots of videos. Not only with Brets, he's playing Imperium and also Beastmen. I love to watch his videos as in my opinion he's a real good and skilled player.

I will do some kind of a fusion-list, probably not only MSU-units.

For MSU i already thought about y Orcs and Goblins with many many many units like Wolfriders, Spiders, 1 or 2 Giants, Pump Wagons, Mangler Squigs, many Goblin and Orc chariot and many Warmachines like Rock Lobber, Boltthrower Doomdiver im gonna watch how this works and ur Battlereports showed some ways, how i could win with it

Swordmaster of Hoeth spielt also auch MSU mit dem Imperium,kennt jemand einen Link dazu? Über youtube und google finde ich nichts...

Swordmaster of Hoeth: Can you give me a link for any reports/ discussions on your MSU concept with the Empire? Thx in advance,
Greentide

Hi guys!

Good to see the discussion continuing!

@ Aem_Kei

There is no need for you to follow MSU concept at all cost if you feel better with other type of a list. I have never claimed MSU is in any way superior. Actually, many players consider this type of an army too risky or not good enough to win big constantly. It is simply another way of enjoying the game! Follow your own instinct!

@ Goblinspießa

Orcs and Goblins can definitely build their own version of MSU force. What is important here is to remember that the size of the units does not have to be "small" to have a good MSU force. 20 Goblins is small regiment for goblins and is still very cheap. Use that to your advantage! Sure, some might say you increase the chance to fail animosity. But at the same time you do give yourself a lot of different options.

Good luck and have fun with your army! I am glad my reports gave you some new ideas to try!

@ GreenTide74

Sure!

Here is a link to SmithF's own topic:

http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=94537

He started to play MSU with Empire before it got a new book. But if you check the list of reports he had 4 with the new army book too before he switched to Wood Elves.

I also tried to find some discussions on Empire forum and here are some links. I am not sure how useful they are, though, as I haven't read them.

http://warhammer-empire.com/th…45637.msg795013#msg795013

http://warhammer-empire.com/th…46664.msg829462#msg829462

http://warhammer-empire.com/th…44823.msg776248#msg776248

I hope you will find them useful.

Cheers!