Scarab Con Report and *%!!&#& Teclis

I am well behind putting this post up.  For a while I was waiting on tournament results, and then I just got distracted.  In January, I attended a GT in Columbia, South Carolina at Scarab Con.  This seems to be the smallest of the region's grand tournaments; however, a lot of good players were in attendance.  I enjoyed the trip down, and I'm looking forward to heading down again next year (and I'm sure we will be back as my fellow Mangler Paul won himself free admission to the tournament next year).

Because the tournament was completely uncomped, I decided this was my opportunity to take Teclis.  I figured that Teclis will be out of the new book (or will cost 600 points), so I might as well break him out to see how he works in this edition.  Ultimately, I can't say that I really enjoyed playing the great wizard of cheese.  I did, however, learn a few things about playing him:

• Don't take death magic.  I didn't want to play a mindrazor list.  That would be way too over the top, so I decided on either light or death.  I ultimately went with death to counter other folk's characters.  I learned, however, that death is much too random to compliment Teclis.  Purple Sun has random range and can misfire.  Spirit Leech is a roll off.  If you take Teclis, you are taking him to eliminate the random factor and to ensure that you get your spells off.  The random nature of death undermines that.  In one game, I shot three purple suns at a treeman coming to kill Teclis.  The first one came up short and then moved out of the way.  The second misfired.  The third misfired.  The treeman then killed Teclis.  
• The Banner of the World Dragon is a must take.  Teclis (and the Book of Hoeth Mage) is going to draw a lot of attention.  The Banner ensured that troops had to make it to him.
• Some armies have counters for him.  Teclis is best against the deathstars that are very popular right now.  I played an Empire army that had a horde of 40 knights.  Teclis really showed in that game.  However, anything with flyers is tough.  
• No one likes Teclis.  Of course everyone knows that, but you will generate a lot of ill will when you break him out.  I'll end up having to take a Dragon Mage to Brawler Bash in order to make it up to everyone.

In the end, I ended up fifth overall.  I made a few mistakes in one game (including letting someone cast a very decisive hex on the unit with Banner of the World Dragon.  Doh!) which led to a loss, and I also lost by getting seriously outplayed by the man who ultimately won the whole tournament (Congrats, Bobby!  You can check out his blog here).  I did manage to take home Player's Choice Army; however, my guess is that might have been because some of the better painted armies won an overall prize.  

On the positive side, I did get the very cool Teclis model painted.  You'll note that my Teclis has had the top of his staff replaced with the staff from the Isle of Blood mage.  What happened is that I broke the top of the staff off my Teclis.  I then put it somewhere where I knew that I could find it when I was ready to paint him up.  I was never able to find it.  Luckily, the Isle of Blood staff looks like it was made for him.  My wife claims he looks like a drag queen:

Currently, I'm working on getting High Elf archers ready.  I want 50 in my 3k list.  I only have 30.  Time to paint!