Warchief Gets His Mojo Back

July 2012 Gaming Update

I’ve got the Warhammer bug again….

In an effort to get back into the game with a bit more vigour I’ve been trialling a couple of wargames clubs around the Midlands looking for one that I can attend more regularly. Consequently I have played a fair few games recently. So it must be time for a quick update….

 

1300 Storm of Magic – Dark Elves vs Chaos Dwarves

This wasn’t at a club, it was a warm up game for Kris, at his house, to help him prepare for the Tides of Chaos campaign weekend. It was using adapted Storm of Magic rules for one of the singles games. Neither of us had that much experience with the SoM rules and consequently we got a fair few bits wrong – however that didn’t stop it being a fun game!

I took a heavy shooting and magic Dark Elf list (it would have been rude not to!) and forced the evil stunties to run towards me. Kris raced the K’daai Destroyer straight at me and I think he was a little surprised when my Dreadlord on Pegasus charged straight back at him. I’m not sure whether he knew about the Pendant of Khaeleth or had just forgotten but it’s safe to say he’ll remember it in future. The Destroyer got destroyed after 4 rounds of combat with only one wound suffered on the Dreadlord in return. Kris got his revenge next turn though when a unit full of Fireglaives shot him out of the sky… Str 4 AP is his weakness…

He also seemed a bit miffed at the Miasma, Withering and Dark Elf shooting combination as a unit of footsloggers tried to inch their way across no-man’s land.

Result – After a fairly brutal game the points came down to a narrow win to the Dark Elves. However it is unfair to claim it as such due to the amount of mistakes we made. I’m sure a re-match is on the cards…

 

2400 Midlands Open Comp – Dark Elves vs Vampire Counts

The first of my excursions saw me attend the Dudley Darklords. They meet in Kingswinford every Tuesday and as I work in Birmingham I thought I would see if it was feasible to pop along straight after work. It is doable but it takes over an hour to get across Birmingham in rush hour traffic. Also Tuesday’s are an awkward day for me to have the car so unfortunately I probably won’t be able to make the club regularly enough.

Anyway, I had arranged a game through Twitter with Sie, one of the club members and a regular on the UK tournament scene. He was trialling a VC list and we agreed to use the Midlands Open comp pack (Midlands Open is a 100 player tournament run by the Dudley Darklords).

I took a fairly middle of the road Dark Elf list and found out that a ‘balanced’ list just doesn’t cut it against a tough tournament designed VC list! I also I realised just how rules rusty and lacking in serious game practice I am!

In short, I got severely out deployed and made a few other minor mistakes that cost me units. I was holding my own for a while, my shooting dice to hit were on fire but then couldn’t wound anything, and when I did Sie rolled a lot of 5+ regen saves. Once the VC’s had weathered the storm and come over the middle of the table, they barrelled into the DE line and completely decimated me.

Result – Heavy loss for the Dark Elves.

 

1000 Intro game – Goblins vs Skaven

I may have mentioned before that my 12 year old son is getting into Warhammer. We bought him the Island of Blood box set as he showed an interest in doing Skaven. After nearly killing his enthusiasm with the endless clipping, scraping, gluing and basing to put the models together we finally got around to playing a game.

In order to play fair I ran a very soft all Goblin list against him and ultimately paid the price…

Highlights of the game were my Goblin Wolf Chariot pulling off a 20 inch charge against  a unit of 10 Giant Rats, whiffing their impact hits and attacks and the rats killing it outright in return. The Warp Lightning Cannon decimated my Goblins over a couple of turns whilst my Rock Lobba kept failing to land anywhere close to it. I got it in the end but victory was short lived as the Giant Rats, fresh from their chariot victory, wiped the catapult out. My single Goblin Fanatic got drawn out, ran forward a massive 3 inches and then turned round and went back through its parent unit before heading off for a swim in the river… My Wolf Riders wandered into a forest which turned out to be Fungus filled. They failed a stupidity test and shuffled forward into charge range of some Rat Ogres. Our characters (kitted out in similar standard common magic items) slugged it out in the middle with the Goblins the eventual winners. However their unit was so depleted that when the second Clanrat unit hit them they ran for hills…

Result – a bloody battle with a hard fought, narrow win to the Skaven.

 

2400 SCGT Comp – Orcs and Goblins vs Beastmen

This was at the recently renamed Wyvern Wargamers club in Bishampton. It’s the same club I used to attend regularly and they meet twice a month on a Sunday evening. With my Warhammer resurgence I am going to try and attend more frequently however I don’t think this is going to be enough to give me my weekly Warhammer fix that I am aiming for. It’ll just be a bi-weekly bonus to meet up with a few mates and play some games.

For the club night I had pre-arranged a game against Santilargo’s Beastmen at 2400 points. In order to even the field we agreed to use the South Coast Grand Tournament competition pack which puts a restriction brush across the rules and army books in order to even out some of the more broken and abused combinations that can make the game unbalanced (the SCGT is a 160+ player tournament and is the largest independent tournament in the UK. Their comp pack is widely used and widely regarded as a ‘light touch’ and relatively fair). We also decided to mix it up by randomly selecting a scenario from the rule book as opposed to playing Battleline which is the norm.

I decided to throw Santilargo a curve ball. I pulled out my Orcs and Goblins from the loft, blew off the dust and gave them their annual run out under 8^th edition. Yeah that was a mistake….

We rolled the ‘Battle for the Pass’ scenario which means we fight along the long length of the table. I set up a little back from the deployment line and hoped that my artillery might do some damage before the hordes of Beastmen reached me. Nope, that didn’t work.

My magic faired a little better – I managed to decimated a Minotaur unit and few stomps from the big Foot of Gork (or is it Mork?) gained me some VP’s.

The hordes of Gors and Bestigors blew through my single Troll speed bumps and eventually reached my lines and it started to get a bit messy. Both of us failed short distance charges but eventually smashed into each other.

We had to finish the game after 4 turns each because we had played the game too slowly. To be fair most of the time was spent with our nose in a rule book or army book. Why do Orcs and Goblins have so many weird rules??

Result – I think we agreed where we left is would have been a draw however had we continued it would probably have been a win to the Beasts.

 

2400 SCGT Comp – Dark Elves vs Ogres

My next trip out saw me visit Cheltenham Warchiefs. They meet every Monday and as long as I get home on the train in time I should be able to drive down the motorway and get there every week. I hadn’t arranged a game but I had introduced myself through their forum and been advised if I turned up with an army I would be pretty much guaranteed a game.

Turned out I got paired up with Sedge, an experienced player and regular tournament attendee who is currently using Ogres. Oh joy! I have kept in touch with the current tournament meta-game through podcasts and forums and know that Ogres are the current ‘must have’ army and in the hands of an experienced player are capable of smashing faces and wrecking hobbies.

Sedge was running an Ogre gunline, slightly against the internet trend but daunting none the less, especially when 2 Ironblasters, 12 Leadbelchers and 8 levels of magic line up opposite you.

I had changed up my Dark Elf list to run more combat heavy using 40 Spears, 30 Corsairs, 18 Black Guard, 5 Cold One Knights and a Hydra supported by 10 Crossbows, 5 Shades, a Cauldron BSB, a level 4 shadow, a level 2 fire and the ‘Unkillable’ Dreadlord on a Dark Steed. I kind of wish I’d stuck with my pew pew magic list…

I made a few fundamental mistakes again on deployment – I wanted to get across the board fast to negate the amount of turns he had to shoot at me however I had deployed my blocks were too close together which hampered my movement and was made even more difficult by the Dreadlord getting snagged on a Gnoblar unit after the BG failed a charge on the same unit. Combined they sat there in front of everything. I also made a few errors which cost me units, like leaving my Shades too close to stand and shoot against a Sabretusk charge.

Anyway – I again held my own for the first couple of turns. My Fire magic and limited shooting put a big dent in an Ogre Bull unit but a disastrous magic phase then pretty much finished the game…

A Comet of Cassandora (the big boosted version) had been irresistibly cast earlier on. It decided to come down in my magic phase and because of the failed BG charge and the Gnoblar speed bumps everything was bunched around the point where it landed. It came down at Str 10, doing 2d6+6 wounds, to everything within 2d6 inches. It killed 15 Blackguard, 8 Corsairs and put a wound on the Dreadlord. It hurt but was survivable.

My level 2 then cast Flamecage with IF on 3 dice. It did no wounds to the Bulls and the resultant miscast killed 8 Crossbows and she got sucked off into a Dimensional Cascade….

Then my Level 4 cast Miasma on three dice and got another IF. The miscast saw her lose 3 magic levels and 3 spells. I lost Miasma and (randomly selected) also lost Withering and Mindrazor – the only spell I had left was Steed of Shadows.

So in one turn I lost 5 levels of magic and all of my combat potential. Then it was his turn. Without any decent defence, magic took out the remaining 3 Blackguard. The Hydra took an Ironblaster shot to the face and died. The other Ironblaster took off the Cauldron. 6 Leadbelchers shot at the Dreadlord and he lost 1 wound (Pendant for the win!). The other unit of Leadbelchers decimated the Corsairs killing another 8.

Result – I conceded at the start of Turn 5 as it was headed towards a very heavy defeat for the Dark Elves.

 

I think the Cheltenham Warchiefs offer the potential for regular gaming and there is a decent amount of fantasy players who attend. The night I went there was a big showing (at least 5 games) of 40k (possibly due to the new edition release), a few Warmachine and Hordes games and a 3 way SAGA battle going on as well.

 

So that’s what I’ve been up to. I’ll post the next gaming review sometime in August but I will also try and get a couple of short painting and modelling blogs up too.

 

Watch out the Warchief is back…

 

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