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I played against the Orcs and Goblins for the first time. Things were pretty well stacked against me with the player having a Mighty Empires advantage over me: an Idol of Mork! This campaign feature allowed him to WAAAGH more than once in a game, or something like that. It's been long enough that I can't remember what any of it does in-game.

Tony plays a special character. For him it's the sneaky goblin hero with the giant squig. We roll for each unit to determine whether or not a unit of mine starts off the table (can't remember if this is before or after regular deployment). I get to feel something akin to opponents to Alaitoc Disruption. ie, powerless.



Rolling for each unit, I'm relieved to find that only two units start off the table. My unit of Waywatchers and my unit of Wardancers. Suddenly I feel overexposed without my minimum unit marchblockers, but I soon discover that the Orcs and Goblin army is a pretty fierce beast indeed.

edit: Waywatchers, not scouts. I got a little confused!

My Deployment:

From right to left:


Dryads
Glade Riders with Musician
Dryads
Wild Riders
Wild Rider Kindred on Stag with hail of doom arrow and Annoyance of Netlings
Archers



Level 2 Mage with Calaingor's Staff
Level 4 Spellweaver with Lord of the Beasts, full complement of dispel scrolls and Deepwood Sphere
Level 1 Brainchwraith with extra dispel die



10 Archers

All in all, I think I have 7 dispell dice. My idea was to use the Dryads to lure out Fanatics, and then steamroll on the flank with as many of my Wild Riders as I can safely manage to get into combat.

With my Wardancers undeployed, I imagine they are going to support the center.

I try a unit of blockmarching Glade Guard scouts. They have the banner that extends my blockmarching range, and I deploy them on my left flank where my Wood Elf forest template is. The idea is to slow down the Black Orcs on the left flank with my march blockers, and to draw out the Fanatics on my right flank with my Glade Guard Riders.



Unfortunately, Tony's Doom Divers completely wipe out my Riders on a single volley. Originally during deployment he had put his doom divers into a forest, which I pointed out was a bad idea. Now it was biting me in the butt because my Fanatic bait was gone.



The first Waaagh of the game, and the left flank doesn't look so hot.

Spiders to the left of me, black orcs to the right, and squig hoppers straight ahead. I doubt I can avoid a charge next turn. What to do? Not realizing what a bad idea it is, I charge the spider riders.

Next time, arrow shots will be required to try and force a panic check...

Tony's Goblins and chariot approach on my right flank.

Nearly every foot unit had shamans and (I kind of guessed) fanatics. I think they were night goblins, but I'm not sure, and I know they all had mad cap mushrooms.

Magic was pretty safe, except for a few stray movement spells that got off. I tried to dispel as many of those as I could.

Without my Glade Riders, I tryMarching and Call of the Hunting my Dryads to get them to trigger the Fanatics, but they end up outside of Fanatic range.



On the left flank, my Waywatchers try to advance swiftly into a good firing position. Overall my archers cause very few casualties in this game.

And though there's no picture of them, the Wardancers enter the table and march up the middle through the center forest where I am hiding my heroes.

The spider riders polish off the Scouts with their venomous attacks. I didn't realize that the spiders get attacks, too. I asked Tony what they did before I decided to charge, and he forgot to mention the venom :(

It was a bad idea to charge anyway.



Clear to do as they please, the Squig Hoppers roll a crazy number and end up charging my Waywatchers. At least the Waywatchers get two attacks, but with fast troops in my bowline, I'm starting to think that everything is going to roll from there.

And on the right flank: release the Fanatics!



He has a nice bunch of Fanatic conversions but not enough of them done yet. So some of the models you see are just regular archers proxied as Fanatics. In the upper right hand corner of the pic you can see his styrofoam ball conversion. That nasty bugger takes out 3-4 Dryads by himself!

Most of the other Fanatics do similar damage. My forward Dryad unit that was supposed to trigger the Fanatics originally gets decimated to a single Dryad.

And so my general faces a minefield of fanatics and can only think of one thing: freeze in place when he should be getting the heck out of there.

The Waywatchers flee, but somehow rally, tying up the Squig Hoppers for one more series of close combats.



Wardancers charge the leader unit and do the dance that does an extra attack, but kills very little. I'm still getting used to the unit champion rules and apparently I should have put a lot of attacks into that giant squig and leader to kill them.

My Dryads get stuck in combat...all four of them, and no matter how many they manage to kill they're still outnumbered and outranked. Also, they don't outnumber the goblins and the goblins pass their fear checks anyway.



Squig Hoppers roll into my archer line. From behind. (ouch)

Meanwhile, the Black Orcs try to maneuver to get a bead on all my characters. They've been hiding in the woods and trying to get spells off, but they've either been failing or getting dispelled.



The Wardancers take a flank charge and I realize I have to kill that leader to try to break things...but it's probably too late.



/sigh Does everything have to take a flank charge? Yeah, even though the Fanatics are collapsing of their own free will left and right, this is probably going to be the end of both my Dryads and Wardancers.

Suddenly I'm playing the worst way possible--how to avoid a massacre? That kind of thinking is pretty negative and hardly gets anything done.

Will the dryads go apesh!t and kill 17 goblins, moments after the pig chariot whiffs every attak??

Will the wardancers successfully perform their Dance of Dooom, dropping Skarsnikk AND Gobbla with dual killing blows while meatgrinding a dozen gobs at the same time??

Will the delicious candy-colored squigs have their reign of terror ended by a passing toddler and/or Malfred himself??

*waiting on edge of swively work chair!!*

- Salvage

The Dryads die a miserable death, and the Chariot lines up to roll over my second bowline. My lord and his Wild Riders start to shift side to side to avoid the fanatics and try to set up a nice charge on something meaty over in the corner. If nothing else, I save them to challenge at least one of the quarters of the table.

Just before the chariot gets to charge, a fanatic plows through it, causing wounds with his styrofoam ball of destruction. The chariot, which we determined to be just within stand and shoot range, becomes a pincushion as it tries to plow into my archer line and dies.



The goblin leader's unit gets stuck into my forest after destroying my fleeing wardancers.

And just outside the forest the black orcs are affected by an irresistibly cast Foot of Mork spell, allowing them to charge during their magic phase. We miscalculate base sizes and allow just enough attacks for the orcs to kill both my Branchwraith and my spellsinger in hand to hand to hand combat (I didn't hide them in the forest deep enough to block line of sight). My spellweaver flees up the table.

My Deepwood sphere never gets to go off.

The black orcs chase my spellweaver up the field...



And chase...



And chase...they run over my leader, my archers, and plow straight into my Wild Riders, whom they destroy.

And the game is a massacre.

At the end of the match I have no more dispel dice to counter additional foot of mork spells. The Hand spell did the deed on much of my Wild Rider unit in the final picture above.

Ah well.

Better luck next time.
on another note those squig riders are pretty cool.

Unfortunately, it wasn't luck but bad tactics on my part all
throughout the game.

If only I could blame it all on luck!