Auspicious Aspiring Champion of Chaos
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Hi all-
After a short hiatus due to familial and Ultimate Frisbee related obligations, to say nothing of continuing the painting work (no new units fielded at this time) I'm back with another installment.
A welcome change of pace, I got to face a new player and a new army. Aaron's just getting in to the game, though he's painted an entire 3000 point force of Empire. Very nice hand painted banners and a great paint scheme for a Talabheim force.
I was looking at:
Ludwig Schwarzhelm
Warrior Priest w/Doomfire Ring and a Hammer (Sword) of Might on Barded Warhorse
Battle Wizard, Lvl2 w/Wizard's Staff and Dispel Scroll
19 Swordsmen with Full command
9 Halberdier Detachment
5 Handgunner Detachment
8 Knights, Full Command and Warbanner
20 Flaggelants
5 Pistoliers
2 Great Cannons
I brought my usual list-
Thane, GW, MR of Gromril, Resistance, Preservation
Runesmith, GW, Shield, Rune of Stone, Resistance, Challenge
Dragonslayer
25 Warriors, FC, Shields
20 Warriors, FC, Shields
15 Longbeards, FC, Shields, Battle, Stoicism
11 Thunderers, Shields
10 Rangers, GW, Vet, Mus
6 Miners
Bolt thrower, Valiant, Penetrating, Burning, Engineer w/Handgun
So... I was not going up against the hardest of lists by any means.
I didn't have a lot of concerns about the shooting, and figured I could pick up some VPs by sending in the miners. The only thing I really had to watch for would be handling the
After rolling for board edges, I found myself with a hill partially blocked by a piece of impassible terrain that also blocked LOS. The only woods were going to be too small to scout, so no ranger hi-jinks this time around. I anchored my line on the right with the bolt thrower and thunderers on the hill. The longbeards went to their left, with the 20 warriors and 25 warriors spreading along. I'd be able to advance and keep a block of woods on my left. The knight unit went down opposite my longbeards, with the swordsmen and their detachments off to their left. The flagellants were on my extreme right, the pistoliers on my left. One cannon went down to shoot at longbeards and my shooters, while the other one deployed to push up a hill just outside his deployment zone and batter me from there. Of course, the mage went in the swordsmen and the mounted characters joined the knights. Of note, the mage picked up Rule of Burning Iron and Transmutation of Lead (or whatever it is).
I scouted the rangers in my own deployment zone to swing around the back of where I expected combat to result and rear/flank charge or capture pursuers. The dragonslayer accompanied them, intent on locking down the flagellants till I was ready for them. Both my other heroes dropped in my longbeards. The thought here was that I needed to Challenge the knights into my longbeards, and use the characters to absorb damage and possibly inflict a wound or two. Any other situation was going to be ugly. The knights were bringing static combat res of 5, 6 if they outnumbered. I would surely drop this to 4 or 5 with shooting, but that was still going to be a tough charge to take with warriors. Even worse if the pistoliers went in a flank.
We diced for first turn, which I picked up, thanks to the bonus for finishing first (rangers good for something there!). I gave him first turn, and we were off.
Turn 1
The Empire trotted forwards, with the knights staying just ahead of the rest, ready to charge if I advanced aggressively. They were also set up to swing around the impassible terrain and slice along my line while I fought the other blocks. Potentially problematic. One cannon was digging in to a new firing position, and the other misfired at my longbeards, needing an extra turn to clear the jam.
In the magic phase, I was holding on to block Burning Iron on my heroes. I probably could have thrown one of my five at one of the bound items/prayers but didn't find any of them too worrisome. The rangers and dragonslayer were a little peeved at this decision when a giant flaming skull came rocketing through the impassible terrain and washed over them. Mercifully, there were no wounds here. The priest gave a 4+ ward save to someone, which I figured on knocking down with my power dice in my turn. And, as planned, iron was dispelled.
In my turn, I pushed all the blocks forward at full speed, preparing to challenge the knights on to my longbeards. The dragonslayer moved towards the gap on my right in case the knights were out of 14" from my challenge and elected to go around my line instead. A charge and overrun would put them taking a flank shot from the bolt thrower, or possibly a flank charge from the rangers.
And then shooting... Here my bolt thrower took down a knight, and the thunderers, who could only see with 8 opened fire. 8 shots- 7 hits, 5 wounds, 1 save later, and I'd taken a complete rank from the knights. Worse to come- they failed their panic check and ran 15" back. I was suitably appalled at the lack of intestinal fortitude displayed by humans. Apparently at 1500 pts, there's no one available with better than Ld 8. Yikes.
Turn 2
So, at this point, the proud bearer of the Emperor's standard was leading his entourage in glorious retreat. With the knights fleeing, there were no charges to declare. On to rally fleeing troops... and another failed check saw the remaining eggs in the knight shaped basket hurtled off the table.
I felt pretty terrible at this point. Essentially, the game was over thanks to some awful dice rolling. Aaron took this turn of events incredibly well, congratulating me, but wanting to push on to see if he could salvage better than a massacre. So we plugged away, and as you might expect, Dwarven blocks carried the day. I will not give you the blow by blow of this rather painful next handful of turns, but I will provide a couple highlights and demonstrative vignettes.
Turn two: The longbeards look around trying to figure out what that terrible smell is. Finally realizing that their thane is being magically cooked inside his preposterous suit of armor, there rises a few half hearted cries to put him out with some of the ale on hand. The greatbeard wisely puts a halt to this talk, reasoning that this will build character, and besides, when he was a beardling, he'd fallen in a volcano and was none the worse for wear. Not his problem if the young un's couldn't take a little heat. Note to self- 5 pts is a wise investment for Rune of the Furnace.
Turn three, right flank: Rangers circle up for a conference...
"Right, what's going on here?"
"Well, those unhealthy looking umgi are getting ready to charge."
"Right, giant skull, a whole bunch of... what seems to be zombies or some such, clearly we're fighting undead."
"I think you're right. Execute highly classified undead maneuvers?"
"Affirmative. Let's do it!"
Rangers flee the charge, fails to rally and sprint off the board, with a total flee of 19" in two turns.
Turn three, Empire deployment zone: Miners are 1" away from the Great Cannon. A strength 2 grapeshot, fails to impress, and they charge, taking the next 5 combats to discuss what they were doing wrong, sending them one by one back to the artillery school with a stern talking to.
Turn five, in front of the other great cannon. My block of 25 warriors, which has absorbed all Empire shooting thus far, sustaining 8 or nine casualties is now about 2" away after an overrun. Grapeshot fires off, and hits with every partial, scoring 12 strikes. And artillery dice comes up... 2. The warriors are less forgiving than the miners, now thoroughly peeved, blackened, but not much worse for wear, and proceed to fire the crewmen out of their own cannon.
So ultimately, jammy turn one and two dice rolls get me a massacre win. I felt pretty bad, but such is life. Aaron was a true gentleman to play, and I was impressed at his sportsmanship. He'd put a lot of love into his army, and done up some great reference cards for himself. Gladly play him again any time.
I'll forgo the grades this time around because of the ridiculous nature of the game. I did learn some good things-
1- Can't count on dispelling Burning Iron. 5 points would be good to spend there. Lead spell was no slouch either, as it made the swordsmen better fighters than my Dwarf warriors for the combat round (4s to hit, 5s to wound, only a 4+ save, I had 5s to hit, 5s to wound, also against a 4+ save).
2- Flagellants have martyrdom rules that actually help them kill things. Wasn't expecting this, and it got my dragonslayer killed. Still, 50 points to keep that unit out of the fight wasn't bad, and he almost scored half the unit himself.
3- I'd never seen grapeshot before. Now I know how it works, good to go.
4- Further reinforced my distrust of cannons. I suppose ours with forging would be more effective, but he had shots short, misfire, stick in the ground and all-in-all caused very few casualties.
And that's it. Slayers are coming along nicely on the painting table, and I'll post them up for C&C when they get close to done.
Thanks for reading- short as it was this time around. Might be another week before the next game due to obligations, but might get it to 2000 in that time.
RZ
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