Well, our
FLGS has basically had the 8th ed book sitting out for about a week now, so that anybody can come and read it if they choose. So, a friend and I decided to play a game with it.
=======ARMY LISTS========
My list:
Pope on Pope wagon
-Van Horstmann's Speculum (stat swapper)
-Crimson amulet (gives a 6+ ward and makes you auto-pass all characteristic tests except
LD)
-Trickster's Helmet (+1 to armor save, enemies must re-roll wounds against you).
-Heavy Armor, Shield
Warrior Priest on barded warhorse, heavy armor
-Enchanted Shield
-Crown of Command (makes you stubborn)
BSB (empire captain) on barded warhorse wearing full plate armor
-The White Cloak (5+ ward increased to 2+ against flaming attacks)
Battle Wizard (lore of beasts)
-Rod of Power (store up to 3 dice from any magic phase, roll to recover them the following phase).
Master Engineer
-Hochland Long Rifle
30x Swordsmen, Full command
-Detachment of 10 handgunners
30x spearmen, shields, full command
-Detachment of 10 handgunners
9x Knightly orders
-Full Command
-Banner of (forget name but gives +1 to movement).
2 units of 5x pistoliers with
-outrider
-repeater pistol
-musician
2 cannons
2 helblasters
His list: (I can't go into as much detail here, because I don't know the skaven book. the important points will be covered).
Warlord on rat ogre
-Felblade
Warlord on rat ogre (his general)
-don't know magic items
warlock engineer
-warpstone condenser
Some kind of character with the brass orb
Warlock Engineer with, presumably, a couple of items.
Some kind of
BSB with a banner that makes you re-roll your successful
LD tests within 12" of it and gives -1
LD
25 stormvermin (general and
bsb were here) with a warpfire thrower weapon team
50 Giant rats with appropriate numbers of packmasters (he wanted to try out the "horde" rule)
25 skavenslaves with spears
3 rat ogres with a master moulder
hellpit abomination
30 clanrats with a globe thrower weapon team
Warp Lightning cannon
=======PRE-GAME========
our
d6+4 compulsory terrain ended up being only 5. We rolled
2d6 five times, and ended up with:
2 mysterious forests
some fence
a mysterious river
an arcane ruin of some sort.
The board we were playing on had a river modeled into it, so we decided to just use that as the river. It turned out to be a *boiling river*, which meant that if any model that ended the turn in it took a s4 armor-skipping hit. In this rulebook, units may not count their rank bonuses in rivers or march through them, so this was a significant defensive feature.
My lone level 2 rolled a buff to give +2 toughness to a character within 12" and the new book's equivalent of the hunter's spear spell from the old rulebook (it now does d3 wounds and can be buffed to s10 for
d6 wounds for a substantial increase in casting value). His two warlocks each took warp lightning, and one got skitterleap while the other got death frenzy.
The scenario we rolled is, in my opinion, stupid. You get a point of fortitude (or something) for every unit standard, plus your general, plus your
BSB (meaning I had a total of 5 and so did he.) Your army has a breaking point, which is 1 point for every 1000 points of dudes, rounding up. In our 2250 game, our break point was 3. If you reached that (in other words, by losing one unit standard and my general or just two unit standards) you automatically lost the game regardless of what else might happen on the table
. Also, there are only 18" of no-man's-land between the armies, meaning we each got a 15" DZ but you had to stay 9" from the short board edge.
This is how the game looked with deployment all done:
The big worm thing his his HPA (and a very lovely model it is, too).
we both rolled 6 to take first turn, but I had the +1 for finishing first so I won.
=======TURN ONE=======
I moved all my units up to, but not quite into, the river. The idea was that since my two big blocks were going to be stubborn (they outranked everything he had) he might charge across the river and win, but I'd stick and then he'd be sitting in the boiling river and take a lot of s4 hits, which is bad when you're a bunch of freaking rats. I fired both cannons at his warp lightning cannon, but one misfired (harmlessly) and the other one did one of its
d6 wounds, no doubt feeling sorry for the poor little rats. A handgunner put a wound on the HPA and the other one shot his master moulder and one rat ogre. Since the handgunner detachments had moved, they couldn't fire, and the pistoliers were still out of range (even their newly buffed 12" range).
On his turn, his unit of slaves and his horde of giant rats both declared charges. The slaves didn't make it (moving only 2" as a result) but the giant rats (now including his felblade-wearing warlord) did, setting up an epic combat immediately. Other things moved around a bit, and I dispelled everything he tried in his magic phase except just one little skitterleap (he cast this with irresistible force, losing 3 levels from his level 2 wizard which just became a rat in a fancy hat).
Oh, that cunning, cunning skitterleap. When the shooting phase began, the skitterleaping rat threw down THE BRASS ORB. it killed a few spearmen (my
BSB, by now having joined the spearmen, was shoved aside). The same spearmen were then shot by the warp lightning cannon AND the warpfire thrower AND by a very precisely aimed doomrocket from the unit of clanrats way over to the left. At the end of the phase, they looked like this.
. They didn't panic, however.
In combat, the felblade warlord and the giant rats killed about 8 or 9 swordsmen, but since I had managed to kill a few giant rats on the stand and shoot reaction from the detachment, as well as with a helblaster, and also in combat, I had more ranks and was stubborn. The boiling river then cooked THIRTEEN of his rats (the entire unit was in the river except one guy) and also put a wound on his warlord. So far, my plan was sort of working.
=========TURN TWO===========
My
BSB ran back to try to keep everything within 12", and also to look at the pesky rat who had orbed me. The two remaining spearmen, including (importantly) their standard, backed up. My pope wagon charged the flank of the now much-diminished giant rats, and my pistoliers ran around to try to shoot at the HPA. in a disastrous development, I tried to charge the lone rat-ogre with my big unit of knights, and they rolled 1-1-2 and didn't make it (this means they go 2").
I didn't get any magic of significance off, and shooting was also anti-climactic.... I put seven wounds on the HPA (a cannon, the pistoliers, the nearby unit of handgunners, one helblaster) and he regenerated every single one. The other handgunners shot another rat ogre, leaving only their champ, and the helblaster on the left suffered a misfire (it didn't splode, but it only fired 8 shots and killed one stormvermin). In my combat phase, his felblade-having warlord challenged the pope (my champion was already very dead) and got speculumed, meaning he only had 2 attacks, and he missed with both of them... whew! His rat ogre put a wound on the pope wagon but my arch lector, enjoying his speculum-induced 5 attacks, put one back on the warlord. I had ranks and a flank on him and did an extra wound, causing him to break. The pope wagon ran him down, but only went 6 inches (he rolled 5) meaning I was not only in the boiling river, I was staring straight at the big worm AND blocking my swordsmen from going anywhere. Awesome.
On his turn, he charged his lone rat ogre at the helblaster and his formerly-brass-orb-having skaven at my
BSB, and trucked his HPA easily into the pope wagon. His stormvermin charged at my handgun detachment (which fled a might 11"). His clanrats way over on the left (bet you forgot about them huh?) charged my pistoliers, which fled... into the boiling river. He also missed wildly with the WLC and had moved his two other shooty things.
BSB easily killed the one-attack skaven in combat, and the pope hung on due to his ward save (taking a couple of wounds) but the helblaster got completely owned. Having seen a friendly unit completely destroyed right next to them, the knightstar panicked (this was due to the -1 leadership from the rat banner, curse him) and ran.
The river cooked the pistoliers.
======= Turn 3=======
I rallied the knights turned them around, and ran the
BSB over to join them, bringing them back up to 10 (one had been shot by something). Whatever shooting took place was inconsequential due to the storm banner (which is still going if I didn't mention it, for the 3rd phase). I cast my bound spell with irresistible force (haha!) to heal the pope wagon all the way back to full, but that means that the pope forgot the spell.
The right-hand helblaster misfired harmlessly, and the left-hand one killed 3 or 4 stormvermin. The cannon failed it's storm-banner induced test to fire. My pistoliers ran to shoot his warlock back near the cannon, (who at some point had hurt himself trying to cast warp lightning). My two spearmen shuffled left to keep his stormvermin from charging my knights, but couldn't quite get far enough to stop him from catapulting characters. In combat, he put a couple of wounds on the pope wagon.
This he immediately did, charging his warlord at my knights (with the rat ogre hitting their flank) and his
BSB at the two lone spearmen. He also fired at my swordsmen with his warpfire thrower, cooking a few but mainly overshooting into the handgun detachment, which was left with one handgunner plus my wizard, who had joined them. The swords panicked, so that was the end of their usefulness. In the combat phase, the abom put a few more wounds on the pope wagon which continued stubbornly hanging out. Nobody did any wounds in the combat of knights vs rat ogres (in a challenge, the warlord and his mount threw ten s5 attacks at the knights' preceptor, but none managed to get through that lovely armor).
======= TURN FOUR =======
In desperation, I charged one handgunner with the wizard into the flank of the HPA, hoping that the +1 combat res might help me win. The cannon hit one stormvermin and failed to wound him
, and the helblaster did a wound to his
BSB but couldn't finish him off (the
BSB had overrun to a position where he was hurting my
LD, etc).
The knights lost combat by 1 and stuck. The pope wagon, however, lost its last wound, and the no-longer-unbreakable arch lector fled and was run down. This triggered the auto-lose, so I lost.
The situation at game end:
===========POSTGAME THOUGHTS=========
1) template weapons with no partials are SCARY when you don't have to guess range on them. Maybe mortars are going to be worth it again.
2) The terrain rules and book scenarios are just silly. I suppose the terrain has some potential for being interesting (other rivers can give you poison attacks or fear if you walk through them) but it's all very complex, probably too much so for the return.
3) I goofed with the knights, not being aggressive enough with them. They were stubborn due to the priest item, and would have done fine in combat.
4) That skaven anti-
bsb should always be taken by all players every time.
5) The storm banner doesn't cost enough.
6) More cannons, less helblasters.
Thanks for reading, and sorry for the blurry photos; I took them from my phone.
Hopefully many more batreps to come!
