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This is a battle report for my tabletop showdown with JohnHwangDD. When the Age of Sigmar began, along came Bob the noob and John who knows well how to game, dice bucket in hand. Now let me tell you about a game of high adventure!

Okay, so maybe more of a game of high dice rolls.

We decided on Brrokhurst Hobbies as the battlefield, and the Seven Samurai as the inspiration for our narrative. John brought his Dogs of War army, as well as a wealth of print outs, dice, and patience. I brought my favorite pretty models, my ignorance, and some whips sticks. Due to a combination of procrastination, my swaggering arrogance, and a plumbing emergency, I came totally unprepared for the game, with only the barest understanding of the rules and an iPad full of war scrolls. I only bring this up to illustrate how easy it was to learn the rules for AOS and get playing. To me, that is what makes AoS a success.

Anyway, here are the force compositions. Please forgive my poor memory when it comes to the units John was using.

John brought a hero on a dragon, ten crossbow men with pavises, twenty pikemen, ten dark elf crossbow men with great swords, and ten Tilean swordsmen (of the Bravosi style).

I brought many heroes, but we decided to simplify things by counting two of the elves as High Elf Princes, Caradryan, two counts-as giants, a wizard of life, and Karl Franz (or rather, my conversion, Koreleh Franzchik).

Since he was playing more wounds than I was, we decided to use a sudden death scenario: we placed down my fortress of redemption Dark Tower on his side of the table, and the "seven samurai" needed to end the fourth turn with at least one unit in position to defend the tower. John rolled higher but decided that I should go first, so we deployed our units and then began the game.

Get ready for the most beautiful picture of a tabletop skirmish Fantasia that you will ever see, because here it is.

For those who are (or aren't) familiar with the OOP Dogs of War Regiments of Renown, I fielded the following:

Asarnil the Dragonlord (I like the Forest Dragon! for Deathfang)
10 Braganza's Besiegers (heavy crossbowmen with pavises)
20 Ricco's Republican Guard (heavy pikemen)
10 Mengil's Manhide (using the 4E/5E DE RXBs - WiP)
10 Vespero's Vendetta (swordsmen with 2HW & bucker & throwing knives)

Sorry, it's not all painted - I slowed down and took a bit of a break from WFB just after I bought a bunch of stuff for the army. This year, I'll be pushing to get everything assembled and basecoated.

DoW Warscrolls were homebrewed based on "best match" and a tweak from the old DoW RoR rules; fortunately, most DoW stuff isn't too complicated, so carrying over things like -1 to hit is pretty simple.

For his two big guys and Wizard, I had him use the Giants of Albion, since I had the rules on hand.


Table was narrower than I'd have liked, which really cut down on deployment space. Not that it really mattered for an intro game, where mechanics and such matter more than the details of board size and such. Although we did (barely) manage to start the forces 24" apart.

With that, I'ma let Bob finish...

As a first time player, I decided on a classic strategy, devious in its elegant simplicity; I moved all my guys straight at all his guys. Sure, I mixed it up a bit by sending Karl Franz to hold the Northern flank all by himself and moving the life wizard behind the tower, surely the safest place in such a battlefield, where no harm or grief could possibly befall him. After all, he was the medic. Who goes after the medics first?

Karl Franz: "Charge! Leap down their very throats! No fear, men, for Wizard Kenneth shall mend our every wound and we shall come back swinging!"

John responded by shooting the crap out of everyone. Well, that isn't quite true. The first thing he did was move his dragon into play and fry the life wizard. The wizard who died instantly. The quarterback is toast. Won't be attending that hat convention in July. Won't see Richter at the Party. Went gently into that good night. Ceased to be. Dead.

Karl Franz: (high pitched and quiet) "Oh sh--"

Then John's crossbow men shot Dreadclaw full of quills, most of which bounced off, and charged with his twenty pikemen, tough, ruthless mercenaries drilled to the peak of human precision. They scored a mighty single wound. Then he charged with his crossbow men, rough, toothless men presumably armed with dinner knives. They did about as well as you'd expect. Two wounds. But Franz has that special save reroll that makes him damn near invincible, so no real harm done.

Franz killed a bunch of pikemen in revenge, while Deathclaw went to town on the crossbow men. Battleshock added even more carnage to the scene.

On the other side of the battle, the delves shot a staggering number of ineffectual warning shots at the nearest giant, while the Tileand threw their daggers at his feet in what must be some regional insult. One dagger did hit, but it was not intended to wound.

Giant: "Good knife, Mr. Burton."

Good thing the delves charged in with their great swords or the giant would have gone on taunting them.

Then the dragon charged into battle against Caradryan in a glorious storm of stab and slash, feint and thrust, a sight that will be remembered for generations as Star Wars Prequel levels of pointless dance-fight wankery. It was reminiscent of two five year olds with Medieval Times swords trying to hit each others' blades. The two helf princes were quite a bit more formidable.

My other giant waited patiently in the distance, like the fat kid in little league they always put in the outfield, where he would pluck the more interesting grasses and glance at them from every angle, pretending they were the claws of giant space monsters or something else less boring than little league, wiling away the time until I could finally go home and do something else.

Linder I forgot to take a picture of round one, here is another picture of the set up.

A comment on strategery...

I finished deploying first, and decided to try for a "double turn" by allowing Bob to play first. As I had shooters, I also wanted to show the "Alpha strike" feature in AoS. This kinda worked, as his dudes advanced, allowing my dudes to advance, shoot, and charge.

What didn't work were my dice. I killed a weedy little wizard, and then proceeded to do not much for a long while, as my dudes got shredded, mangled, stomped and otherwise murderized in exchange for inflicting an occasional wound (but not killing). Never got the the double turn, either.

Observationally, defensive Special Characters are insanely hard to kill, while Giants really are great for damage output... Not having to take Battleshock is great for little guys.

Very cool! More please?

Well, Turns 2 and 3 consisted of my blocks locked in and getting ground down to nothingness, losing several dudes per single wound caused.

Come Turn 4, I was basically out of dudes, but I finally killed somebody. Bottom of the 4th, I was on the verge of being tabled.

This was, by far, the worst my dice have ever turned on me.