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25,000 point team battle 1/8/10 (now complete!)

Malleus — GMT

This here is my teaser for a report I'm hoping to do on a mass battle my club is organizing tomorrow night. I finally own an actual camera (Christmas pwns!) so I won't need to inflict such horrible pictures on all of you. Ally rules will be in effect, but teams will be selected randomly as people arrive, possibly leading to interesting shenanigans. I'm calling it 25,000 points because each player is to bring 2,500 and I know of 10 who are coming, but it could be larger or smaller.

Some special rules, particularly regarding the magic phase, are necessary for a game like this. I didn't write these but here's what the powers that be have decided we're doing:

Every magic phase, the grand general (each team will have one) of the casting team rolls 2d6 for pool dice, and the defending team gets the higher of the two dice rolled. In addition, each individual player rolls another d6 for their on individual use, both to cast and dispel. Each player (not each caster!) may cast exactly ONE spell per magic phase, except for bounds. There is no limit on bounds per turn per player, but you can't use pool dice for bounds, only what you got from your own d6. Nothing can modify the amount of dispel or power dice you roll (priests can't generate them, the rod of power doesn't work, dwarfs can't generate them from runelords/smiths, dark elves may cast "power of darkness" but, since that's their only spell in the turn, it would probably be unwise, etc etc etc).

Also, global effects (stormbanner, chalice of dark rain, dispel scrolls) have a maximum range of 24" to prevent them from burying the whole table with their nasty shenanigans.

Now, there have been those in my gaming club who have been wont to dismiss any time I win because of my "broken" empire lists. There are several things that upset them about the empire book. I shall list a few.

1) The pope wagon
1a) The speculum riding on said wagon
2) War Machines
3) Epic dispel dice spam due to priests
4) Master Engineers and their misfire-rerolling goodness.

Now, I'll be honest: I think I'm better than these individuals who do this complaining. Accordingly, I've designed my list to prove it, taking NONE of those things that they assert are so broken. This is the softest empire list I've ever written. The exception is priests, which I'm still taking, but the scenario rules prevent them from generating any DD. So, without further ado, my list!

General of the Empire (general), Meteoric Iron Armor, Sword of Bloodshed, Ironcurse Icon
-Goes in the halberdiers

Arch Lector, Barded Warhorse, Mace of Helsturm, dragonhelm, The Other Trickster's Shard, Shield
-Goes in knights 1

Templar Grandmaster, The Dawnstone, Sword of Fate, Shield +Full Plate (free)
-goes with Knights 2

BSB captain, barded horse, charmed shield, full plate
- goes wherever he fits, probably the halberdiers

Warrior Priest, hand weapon, heavy armor, shield, crown of command
-hides on a corner of the halberdiers

Knights 1- 11 Inner circle, full command, razor standard, lances (archlector goes here)

Knights 2- 9 regular (non-IC), full command, flaming banner (templar GM goes here)

Halberdiers: 48, full command

Swordsmen: 30, full command

Flagellants: 20, prophet of doom

5x Pistoliers, outrider, repeater pistol, musician

5x pistoliers, outrider, repeater pistol, musician

5x outriders, attractive camoflaged cloaks

I'm actually kind of interested to see how some of these items will perform, particularly the mace of helsturm and the sword of fate. I've often debated using them, but always trimmed them due to needing other things I know better. Also, triple units of fast cav kind of excite me: usually, I take a single unit if any, and they always get shot or spelled out of existence almost immediately. We'll see how it works when I take more.

Be back Sunday sometime with a report!

25,000 point team battle 1/8/10

nieto666 — GMT

This sounds awsome, wish I could get the guys in my neck of the woods to do something like this. Good luck tomarrow and cant wait to see pics.

25,000 point team battle 1/8/10

Malleus — GMT

So, I learned a series of valuable lessons in the course of this game. One of them is: buy your own SD card for your camera, and don't count on a hand-me-down. The second is: cameras do not work so good in the absence of a functional SD card.

So, no pictures here. Even my phone decided its battery had had enough. So instead of a detailed, turn-by-turn breakdown with illustrations, you get a general verbal description of some highlights. >_< go ahead, tell me I'm a failure.

8 people ended up showing up for the game. We divided into teams thus:

THE GLORIOUS FORCES OF GOODNESS AND LIGHT
Myself (list in previous post)

Lizardmen: carnosaur, saurus horde with scarvet, saurus block with oldblood, skink bsb on steg with blowpipes, some walking blowpipes I mean skirmished skinks, 3 salamanders.

Brets #1: two sets of peg knights, a peg dueling lord, some knights, some bowmen.

Brets #2: almost exactly the same list.

VS

THE HEINOUS AND COWARDLY FORCES OF DOOM AND MISERY

Dark Elves 1: Horde of spear-elves (!), level 4 death caster and level 2 shadow caster, about 20 black guard, 7 cold one knights, 25 wych elves or so, and a metric crapton of crossbows.

Dark Elves 2: Dark elf lord of epic cheese (khaleth, stubborn crown, blood armor, crimson death). Some crossbows, some spearelves, a cauldron of blood, some corsairs, and about 18 black guard with a level 4 caster of dark magic.

Orcs and Goblins: 25 or so Boyz with choppas and shields, with general on boar, level 2 orc caster, and orc BSB. nine fanatics and their entourages. 2 pump wagons. Six trolls.

Beastmen: Really just an awful lot of gors, 3 or 4 big blocks including 2 hordes. Six minos with a gorebull. I think maybe there was a chariot.

Author's note: I may be confused about which dark elf player owned exactly what.

Game Summary:

The brets took either flank, I was center-left facing off against 3 dark elf infantry blocks, the trolls, and the orcstar, with a large number of squig herders also present. I had my whole army there, fast cav in front and combat troops a little back of the line. Lizard guy was to my right, facing off against those minotaurs and their support. The armies of good took up pretty much the whole board with no spare space (15' wide), but the evil types left a lot of area filled with just 10-man crossbow units.

My pistoliers did what they do, causing the black guard, the trolls, and the spearelves to fail charges turn 2. The black guard charged a unit that wasn't right in front of them, meaning they showed their flank to the swordsmen, who obligingly charged right in. my halberdstar hit the black guard in the front, and there we were, 80 models fighting 14 (some had died to an errant treb rock).

Naturally, the 14 won the combat handily and I had to stubbornly hold with both units. I did kill about 7 black guard, reducing their attacks a bit. It helped, maybe. A bit to the left, my razor knights charged into the front of the orcstar. They won the combat, but the arch lector's cannonball on a stick missed the orc general on a re-rollable 4+ to hit, and the orcs steadfastly held.

Evil turn, and the squigs flanked my halberd horde while the trolls flanked the swordsmen. A hydra also front-charged the halberdiers. I managed to dispel Bash 'em Ladz on the orc boyz fighting my knights, and shooting was ineffectual. In combat, THIRTY-SIX state troopers lost their lives to squigs, trolls, and black guard, leaving 4 halberdiers (also with my BSB, stubborn priest, and walking general) and about 14 swordsmen. These remaining guys killed all the black guard except the tower master, and also killed the caster who was with them with allocated attacks.

In the other combat, the cannonball on a stick slapped the orc general for 5 wounds, generating an awful lot of combat res, and the orcs were only steadfast on the BSB's 8. They ran and I caught them.

Evil turn 4 saw the halberds and, crucially, their stubborn priest completely wiped out by the squigs, lone black guardsman, and hydra. I killed the tower master for a bucketload of points, but both units needed 3's to stick and couldn't get them. My general fled and made it, and the swordsmen got away from the trolls, which reformed to face my great weapon flaming knights, who had been wandering around looking for something to do.

Next turn, I charged the trolls with my flaming knights, rallied the general (his companion BSB had auto-died, of course) who turned to face the hydra, and rallied the six remaining swordsmen. The knights, not having hatred, BARELY won their combat with the trolls (charge, banner, 2 wounds vs 4 wounds from troll vomit) but trolls are low LD and these broke and fled, getting away.

RULE QUESTION: when I've got the flaming banner on a unit of knights, are horse attacks flaming? It would have made a difference.

Nothing else really happened in the final turn (last evil turn) in my section of the board, except the hydra charged my rallied general, won combat by 1 (the plucky general wounded the hydra, it wounded him back, and the charge was the difference) but the general barely stuck.

Elsewhere, on the right, salamanders did gruesome and horrible damage to the large blocks of gor and ungor, just in time for 12-man bret buses to hit them in the teeth. It was all over rather quickly and painlessly on that side of the board. The minotaurs munched a large block of saurus in a few turns, made a forced frenzy pursuit, and then turned around to find the battle had ended.

On the left flank, the dark elf caster with purple sun 11-diced it every single phase, wiping out the entire saurus horde without ever having to fight it at all. A combined task force of brets stepped in the gap left by the purple-sunburned saurus hordes rather effectively, stranding the spear horde and the black guard to the point of ineffectiveness. some of the latter were also poisoned by skinks.

It was 3:30 AM when we finished, so we didn't tally up the victory points. Our system distributes "blood tokens" for each unit or character killed by a player. It was a shade unbalanced here, because nine fanatics gave the good team six blood tokens (3 were still spinning about at the end), but we won by a margin of about 15, so the fanatics weren't decisive. The board was an awful, awful mess: I was left with my general (who survived a round of single combat with a hydra and even wounded it!), an arch lector with one wound, a templar grandmaster, and a total of 11 knights in 2 units. I'd say the game's total model count was down to about 25% of what we started with. Great fun was had by all, and next time I promise I'll take pictures :(

25,000 point team battle 1/8/10 (now complete!)

G. Whitenbeard — GMT

Sounds epic! I've always enjoyed playing large team v. team games. They're a great way to get new players with only a small army involved and playing alongside old veterans with 5000 point legions.

PLEASE take your camera next time! You don't get to see 15' of 20,000 point goodness everyday!