A Little Warhammer Television, Beastmen vs. Dwarves

One of the things that I'd like to introduce in this blog is a chance to find and link some of the great video battle reporting that I see out there on Youtube.  I've been following former North Carolina player Oncebitten360 with his fantastic video batreps, and wanted to share this great example below.   Enjoy!

The Battle of Five (or More) Warhammer Armies

So I've written up a scenario that we'll hopefully be playing here in the next few months.  I like to watch this for inspiration:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y30LAj502mY



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Scenario:  The Battle of the Five (or more) Warhammer Armies

Players:  Five (or more).  Fluffwise, these consist of two or more forces of order armies, Skaven, Beastmen, Lizardmen, and Orcs.  Feel free to swap out armies if convenient.

Points:  2,500 points outer (evil) army.  3,000 points per (center table) army.  These points should adjust to provide some semblance of balance (at about a 10:6 ratio), although evil should always outnumber good.

Deployment:  The center table defenders deploy anywhere on the center table.  The outer table attackers deploy within 12” of their outer board edges. 

First Turn:  Defenders go first

Game Length:  The Game will last for six turns, or until a time limit is reached.

Victory Conditions:  Each player has secret conditions. 

Scenario Special Rules:  Lots!  Coming Soon!

Map:   

Fluff: 

Bobo was scared.  He’d stolen the Ring from the scary dragon, Flogg, just like the old Sorcerer Randalf had asked him to do, but ever since then, things had gone horribly wrong.  Randalf and the Dwarfs that were supposed to protect him were drunk, Flog the Dragon was pissed, and Bobo’s pants were sopping wet down the front. 

“No worries, Bobo”, grinned Randalf, “I’ve got this here horn, and I’ll blow on it to summon some allies to help us out.  Pretty soon, we’ll be up to our arses in archers and eagles”. 

Randalf whipped out his horn and went to blow.  Unfortunately, his mouth was still filled with “pipeweed” smoke, and a hacking cough struck him just as he sounded the horn.  The resulting note sounded something like a cross between a startled sheep and a wet fart.

Beastlord (or Beastlady, as she preferred) Gortia Gorson led her herd through the woods around Mount Boom carefully.  No longer satisfied with petty loot and plunder, Gortia had become a militant anti-man zealot after a late night jam session with her Gor-crush Malagor at the Herd Stone last Boxing Day.  She was on the lookout for any settlements to defile, loot, and hopefully poop on. 

Randalf’s “note” sounded in the air.  To all the Beastmen, it sounded like the world’s most awesome Bray-Horn.  Gortia smiled and turned to address her herd.   

“Let’s get moving, boys!  There’s more Beasts ahead!

Randalf looked down at the horn and frowned.  Whatever note he had blown, it hadn’t summoned much help.  Bobo looked even more terrified, and several Dwarfs looked ready to sick up. 

“Ah ha!”, exclaimed Randalf, “I’ve got the ticket!  What I’ll do is jazz up the next note with a little Razzle Dazzle Magic ™.”  He sniffed at the Winds of Magic.  They seemed pretty ripe!

Glowing with power, Randalf blew into the horn.  On the plus side, the horn blew a perfect, beautiful note.  On the down side, Randalf exploded.

When the smoke cleared, Bobo and the Dwarfs found Randalf stunned on the ground.  “Well”, groaned Randalf, “I sounded the horn with Irresistible Force.  Unfortunately, that’s also a miscast in this edition”. 

To the east, the Eagles and their Wood Elf friends heard Randalf’s call, and took to the air immediately to go to his aid.  The majestically soared over the trees, true friends and allies to Randalf’s cause.  Sadly, as they flew, the air around them grew hot and then exploded in a white hot burning ball of unnatural miscasted Strength Ten D6 Wound Ouchies.  When the light cleared, only a few eagles remained, and the green fields and trees below had been replaced with a squalid swamp and unnatural temple.  Lizardy eyes glared up at the eagles.

“What. The. Croak.”, snapped the High Slann Slippimus Prime.  “I don’t know what jerk mage summoned us up on accident, but we’re going to follow those feather Pteradons up there and kick his butt”. 

Meanwhile, up in “Da Hills”:

“Boss, we’ve been after these Stunties for days”, complained a Big’Un, “When are we gonna bash sum heads?”

General Bork gave his troops the stinkiest eye an Orc can give. 

“Shut it up, you lot!”  He chopped a nearby Gobbo in half in irritation. “We’ve almost caught ‘em.  I can feel it.  Plus, listen to dat racket down there near the mountain. We’ll smash ‘em up good, and Gork’ll be proud.  Chargelzors!”

The woods were rustling, there was a new swamp to the east, the sounds of a Waaaagh could be heard from the hills, and most of the Eagles were BBQ.   Even Randalf looked worried. 

The only place left to look for help was to the west, in the small settlement of Durham nearby.  Randalf tooted despondently on the horn again, hoping to summon some men, at least.  Amazingly, he saw men approaching!  Unfortunately, they looked like they were in bad shape. 

One of them screamed, “We’ve been swarmed by rats!” and fainted dead away.  Bobo peed in his pants a little more. 

In Durham, Gray Seer Burns stroked his whiskers.  “Exxxxcelent!”, he hissed.

The plan to take Durham had gone well, using only some cheese, a Pied Piper, and twelve cucumbers.  His alliance with the Vampires was underway…for now…and no man-thing remained in the town.  Burns could now launch his raid on Mount Boom, and steal all of its magical artifacts.  Enough Slaves could take down a dragon, and no other inconveniences could stand in his way.  Mounting his Bell, Burns screamed to the sky.

“Rat-ulators!  Mount up!”

All around the Dwarfs, things were going badly.  Nowhere seemed safe, and the Dragon was coming out from the mountain.  They had some guns, and some knights, and quite a few peasants, but they were completely surrounded!

Bobo had to get out of here!   His hand crept towards the Ring….

Just a Bug on A Windshield

You ever have one of those games when the dice just refuse to like you?  I had one the other day vs. one of our local players, Lance, and his Dwarfs.  We didn't take pictures, but if you can imagine me as the bug in the picture above, I think that would make sense.

Lance and I both set up pretty evenly around the middle area of the table.  Sadly, he went first, and splattered one of my two Hydras immediately (a feat he would do again in the second round, and to a chariot in the third).  Meanwhile, my Crossbowmen fired over 200 shots into a unit of ten quarellers over four rounds of shooting, and killed four in total.  In the end, the same quarellers helped run them down with the help of some Longbeards.

Meanwhile, some bad decisions and atrocious rolling tarpitted my 60 spears, general, and BSB on fourteen hammerers, where I netted about six wounds in five rounds.  Yeesh!

In the end, Lance made good, conservative decisions, and I did not, so I suppose the dice were punishing my aggressive nature.  The funny thing is that Lance is a fun opponent, and was relaxed, so that this was one of my most fun games of Eighth, even if I was being pummeled by fate.

The Ally Matrix?

Apparently, the Eighth edition has an ally matrix in it for people teaming up in games.  They've developed forces of order and destruction, with a couple neutral armies in the middle.  Now, I'm all for team games of Warhammer, but I'm not sure that it really needed official rules on who can team up and who can't. 

Warhammer has always been a rich, varied universe in both versions.  Lumping armies together into "the good guys" vs. "the bad guys" ignores the fundamental idea that everyone is more or less at odds all of the time.  Even then, some allies don't make sense.  Dwarfs and Wood Elves?  Lizardmen and Empire? Beastmen and Skaven? Sure, you could justify these, and I think you should play them if you want to, but is it really any easier than just playing what you wanted in the first place, without a matrix to limit things? 

Good ally rules will be a plus, though, so outside the matrix, I am really looking forward to seeing what GW has in store there!

Lone Wolf WFB GT Summary

From Lance Lagroue:

Lance LaGroue- Lonewolf Quick Summary

The Dwarfs went to war over the weekend resulting in a 2-2-1.  Perhaps the question is why adopt an army that is so ill suited to tournament play, that rarely achieves tournament objectives, and opponents can play you conservatively for a draw in nearly every encounter?   The answer is that for 2010, I wanted do a bi-polar approach to Warhammer whereby the two armies I utilized represented extremes.  I adopted dwarfs as the pillar of defense and Bretonnians as perhaps the manifestation of pure offense.

My list included the following:
Runelord (general)- great weapon, gromril armor, Anvil of Doom, shield, and rune of spellbreaking X2. Total- 374 pts

Thane- battle Standard Bearer, gromril armor, rune weapon with rune of might, and rune of fire, rune armor (Rune of Iron X2). Total- 150 pts.

Thane- great weapon, crossbow, runic armor- master rune of gromril and rune of resistance, and master rune of challenge 149 pts.

Core-
10 Quarrelers- 110 pts
20 Quarrelers with standard bearer and shield- 250 pts
20 Dwarf Warriors with standard- 190 pts

Special-
Bolt Thrower- engineer upgrade 60 pts
Bolt Thrower- engineer upgrade + Rune of Penetrating and Rune of Burning 90 pts
Bolt Thrower- engineer upgrade +Rune of Penetrating  85 pts
Bolt Thrower- engineer upgrade + Rune of Burning 65 pts
18 Hammerers with full command, standard has Rune of Courage- 276 pts.
15 Miners with prospector and standard, prospector has steam drill- 210 pts.

Rare-
Organ Gun- 120 pts
Organ Gun- 120 pts
Total: 2,249

The strategy was overtly simple, namely shoot the large targets that dwarfs can’t handle in combat, followed by reducing enemy combat blocks in order that ranked dwarf infantry can fight.  Due to such a tactic, the dwarf army is completely dependent on the first two turns of the game to effectively ‘even the odds.’  This plan is coupled with the anvil to delay part of the enemy’s hardest hitting unit.  Moreover, since I have so few drops, I have to anticipate my opponent’s deployment in order to better arrange and position my artillery to threaten my opponent’s battle line.

The games I played were extreme in dice results in nearly every capacity.  It is hardly worth recalling every game, but to give a quick summary of the effects of the strategy.  In games one & four my dice were extremely hot.  In the first two turns I did not miss once with a bolt thrower, the crossbowmen hit, and organ guns and the anvil did not misfire.  By turn three in game one I dropped two stegadons, two characters, and 50% of two saurus blocks.  In Game four, my Chaos opponent lost 70% of his army due to my hot dice by turn three.

The reverse also held true in games two & three.  In game two I sent nearly a dozen bolt thrower shots at a steam tank before a single wound was inflicted.  Four Strength seven bolt throwers shots failed to put a wound on a war alter.  Three strength eight combat attacks failed to bust the altar.  I failed a restrained pursuit roll on an eleven to pursue a unit of knights that opened a flank charge, in one instance I just need above snakes eyes to escape from combat but I failed that roll, I failed two stubborn nine combat checks…the list goes on.  My anvil misfired so many times in games two, three and five that it actually only worked a total of 5 times out of a potential of eighteen times with each game resulting in self destruction…sigh.

In each of these games, I failed to hurt the key combat units to any significant degree- the steam tank hit my line with a wound, the altar had only one wound, almost no dead knights, hardly any phoenix guard or dragon princes killed, etc.  Moreover, the dwarfs lacked the combat power to repel such troops with their stats resulting in defeat.  I am really curious to know how all five games would have played out if my dice were much more average.

On a different note, all my opponents were really great both in terms of personality and their play ability.  They made very few mistakes in their strategy, with nothing particularly game changing.  I think my personal weakness barring wacky dice was my own list design more than deployment or tactical movement.  I think I would drop the miners for a second unit of hammerers as I needed more flank protection, split the 20 crossbowmen into a unit of 10 crossbowmen and 10 dwarf warriors as scouts to delay enemy movement.

What's Your Local Meta?

 

It's my belief (and a not too controversial one) that the way we play is shaped by the players around us.  While there are many aspects to this, one of the most basic things we can look at are the armies around us.  While planning for a local tournaments, many of us think about the armies we are most likely to face.  For Warhammer Fantasy, I know that the following armies are in the area and likely to appear.

One Bretonnian

Two Dark Elves

One Daemons

Two Vampire Counts

One Warriors of Chaos

Two Lizardmen

Two Skaven

One Dwarfs

One Empire

One Orcs and Goblins

One Ogres

It's a good mix.  I also know that magic is not super popular in the area, but that I have to be prepared for a decent chance of hitting either Vampires or Lizards, who can maul you with the magic phase.  I know that with my Dark Elves, I can usually get a speed advantage on many of the armies.  I'm lucky in that Daemons are relatively rare in the area.

So what's your local meta look like? 

Tourney Batreps from 01/10/2010

 

After my big win at the first tournament on January 9th, I felt pretty good entering day two.  The one thing I didn't like was my list.  Since the tournament on the 10th was a League tournament, we had made our lists long ago and been playing with them for a few months.  Unfortunately, I had decided after my first game or so with the list that I really hated it.  It violated two of my cardinal rules, in that it was slow (or at least felt slow) and the units were too expensive.  It also didn't have a lot of "shock" hitting power.  The list was:

Lord with ASF Dagger, Potion of Strength, Pearl of ItP, Regen Armor

Hero with Pendant, Soulpiercer

Cauldron with Rune of Khaine, Manbane

Scroll Caddy

2 Assassins with Rune of Khaine, Manbane

23-24 Spears with War Banner

2 Units of Dark Riders

20 Black Guard, ASF with the Ring

Seven Shades

Hydra

1 Bolt Thrower

The Lord and Hero go in the Spears.

Game One

In my first game, I played Todd and his High Elves.  He had big units of Phoenix Guard and White Lions, two Tiranoc Chariots, mounted Lord and Hero in a Unit of Dragon Princes, two Level 2 Mages and the Banner of Sorcery, a bolt thrower, and two giant spear units. 

Todd played very aggressively, charging all his folks forward.  He was pretty bent on destroying the Black Guard with his High Magic, despite the Ring of Hotek being in there, and this went pretty badly for him.  He also liked to save dice to cast the High Elf spell that raises my casting values, despite the fact that I had no magic phase.  I think he may have been worried that I had some sort of cunning plan, unaware of the fact that I learned to play with Bretonnians and thus developed no strategies in this game except for "Charge!". 

Todd had deployed his White Lions off to one side of the board, and they were pretty much a nonfactor in the game.  He also inadvertently let me shoot his Dragon Princes in the flank with a Bolt Thrower a couple times as they chased Dark Riders around, which led to just the Prince and Noble Surviving.  Without the White Lions and Dragon Riders around, my Spears and Black Guard were able to kill the rest of his army, and by the end, he was charging his Noble and Lord into the Black Guard, which used their Combat Res. to run him down.  I had a few bonus points, and was sitting near the top of the tourney at this point.

Lunch was the finest (non-alcohol serving) place to eat, ever.  That's right, the K&W Cafeteria.  At this point, a scary lady who was serving broccoli gave me the evil eye, and I'm pretty sure that's what led to round three.  Crikey!

Game Two

In the second game, I ran into Blair, who is our local VC player.  While he's been playing for less than a year, Blair is very talented and a great guy to play against.  However, he had been making disparaging comments on the quality of the K&W Cafeteria, so I was ready to take him down.  Blair will also write a much better Battle Report for this match, hopefully, and then I'll post it here.

He brought a Lord Vamp, a Hero Vamp BSB, a Necro on Horse, and a Corpse Cart.   To ride shotgun, there were Blood Knights, Wraiths, Grave Guard, and some Ghouls and Zombies.   Lots of magic dice, and some bound items.  Yum. 

More or less, we managed to create an ubercombat in the middle of the Board, as everything charged everything else.  Although I almost broke once, I managed to hold on and eventually kill his Lord and BSB.  Meanwhile, while he killed lots of guys, most of them were Spearmen, so pointswise I had a big win. 

Round Three

For the third round, I was tied for first place.  Unfortunately, so was Lance, who is an excellent player, and who also had a lovely Dwarf Gun Line.  He had two units of Longbeards, two Units of Hammerers, four bolt throwers, two Organ Guns, a BSB, a Thane, and the Anvil.  Before the game began, I was pretty excited about my upcoming draw/minor win or loss. 

Basically, he had an excellent answer to most of the things in my army, like the Hydra, in the form of one billion flaming shots each turn.  If I had been in super cunning tournament mode, I guess I could have hidden a good part of my army in the woods for the whole game.  I'm just more friendly/aggressive than that, though.  Plus, I hate thinking.  See the "Charge!" strategy, above.

His anvil did explode on the first turn.  So I had that going for me.  When this happened, though, he pulled the rest of his army behind a hill, and formed his Hammerers two wide and ten deep with the BSB (and the remaining army) behind them.  In practice, this meant that I now got to use my two blocks of troops to pound away at his Stubborn LD9 rerolling units for the the rest of the game, with neither side really doing much of anything.  I killed one unit, and hacked on the other, and we called it a game.  I had a little bit of an advantage on scenario points, and edged him 13-12. 

Overall

I ended up in third place for the day, behind Ian Holland and Chad Hoggan.  The tournament was a great time, and I enjoyed all my games.  Thanks to Chad and Chris for organizing and running the league/tourney.  I'll be there next year!