I had some spare time today and chose to go bunny-hunting. That's what it's called right Antony? :)
Anyway, finally got a win against Old Man Kitson and the president of the next generation triumphs over the old, tired, grumpy Warhammer has-beens champion. Jokes. Mostly.
The Darkies had a tough match-up against solid Dwarf toughness and armour and some fairly incredible luck on my part meant shooting had a siginificant impact on the game or was just plain amusing in it's ridiculousness (e.g. Thunderers kill both Bolt Thrower crew and for the hits on the actual Bolt Thrower itself I roll three 6s to wound ). One chariot was lucky to make combat after an overshot from the cannon (which destroyed the second chariot); it made it in to combat with 1 wound remaining after the stand-and-shoot reaction of the Thunderers. Still managed to do for the Thunderers however. As expected the Dragon made it into combat unscathed (misfire and self-immolation from the Organ Gun at just the wrong time! Would have been awesome to get 10 hits at that point!) but against artillery and support units struggled to make it's points back. Ld10 would really have helped those poor Cold One Knights and Chariots with their stupidity (CoKs failed 2 turns in a row which pinned a unit of Dark Riders for two turns - very helpful for me!). A lower leadership army might have run off from all the Terror - 4 tests one turn - but the Dwarfs soldiered on.
I'll be curious to see how Antony's DEs go against a magic-heavy army (4DD and 2 scrolls) or something with serious combat potential. The one spell that had any real effect was Dominion against the Warriors on the last turn which I failed to dispel on 5 dice (needing 12!) meaning they couldn't charge the Elf mage.
So, a win by exactly 500VPs - a 12-8 win by Fields scoring. I'll take it!
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My guessing has started to hit consistent form - I think largely thanks to the solid weekend of gaming at Tin Soldiers. I find I'm combining rough 12" sets to gauge distance and confirming this by looking at positions relative to the table edges and doing some quick math in my head. In tha game against the DEs the cannon nabbed a bolt thrower (another D3 wounds roll of a 3! Ye-ah!) and a chariot and kept the Dragon honest. The grudegthrower misfired twice (killing a crew member each time) but managed some reasonable guesses when it was able to fire.
The Thunderers are a force to be feared - +1 to hit and -2 to save makes them a scary prospect. They are no slouches with stand-and-shoot either. By comparison the Quarrellers are somewhat disappointing although they did a sterling job of annihilating the Repeater XBow DE Warriors in today's game (due to fantastic long-range rolling on my part).
Shooting is just integral to the Dwarfs. I feel I have just enough to make my opponent seriously consider how much pain they are willing to take at range before they make it into combat.
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Of course, all going to plan, when they make combat they are facing down 3 20-strong Dwarf blocks. Despite being the weakest link in the army the Warriors are no pushover. The Longbeards are HARD. The Hammerers are of course INSANE. I'm rapidly discovering that each game basically becomes the challenge of 'how I get the Hammerers into the think of the action' vs my opponent thinking 'how the hell do I avoid that lot!'. Rune of Challenge helps in this regard, but more often than not I just delpoy the Hammerers at the point of maximum disruption and major impact. They may only be movement 3 but they are still remarkably difficult to avoid.
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I crossed-over from 40k with something of a mindset that characters should be minimal so one could invest more in basic troops. I grudgingly accepted that I would need to invest more in characters to provide killy res to help swing combat in my favour. The Dwarf Lord, weighing in at a not insignificant 281 points, helps a lot and is a good case-in-point. The fighty BSB (165) and Runesmith (147) means I've spent 593 points on characters. Antony's dragon boss costs him 537 and he discovered today that taking that Ld10 away from the rest of his army isn't necessarily the best idea. It's much more the done thing in Fantasy and frowned upon a whole lot less.
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Starting to think about another army (don't tell my wife PLEASE). Might ask to borrow Ant's Lizards at some point in the future and see how magic works for me...
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