I got home on Tuesday night and my wife reminded me she was having her 'art friends' around at our place. They turn up ostensibly to create artwork but in reality they just get plastered and talk... and talk... and talk... Facing banishment to the bedroom and an early night I opted to cast around for a game of Fantasy. Carl was happy oblige so I popped over to give old Johnny Empire what-for with the stunted ones.
Carl hasn't played a lot of Warhammer yet and is still learning the rules. Having just finished my first tournament I felt like quite the professional Warhammer master - even so, between us we still managed to forget several crucial things.
The Empire army I was facing deployed my left to right: great cannon (in hard cover - ugh...), 20 greatswords, HUGE spear block accompanied by warrior priest AND mounted arch-lector and flanked by 5 handguns and 5 crossbows, 5 knights with muso and great weapons, HUGE swordsmen block accomopanied by another priest and a mounted BSB and flanked by 5 handguns and 5 crossbows, 10 crossbows and a great cannon on a hill, HUGE spear block with 9 Free company in 3x3 formation (?!) and 5 pistoliers with champ (repeater pistol). HUGE=more than 25; probably closer to 40-strong.
The army was MASSIVE and stretched across the board edge. With a couple of fairly central forests that would funnel those massive blocks I did the only thing that was sensible - refuse the flank. I basically set my whole army up to fight the greatswords and spearblock with arch-lector with the Hammerers to hold the pass between 2 forests. The cannon went on my right sheltered by another forest to have a go at the flanks of whatever went for my Hammerers (hoping to enfilade the knights). The Miners were in reserve ready to either come on and bash up the crossbows or get in the way of the damned Pistoliers who I could see eliminating the cannon quick sharp and playing havoc behind my lines. My aces were (or so I thought) the gyro and the organ gun. The Gyro would be super at steaming those enormous blocks with their mighty 6+ save and toughness of 3. The organ gun would just be super unless it misfired and destroyed itself.
Not much for a turn by turn analysis at this time but here are the highlights...
- grudgethrower missing or failing to wound a great cannon (and crew) for 5 turns before finally taking it out. GT had only one wound (and 2 crew) left after taking cannon fire itself.
- Gyro dying before it had moved to cannon fire. D6 wounds indeed!
- Hammerers taking out 20 flagellents and losing 3 dwarfs, then taking on one of those super-sized spear blocks. Flagellents are not as awesome as I first thought - str3, T3 even with 2 attacks and martyring to get rerolls still bites against T4 3+ save dwarfs.
- Dwarf Lord dying to arch-lector's Mace of Cheese. D6 wounds indeed! (trend appearing)
- Longbeards holding in combat against mad spear block with characters, even after the BSB bit the dust, until the warriors got into the flank. Winning by 5 saw the spears break, run 5 inches, get smashed by the Longbeards who pursuit of 9" put them into the flank of the sword block!
- 18 Greatswords dying to Thunderer and Quarreller fire and a grudgethrower shot that scattered 8" off a nearby cannon and onto their heads (killing 8). The remaining 2 failed panic and fled the board.
- the organ gun owning ALL: 2 5-man detachments, 9 free company, 5 knights (in one shot) AND surviving the game. Maybe Josh's fear is justified? Probably not as I'm sure in my next game the OG will self-destruct with it's first shot :p
- the cannon misfiring twice including the second time where it misfired shooting grapeshot at the 9-man free company (which would have nuked them had it gone off) - thank goodness that organ gun was nearby!
- the Miners charging the pistoliers, killing 3 and breaking the remainder off the board (although this wouldn't have happened if Carl had understood better how fleeing works).
End result was 2440VPs (including general, 3 standards, 2 quarters) plays 681VPs (including general) which is about as solid a massacre as I could ever get. 20-0 win by Fields of Blood scoring standards.
Carl was quite convinced however that he didn't lose because I outplayed him, but because my army is just so much tougher than his. He did of course make some serious mistakes (like... erm... forgetting the magic phase almost every turn, the pistoliers incident, forgetting his BSB had a banner making the unit he was with stubborn (when they lost a combat by 5 or 6, fled and were run down) an so on.
Hrm...
So I'm sure we'll be up for a rematch at some point in the future at which time he can prove his tactical superiority against my clearly broken Dwarfs :)
With show rehearsals every Sunday for the rest of this term (yay) I won't be able to go into the club to play, so I'll have to look around for local games. I dodged Mark McCall's Brets at Tin Soldiers and wouldn't mind giving them a go. Aaron (Nurgle daemons) also lives on the Shore and expressed interest at coming round for a game sometime. That could be interesting - I'm guessing the Nurgle lads would win the 'toughness race'...
Having mentioned Fields of Blood, here's the plug:
Fields of Blood (Fantasy) 2008
13th and 14th September
Freeman's Bay Community Centre
Email me (David Stent) for a player's pack - fieldsofblood2008@gmail.com
Now get off your butt and enter!
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