And so begins a few months of play-testing as I strive for optimum levels of fluffiness in my Dwarfs. It's like the montage of training scenes from Rocky but instead of running up and down stairs and whacking that bouncing punching thingy it's more like wading through marshmallows and punching bunny rabbits. Um...
Derick and I haven't played for ages (as evidenced by me forgetting Dwarfs Hate Greenskins) but it was great to see him, have him over last night and thrash his sticky Spider army. Derick's lads are uber-fluffy - as Nick puts it, "hamstringing yourself". There are however some dangerous elements that would be underestimated at your peril. For example:
- the L4 Shaman (who is not the General). Derick had some terrible luck given that my FluffyDwarfs only have 4 dispel dice (and no scrolls) - he didn't miscast but almost every spell failed to cast by '1'. With the Shaman in combat he attempted Waagh! with 4 dice and even with the +2 to cast for being in combat STILL failed to cast! We both agreed that things might have been very different had the spell gone off!
- those damn Savage Orc Boar Boy Big 'Uns! Gosh but they're hard. Fortunately they had no choice but to charge the Hammerers led by the ASF Thane. Pain time for the Orcsies.
- The other characters - specifically the Boar-mounted General with Shagga's but also the other guy with Martog's Basha (WS6). At str5 on the charge with Ironback Boars... well, it hurts. My Rangers found this out (to their detriment) as 9 died on the charge and the last one failed his break test and was unsurisingly run down. An intersesting option for Derick is to combine his mounted characters together to make character units. The Gobbo on Giant Spider combined with the General, other Orc Hero and/or even the Shaman have a high enough unit strength to break ranks and can cause a heinous amount of casualties. Even Dwarfs would be struggling...
- the Giant. I've had bad experiences with Giants. I was VERY fortunate to kill the Giant off with the ever-awesome Grudgethrower with two direct hits and three wounds with each hit. 2D6 str6 hits is not my idea of fun. Don't like Giants.
The Dragonslayer was interesting. He took a charge from a unit of Spider Riders, took a wound and dished out two in return, losing the combat by a musician. Being Unbreakable of course he couldn't care less. Even better at initiative 4 (four!!! A Dwarf with initiative 4!!!) he killed the two in contact before they could take a swing at him in the next round. This didn't bother the rest of the Spider unit because they were dead after taking a little Warrior block in the front and Miners in the side.
The Gobbo chariot was popped in the first turn by the Cannon.
The Longbeards and another small Warrior unit never saw combat. This is problematic I suspect in that I'm going to have trouble maneouvering all these short-legged lads into the right places to make good combat happen. They keep getting in each others way.
Around turn 4(ish) we called the game. Derick had his characters left and a unit of Spider Riders. I had lost the Rangers and a smattering of other models but all the units left were well-above half-strength. Clearly Dwarfs have some serious advantages against this list and I wondered if it's still too hard. More playtesting coming up but I suspect when I hit something with a little more... hit... I'll be in for it.
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