New Armies and Old Mistakes

Updated 01DEC2013: Added some answers to the questions below

Over the last two weeks we played 3 games of Warhammer Fantasy 6th Edition.  Game one was with a potential new player, The New Guy, so we kept the size small and focused on the rules.  500 points, he took the High Elves and I used this as a chance to start playing with The Empire troops I've been painting for the last few months. It felt great to finally get to see my new army in action.

Recap

Game One: High Elves vs Empire

The lists were roughly this:

Empire: Hero on Pegasus, 19 Spearmen, 18 handgunners detachment, cannon.

High Elves: 10 Spearmen, 10 Archers, Repeater Bolt Thrower, 5 Dragon Princes with General

Terrain was setup in the usual manner: lots of stuff in each corner, empty in the middle. 

I have never played Empire before, and have never seen the Warhammer 6th Edition Detachment rules in effect either. My plan was to keep the handgunners slightly behind line, advancing with the spearmen and hoping to draw the combat into the spearmen.

Needless to say, things did not go according to plan.  The cannon either over shot, landed short, or misfired.  On the flip side, the Elven archers on the hill were extremely effective and killing my troops.
As for the detachments, the Dragon Princes moved up into the center and charged the handgunner detachment instead of the main spearmen unit, negating the chance to see the parent/detachment support rules go into effect.  However, the benefit of this was learning that charging handgunners might not be the best idea. The chose to stand and shoot, and the armor piercing nature of the Empire Handguns took out 3 of the 5 Dragon Princes.  Yikes! Still, the remaining Dragon Princes (one of which was the Elf general), passed their panic check and hit the handgunners, winning combat, and running them down.  This also showed one of the smaller (arguably more important) rules of detachments: all friendly units ignore panic from broken/fleeing detachments.  Well, well, well...

Eventually, the Repeater bolt thrower wounded the pegasus twice, and the Empire hero decided to charge the block of elf spearmen. This didn't turn out too well. The hero died, the pegasus passed his monster reaction test, but then failed the break check in combat, running away.  End result, Empire take it on the chin and the new player gets a nice win under his belt!

Game Two: High Elves vs Lizardmen

High Elves: 24 spearmen (i think it was 24), 12 Archers with Elf Hero as general
Lizardmen:
In game two, we also saw the new player on one side, this time play-testing the army he is interested in using: Lizardmen. I happened to have a bunch of old plastic Lizzies from the Bretonnian boxed set in 1997, so I slapped them onto some bases and we used a few "stand-in" models to round out 500 points.  He took on the High Elves from Rookie Wargamer from our Escalation Campaign.  In this game we also decided to use much more terrain than usual.  I only had a 5th edition Lizardmen army book for reference, so I have no idea if the "Aquatic" special rules still apply to the Lizzies, but man it was fun.  We stuck a river down the length of the board and let the dice fall where they may...

We decided that the river was Unpassable except for the two bridges.  The Skinks and Kroxigor (a horse model) however were Aquatic and ignored any rivers/ponds/lakes/marshes.  They were able to advance across the river without issue. Also, the Skinks were allowed to stay in the river, and if you shot at them it was -1 to hit.  Craziness!

The fun thing about this battle, aside from the fact that we had a completely new army to deal with (lizzies), was the terrain.  There were only two avenues of attack for the High Elves or Saurus to advance through - the two bridges.  The High Elves plopped the spears between the town and the center hill, defending the central bridge.  The Archers were deployed behind the center hill.  The Saurus deployed behind the central bridge, with the two units of Skinks and Krox heading over through the river.     The Skinks also have a movement rate of 6 inches and they skirmish, so they move 12 inches. Needless to say, they are really fast.

With the old Lizardmen book, the Skinks had poison-tipped arrows with a strength 4.  This seemed pretty hefty, but it was the only set of rules we had and we went with it.   The Skinks of course proceeded to annihilate the Elf archers on the hill with those Strength 4 hits.

The Saurus charged over the bridge into the spearmen, lost the combat and ran (even with cold blooded rule allowing them to roll 3D6 for leadership tests and pick lowest two dice).   Eventually they rallied and the Lizards surrounded the remaining Elves (Spearmen block).  The Lizards were faced with a choice: Charge with the Kroxigor and Saurus into the elf spearmen, with maybe a 50/50 chance of winning combat, or shooting them with 25 skinks and poisoned-tipped arrows, Strength 4 vs Elf Toughness 3.  The Lizards chose to shoot - and it was the right decision. They decimated the spearmen, forced a panic check with the elves failed, and everything ran off the board.  Victory for the Lizardmen!

For those keeping score, "The New Guy" is now officially 2-0.   He's sticking with the Lizardmen army.

Game Three:  High Elves vs Empire
The final game of the weekend was a very interesting battle. 600 points, High Elves vs The Empire.  The Elves basically used the same 500 points from the previous battle vs Lizardmen, and then just added a repeater bolt thrower.  The Empire had one new addition: 10 skirmishing archers.

After the success of the heavy terrain of the previous battle, we decided to have The New Guy set up the board as an impartial third party. One side had a hill within the deployment zone, and the other side had a hill but it was 3 inches beyond the deployment zone.  Because of this, we decided to roll a dice to see who got the side with the hill. Instead of "highest wins", we went with "highest roll gets the hill side".    We rolled, and The Empire won the hill side.  At first, this seemed critical with the Empire getting to deploy the cannon on the hill.  The end result was that the cannon repeated its same terrible performance as the first battle.  But even though the cannon was ineffective from that vantage point, it also mean the Elves didn't have a hill for their archers and Repeater Bolt Thrower.   Without the hill, the Elves deployed the bolt thrower next to the river, and the archers to the far side of the center hill.  The spearmen block were in the center, between the river and the center hill.

The Empire deployed the cannon and the pegasus on the hill, the spearmen in the center with the handgunner detachment to their left.  The skirmishing archers were on the extreme left behind the wood.

When the game began, the Empire general flew his pegasus behind the large hill near the town, hiding from the elven bolt thrower.  The spearmen and handgunners advanced forward and the skirmishers in habited the wood.  The elven spears stayed put, and the archers approached the wood that the skirmishers had started to enter.  Eventually, the pegasus charged the bolt thrower, killed a crewmen and ran the other one down in pursuit.  The elven spearmen moved up, and charged the handgunner detachment instead of the spearmen.  This was exactly the same situation that developed when The New Guy controlled the High Elves; both decided to engage the detachment and ignore the spearmen.  The handgunners opted to Stand and Shoot, took down some spears, then received the charge. The spearmen won the combat and broke the handgunners. The handgunners fled and the spearmen ran them down, ending up closer to the empire deployment zone.

On the left flank, the enemy archer units danced around each other with the Empire skirmishers eventually emerging from the wood.  Both units exchanged fire with each other, and the High Elves decided to charge the skirmishers, who accepted the charge.  Surprisingly, the Empire archers won the combat, broke the elves, and ran them down.  Suddenly, two of the three High Elf units in the game had been broken and run down.  Only the elf spears remained.  In the center at the bend in the river the Empire Spearmen reformed in the opposite direction, with the General on the Pegasus right beside them ready to charge the last elf unit.

After the elves reformed to face the imperial units, the Pegasus and Spearmen charged in.  The general and pegasus killed 5 spearmen and the Empire spearmen killed another one.  The combat resolution was a difference of 5, and it was too much for the Elves. They broke, and the Pegasus ran them down. With no remaining High Elf units on the board, it was a Solid Victory for the Empire!

Mistakes
There were a few mistakes that became apparent when I looked up the rules the next day.
The Pegasus does not cause fear.  For some reason, I thought it did. It didn't have a direct effect on either of the games as the elves passed all their fear checks, but it's important to remember for future games.
I missed a section of the detachment rules that I will have to remember for future games.  The detachments cannot be bigger than half the size of the parent unit. So in my current 600 points list, I have 19 spearmen as the parent unit.  This means the detachment of handgunners can be no greater than 9 models. Luckily, you can have two detachments so for now I'll split that big unit of 16 handgunners into two separate 8-man detachments.  I will probably deploy them in a single rank of 8 to get all their shots.
Another mistake: I used the old move distance for Flyers. It used to be 24", but now it's only 20".
There was a question about moving war machines that I still need some clarification.  Can they move and shoot? Is it specific to a particular war machine?
UPDATE: Re-read the section on war machines and I'm not sure how we missed it, but it's pretty clearly stated in the Bolt Thrower and Cannon section that these cannot move and shoot. 

I'm going to follow up with another post discussing the tactics for using detachments.