Chaos vs Dwarfs Remote Gaming

 Played first remote wargame a few days ago and it worked surprisingly well. It was myself as the Dwarf player vs Joshua, of Crown of Command Podcast fame, remotely commanding my newly painted Khorne Chaos army.  We used Google Meet and I attached my iPhone on a stand. Connected a Beats Pill bluetooth speaker to hear the remote player (Joshua) better. 

Joshua is very small in the iphone

14 hour time difference was no problem.  It definitely helped that it was a a small game (1500 points), we used no magic, and had the right attitude. 

Chaos vs Dwarfs, Warhammer Fantasy Battle (WHFB) 4th edition. 

Deployment:

Overhead Deployment

You can see in the above picture the Chaos deployment (left side of picture) with a "Refused flank", to try and take the flame cannon out of the game, as well as the hammerers (the block of Dwarfs on dwarf right flank). 

Dwarf Army

Chaos Army

This isn't a turn by turn battle - we didn't have pictures of the first two turns because I had forgotten to charge the batteries of the "fancy" camera and since the iPhone was hosting the video, I couldn't snap any! Better planning next time.  

Dwarfs had initiative and went first.  Unloaded all 5 barrels of the organ gun, didn't misfire! This decimated the beastmen unit. 

The Khorne Chaos lord on the Griffon flew forward (did NOT fly high), and used his "breath fire" chaos gift, blasting the crew of the organ gun and leaving 1 crewmen remaining.  This proved critical because it meant it would take an extra turn to "reload" the organ gun. (We'll return to that later).

The the most part, the Dwarf shooting was pretty effective.  The flame cannon tried a few ridiculous attempts to shoot the flames over friendly units, and didn't get there, killing Dwarfs instead.

After neutralizing the organ gun, the chaos lord charged the dwarf crossbows, who opted to flee as their charge reaction and which forced the griffon to have a failed charge and get stuck right in front of the organ gun.  When the Dwarfs were about to unload all 5 barrels again, we realized that with only 1 crew remaining, the organ gun would need another turn to reload, so...that didn't work out. It left the organ gun a sitting duck for the ogres (who were on the extreme flank).

The chaos warriors were slowly making there way around the rocks that were in the middle of the table. 

Eventually, the chaos lord slammed into the crossbows, but you can see that the main dwarf clansmen unit had repositioned themselves (with their general) to either help this fight or take on the chaos warriors.

The ogres charged the organ gun, and to everyone's surprise no wounds were caused on either wide, and the lone crewmen won the combat because of the +1 higher ground bonus! we were on edge as Josh rolled the break check...and he barely passed!  Either way, the crewman had done his job.  He tied up the ogres in combat for two turns, basically taking them out of the game.

This picture above was when I realized I made a mistake by letting those final two members of the beastmen unit survive.  I thought they were harmless, but the champ was actually a chaos champion of Khorne (not a beastman champ), and he had frenzy, and something else, and basically when the hammerers failed to break them on the first turn with rank bonus and standard bonus, the champion and beastman standard bearer tore through this unit of hammerers.  It was brutal!

You can see the unit of 6 Dwarf slayers moving across the rear of the dwarf line in a "snake" formation.  Pretty sure that's the first time in my life that I ever moved Dwarfs in a snake. 

You can see above, this is this misguided attempt by the flame cannon crew to shoot the flame over their own units...and hitting the Dwarf General's unit of clansmen instead.

The Slayers got into position, waiting for the eventual destruction of the crossbowmen.  That set up a great combat with the griffon and chaos lord against the slayers.  Well, great because the slayers actually got into combat with a monster.  But they got slaughtered and met a proper "doom".

This set up a final last chance gambit by the Dwarf General and his unit of clansmen.  The charged the chaos warriors, hoping to break them.  They didn't.  The chaos warriors won and broke the unit.  

That was the end of Turn 5 and the final turn. The forces of chaos handily defeated the dwarf army.

All-in-all, it was a great battle.  Lots of fun to play some solid "herohammer" which had wild swings of momentum and general ridiculousness.  I know that 4th and 5th ed get a lot of complaints, but the rules as written hadn't accumulated any of the "cruft" of the later editions.  Sure, there's some ambiguity and grey areas here and there, but the spirit of the game is pretty light and fun.  It wasn't "serious" yet. Which is why it was, and still is, my favorite edition of WHFB. 

Thanks to Joshua for staying up late and playing as the "remote" general!