Siege!

We playtested some Warhammer Siege rules a few weeks ago. It was great.

Here's a few pics.

The Mighty Fortress

Thoughts on Age of Sigmar

The impending release of Games Workshop's new game, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar has been impossible to ignore.  Once they provided the rules and Warscrolls for free download I was pretty amped to try out the new rules. 

So we got together last night and played Empire vs High Elves.

Before we started we briefly went over a few of the basic rules so that we were in agreement on how we interpreted a few things, then decided to basically play the rules “as-is” as much possible.  We did, however, want to compare how the new rules would workout with equal sized armies, so we used the old point values to attempt to keep things “slightly” balanced.  We also added a few extra High Elf models before we started to get the total model counts within the 1/3 threshold.  I had 98 models and Rookie War Gamer had just under 70 (I forget the exact number). We didn’t want to deal with the Sudden Death rules in our first game (if you’re outnumbered by your opponent by more than 1/3 total model count, you can pick a Sudden Death victory condition).  The basic rules state the victory conditions are to completely kill all of your opponent’s models. All of them. If you do that, it's a Major Victory.  If that’s not possible (for whatever reason) then you calculate the percentage of models lost – the player that lost the highest percentage of models from their original model count is the loser and the other player wins a Minor Victory.  Otherwise, there's no set game length. It’s a little strange, but I think they intend to expand on that with supplements, campaign packs, scenarios, etc.   I was also wondering how long the game would take if the objective is to kill all of your opponents models. Then we started playing – let me tell you, stuff dies quickly and in large quantities. Once you learn the rules and start memorizing your troops stats, this game can definitely be played fast (relatively speaking).

Set-up:

Both players roll a die, the winner decides how to divide the table up into equal halves. Rookie War Gamer won and decided to go diagonally from corner-to-corner. Then you alternate placing units no closer than 12 inches to the enemy’s deployment zone.  Nice little twist with the diagonal setup. 

The rules also state that you roll for each piece of scenery to determine its special effects. We thought it would be too many things to keep track of so we decided to roll a D3 for each piece, so on a 5 or 6 we’d roll on the scenery table. We ended up with one group trees being “Mystical” and two hills were “Arcane”. This added just the right amount of flavor, but it’s easy to forget the terrain effects during the battle.

Overall, Age of Sigmar are simple, fast, effective rules. In most cases, it was really easy to play. It’s fantastic to just lookup what you need to roll on the unit warscroll. Also, pre-measuring at any time really eliminates a lot of guessing, thinking, agonizing, and generally wasting time. It was long overdue (although apparently this was in 8th edition which i haven't played yet...) I like the roll for initiative at the beginning of each turn. Winner gets to choose who goes first. There are definitely times where deciding to make your opponent move gives an advantage. I like this.

I'm going to highlight some of what we encountered in each of the new "phase" in a battle round.

Hero Phase: Really great idea. It’s the first phase of your turn, and here’s where any of your heroes get to influence the battle. General can use a command ability, wizards can cast a spell. The magic casting is really simple too. And I love that you can only attempt to dispel (or “unbind”, as it’s now called) with a wizard within range of the caster. Pretty neat.

Movement Phase: just move. If you decide to “run”, you add D6 inches. If you run, it means you can’t shoot or charge that turn.

Shooting Phase: Also much improved. After two months of me bitching about “long range / short range modifiers”, they actually scrapped that. They reduced the ranges of most missile troops, but it’s all one effective range. You’re either in range or out, and you just roll to hit. Archers specifically, they’ve jacked up their effectiveness. High Elves have some special rules where once-per-game they can unleash a “Storm of Arrows”, each fig gets two shots! Empire archers get bonuses for "Ordered Volleys, re-rolling 1s to hit. They also get bonuses for bigger units, like units of 20 or more you get to re-roll 1s and 2s to hit. Suddenly archers are a very, very viable unit.

They changed up cannons a decent amount, which allowed me to wipe out some elf Reavers in one round of shooting:

dead Reavers

Charge Phase: now we start to get a little…wonky. It’s simple: pick a unit, if they’re within 12 inches, they can try to charge. Roll 2D6, that’s their charge distance. However, here’s where the “skirmish based” rules start to show up. You move each model up to the charge distance. Since you’re trying to get into combat, you want them as close as possible.

We immediately realized you’ve gotta take the figs off the movement trays for this to be effective. Fine for smaller units, but like you see in the picture above it starts to bog down a bit moving 30+ figs. This (and combat) is very much like the current 40K rules. It doesn’t really work for ranked up units. It’s meant for smaller blobs of figs.

Combat Phase: The combat mechanism on its face is great. Roll to hit, roll to wound, opponent tries to save, then determine total damage/and allocate wounds.

But combat starts with the “Pile In”. You pick a unit that either charged or is already within 3 inches of an enemy. Then you Pile In. Each fig moves up to 3 inches to get closer to the enemy. So now there’s more movement and trying to jam as many figs as possible into a mess of combat. 

what a mess

Again, a little cumbersome for traditional ranked-up units of 20+ models. You finish your attacks for that unit, and then it’s your OPPONENTS TURN to pick a unit and attack. So, based on our reading of the rules, it doesn’t matter who charged, or whatever, it matters what unit you pick to fight first, then your opponent picks a unit and attacks, and you keep alternating. I’m not sure if I like this yet. Example, on the same turn I charged my Pistoliers (who are suddenly awesome) into his Mage and charged my remaining Knights into that big combat from the picture. I chose to attack with the Pistoliers first, they killed his mage.

dead Mage

Then Rookie War Gamer got to choose a unit, and attacked my knights, who died before they could even attack on their charge. Seems…wrong. Now, we didn’t realize at the beginning that’s what you’re supposed to do, so it’s possible after playing a few more games and understanding how that works that it could add a whole new level of fun. But to me it’s a quirk of the rules that you have to deal with, and you’ll end up making decisions in order to take advantage of (or protect yourself from) the combat mechanic of the game, instead of more abstract tactical decisions. So, the jury is out for me on that.

Bravery Phase: This is really different but super cool. You have to keep a running total of models removed from a unit each turn, (shooting, magic, and combat), and then the last phase of a turn is Battleshock Phase, and all units that suffered casualties (you and your opponent) take a Battleshock test. Roll a D6, add the number of casualties removed, and if that total is greater than your bravery score, you lose that many models as they “flee the battle”. Example, I’ve lose two casualties (one from shooting, and one in combat). Baseline Bravery stat of 5. I get +1 for unit of at least 10 (advantage for large units). Now my bravery is a 6. I roll a 5, +2 for the casualties, my roll is now a 7. That’s 1 greater than my bravery. I lose one model. Yikes! It can get bloody really fast. I love this mechanism though. It played out awesome in the game. It's different than any of the other wargames that i've played (whether fictional or historical).

After about 2.5 hours and 3 turns, we called the game. Since nobody got tabled, we tallied up the casualties and the Empire squeaked out a minor victory.

On the whole, I really enjoyed playing Age of Sigmar. There’s a few other hiccups with heroes/characters and how they apparently attack with ALL the melee weapons they're armed with, and some other minor things. But I have concerns about the combat phase (the order of units attacking seems wrong) and the pile in/charge moving is really cumbersome for big units. I’m hoping that maybe we just missed something and played it wrong, but the rules are so short and simple that I’m pretty sure we played it correct.

I still think they could have introduced all of these changes, even the renaming of races to "protect the IP", but do this all without gutting and throwing out the existing background setting. To me, that was the best part.

Trouble With Metallics

I thought i'd quickly paint up some Reiksguard knights, but i'm struggling with the metallic technique on the barding.

I found some decent examples and can't seem to execute any of them.

First, the GW paint scheme:

I actually like this approach for Reiksguard.  Super-bright, clean metal, with minimal shading in the creases. That's pretty much it.  This was my original plan.  Didn't work.

Then I found this pic:

A little darker, a little rougher look, but nice shading.  Tried this, couldn't do it. Really struggling with where to apply the shading and the highlighting on the barding. The "scoop" section is my biggest problem. 

Then there's this pic: 

These guys are really well done, almost perfect balance of both approaches. 

Then i found this pic on the warhammer-empire.com forum (along with a nice tutorial which i also failed to execute):

This was very, very striking.

Again, i intended this to be a quick paint job. I primed them with very bright metallic silver (almost identical to the GW color).  I figured a quick, thin wash of black Nuln Oil and brief highlight and i'd be done.  Wrong.
The ink wash looked ok, but didn't get the "clean, Best of the Best" look i was getting for the guys that are supposed to be the Emperor's Guard.  Then the disaster began: me attempting to highlight the barding.  Now, a good hobby blogger would post the WIP pictures of these knights, but i didn't copy the pics to the computer i'm currently working on, so you'll just have to take my word for it and trust me when i say they look unsatisfying.

Suggestions?

Clash of Hordes

Waaagh Gorfang was headed into the human lands after hearing about all the fun outside of some Empire town of Lietzburg. Something about warpstone, but who cares; Gorfang just wanted a good scrap.

While moving through Bretonnia Gorfang found the juicy town of Summersall Fort, which looked like a perfect town to sack, but he hit a giant force of Skaven led by Thanquol.  Battle ensued...

Old School Goblins

I've been slowly collecting old, out of print (oop) goblin figures from the mid 80s/early 90s. Mostly Citadel and Marauder, with a few Iron Claws thrown in there.  I've also found some really nice Reaper, Grenadier and Heartbreaker goblins, too. I'm going to paint them all up and combine them into one giant unit of "common" goblins with a variety of weapons, whatever they have (axes, swords clubs, bows, who cares).

Here's the first 4 that I've completed. Great sculpts, easy to paint because each one has nice character to it.  The spearmen still needs a shield; I'll get to that later.

Poor lighting, but both pics can be zoomed in for better detail.

Empire v Skaven 11/28

We played a post-thanksgiving 2000 point game of Empire vs Skaven.

Here's a brief synopsis thats poorly edited with a lot of pictures. Some of the account is accurate.  

Deployment...

In view below is most of the Empire army of Leitzburg, led personally by Baron Edmund The (normally) Absent on his pegasus, Peg. Two units of knights, The Taal Eagles spearmen (red / yellow), the Bloodpine Shields swordsmen  (red / blue) led by the local Graf, Dieter, and the baron's personal bodyguard the Leitzguard, full armoured Greatswordsmen (full plate armor on foot).  In the distance is the Skaven horde... 

 The rest of the Empire army in view below: Knights of the Order of Grey Plastic, a pistoliers unit The Sons of Taal, two cannons, and a small contingent of skirmishing Stirland Archers, the Deathjacks.

Below are lots of Skaven. I hate Skaven.

 Large unit of large Rat Ogres, unit of Stormvermin led by army general Lord Thrott (his debut appearance), a block of clanrats, two rat swarms, Warp Lightning Cannon Thing, and unit of giant rats.

Deployment errors: I made many. Skaven dropped first unit and it was that big unit of Rat Ogres. I didnt even know he had that many ogres.  I was psychologically on tilt and it affected every deployment decision I made after that, compounding errors. I would spend majority of first 3 turns digging myself out of this hole. Luckily, I brought a Helblaster volley gun...

Turn 1 skaven moved up. warp cannon killed stuff.
turn 1 empire, much deliberation, both knights charged. Reiksguard failed charge and get stuck in middle of field. Panther made the charge and slam into Rat Ogres. Pistoliers sweep around flank and shoot at the mass of giant rats, killing one.
Cannon hits Lord Thrott, poor rolling ends up only one wound which he regenerates.

uh oh...Reiksguard knights didnt make it

 Knights panther cause massive damage, killing 2 rat ogres outright and leaving a 3rd wounded. Rat Ogres fail the break check, run and on a poor pursuit roll the knights panther don't catch them but get close.  everyone passes panic checks

 turn 2 skaven rat ogres rally. clan rats take opportunity to charge knights stuck in poor position. knights intentionally flee hoping to set up artillery shots.

 warp engineer unleashes warp lightning on the pistoliers, killing 3 and causing them to panic.

 Warp cannon targets the grey knights, misfire, spin around and it fires through the storm vernon and hits the castle.

 turn 2 empire Reiksguard barely rally behind the greatswords pistoliers fail to rally and keep running.  grey knights charge rat pack.

 panthers pass fear check and again charge rat ogres. no one is sure why.

 cannons totally miss but the helblaster unleashes long range volley and annihilates 14 clan rats, cutting the huge unit in half.

hel.

combat with rat ogres is a draw, grey knights win combat with giant rats and run them down.

 turn 3 skaven clan rats charge great swords, tunnel team fails to show up again, storm vermin charge hand gunner detachment rat swarm charges grey knights who intentionally flee trying to avoid the "tarpit" of two swarms.  clan rats lose combat but hold, greatswords lap around. hand gunners stand and shoot, wounding one rat. storm vermin hit the hand gunners, beat them and they run. storm vermin can't pursue because Thrott sits there eating remains of vanquished. Rat ogre combat, ogres lose but hold.

turn 3 empire: Baron edmund, spears, and swords charge storm vermin. the free company detachment is in the way to swordsmen fail their charge.  Reiks knights reform and try to wind their way behind the line and support the right flank. both cannons misfire.  helblaster continues killing things.

 Throt challenges the Baron who accepts. Baron and Peg cause two wounds on Throatt and he fails to regen them. in the swirl, empire wins combat but it's a draw.

 Greatswords win combat and break the clan rats, but Griffon standard means they can't pursue. Rat ogres finally win combat against remaining Panther who flees. Rat Ogres pursue right into the free company detachment.

 turn 4 skaven: rat swarms charge grey knights who dither but eventually accept. tunnel team finally arrives and scatters right into the cannon. they charge cannon crew, who flees, but they catch them and charge anyway (this was a mistake, crewmen should have been run down when caught).

 Big showdown, Baron kills Thrott, we're confused about regen rules but he fails anyway, spears cause more wounds, skaven lose combat and flee, pegasus runs them down killing big unit and general. not good but Rat Ogres pass panic check, then break the free company in combat who flee. short pursue leaves ogres right in front of swordsmen. Fleeing members of Empre Free Company wondering how the hell they survived combat with Rat Ogres. 

turn 4 empire:  swords reform to prepare for charge of ogres. not sure why i didn't charge them first but oh well. moved other units to surround ogres, too. huntsmen charge the tunnel team, and break them in combat! can't believe it and don't pursue them enough.

 turn 5 skaven. ogres charge swords, who fail to save anything, entire first rank of 6 guys dies. the graf does his best to kill an ogre but the weight of combat is against them and they flee. the poor saps that survived from the free company thought they were safe but the pursue brings the ogres right into combat with them again!. this saves the swords from getting run down.

 turn 5 empire: grey knights finally kill the rat swarm. spears and greatsowrds find themselves out of position. Baron and Reiks charge the rat ogres. big mess of combat with multiple charges, challenges and rules confusion.  we do many things wrong but who cares. In the end the rats win combat but all Empire units pass their checks.

turn 6 skaven - tunnel team rallies, but the Baron wins combat with rat ogres who flee and the pegasus runs them down.  Tunnel team only Skaven unit left on the board. Huge win for the Empire!

Lizardmen vs Orcs and Goblins

Few weeks ago we played a game between Orcs and Goblins vs Lizardmen.

Here's a bunch of photos from the game. This was first time the Lizards had faced the greenskins, and the greenskins army list was a trial run for a number of units that either a) i had never used before and wanted to try out, or b) "counts as" units for troop types that were auditioning for a spot in the army.

It was a lot of fun as we had tons of fanatics, a snotling pump wagon, and various other random craziness going on.