Today we played a game of the much maligned Age of Sigmar. Logan has been collecting Seraphon, and with the release of the Generals handbook if was a breeze to get a ‘pick up’ game organised. He had just finished painting up his models, to get a game in for the Summer campaign , with a week to got before ‘back to school’. We used the first scenario – take and hold, which is a typical capture the flag game. We only used 600pts to try and get a game that we could setup, play and get to a conclusion, in the time we had available.
Logan’s Seraphon was a Shadowstrike Starhost warscroll battalion (2 units of Skinks, Skink priest and Ripperdactyls), and a unit of 20 Saurus.
I dug out some some Nurgle, 5 Blightkings, 20 Plaguebearers, 2 units of 3 Nurglings and a Herald as leader. As I had the keyword Nurgle in my army selection Blightkings counted as battleline.
The terrain was rather crowded (too much so was the view afterwards), and we fought over a ruined village next to a river- in reality I found some old terrain tile that hadn’t been used in 20 years, so needed a trot out
The Seraphon were rather devastating. They have rather a lot of anti Chaos buffs (as the Seraphon manifest from the blazing light of Azyr – new fluff)
The game started very quickly the Saurus marched (with drummer), and threw high on the charge fighting the Plaguebearers on the riverbank. This was to be the chunky combat of the game. The Saurus , being given inspiring presence were immune to battle shock. The Plaguebearers as now even more of a tarpit, they get a 5+ save , with a subsequent 5+ save – Disgustingly Resilient ( I will not call it Feel no Pain 😉 ) They during battle shock if they throw a 1 they get 1d6 plague bearers back. This fight ground out.
My Blightkings were lead a merry dance with by the Skinks, the Starpriest hitting them with 2 spells each turn – typically done d3 Mortal wounds each time. Not something that a 5 model unit wants. The Skinks poor out a lot of shooting and when I did close to contact , as wary fighters the skinks can break off during their ‘activation’ in the combat phase. With the Plaguebearer/Saurus combat being the main focus, that meant that quite often they would activate first and break off with no loss.
The Ripperdactyls start off table as part of the battalion rules, arriving when needed. They come with a Bloat toad model, who as a non-combatant moves around the table giving away their arrival point. When fighting within 2” of the toad the Ripperdactyls go into a frenzy. Combining the ‘Swooping Dive’ rule with the ‘Strike from the Skies’, they come down with a vengeance. In this case some unsuspecting Nurselings camped on the objective felt their wrath. Normally these little spuds just shrug off hits. 5 wounds per base, remove all excess hits at the end of the phase. But the toad has shuffled next to them and the reptilian Stukas obliterated them in 1 attack.
The jig was up for Nurgle, the plaguebearers stuck in a long running combat (killing 20 Sauruses takes a while!), Nurglings wiped out, and the Blightkings less that 5 models so could not control any objective.
I have to admit I really enjoyed this game. It was ‘lite’ for sure, but needed thought and gave some interesting decisions in the game. It was a bit like Warmachine, but without the terminally fiddly bits that that comes with. The generals handbook was excellant for making the game quick to set up, and the force selection was a breeze with all the ‘upgrade’ minutiae from WFB gone. The app was excellent too. Add your troops to ‘my battle’ and you can keep a track of all your units quickly without constantly having the ‘book lookup’ – Free too!
Recommended
Excellent. Looking game Shall I rebase my stuff?
rebasing is not necessary , other than for the look