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Category Archives: Fantasy
For the Emperor !
Helbrecht could taste the taint of Chaos on his tongue as he urged his sergeant to speed the Landraiders towards rthe industrial complex at Ikton 5 Khorne the most savage and abandoned of the Chaos filth were already there in strength.
This was my second game of 8th edition with the greatest chapter the Black Templars ( no magic loving close combat) against Khorne close combat no magic and no shooting. the chaos node deployed worth marines on the left flank and vile demons on the left screened by flesh hounds urged on by a demon prince and the insane Kharn the Betrayer. Opposing the demons were two Landraiders full of marines led by the chapter master and the Emperors champion
The action began with the Khorne horde advancing mercifully too far away for a turn 4 chargeThe Templars responded with a hail of fire from the Landraiders and the dismounted marines which destroyed the fleshounds opening up a charge lane for the marines and Helbrecht to engage the bloodletters demons. On the other flank the predator and the storm talon destroyed a 10 man berserker unit
Crying vows of loyalty Hebrecht and his crusaders charged tied the demons. Whoops forgot the rerolls to hit so only killed 8 and they responded in kind with their hellblades – ouch!
Next turn saw the demons summon another swarm of bloodletters which surged forward to join the Melendez and the swooping demon prince and kharn the betrayer also charged. In a whirlwind of blows Kharn’s axe Gorechild slew Helbrecht. At this point I used two command points to allow my remaining marines to strike before the charging demons and removed the reamaing blood letters from play the demon price then killed a few marines.
The remaining marines took advantage of the new rules to withdraw from combat carrying Helbrecht shattered form with them The Landraiders moved forward to exact vengeance and The isolated Khorne heroes died in a hail of assault cannons rounds. Marine firepower is brutal and another squad of berserkers died to my two support units.
Turn 3 and the heralds summoned more blood letters and some long bomb charges saw my other crusader squad and the emperors champion hit by a tide of berserkers and bloodletters. Iwas left with 4 neophyte marines and the champion though we took a toll of the heretics. Once again the marines survivors fell back and the Landraiders shot and charged (yes vehicles now have a melee value) and the support vehicles manoeuvred ans culled the remaining berserkers. Assault marines landed on an objective in the KHorne rear areas. Drop troops now land where and when you want but have to be deploy by turn 3.
Turn 4 saw the Khorne heralds charge the newly arrived assault marines and kill most of them over 2 rounds of combat.
The marine supports killed the last of the blood letters and the Landraiders and the champion killed the last of the bloodletters and the berserkers.
Khorne at last saw reason with 2 heralds facing the predator Landraiders and the stormtalon flier and we called it . 11-4 to the Imperium
Lessons learnt
1. Infantry in the open die easily
2. Marine firepower is their strength
I love8th edition
Really in the days before digital photography?
Chanced across these in a tidy up. I’ve not owned a ‘film’ camera for a long time , who took them I have no clue.
As as I recall last time BAD wargamers won anything at a show 😉 just to prove we can 🙂
Age of Sigmar – this time High Elf Alliance
Today we played round two our Age of Sigmar competition. As we found out we were 1 week later for the summer campaign , so the results would just be for our own fun. Today I gave a run out for my High Elves.
I took Althran Stormrider Host war scroll battalion . Which consisted of
- Hero on Griffon
- Elf Mage
- 5 Swordmasters
- 10 Lothern Sea Guard
- 5 Ellyrian Reavers
Actually the contents of the Battle for Blood Island- which I have – and 600pts exactly. Looking like karma…
Logans Seraphon remained the same
- Skink Starpriest
- 20 Saurus warriors
- 10 Skinks with javelin
- 10 Skinks with blowpipe
- 3 Ripperdactyls
The elves looked very outgunned. After reading the warscrolls then it seemed like the older models didn’t have such an oomph as the later releases. We played take and hold again, with slightly less terrain (doing away with the nonsense polystyrene tiles!). The game has a string narrative. Serpahon starting – with Ripperdactyls off table, ready for their swooping attack. There was a general advance The Saurus drummers allowing them to march – but then not to charge. In the subsequent Elf turn Althran on his Griffon showed was a monster can do. With Hand of Glory cast (re-roll hits and wounds) with a massive 16” one – he is flying – then rolling a double 6 for the charge allowed him to charge whoever he wished. The target was the big block of 20 Saurus warriors.
He did great dispatch, inflicting 10 casualties on the unit. The Saurus had already taken 2 casualties from an Arcane bolt earlier in the turn. in the Battleshock phase Logan threw a 6 , adding 12 … even with a bravery of 10 that meant another 8 lizardmen fled the field. The mistake was not to have given them inspiring presence that turn ( given to some Skinks who were skirmishing ahead of the lines). So it was looking good for the Elves from the get-go. However, in the next turn the Ripperdactyls cinematically swooped down to wreak revenge! this they did.
With their initial boosted attacks from the warscroll battalion they took Althran down to 2 wounds with their clawing attacks to start. The beak attacks are only 1 dice attack, but each time they are successful they get to roll another attack. These exploded attacked finished off the brave elf nobleman. The following turns saw the elves turing their attention to the Ripperdactyls and pepper with arrows and a few arcane bolts saw them off. With all the big beasts gone, it was down the infantry. The Ellyrian reavers had also been picked off by the Rilpperdactyls. The sword masters had some success , but with only a low model count they suffer from mortal wound spells (arcane bolt ect), as soon as they are less than 5 their usefulness to capture objectives is diminished. Finally the skinks ran out of room. As ‘wary fighters’ they can break off from combat , being safe to shoot next turn. However against the elves who shoot back …and with elf shields 4+ save (re-rolling 1s & 2s in shooting) they were getting the worse of the deal.
The final nail came with a the Elf mage longbombing a charge to attack the Skink Starpriest. With ‘Arcane bolt’ followed up with ‘hand of gloried’ sword and the tiny lizard was dispatched.
So victory for the elves, only minor as they didn’t have enough troops to hold both objectives!
Great game. I’m really enjoying these Age of Sigmar games. They have a real simplicity, but with some clever decision making. No monsters are too powerful as they can be ground down by infantry. Infantry are vulnerable to high losses due to battleshock, so nothing is massively survivable. Its hard to make anything approximating a deathstar! no 2++ re-rollables here
Age of Sigmar
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!
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