Tuesday 28 May 2013

Fog on the Barrow Downs

Game three of the clubs ongoing Mordheim campaign involved a bit of grave digging.

The setting was a large barrow site, shrouded in fog where the objective was to discover an amulet buried somewhere in one of the grave barrows.  To complicate matters there was a thick fog which gave anyone wondering off by themselves a chance of getting lost and stumbling about in a random direction.

There were five players this time:

  • My Beastmen
  • Dave's Kislevites
  • Rory's Kislevites
  • Ian's Reiklanders
  • Andy's Sigmarite Sisters
Table Overview

Smelly Beastmen

Kislevite Warband 1

Sigmarite Sisters

Reiklanders

Kislevite Warband 2
 The Fog meant that at the start of the turn 4D6 were rolled, with the total score being the distance anyone could see in inches, thus limiting missile fire (not to much bother for the Beastmen, not having any).

Early game saw the other four players creeping about and taking some potshots at each other when the mists parted long enough to see something, while my Beastmen crept from cover to cover taking great care to stay out of site of the large amount of missile armed humans on the board.   Everyone paired of pretty quickly with Ian's Reiklanders getting stuck into Dave's Kislevites pretty quickly and an almighty scrum breaking out between Rory's Kislevites and Andy's Sigmarites.
My Beastmen were left a bit stranded as all the action was taking place down the other end of the table but they targeted Ian's Reiklanders and moved up to try and get in on the action.
Ian also managed to unearth the Amulet in his first dig, so that pretty much put a stop to anyone else attempting to do any of that exploring nonsense.

Beastmen advance while the Reiklanders and Kislevites have it out.

Kislevites and Sigmarites have a bit of a disagreement.

Beastmen finally get to fight someone.

Sigmarites start to triumph over the Kislevites.

The ensuing combats were all pretty bloody, with Dave's Kislevites coming of quite badly against the Reiklanders, before fleeing the field.  Rory's Kislevites and Andy's Sigmarites got stuck into each with Rory losing 8 models before finally quiting the field, while Andy had lost 4 of his warband by then.

The Beastment managed to get into contact with the Reiklanders and pick of a few stragglers, at which point Ian decided to cut his losses and run. The Beastmen then turned their sites on the remains of the Sigmarite Sisters but upon seeing that the Beastment had not yet suffered a casualty they decided to also quit the field, leaving the Beastment victorious!

I would like to say that it was a hard fought and thoroughly deserved victory but in truth I was very much left on the periphery of the action and by the time I was in a position to take part everyone had a very bloody nose. The highlight of the game was when the Sisters of Sigmar Augur, who is blind as she has second site which allows her to see things that others cannot  was the only model in the entire game to get lost in the fog, and then managed to stumble straight into one of Rory's Kislevites, and managed to take him out of action.

A very bloody and quick game, with the other four warbands all taking quite a beating.  Ian managed to get his warband leader killed, while Andy and Rory both lost several men to their wounds.  
My Beastmen suffered no casualties and so managed to do some serious shopping and get some more decent gear.   I managed to get some more helmets and a few other nifty bits and pieces. Almost time to start saving for a Minotaur!
Beastment enjoying the spoils of victory




There were a few conclusions from this game:

  • We need another player. When you have 5 players inevitable 4 players pair off and fight each other and then the fifth player gets to skirt around the board and then pick off any survivors at the end.
  • It was decided by everyone involved that in future we would select the deplyoment randomly, to help mix up the potential matchup in future games.
The monthly Mordheim campaign is turning into a real highlight of my games at the club, despite the relatively poor showing of my Beastmen so far, and I am  looking forward to next months instalment

Sunday 26 May 2013

Warhammer FB

Last Monday night I had a game of Warhammer 8th edition scheduled with Dave.

Dave was bringing his Chaos Warriors and I decided to use my Orcs and Goblins, as I have not had them on the table for a while. We decided on 2500 points, which is the largest game of warhammer I have played in a long time, but allowed me to bring lots of toys.






My army consisted of three large units of Orcs, a large unit of Night Goblins and a generous helping of the random nonsense that makes using Orcs and goblins so entertaining, if at time frustrating.  Dave brought a large unit of Marauders, several units of chaos warriors, some Chaos Knights and some units of disposable Chaff in the form of Chaos Hounds and Marauder Horse.  



Early game my units of troops proved quite reliable, with no animosity, but everything else proved to be very random, with a Doom Diver managing to kill off a Goblin Chariot with a misfire, and my warmachines and magic proving to be fairly inneffective.  This meant it was down to the lads to get stuck in and they did with gusto, and large amounts of models were removed from both sides. The higher numbers of the orcs were telling in the end though.  My warmachines came good on the last turn of the game, with the Rock Lobber finishing of a chariot, the Doom Diver nailing a unit of Chaos Knights and the Bolt Shooters skewereing the Chaos Sorceror.


The game had to end at turn 3 as we ran out of time, but the it was beginning to look like the writing was on the wall for the Chaos army.  
It was good to get the Orcs back on the table, as I had forgotten the potential they have to be very effective in every phase of WHFB, while also having the potential to be truly awful.  The trick is to not rely on any one phase of the game and to have a balanced approach, which also happen to be the most entertaining.

Two things to come from this were the abandoning of the terrain rules from 8th, especially the "if you can see it you can shhot it," and instead declaring that basically all woods and hills block line of site. The other thing we decided was thet 2500 points was perhaps a little to large for a Monday night game, especially as Dave is realtively new to the wonderful world of Warhammer.

It was still a very enjoyable evening as I had the most important component of any ruleset, a good opponent who always takes everything in good spirirt (something I sometimes forget to do, I must admit).

Next Monday is game three of our Mordheim campaign, with my Beastmen so far having put in a fairly poor showing.  I am playing the long game and concentrating on minimising losses at the moment, so that I can hopefully have more success later on in the campaign. We shall see.

Thursday 23 May 2013

Hi,

Welcome to my Blog.

This is going to follow my wargaming activities, mostly from playing on a Monday night at my local club, Falkirk District Wargames Club.
There may be some photo's at some point, when I work out how to add them!

Managed to add some photos.  These are examples fo some games that I have played at the club this year.  I really enjoy Lord of the Rings gaming , so most of the photos are from various games.