Coming Soon to Prospero

I was going to do a quick review of all the new goodies in the latest White Dwarf – but stuff that, you’ll see them for yourself on Saturday, and I don’t think it is really anything that you haven’t really seen before.

No, what we will do instead is have a look at the new Forge World miniatures that have just been previewed on Warhammer TV that are going to be destined for my Prospero forces!

First up… Custodes Terminators – as Mr Cottrell himself said on Warhammer TV, they are bigger and golder than normal Termies!

Forge World being what it is, they are going to force the more wallet-conscious to make a choice – Custodes Terminators can also have Firepikes (did I get that right?).

But the model I am really after…

A Thousand Sons Praetor!

I was going to try to swing the Warhammer World exclusive Praetor for my Thousand Sons but sod that, the Space Woofs can have him – this one is going to be my new general!

Speaking of Space Woofs, they also had a quick leak for their Terminators..

What was that? You still want to know what is in White Dwarf? Well, the new Hellblasters, Intercessors, and Inceptors are arriving this month (I want the latter especially, tooled up with plasma!), and the Grey Knights and Chaos Space Marines have the odd Codex coming (typically, I have recently sold my Grey Knights, and I went Death Guard for Chaos, so the generalised Codex is less interesting right now – though I have had a hankering to do Kharn and his warband in the past…).

The Hobbit gets a blind troll and a large budgie, and the new Forge World Thunderhawk looks a bit tasty.

Oh, and apparently the XBox Blood Bowl 2 is going to be getting an update soon that adds a bunch more teams, including Amazons – now that I am interested.

But I think that is a decent enough round up of White Dwarf. I am now going back to gazing at that Thousand Sons Praetor…

Thousand Sons Tactical Squad

I still have not leapt completely into Horus Heresy mode, but the occasional model is getting done here and there. This weekend, the Thousand Sons received their first Tactical Squad!

The basic idea is that I am doing both a Thousand Sons and Space Wolves force, with the thought that someday I’ll play a Prospero campaign. Not sure how realistic that is, but we’ll see how things go!

This squad marks the completion of the Betrayal of Calth set, and now I will be cracking on with the Burning of Prospero models. The Sisters of Silence and Custodes are already built and undercoated, and are destined to be next on the painting table, ably joined by Ahriman and the Tartaros Terminators (the latter of whom will be Thousand Sons).

As for the Mk III Space Marines of that set, twenty are destined to be Tactical marines for the Thousand Sons, which will neatly fill the ‘compulsory’ slots for that army (I have some Grey Slayers on their way from Forge World who will do the same for the Space Woofs), and then I have to make a decision on the last ten of the Mk III marines. I was thinking they should be another Tactical Squad for the Space Wolves, but maybe I should investigate the support options instead…

Event Report – Battle Brothers

Warhammer World ran their Battle Brothers Event for Age of Sigmar this weekend – and I was in attendance!

 

The Armies

My Battle Brother for the weekend was James (the chap who plays through the Realmgate Wars campaign with me), and he had been painting up his Daughters of Khaine. It is a fairly simple force in concept:

Cauldron of Blood x 2 (one as general with the Phoenix Stone and Tenacious)
Witch Elves x 2 (units of 20)

Now, I had started thinking about taking an army that was cool and fluffy but, after looking at what James was taking, I realised we were not going to be making any friends, so I went for Seraphon:

Eternity Warden (wit Phoenix Stone and Tenacious)
Skink Priest (with Priestly Trappings)
Saurus Guard x 3 (units of 10)
Eternal Starpost Battalion

I think you can all see where we were going with these choices.

The Witch Elves would run ahead and absolutely murder anything they came across (the number of attacks they put out is utterly insane), relying on the overlapping Blood Cauldron auras to effectively give them two 5+ saves against any and all wounds.

The Seraphon would advance and sit on any objectives with a 2+ re-rollable save that ignored Rend of -1.

I figured that this force would look weak upon deployment in a game that has lots of big monsters and tough Heroes, and it would not be until the second turn before opponents started realising just how nasty it was…

 

Game One

Our first opponents were a couple of young lads called Matt and James, and they too had Seraphon and Dark Elves – however they had brought nice, fluffy forces and we had brought an absolute monster along.

I turtled down on the right flank, while James gave them a solid left hook and swept round. The elf player on the opposing side had an amazing ability to make saves, so that Anointed on the Phoenix lasted a long time, but those Saurus Guard kicking out D3 damage (thanks to Eternal Starhost) proved an inevitable end.

They took their loss well and were amazingly good-natured (always nice to see in younger players – and older ones too, for that matter), and staged a last ditch defence with the Bolt Thrower crew charging into my rampaging Saurus Guard (and came ‘this’ closer to taking down a unit, thanks to some miserable saves on my part!) but, in the end, the sickness of our force told.

 

Game Two

This is where we started having to up our game. We faced a great pair of chaps who had also come to the event loaded for bear – Ogors teamed up with a Warherd (that is beastmen, but where the smallest/weakest fighter is a Bullgor!).

We could tell that, upon deployment, they thought they had this game in the bag – and I was not too confident myself, knowing that Rend -2 Bullgors would rip through my Saurus Guard like tissue paper. However, as the lines crashed together…

The Witch Elves utterly mauled the Ogors and a flanking move by a bunch of Bullgors was annihilated by the Saurus Guard (though only because the lizards struck before the cows – had we not done that, I would have evaporated). It was at that point our opponents realised what they were facing and, full credit to them… they congratulated us on it!

The battle then turned into a real slog. The Ogors fell quickly but the Warherd was just plain nasty – at 1,000 points, this is an absolutely solid force and would recommend it to anyone.

We prevailed in the end but, talking to our opponents afterwards, they thought they got completely hammered. I don’t think they realised just how close we had come to breaking either. This battle could have gone either way and it was probably just the Witch Elves smashing the Ogors early on that pulled us ahead. There certainly weren’t many of the girls left at the end of the battle…

 

Game Three

Now, this was an interesting one, in many ways! We faced a Flesh-Eater Court/Bonesplitterz combo run by a Father/Son team. The father was very Italian and the son very… well, drunk!

(At one point, I think James suggested the son keep track of turns by having a pint for each one, and then just counting the empties to see where we were in the game!).

This one was a lot of fun, and our opponents were clearly doing something right as they went on to win one of the painting awards, along with the event championship!

The Battleplan played was Escalation, and that immediately caused the first problem. Both my force and James’ relied on synergies and we could not deploy everything needed to get all our buffs. The second problem was that the Bonesplitterz were fielding a Kunnin’ Rukk with Arrow Boyz, and we had never faced that before. Heard about it online, but this was the first time we had actually seen it.

One of James’ Witch Elf units and its Cauldron of Blood disappeared under a hail of arrows in the first turn, leaving a massive unit of Savage Orruks to roam the centre of the table. When his reinforcements came along, James decided to leave the Bonesplitterz to the Seraphon (thank you for that), and contest an objective with the Flesh-Eaters.

This he did convincingly, facing down a Varghulf, Ghoul King and Crypt Horrors. In fact, he held on to the objective right up until the final Crypt Ghoul reinforcements came along. They proved too much for him, and the girls were wiped out.

Meanwhile, I was facing two units of 30 Arrow Boyz, plus Boarboyz, all in Kunnin’ Rukk formation.

So, I turtled.

The Father’s face when I removed two Saurus Guard as casualties after a round of shooting from that lot was a picture. Knowing he had to shift me, he charged.

That might have been a mistake, as my Saurus Guard were now dishing out D3 damage, and Arrow Boyz are not all that in close combat.

They managed to grab two objectives, but my Saurus Guard steadily advanced.hacking their way through the Orruks. The game ended when a single Saurus Guard broke from combat to grab the centre objective while his mates hammered more Arrow Boyz into the ground. A victory, but so very, very close to defeat – after the first turn, we did not have any idea how we were going to deal with those Bonesplitterz!

 

Game Four

After a good night’s rest, we were back on the Sunday morning, this time facing a combined Death force – and just looking at their army before deployment, I knew we were in trouble.

Arkhan, four Morghast Archai, and a Mourngul, surrounded by a whole bunch of Spirit Hosts and Banshees.

I could see what was coming, so I raced for the objective on our side of the table and camped, waiting for the inevitable.

I did not have to wait long. James started confidently, but quickly got bogged down by the Mourngul (reducing to a single wound at one point, but it just kept coming back!) and torn apart by the Morghasts. While he did manage to do some damage, there was no holding back the undead and the game ended on turn 5 with them launching an assault upon my Saurus Guard around the objective, with Mourngul and Mortarch leading a massive unit of summoned skeletons.

This game actually ended in a draw, so it came down to points, and I had a feeling it would prove distinctly lop-sided. So, I was surprised to hear that the only unit we had completely lost were one of the Witch Elves (everything else managed to hold on just long enough!), while the Morghasts and Spirit Hosts were had nobbled proved sufficient to grab a minor victory for us!

 

Game Five

By now, we were well into the thick of things in terms of fearsome opponents, and when our last match was being set up, I knew we were in for another tough time – Ogors matched with Beastclaw Raiders.

The Mournfang Riders, along with Yhetees and Fimir crashed into the Witch Eves, and while they managed to give one of the Cauldrons a good bashing, the Daughters of Khaine remained firm.

The problems were more on my side of the table. The Stonehorn had rushed forward in the first turn and trounced my Skink Priest, while the Saurus Guard had advanced (which I probably should not have done) into a wood to contend another objective. The Skink Priest went down, and I was left without re-rolls on the saves.

However, as it turned out, I suddenly became quite good at rolling saves without re-rolls – which was all the better when the Eternity Warden went down, meaning I had a basic 4+ save against Rend -2 nasties!

We were tabled right at the end of turn 5 but, by that time, we had wracked up enough points on the objectives to claim a decent enough victory. It was the Witch Elves that managed to grab the objective in the enemy deployment zone (briefly, but it was a good points boost), but I am going to say it was the Seraphon that won this one – not only did one unit hold a forest (and the objective in it) from an entire warband of Ogors, plus Gargant, but a single Saurus Guard survived the (frankly murderous) attacks of the Stonehorn for two consecutive turns, denying our deployment zone objective (and a bucket load of victory points) to the enemy!

As expected, we suffered on Favourite Game votes (I blame James and his Witch Elves), but we managed to secure fifth place in the event. Result!

 

End of the Weekend

There was not a bum game among any that we played, and we did not even hear about ‘That Guy’ let alone meet him throughout the weekend. People brought tough armies (some tougher than others, sure), but they also brought along a really good attitude. Every game was pretty much played for laughs, and no one really tried to ‘game’ their way to victory.

There was also the appropriate amount of blaming one’s team mate for disasters!

I think the team/Battle Brothers events are going to be moving into my top slot of Warhammer World games, as they really are a great laugh and no one takes things amazingly seriously.

As for our armies, I think the Seraphon were solid, so long as they did not meet Rend-2 or mortal wounds. The Daughters of Khaine are vicious and can really catch people off guard (you don’t really see them in ‘net’ lists), but they suffer badly against any force that can dish out a similar amount of attacks. I think James might try the Sisters of Slaughter next time…

Oh, and I know someone will ask – just under 50 people attended this one.

Event Report – Seeds of Hope

Games Workshop had another one of their one-day free events for Age of Sigmar this weekend. So, we loaded up the car and made the trip into the wilderness of the North to attend!

This was (I think) a dry run for their 2,000 point ‘tournament’ event in a month or two, being a three-round, 1,000 point event, using all the Matched Play rules. I went up with Andy and James, who took Ogres (Gutbusters) and Daughters of Khaine respectively, while I went with my Hallowed Knights:

Lord-Celestant on Dracoth
Fulminators x 4
Liberators
Judicators

So, a nice, compact force that was not too over the top but it had it where it counts. The Lord-Celestant was a Legendary Fighter (giving his hammer +1 attacks) and he carried the Phoenix Gem (healing him every round).

I did not count up the attendees, but it was well attended, with more participants than any other Age of Sigmar event I have been to, I believe.

My first game was against a chap called Andre who hailed all the way from Florida (he hadn’t flown over just to play, he was in the UK for other reasons!) with his Ironjawz. Now, I have picked up some of these guys, but had never played or faced them before, so was interested to see how they went.

It didn’t go well!

In the first turn, the Lord-Celestant grabbed an objective, putting the Hallowed Knights in the lead (as I did not think his Warchanter or Megaboss could get to an objective in the first round), and the Fulminators charged into the Ironjawz flank, wiping out an entire unit of Brutes as they went.

Then the Ironjawz just turned around and mauled the Stormcasts! There were still some high points, such as the Lord-Celestant abandoning his objective to kick the snot out of the Megaboss (though he was badly wounded in the attempt and was quickly pulled down by a Brute), and a desperate last stand by the Judicators, who managed to destroy another Brute unit in close combat!

However, victory was very firmly in the hands of the Orruks.

The next battle was against a combined Chaos force, which included Nurgle and Khorne daemons, with a big unit of Bullgors, all led by a Great Unclean One. This battle had a random placement of objectives in the second round and, just my luck, mine landed right in front of the Bullgors – so, they needed to be dealt with!

As it turned out, just about everything went my way in this fight – the Fulminators wiped out the Bullgors in a single charge, and then went on to clock the Great Unclean One. Even the Liberators did respectable work, tying out and bashing a combined Bloodletter/Plaguebearer force.

Victory for Order!

The final battle was against a Deathrattler force, and things went well, initially. The Fulminator charge was pulled off flawlessly, wiping out a big Grave Guard unit, and though they got bogged down by a Wight King who was reducing their hit rolls, they finally managed to fight their way through him and his Skeleton Warrior bodyguard.

So, they were ready to plough forward and grab the enemy objective from a single unit of Skeleton Warriors – easily done!

However, I had let two Tomb Banshees sidle up the middle of the table to attack the Liberators and Judicators guarding my own objective. Nothing to worry about, as they are only Banshees – so I thought…

As it turned out, these Banshees were way, way more effective than the ones I had used in the past! Their screams almost annihilated my units and they were even bringing Stormcasts down in close combat!

If my Lord-Celestant had not doubled back to support them, I would not have had five models on the objective to claim it, and victory might not have happened – that game was a lot closer than it looked!

And that was the Seeds of Hope event – a very enjoyable day and while the Death Faction was the overall winner of the event itself, Order was able to claim Warhammer World for the Season of War summer campaign.

Yay!

I have to say, this was probably the best Age of Sigmar event I have been to. Everyone was very friendly and there were no TFGs in evidence – at all. Like, none. There were no forces that looked terrible to face, and I did not meet anyone who was absolutely determined to win all their battles. A very positive experience, and I am looking forward to the next one!

 

Event Report: Trials of the Everchosen

This weekend, another Age of Sigmar event was held at GW HQ in Nottingham, so we gathered our forces and took the long voyage North!

The Trials of the Everchosen event, as it was called, was a bit different from the others we have attended.

There would be six games in all over the two days, and players would take two forces along – a group of Heroes and a force of villains. Each game would use one of these forces, and then players would swap around; playing their villains first and then their heroes, or vice versa. So, we were getting 12 games in all!

I decided to take a distinctly middle-of-the-road force for both, and went with:

 

Heroes
Gutrot Spume
Festus the Leechlord
Lord of Plagues
Blightmage
Harbinger of Decay

I figured these guys would not kick out a ton of damage, but they could sure soak it up! They also did not include anything that would ‘frighten’ an opponent.

Villains
Lord of Tzeentch on Disc
Chaos Sorcerer Lord of Tzeentch
Two units of 10 Chaos Warriors

Again, solid enough, but nothing too hideous for anyone to face.

 

Game 1: Lair of the Beast

The first battle was a ‘soft’ introduction to the weekend, intended to take just half an hour. One player would have a monster (a Chimera in our case) while the other selected a single Hero to battle it.

As it turns out, the Chimera is quite hard and ended up eating both of our Heroes within a couple of turns!

 

Game 2: Defenders of the Realm

The first ‘meaty’ game saw all the Heroes of one player set up in a village, while the villains swept forward to destroy them.

I was the villain player to begin with, attacking a mixed force of Chaos Heroes who had set themselves up in a village temple. Things looked a bit doubtful to begin with, as a Tzeentch and Khorne Lord raced towards my Chaos Warriors while spellslingers hurled magical attacks at us. However, a canny reinforcement saw a unit of Chaos Warriors flank the spellcasters, and the Chaos Heroes quickly folded after that.

And then we switched roles!

I holed up in temple and a large Nurgle force with chariot, knights and Blightkings completely surrounded me. However, while the attackers were tough enough to kill, my Heroes (bolstering one another with various abilities) absolutely refused to die!

In the end, I told my opponent to bring along a Hell Cannon (it had obviously not turned up on time!), and the shelling of the temple began, but the Nurgle heroes managed to cling on long enough to claim victory!

 

Game 3: Race Against Time

The next battle featured the villains in the centre of the table, protecting a wizard as he worked to complete a ritual.

My opponent had Dwarfs, and I had actually played him before at the Oighear event. His force had been a little… potent back then, and the Dwarf King Thorgrim, backed up by the Slayer King and Bugman quickly went through the Chaos Warriors this time round, in about five minutes. Not a brilliant match, and I think he rather felt the same way.

However, when we swapped positions, suddenly we both had a real fight on our hands!

A Dwarf Runesmith was conducting the ritual, surrounded by a large group of Hammerers. The Nurgle Heroes faced a tough fight (those hammers hurt!) and we agreed halfway through that the Runesmith should be able to get involved in the battle (technically, the rules state that he takes no actions but the event organisers are always the first to say that if both players agree, they should do what they want to make a good game – very much a trait of Age of Sigmar). It ended with a one-on-one duel between the Harbinger of Decay and the Runesmith, with the Nurgle Hero just pipping the Dwarf with a final sweep of his scythe!

 

Game 4: The Trial of Champions

This was a good ‘un and, as weird as it sounds, I don’t think any pair of players did this one in quite the same way!

Both players set up all of their Heroes on the table, but they did not have any of their normal weapons or equipment, just basic abilities. Instead, they could scour the arena floor for random weapons.

Some players used these weapons in addition to their normal attacks, some allowed mounts, some didn’t – my opponent and I agreed to no equipment of any description, and each Hero started off only with the Rotten Club (two attacks, 4+, 4+, no Rend, 1 Damage), which proved to be absolutely useless, and soon had us scrabbling around for better items!

Despite an initial good start, my Heroes gradually got whittled down but the game had not taken very long, so we tried again!

After this round, a few of the tables got together and did 2 v 2, all against all, and monster clashes – I took this opportunity to do a bit of shopping, and popped into the exhibition centre again to see if anything new was about…

After that, it was retiring to the hotel and popping off to the restaurant for dinner – the service had really not improved, but we had figured out we could bypass a lot of the delays if we simply went to the carvery instead!

 

Game 5: The Enemy of my Enemy

With a bright early start, we dove into the Sunday gaming! This battle would be another Heroes vs. Villains fight, but with a big twist – the Villain player would choose a Hero from the other side and then use them during the game as a traitor! The aim of the Heroes was to bring the traitor to justice.

I was facing a (very nicely painted) Wood Elf force, and was given Durthu to mess around with.

The treacherous Durthu fought hard and while the Waywatcher Lord paid with his life, Durthu was finally brought down by a very nasty Glade Lord on the back of a Forest Dragon.

So, that done, we swapped roles and my opponent chose the Harbinger of Decay to be the traitor (fine choice, exactly who I would have picked). However, then he set up the rest of the army.

Yeah, that is Archaon on the far end of the table. That was the first model to go down after the Harbinger, and my first thought was ‘please be kidding’. Archaon was quite capable of handing the rear ends of all my Heroes to them within a turn or two.

Then a Slaaneshi Lord went down, a Mutalith, and 15-odd Hellstriders. This was going to be a walk over…

The thing is, I knew what my opponent was thinking. He had the nice, big, fully painted Archaon, and wanted him on the table – he doesn’t have to actually fight, of course, he can just hang back and not get involved, just using his Command Ability.

The problem with that is that it puts a big hammer over the head of your opponent – basically, ‘I am going to let you live for now, but do anything I don’t like, and the hammer (Archaon) comes down.’

Which is exactly what happened.

The Harbinger got into a fist fight with Festus, who was joined by a couple of other Heroes when they managed to fight their way clear of Hellstriders. As the Harbinger started to lose wounds, right on cue, Archaon charged in.

As it turned out, with the way the turns fell, it was too late and the treacherous Harbinger was finally dispatched, but with just a slightly different deployment that would have been a battle I simply would have had no chance of winning.

 

Game 6: Only the Mighty

The final battle was a fun one, and I had a great opponent. The Heroes had to cross the table, and kill the general of the Villains. Simples!

I was the Villain to begin with, and was facing a mixed band of Chaos Heroes. I threw up a couple of lines of Chaos Warriors to slow them down, but when the first unit was utterly crushed in a single turn by a Lord of Plagues, Skyrye Arch-Warlock and a Slaughterpriest, I knew I was in trouble!

My general was the Lord on Disc of Tzeentch, and he started legging it, but was soon caught up by the Slaaneshi Lord on his serpentine mount! There were a few tense combat rounds as my Lord slowly got whittled down but, in the end, he managed to survive with a single wound!

Then the roles were reversed.

Now, this was a brilliant game…

I was facing an Undead horde, led by Krell himself and, being Nurgle, I was not exactly quick in getting across the battlefield. A few ambushing Spirit Hosts did not slow me down too much but, as I closed in, time was running out (there was a turn limit).

The photo above shows the layout of the different units and Heroes as we went into turn 4, and what happened next was a superb demonstration of maneouvre and subterfuge. You see, I knew I could not break through that line in the time I had, so I was trying to lap round the sides, using some Heroes to pull some enemy units in close in order to create gaps others could go through – no tactics in Age of Sigmar? Ha! This one took a lot of thought!

In the end, I did not manage to nail Krell, but I gave him a few wounds and something to think about at least!

 

End of the Day

After all the battles were done, we were tired but happy!

As the Awards were handed out, it so happened that one of the guys I had travelled up with (Andy) had been the most successful Hero player of the weekend, and was duly rewarded with a certificate.

Amazingly, it turned out I had been the most successful Villain player, and was duly awarded the Everchosen certificate!

The way I see it, that makes me the Everchosen…

 

 

Event Report: Rise of the Seraphon

This weekend, I was in Nottingham, at GW’s HQ, for their Rise of the Seraphon event.

I thought it might be quite characterful if I took my Seraphon and, being a doubles event, I took along Andy with his Ogres for some fun Age of Sigmar gaming!

For the Seraphon, I took a fairly modest force – a Slann Starmaster, an Eternal Starhost (three units of 5 Saurus Guard led by an Eternity Warden), 10 Saurus Warriors, 5 Chameleon Skinks, a Bastiladon and Astrolith Bearer. The last I was only planning to use if I thought I was facing a particularly tough army.

This was, on the whole, quite a defensive force. The Bastiladon has quite a nasty ranged attack against daemons and the Eternal Starhost can be an absolute sod to shift (2+ saves for all the Guard!), but I knew actually moving about and getting too objectives would be hard.

Andy brought most his his Ogres along, and I knew we would have to tone down his force for every battle (Ogres have a bit of a reputation for kicking out damage!).

Anyway, for our first battle, we were facing a combined Nurgle and Khorne force that I am pretty sure was being run by two GW chaps.

This was a battle drawn from the new Balance of Power book (as were several this weekend – every table was set up for its own Battleplan), where the forces of Chaos had to drive through the Seraphon and deliver an artefact to the huge rock you see on the left.

So, Big Plus Point – the Seraphon would be defensive!

Not so good – both Skarbrand and Arcahon were present! Given the presence of those two guys, I was quite happy taking the brakes off Andy’s Ogre force, so both the Stonehorn and the nine Ironguts went in!

Whenever you see the likes of Archaon and Skarbrand in the opposing army, it is very easy to make all sorts of judgements but this was actually a very good game – in fact one of the best of the weekend!

I was being extremely callous with the lives of the ogres (#LizardLivesMatter), and there were just as many (intended for fun) arguments between Khorne and Nurgle. You can see in the deployment photo above where I got Andy to place his Ogor Bulls…

This battle was a right merry ding-dong as the forces of Chaos tried to break through our line. The Varanguard ploughed through the Ogors, but got tied up against the Bastiladon long enough for the Stonehorn to sort them out, while the Chameleon Skinks popped up in the Chaos rear and managed to assassinate the Gaunt Summoner in a single salvo!

Perhaps funnier was watching Skarbrand get progressively angrier as he was pelted by missile fire, tearing apart a Firebelly, before preparing to launch his main assault on the Saurus Guard – just as he was hit in the side by an Ironblaster, flattening the daemon completely!

Archaon was carrying the artefact, but was distinctly cowardly for the first couple of turns, hiding behind his own lines. When he did come forward, he got mobbed by every Ogor we could throw at him, but he beat them all off with barely a scratch. However they did manage to delay the Everchosen long enough to allow us to claim victory.

This really was a Double A-Plus game.

The whole event was designed to promote a very relaxed style of gaming, and there were three hours for every round (meaning just four games over the entire weekend). This was a nice change of pace from the normal rush, and allowed even quite large games to get finished.

Our next fight was with a couple of very nice chaps from Salisbury who were running a combined Slaaneshi/Duardin force (got to love the idea of hedonistic dwarfs!). They started with a very limited force on the table but could bring in a whole bucket full of reinforcements if they could just get one of their generals to the dais in the centre of the battlefield.

We all made a couple of mistakes here. The Dwarf player kept his general as part of the reinforcements, which meant we only had to kill the Slaaneshi lord in order to stop all the reinforcements appearing. Our mistake is that we probably took a unit or two of Ogres too many. The result was the Slaaneshi general being killed in turn two and the battle being effectively lost.

However, we didn’t feel that was a particularly good resolution. So, I pointed to the Chameleon Skinks that had infiltrated their fortress and told them that I was pretty sure the Skinks had seen the Duardin General inside the castle, along with a large bodyguard – they duly placed the general and a unit of Dwarfs behind the gate, and the game was off again!

And I am very glad it was, as this was another smashing game. Those Chameleon Skinks had been pelting the Dwarf artillery crewmen, forcing a Slaaneshi Sorcerer on a snake mount to go and deal with them – but the last Skink managed to keep making his saves, turn after turn, until the Sorcerer gave up and rejoined the rest of the battle (the Skink claimed that as a victory!). Meanwhile, the artillery was constantly dropping rocks on the head of my Slann, despite the best efforts of the Eternity Warden to try and catch them.

The game ended with the Duardin General battling at the foot of the dais. He managed to fight off an Ogor who climbed to the top of the dais and performed a power dive on top of him, and his bodyguard fought off repeated attempts to drive them back. In the end, the dwarf only went down when the Bastiladon finally managed to line up and shoot him.

This was another brilliant battle with two great chaps – and I rather got the feeling they felt the same way!

That was it for the Saturday, and we retired to the worst restaurant in Nottingham (the Farmhouse, takes 40 minutes to get your food and you should really avoid the steaks – breakfast is decent enough though).

Come morning, it was on to our first game, and we had a bit of a treat…

We were playing on Big Castle Table!

This had its own special Battleplan, which involved us rooting out some Nurgle forces in the Bastion, finding an artefact within, and then getting half our force to the opposite side of the (very large) table.

Now, that is a Big Ask.

I had come across the father and son team in a previous event – in fact, I had played the son (Johnny, I think his name is?) before, in a battle where his Bloodbound were assaulting a hill held by my Seraphon. So, we were looking forward to the re-match!

I knew the other team were a but, shall we say, nervous about Andy’s Ogres, but I also knew that a) Nurgle forces are an absolute sod to shift when they are in a defensive position and b) were were never going to get the artefact and cross the table. They had Skarbard on their side and their command ability allowed them to recycle three units every turn, bringing them in from the table edges.

So, we went Full On Ogre.

Even so, it took Andy three turns to take the Bastion from the Plaguebearers, Blightkings and Plague Drones, and another turn for him to find the artefact.

Meanwhile, I was just trying to get across the table, but a Slann ain’t built for running.

We achieved the objective of finding the artefact but otherwise it was something of a slaughter, at least as far as the Seraphon were concerned. When everything was counted up, they were just a few points ahead of us on the objectives.

The only bad thing about this game is that, after the day before, I was very tired and my feet were absolutely killing me (must take slippers next time, Warhammer World has a hard stone floor!). However, Johnny (apologies if that is not your name!) and his Father are very much Good People, and I would happily play them any time.

The final battle was an ambush and, as we were in the centre and on the defensive, I was feeling cocky. A little too cocky, as it turned out!

The chaps we were playing were from Stoke-on-Trent, if I recall correctly, and were a right laugh – they were having about as many good-natured arguments between themselves as I was with Andy! They had a combined Nurgle and Tzeentch-daemon force, one of each attacking us from each side. Andy faced Nurgle, while I had Tzeentch in front of me.

I thought I would have it easy, as I placed the Bastiladon in a forest and the entire Eternal Starhost in ruins. I was figuring the Tzeentch daemons would smash against me like waves on a cliff.

Nope!

In the first turn, one unit of Saurus Guard got absolutely nuked by a series of Arcane Bolts, and that was about the time that I thought Andy could probably use some help – so I ran everything except my Bastiladon backwards, which caused the Nurgle player some consternation as he thought he was now going to be facing two armies (which was not my intention – I just knew I could not repel that many mortal wounds and simply wanted to get out of Dodge!).

As far as the Seraphon were concerned, this was another slaughter, with just a (re-summoned) Bastiladon and a single Saurus Guard left on the table at the end. The Ogres fared better and, when we totted up model deaths at the end, it was quite close. Chaos had taken the victory, but we had given them something to think about.

Again, these two chaps were a right laugh, and I would welcome them both to a regular gaming group at any time.

 

Overall, I think this was a really good event. There did not seem to be any of ‘those’ forces or, for that matter, ‘those’ players. It looks like more people are getting to grips with Age of Sigmar and understanding how to approach it. I think this bodes well for the game as a whole, and cannot wait to go back to Nottingham for the Trials of the Everchosen event in a couple of weeks!

 

A Tour of our Tables

We are quite blessed in where we get to play all our games, and I thought it might be fun to have a little tour of the tables we use.

This is one side of the Mongoose offices, dedicated to games of all types (with a dash of stock room and mail order centre thrown in!).

The ‘red table’ will be familiar to those who have been following our Age of Sigmar campaign in the Realm of Fire. However, it was originally built as an alien world for 40k, and we have some additional volcano and bunker pieces to reinforce that.

This is ‘big green’ and is generally used as either fantasy or (more often) alien jungle. Most of the individual terrain pieces come straight from an aquarium shop, and are stuck onto flocked wood tiles – or, in the case of the large ruins, just plonked onto the table!

‘Small green’ will be familiar to those of you following the Realm of Life campaign, though it is used weekly for 40k  by the local club on Tuesday nights. Most of these tables have readily removable boards so they can be quickly switched around (for space or naval battles, for example), and this is generally the table that gets converted first.

This one is normally used as a desert world for 40k, but it works well for any dusty, dry place (just last Saturday, it was hosting a 4,000 point End Times battle). It also tends to serve as a temporary storing area for terrain as it is so flat and convenient! However, right now it has a little fortified fantasy village sitting at the foot of a wizard’s tower.

This is the first of our snow tables and, despite having had a few knocks in its time, still serves very well for 40k – indeed, it is quite 40k-specific as evidenced by the upturned MkI Land Raider at the back!

This is sort of two tables in one at the moment. The actual wooden board was destined to be built upon, either as a Stalingrad or possibly Rorke’s Drift, but it was plain enough to be co-opted by the Infinity players at the club! They have brought their own terrain along for the half at the back, while the foreground has the modern Arab town terrain first put together for Battlefield Evolution (when set up on its own table, it tends to get called ‘Downtown Baghdad’).

This is the Mega-City One table, though kit sees a lot of use for Infinity at the moment, hence all the buildings getting pushed together. However, it works well for any sci-fi game, and plenty of Space Marines have met their end on this table too!

This is a table that has been some years in the making – it started off as a poster/floor plan released by Games Workshop as part of their Cities of Death range. Subsequently, ruined sci-fi buildings have been added until we have a quite densely packed Space Age Stalingrad. Battles tend to be quite vicious on this table!

This is our big snow table, currently set up as a Planetstrike battlefield. Adding more bunkers and defence posts is one of those long term projects that are always on the go, though it is a slow process.

And this is our third snow table, originally intended to be Klendathu for Starship Troopers. For really large games, we tend to keep this one and the larger snow table pushed together, like so:

However, we can also add the first snow table to the left hand side, making a truly awesome battlefield – something that was done late last year for an Apocalypse game with the local club.

We also have access to two more large tables in the other side of the office, though they are in dire need of a repaint and possible re-modelling.

Another one of those long term projects!