Empire vs Orcs - 'Less is More'

This week my club game was a lay-down game of WHFB with Ian, who rather than using his more usual army of Ogre Kingdoms, decided to field his Orcs and Goblins army, pitted against my trusty Empire stalwarts.

Early stages on the left and centre.
The Empire attacks

An interesting and one of which was unusual to say the least, unusual apart from my usual deplorable dice throwing for the first three quarters of the game.

The first unusual part being that the Empire went on the offensive and launched themselves at the Orc horde who were playing it very cagey.

The second unusual part was that the usually effective hordes, shiny machines, nasty trolls and so on didn't really do very well for either side, it was the insignificant skirmish types and lowly goblins and militia that did the damage to each of the armies.

Solitary squig-hopper chases a horde of halberdiers
from the fray

My right flank disintegrated pretty early on (round 2 really) facing some skirmish type squig-hoppers (though they did return in part later in the game) and such and my steam tank was brought to a juddering halt by a couple of well placed bolt shots and being run over by some purple chained flailing monstrosity whose name escapes me. The steam tank then proceded to fail to do anything bar damage itself trying to build up steam, and turned into a traffic obstruction in the middle of the table.

Only the militia on the left flank and the flaggellants recovered any honour for the Empire towards the end of the game where the dice rolling improved and a couple of enemy units were pulverised.

Steam tank becomes a non-mobile, non-firing
gun platform

A fun game and lots of laughs and full of the usual Warhammer silly events which really make the game worth playing like the almost entire unit of halberdiers with mage in tow being chased across the field by a solitary squig-hopper, the lone flaggellant battling a horde of black orcs, the twenty six wounds inflicted on a couple of wolf riders by the militia or (my favourite) the mortar crew locked in combat with a whol;e unit of wolf riders and winning!

At the end of the game, when time beat us we tallied up the points and going by what I had on the field; a warrior priest, my general, two knights, a couple of pistoliers, a steam tank with three wounds left and half a unit of halberdiers with the mage, I had the total of 1275pts (mainly characters) on the field, if the unit isn't destroyed they still count. Ian having 1400 or so points, even though his force still numbered in the multitudes, so victory to him and well deserved. My point here is the 8th ed victory points rules just don't reflect the actual state of affairs, I was beaten with only a token force left on the field where-as Ian still had a viable, though depleted army, but only managed a narrow victory. A decided case of 'should have left things as they were' if ever there was one. Still it is a game I know, and I do tend to look at these things from a 'historical gamer' point of view (or so I'm told, but I do like these things to feel right. Maybe next time we'll just use the old system, just to keep me happy.

I note from the interweb that GW are finally releasing the next incarnation of the Empire Army book along with a few new toys to go with it at the beginning of next month. I'll reserve judgement until I see what's on offer but you never know, the demi-gryff knights may be nice plus the war alter thingy I'm sure will have all sorts of conversion possibilities.

I'll certainly pick up the army book which will be the forth, if not the fifth version of this I'll have. Does make you think doesn't it, money spinning scheme any one? I hope it's got some nice piccies.