Into the Valley of Death...

Earlier this week, I played a re-match of the game I had earlier in the year of WHFB using my Empire troops against Ians' Orcs & Goblins Army. Previously the game was a narrow victory to the Orcs after a hard fought match. This time though was the first outing of my forces using the fully fledged latest edition of the Empire Army book.

The game once we deployed was pretty much in the bag from the start for Ians' Orcs. I had taken my previous army list and re-jigged it using the new points values, this time to a slightly larger 2200pts match off. It wasn't much of a surprise that I ended up with less troops for the 2200 than I did for the 2000pts in the last match.


Admittedly, I did have a character, inthe form of Kurt Helborg in a unit of Reiksguard knights, to see what difference they might make, but otherwise a pretty light weight force. Ian unfortuneatly for my little force, had min-max'd his troop selection to deal with anything the Empire might throw at him. This included a reasonable firing line of bolt throwers, a rock lobber, a horde orc archers and a doom diver. He also had a front line of a solitary troll and three of the giant squig mangler things. As the game turned out, he probably didn't need the rest of his army, in the form of two orc hordes, a couple of goblin chariots and a couple of small wolf rider units.

Into the Valley of Death

With little in the way of meaningful fire power, my Empire forlornly charged forward into the teeth of the storm.

Needless to say, most of the troops never made it to the Orc firing line, either shot to bits, or swathed down by the sgiug mangler things. Even the mighty Empire general and his knights didn't even get the swing a sword as they were quickly cut to bits and the general dying ignominiously with a doom diver to the head.

The mortar and it's crew were the hero's of the story with three direct hits in three rounds on one the orc units and nearly braking it. The pistoliers also managed to survive to the end and took out a unit of wolf riders.

All in all not pretty, for the Empire at least on their first outing for the new lists, and another pretty odd match with a reversal of traditional roles with the Empire charging into an Orc line.

I don't have an issue with the game on the night, which was fun ( in a vaguely masochistic sort of way) and Ian played a stormer of a game playing to his army's strengths really well. I do have an issue with the new army book though which I was pretty under whelmed with, when it came out.

In brief, I feel that to 'win' with the army now you need to go down the route of lots of cheap hordes, the same as lots of the other armies have gone one way or another. Not a problem in it's self, but it's not the Empire image that got me into the army, and indeed WHFB, in the first place. I will no doubt continue to have the occasional game with my Empire in the future, but I will stick to the army I like, which may mean a battle lost before it's begun.