9th Age - Empire vs Orcs

Last weeks club game and another outing for the Empire using 9th Age rules, this time against Ian's Orc Army. (I wasn't about to waste my time against his Ogre's again :-) ).

Initial Deployment

Standard 4,500pt game with standard deployment a a secondary objective of Holding (scoring units nearest the centre of the field marked by a small rise/hill in the centre of the table).

I went for a fairly low-key line up with a beefed up knightly contingent and additional Priest (mounted and accompanying the general) and ditching the Swordsmen from my previous list as being totally useless in the current lists.

Ian (worryingly out numbering me again) also had a pretty standard Orc Line-up but with some knightly tin-openers in the guise of a unit of tooled up Boar-Boyz and four Bolt Throwers, he also added in a couple of his usual Squid Mangler annoyances just for good measure.

Round One

The proceedings went much as we both had guessed things would but hoped they wouldn't, if you know what I mean.

The Empire generally advanced with the right flank cavalry and supporting Flagellants moving out and followed up with some fairly ineffectual artillery shooting and the Orcs in turn did much the same with Ian's Tin-openers moving towards the Knights but his bolt throwers with their 'Piecing 6' ability having slightly more effect than my paultry Str 10 Cannons, but his Lobber doing little to no effect.

Round Three

The second round saw the first major blood spatter, as it usually does. The Empire General and his retinue charged the Wolf Riders to his fore which of course fled and I redirected into the first of the Squig Mangler things. Ouch I foolishly assumed charging this monstrosity would negate the worst of it's multi-wound ability. Wrong It still does what it does but at least it dies automatically but the General was down his entire unit with only his buddy priest to keep him company. The other unit of knights are beaten up badly by the Boar Riders and flee with an on-going pursuit dragging the nasties away from the fight.

On the other flank the Pistoliers (Reiters) blow the Ian's other unit of Wolf Riders to pieces which don't break 'yet' but try and pull the riders out of position. The rest of the Empire move forward to try and occupy the board centre for the secondary objective.

The Other Squig mangler moves 'randomly' through my unit of Halberdier's inflicting several casualties but reduced by a fortuitous ward save and continues on it's merry way, dodging cannon balls.

The General and his mate are charged by the large unit of Orcy types and with overwhelming numbers on the combat resolution he breaks. The priest is subsequently shot by one of the Bolt Throwers.

Round Four Empire

The Third round saw things change a bit, The Wolf Riders on the left flank were destroyed and the Pistoliers moving round to annoy the now exposed flank of the orcs, with the un-bloodied Halberd unit moving round to threaten this flank.

The Imperial guard and central Halberds moved to occupy the centre and hold this while the Squig Mangler continued his depredations now hitting the Guard and causing a couple of casualties.

The Boar Boyz continued their pursuit eventually chasing the knights off the table, losing a couple of their number to artillery fire, and the other Wolf riders moved to wards the flank Cannon to stop its firing.

The Flagellants tore through the big unit of Orcs and destroyed them in pursuit  and continued into the first of the Bolt Throwers on the hill.

The Empire General Rallied but didn't do much else in the battle other than draw out the Goblin Hero type on the Wyvern that moved out from the corner to avoid getting trampled on by the Flagellents rampage.

End Round Four

The fourth and final round saw little in the way of blood bath, the Boar boyz returned to the table after their pursuit and the Empire Artillery crew held the unit of Wolf Riders to a draw in melee.

The Flagellants destroyed another two of the bolt throwers and the Pistoliers continued to annoy the flank of the Orcs and the Squig Mangler avoided any further shooting attempts manfully.

Beaten on time once again, Ian declared the game a marginal Empire Victory due to the exposed Orc position and the Empire in possession of the 'objective' of the centre of the board. Both forces were still viable but the Orcs were a bit spread with both flanks exposed, the Empire, I felt would need to be quite lucky with the dice to be able to overcome the usual Orc toughness but I'll take the win however slim.

Interesting game with once again, the artillery rules not being favoured. I detest the Squig Mangler thing, but that's just a game thing. I did think the points costs for effectiveness a bit lopsided, ie cheaper Bolt Throwers for more bang, 90 pts versus 100 for pretty much guaranteed kill but fairly minor really.

Ian is not hugely keen on the Orcs under 9th Age, as there is no incentive from his point of view to play in character and get his orcs charging as the Initiative (the same as 8th Ed) rule means more often than not he is going to go second in combat so he's as well waiting for the enemy to come to him. I don't see this as a major problem for him as the Empire doesn't usually hit hard enough that his response isn't going to get him the advantage.

Magic was low key again with the empire priests only getting a couple of buffs off and the Orc Shaman being quite ineffectual too, narrowly avoiding blowing himself up.

A fun enough game with only a couple of niggles which always come as part of WHFB Age, just would have been nice to get a to a definitive conclusion, but hey-ho!

9th Age - Empire vs Ogres Whitewash

Another club game a week or so ago, this time a quickly put together lay-down game with Ian who was wanting to have a game and wanted to have another try of the 9th Age rules, having only had one game previously.

I just used the Army I had used to reasonable effect (though probably aided by a helping of dice luck) the previous week as this was still fresh ( and not yet unpacked as well) and Ian was as I had guessed producing his Ogres.

Both our Army Lists were pretty light weight in terms of extra's and Ian's list didn't have any magic at all, just standard unit's out the box as it were. Again a 4,500 point apiece line up and we randomly threw up a diagonal deployment and the Breakthrough scenario again.

So far so good. We deployed our troops with things seemingly fairly close together and Ian won the throw for Initiative.

I won't go through a blow by blow account of the game as it was all pretty one sided as the deployment photo, to the end of turn 3 photo's show.

Deployment

The Ogres shooting alone reduced my army by something like 25% within a turn and a half before the forces came to blows (though aided by the usual catastrophic misfire from the Volley Gun) where I knew the Ogres would be pretty dangerous in melee. I hadn't expected to get shot to bits before then. Zut Alors!

Initial Empire Advance

The ensuing melee's were pretty much completely one sided with the continued shooting carving up the rest.

Much thinned by shooting, nearly in contact

By the end of Turn 3 I pretty much ceased to have an army with only minor damage having being inflicted in turn.

Crunch,, turn 3 

Not sure what message I should take from this joint 'nilla encounter other than to say 'woaw! What happened there?' and perhaps improve my dice rolling abilities. 8th Ed WHFB's all over again. Certainly a very one sided game from the get-go and extremely unbalanced capabilities from straight out the box troop types but, Hey ho.

Time to look at the Army lists in a bit more detail for the next encounter, though I suspect a difficult match up regardless even if I go for a very beardy list.

9th Age - Empire Civil War - Rematch (The Grudge)

A few weeks ago Andy L introduced me to delights or otherwise of The 9th Age tourney rules and we had played an Empire vs Empire match to try out the rules and a jolly time was had by all, that is excepting Andy's troops who had a fairly poor showing and got thoroughly trounced by my 9th Age Newbie's.

As a result of this, Andy who has now become the clubs 9th Age guru and is championing the 9th Age rules enthusiastically, wanted to have another try out (read this as get even for the crash and burn event last time) of the rules and his slightly revamped list prior to taking part in the locally organised 9th Age Tourney soon to roll. I, of course obliged.

Initial deployments

With a 4,500 pt a piece match up and a Breakthrough scenario randomly determined, we laid down our troops as per the scenario doctrine, and launched into the grudge match. Andy's list being based around an anvil unit of Greatswords with accompanying spear detachments and Arcane Engine to buff things up along with supporting cavalry, crossbow and Artillery. My list was very much a vanilla list and practically no magic to speak of, relying on numbers to see things through. Both of us going for Priestly spell casting only for the magic phase.

Andy got the initiative and initially only advanced his flanking cavalry units forward and fired everything he had to try and thin my ranks, but to little effect. In my turn I launched everything forward at full speed in an attempt to get as much into his deployment zone from the outset. Followed by the usual artillery sniping, equally ineffectual.

The flanking cavalry duels were different from each other, but equally disastrous for Andy. On my left flank, the two Imperial Cavalry units met and proceeded to hack at each other for two rounds or so with my numbers getting the advantage and taking a figure off on each combat until his unit broke and left the table in disarray. On the other flank, his Pistoliers (Reiter) rode up and discharged their pistols but only managed to take a solitary rider, in return my fire laid low his entire unit in one fell swoop and this left the way open for a flank move to threaten his Artillery and cavalry flank.

In the middle of the field, my lines advanced to contact as quickly as possible to contact hoping they could weather the meaty crunch from Andy's Anvil unit long enough to get some scoring units into his deployment zone before the whistle blew. A screen of Flaggellents advancing to the fore to soak up any missile fire initially and try and hopefully take off a few before the inevitable.

The centre crashed pretty much at the same time, with the Flaggellants managing to make contact but only lasted two combats thanks to a detachment flank attack and my swordsmen lumping into the other detachment. Simultaneously, Andy's Griffon Knights with their 'Super-Chickens' met my General and his Templar Knight bodyguard.

The following rounds of combats saw the eventual defeat of the enemy Imperial Cavalry on my left flank and this was quickly followed by the Super Chicken Knights breaking from combat from my General and Bodyguard aided by a flank attack from the smaller Halberdier regiment. Also, with no surprises here the Flaggellants having done their duty went down to a man havng only inflicted light casualties thanks to the super-buffing of Andys Anvil unit (which was looking super shiny thanks to all the plusses and re-rolls heaped on his Anvil unit much from the Arcane Engine at the back), and Andy's Imperial Guard then managing an Overrun on into my own Guard Regiment. (Post game note; can you get an over-run even if it was you who was charged?) The Sword and Halberd conflict in the centre continued but it was already looking like Swordsmen choice was a poor one with Swordsmen not having any of the advantages they had under WHFB under the 9th Age Rules.

Things rapidly changed now though as the end game approached (as it often does) and with Andy's Anvil no longer on the defensive but looking to push forward, my centre began to suffer. Although Andy's big unit of Imperial Cavalry did charge my large Halberdier Regiment and in the two mutual rounds of Combat in the third turn lost badly and succumbed to a break test and were surprisingly caught in the pursuit and destroyed. However, in a turnaround, my Swordsmen had a poor showing in this round and got trounced and likewise broke, unlike Andy's Cavalry However they went like lightning and easily outpaced their pursuers.

Andy's Anvil crumped into my Guard and chopped them into little bits but with their Bodyguard rule they stoically fought on, and on the extreme right the Pistoliers eliminated one of Andy's nuisance Cannons and continued to the rear of Andy's lines.

On the left flank my Imperial Cavalry and General mit Garde moved in for the kill to take out the other cannon by way of destroying one of Andy's Crossbow units en-route. In the centre my Halberdiers charged into one of the Spear detachments to try and stall the inevitable.

With the end nigh (thanks to running out of time) Andy's Anvil demolished my Guard who went down fighting to a man. My Swords continued their rout and legged it off the table. The Pistoliers and Halberdiers polished off the other crossbow unit and advanced to the rear of the Anvil and closed on the troublesome Arcane Engine. 

In the centre Andy's rallied but depleted Super-Chickens came back to the fight and helped the Spear destroy my small Halberd detachment but managed to lose another of their number to sharp shooting from my otherwise un-busy Archers. As the Anvil and one Spear detachment tried to get into my deployment area, my handgunner's and artillery lobbed a few shots into the encroaching mass but caused little damage. Andy's pursuit dice proved to be cruel and both his units failed to get into my deployment zone by millimeters.

The end result when the whistle blew was a draw on points but with me having four scoring units in Andy's deployment zone, I picked up the victory on the secondary objectives, though as it turned out a very close run thing.

Conclusions; the Artillery was pretty ineffectual, though poor dice is probably the culprit here. My Priestly buffing proved to be of little use and never managed to achieve much, unlike Andy's super-buffing in the centre. I think on even set ups, magic is likely to cancel each other one more often than not. I don't like the point and  shoot/kill artillery generally and i was very lucky not to get splatted by Andy's Mortar which could have wiped out one of my smaller units with one hit if he managed to hit. The line of sight rule just sucks and makes these seem too powerful but I suspect necessary when facing big nasty monster armies though being able to shoot through your own intervening troops just tastes wrong.

Definitely a fun game played in the right spirit in the end and no doubt will be played again though some serious thought my be required to toughen things up.

9th Age - Empire Civil War

Another week gone by and another weekly club game at the .... club. This week we have been mainly playing 9th Age, the fan written reiteration of 8th Ed. WHFB.

Myself and Andy L had had this game organised to play sometime ago, but before our game, the 9th Age team had revised the rules as written and amended the 'Empire' army list to suit. To avoid any issues (ie having to re-do our army lists) we plumped to play the 1.1.0 release of the rules we had based our lists on.

Playing a 2,500 pt a piece game, each of us playing Empire, the game was set for an Empire vs Empire Civil War pitched battle.

Both of us were unfamiliar with the rules though fairly competent with the previous 8th Ed rule set on which they are based, but we went for pretty different line ups with Andy going for a character/magic heavy line up with a small number of point heavy hard hitting units. I, on the other hand went for quantity not quantity with a large number of cheap cannon-fodder units and only a couple tough but smaller units along with a smaller number of characters with minimal magic giving more figures on the table. (The first different thing noticed was that the troop/troop types are generally slightly cheaper than their predecessors).

Andy was deployed first and had the initiative to start and advanced his Templar Cavalry on his flank with his centre & right stationary to hold. His Cannons commenced their sniping and one round one took out my Volley gun and damaged the Steam Tank.

I preceded to have a general advance and threw out my left flank to circle round his open left and refused my right to draw out his Knights expecting the clash with my Electoral Cavalry to be one way but once lost would draw his Knights off position or even pursue off-table next round.

Round two went much the same with my centre advancing and Andy's centre holding but the flank went differently than expected. Andy failed on his charge roll to get his Knights into my Electoral cavalry and I promptly broke with my plan and decided to get any advantage I could and my slightly out number Cavalry charged his and in an unfortunate state of events (for Andy) I completely ace'd the combat and his Witch Hunter led knights broke and were destroyed in pursuit allowing me to flank charge his other unit of knights with his general in tow.

My firing all concentrated on his hefty unit of Spear in the centre while Andy split his fire on the steam Tank (reducing it to lass than half strength before it got out of the line of fire), and my unit of Imperial Guard Greatswords.

My flank attack continued it's plod round the out side and slowly closed in and only managing to make contact at the closing turns of the game with the Flagellant band managing to make it and charged his Crossbow and easily breaking this unit and pursuing it to destruction and into the rear of his Spear thanks to the additional move this allowed. 

Meanwhile, engaged to their front by the Steam Tank which had cleared to alley of fire from the cannons luckily intact but much depleted in strength, the tank proved pretty nigh-on indestructible in combat against lowly infantry and this unit, already down to half strength by the close looked to be doomed.

The two units of Imperial Guard clashed right at the end and with Andy's skillful playing of the magic had managed to buff up his Greatswords and his Spear making them pretty resilient and with re-rolls on wounds the combat here went very much his way by a factor of roughly 2 to 1 but the Bodyguard rule saved my Guard from an ignominious fate.

The magic in general was low key with Andy generally getting a slight advantage due to more spell casters, but the effect here tended to be quite local, though in the Guard vs Guard fight proved to be the decisive factor.

With five rounds played and running out of time Andy conceded defeat though the game was far from over (especially given the fickleness of Warhammer-esque games) but things didn't look great though (not counted up, but I suspect the points difference on the table probably wasn't too disparate).

The run through of the rules was enjoyable and fairly painless with only some of the tweeks that had been made having to be checked. It was pointed out that my enjoyment of the rules was probably down to an un-characteristic win for my Empire (which I probably agree with).

A couple of points didn't sit right with either of us, but mainly the ability of the Cannons to be heavy duty snipers (the offsetting previous misfire/blow-up rules having been much toned down) and this ability on initiative could be quite disproportionate to their point cost. That said I believe things have been changed in response to this in the new iteration of the rules.

In conclusion, I can see where the nomenclature of a Tournament Rule Set comes from and I think they do this pretty well but they still play quite nicely. The trial with Empire vs Empire does limit this review with some of the other heavy army list requiring trial to see if more balanced but I did enjoy the experience if only because the 8th Ed WHFB rules were pretty OK but just broken by the Army Lists released to sell more and more figures. Shame really but 9th Age seems to do a reasonable stand in from what has been seen here. 

To be played again in the New Year definitely.