WHFBs 6th Ed - Empire vs Orcs Bash

 

Managed to have a Warhammer Fantasy bash at the club this week. First WHFB's outing for my Empire chaps in over 8 years (which happened to be a 6th Ed game too) and around 5 since last outing at all with the troops, then with the 9th Age rules.

Had had a couple of chats over the interweb during Covid about looking out the old 6th Ed stuff and finally got around to arranging a game with Kev and his Orc Boyz and game was duly played this week.

Managed all the rules OK with memories providing most of the details and only a couple of look ups required for a couple of details so both pretty pleased with brain power here as we both expected to be struggling but all pretty much fell into place once we got going.

The game was most enjoyable and won't put down a blow by blow account of the action, but suffice to say being seriously outnumbered from the get go and a poor deployment sealed the Empire's fate for the result. Though it wasn't all one sided and managed to score a couple of minor victories it was a well deserved overall victory for the Orks. Only three Empire units left on the field at the end and them pretty badly mauled and the Orcs still having 6 or so largely intact units rampaging about.

I did do my usual with my artillery and the Great Cannon blew up on it's first shot Rd 1 to much merriment, pretty standard for my luck with artillery dice unfortuneately. Kev also had similar luck with his wizard on his 2nd spell with the Gobbo type's head exploding, also producing much laughter.

The game produced quite a bit of interest on the night and a couple of bods expressed interest in digging out their 6th Ed armies for a bash, so all good from that point of view.

So there's likely to be some more 6th Edition action coming up, hopefully in the near future, and I'll endeavour to put up a better showing with the chaps in black & yellow. (I feel a gun line coming up with no doubt an explosive result). Watch this space for the next exciting episode soon.

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.

Empire vs Vampire Counts - 6th Ed Warhammer

Last week, myself and John Muir had decided on organising a game for this weeks club night and with neither of us had anything particular in mind and we ran through a few options to see what peeked our fancy, and it was John, rather randomly for him, plucked out of the air the option of Warhammer, though with 6th Ed rules, being the latest version he had in his possession or indeed played. Myself, having liked the 6th more than it's proceeding versions a lot more (mainly because I had actually managed to win some games of 6th) thought this a splendid idea and we ventured into WHFB territory once more, the first time in yonks.

Both armies head purposefully towards each other

John went for his usual undead themed Vampire Counts and of course I led my Empire into the fray each with a 2000pt pitched battle, nothing fancy as both of us were a bit rusty on the rules to say the least.

We both picked things up again pretty quickly however, and other than me getting a few different edition rules in my head, things went pretty quickly all in all.

Apart from my atrociously bad deployment and putting my Great Cannon behind a hill and trees so that it only fired in the first round of the game, killing a solitary skeleton and my General and his accompanying knights never actually getting into combat, the Empire held it's own rather than crashing and burning as it would normally do against the Undead, though helped in a large dose by John's poor to terrible dice rolling and his miraculous ability to miscast spells in almost every round,

One thing I had forgotten though I remembered when it happened was that when defeated in combat and outnumbered by fear causing foes, your unit automatically breaks, and I remembered this when losing a combat by one and outnumbered by a couple I lost an entire unit of swordsmen and a Warrior Priest when pursued. I did have revenge though when for one my Greatswords actully chopped up John's nasty Knights right at the beginning with little loss and though by attrition, also managed to remove his unit of Wights with the Army Standard over about three, if not four rounds.

End Game and not much left on table when time beat us to the punch

As usual with these games, we were pipped at the post by time and at the end of the game John had his largely intact Skeleton units on the table and his ethereal General plus a handful of Zombies still chewing away at the Flagellants and I had my untouched General and Knights plus half the Greatswords, plus a unit of Archers and a Unit of Handgunner's who also hadn't managed to do very much either.

A very enjoyable and worthy trip down memory lane for the both of us and likely to be repeated event sometime in the near future.

Warhammer 8th; Empire vs Chaos

A bit of a change for last weeks club game, with Ian and myself at a loose end and looking for a game I had proposed a game of Warhammer as I hadn't played WHFB in an age, well approximately three years, and had been toying with the idea of having a game of 6th edition. 6th Ed. being where I had enjoyed the game the most, and also because I had had most success with a roughly 50/50 success rate. (post 6th Ed I don't think I'd won a game).

As things turned out, neither myself or Ian could put our hands on the 6th Ed rules or Army books so we ended up playing 8th Edition instead.

We both threw together a 2000pt army and had at it with Ian getting the initiative and rocketed his forces on his left flank across the table.

Chaos goes first and romps across the field

The Empire followed suit and launched their forces towards the oncoming Chaos troops with their left flank circling wide to counter the Marauder cavalry circling there.

Ian launched his Khorne Berserker types at the centre of the Empire line and was met by a like number of Empire Flaggellants who true to type immolated half their own number and the other half got cut down without as much as a waving of a flail. The regiment of Swordsmen with Wizard in tow promptly failed a panic test and re-roll and fled from the field without as much as a wave good bye.

The Empire Knights with General commanding moved in to plug the gap. Meanwhile the Empire Pistoliers took the Marauder cavalry to bits  and the Chaos Knights took a while and circled round the far flank.

The wheel begins to turn as the lines begin to flip 90 degs

The Chaos horde approaches

Things began to get a bit more interesting from here on, with the Berserker types tackling the Empire Greatswords with Battle Standard and getting cut to shrebbins and the large unit of Chaos Warriors and a Chaos Spawn got locked into combat with the Empire Knights and the Knights got the better of the combat and took out the Chaos Spawn. The Pistoliers saw off the last of the Marauder Cavalry who as a last ditch attempt to slow the tide charged into the Greatswords and got cut to bits but stopped the Greatswords from joining the fight with the Chaos Warriors. The Regiment of Halberdiers with a Warrior Priest in the ranks charged into the large unit of Beastmen and this saw the Beasties breaking and running for the hills though they did rally and edge back into the fight. The Empie Cannon now also played its role and began to snipe at the unit of Chaos Ogres who had run over the Hundgunner detachment and were beginning to circle round behind the Empire lines followed by the Chaos Knights who had finally reached the other side of the field.

Through out the on going proceedings the Chaos Wizard threw some decent spells about and the Warrior Priest dispelled a fair few and beefed up the Halberdiers in return but the magic was reasonably low key through out the game but may have been different had not the Empire Wizard fled the field early doors.

Now both sides had some losses with the Chaos Ogres getting whittled away, The Empire Knights getting beaten in combat through resolution bonuses even though the forces of Chaos failed to dent their Full Plate armour save and even with the re-roll again the Empire Knights with General fled the field in one mighty gallop.

The Empire Halberdiers with Warrior Priest charged the Beastmen again and they broke and routed off the table and the Halberdiers  turned around to look for new enemies and the Chaos Warriors managed to charge the flank of the Greatswords with the surviving Chaos spawn but the stubborn greatswords held out heedless of their loses.

In the end we ran out of time with more than six turns played and no clear winner on the points view (though I think Ian may have had a slight advantage here) we declared the game a draw.

End Game

A fun game and certainly more evenly matched than most of the past WHFB I've played recently. We both missed a few special rules at critical points, mainly me with the Hold The Line rule for my Swordsmens panic test, but we played through regardless and didn't get too hung up on the niceties so probably the game was all the more enjoyable for that. We may dig out the 6th Ed rules for another go in the near future.

Warhammer; Age of Sigmar Rules Trial

Myself and Ken at club on Monday had a trial shot of the Age of Sigmar free download rules from GW to see what they were like and to see what the hoo-ha was all about.

Digging out and dusting off his Dwarves, Ken had about 100 figures so brought them along in the form of a couple of clan units some Longbeards, Slayers, Miners and Crossbow, a bolt thrower and catapult.

Following suit, I dug out a 100 or so Empire figures in the form of a couple of Halberd units. Flagellants, a small unit of Archers and a unit of Knights and Pistoliers and added in a cannon for good measure to see how that fayred.

Since the Dwarves were 'magic-less' and to keep it simple to start with, I plumped for no magic as well.

The rules, over a whole four pages are pretty basic, but slighty deceptively as the Warscroll's (another name for army list) for each army actually have the add-ons which do complicate the rules a bit (but not much).

The game itself was fair enough once we got the gist of where things were on the rules and in the Warscrolls but had to guess a bit on a couple of points which didn't seemed to be spelt out anywhere (like the Rend modifier being a save modifier). It was actually quite difficult to not add stuff to the rules as we went along as they are simple-stupid almost.

The dicing for initiative each turn is interesting which led to Ken advancing very quickly until I got the advantage and got the charge in almost right across the board.

The mechanics of the game are basic and much the same as WHFB's under different titles, throw to hit, throw to wound and armour save. The difference is the 'not really unit's' mentallity and once we got this 40K/Warmahordes individual figure movement idea on board saw the difference particularly as my Flagellants first piled in to the flank (no difference) of his already engageed unit of clan warriors and utterly destroyed these in tandem with a unit of Halberds and my General, and then went on to take apart his Slayers in short order. The 30 strong Flagellant unit seemed very strong indeed.

Elsewhere there was a line of combat involving the Dwarf Miners, his general and the other clan unit vs my large Halberd unit and knights and towards the end my archers and the Dwarf Crossbows also joining the fray. My Pistoliers circled round the battle and in the end managed to annoy his artillery a bit.

The Dwarves really got hammered in the end but lasted until maybe round four or so when we called it a day with what seemed a slightly one sided battle to the Empire.

Several of the bits didn't seem very clear like how you sorted out multiple wounds from the likes of the cannon or catapult (with us deciding as per old WHFB rules with the multiple wounds affecting the units as a whole) but with four pages of rules this probably isn't much of a surprise. In fact the first and probably most of the second page are setting up the battle so really the rules are on one piece of A4.

Our prognosis of the rules in the end was that they were fair enough and also fun but perhaps a bit too simplistic and the field anything you want and just pile is very obviously aimed at a kids market. Indeed the whole concept does smack of the games we had as kids with Airfix soldiers and lining up what you had and knocking stuff over.

Not quite sure at what size of game is envisaged by the designers, as the individual movement of even a hundred figures could be quite repetitive and laborious, so maybe 30 to 40 figs skirmish size is the target, not sure here. Moving the units about old style, got in the way a bit of the mechanics of the new rules I felt.

There's doesn't seem to be anything to draw veterans into the milieu. That isn't what their about anyway, not aimed at our demographic. Since the whole WHFB thang wasn't broken in it's own terms, if we want out bring the troops out again, I think we'll stick with 3rd or 6th or maybe (blech) 8th or play something entirely different, or if you want a 40K/Warmahordes like experience, we'll play 40K/Warmahordes.

It will be interesting to see what new figure ranges the future will bring and I watch that window to see what goodies might appear for use in other things and though not a fan of the Sigmarines, I know GW are bound to bring out something good. Here's hoping for that bright spark.

Kislevite Ice Witch

A bit of artwork here, which was done for myself by one of my siblings namely my daughter, in the form of a Kislevite Ice Witch.

She did the commission for me at my request as a piece to decorate the man-cave which will keep in with the coming season.

Oldhammer Trial Game

Following my recent dissatisfaction with the current edition of the WHFB rules, mainly to do with the confining and slightly un-interesting army lists rather than the actual rule set, I had been thinking of going back to previous editions of WHFB to try out to see if the 'feel' was a bit more exciting.

Once the thought had occurred, it soon appeared that many others out there have had the same thoughts, in particular 3rd Edition which many appear to consider the best. It also turned out that many of the players at my local club had started wargaming with the 3rd Edition way back when.

So after some on going discussions and a re-scheduled game, we decided fairly spontaneously to have a small game as a taster to see if the idea had some legs.

Four of us sat in on the trial with Kev, Andy, Ric and myself taking a 1000pt army each, taken from the Warhammer Armies book; Andy took his Bretonnians, Ric with Dwarves, Kev Undead and me with my Empire with a Human vs Non-human pair off.

The game went pretty well all told and even though there was a considerable amount of checking through the rule book to pick up on the differences in the rules, we managed to get the game to a conclusion, with the high Leadership and general toughness of the Dwarves (and a healthy amount of artillery) saw Ric duffing up the Bretonnians and some of my Empire too towards the end, and though my Empire saw some early success and looked to be winning early on, some unlucky fear tests saw the best of my army breaking and routing off the table in one round, so victory went to the non-human types.

The concensus on the night that the rules did indeed show some promise, so some future 'Oldhammer' is definitely on the cards in the near future, though there was a couple of points that some House Rules are required to rectify, the only major one being the break test being changed to being altered by the amount a melee is lost as per the later editions of the rules but with an auto break after three consecutive push backs. It was noted that in some melees, you know who is going to loose but the melee continues a a shunt towards a side of the table which can be a bit dull.

There is undoubtedly an amount of nostagia involved in the Oldhammer thing and remembering simpler wargaming days is to my mind no bad thing. Even though I myself never really got into the Warhammer thing until the 6th Edition, I do remember all the miniatures etc and still own a fair number purchased for a more RPG kind of thing.

I also like going over a lot of the pictures and artwork in the books, as several of my favourite artists contributed to the books including in particular Ian Miller whose work I've always liked.

I don't think the rules will drastically improve my success rate any, but at least the army lists give a great deal of freedom into creating appealling armies with models you've already got and not limiting you to the next batch of new releases, this in itself enough of a reason to play 'old-style'. I feel some interesting scenario's coming up soon.

Dawn Raid - Empire vs Chaos

Another title for this post might be 'Almost but not quite' or even 'If only I'd thought about it first'.

Another game of WHFB with Ian fielding his Chaos army for the first time, and myself a very slightly altered Sigmarite Empire army in a 2000pt battle.

We decided on a random scenario thrown for just before the game and it can up Dawn Raid which I of course threw high for to see who set up first and therefore the defender and the army which had a random generated deployment. (By the end of the game I had come to the conclusion that I should deploy my army this way every time).

One turn in and the forces converge

We got the armies on the table on a simple layout and Ian threw higher so had the initiative and went first.

In brief the forces converged, the Empire Pistoliers pretty much saw off the Chaos Light Cavalry destroying one unit and all but destroying the other (bar one figure which refused to die and caused all sorts of annoyance). My wizard did OK up to round 2 where he got off his devastating spell but miscast in the process and forgot all his spells and became a not very good swordsman. Ians Chaos Warriors throwing lots of 5's and 6's saving from instant death (which I've just realised actually meant they all died bar two who saved, not the other way round. Hey-ho).

The Halberdiers manfully stood up to a whole unit of Chaos Trolls plus 'Grog' and took out one of their number but were destroyed in the process (along with the now useless Wizard). The Trolls then didn't take any further part in the game mainly due to failing stupidity.

Turn 3 and the Empires
still hanging in

In the centre Ian did a load of damage, mainly to himself by miscasting in three turns in a row with successively worse results and taking out a good part of his Chaos Warriors and then his large Marauder unit along with finally his general and wizard. A good cannon shot took out one Chaos Chariot, and some grape shot did some damage to one of Ians cavalry units.

The Flaggellants for probably the first game ever reached the enemy line intact and destroyed his Chaos Warriors in the centre and then the other Chaos Chariot and went on to have a bash at the Chaos knights and managed to take one out before killing themselves.

The Swordsman unit with Warrior priest fared mediocrely against the Marauders but held their ground OK but after the explosion of magic taking out half their number (along with the enemy) this melee turned into a stalemate for the rest of the game where neither side managed to kill each other for three turns worth of combats (annoying on my part as there were only three of the buggers left).

The Militia out on the right flank took on the Chaos spawn and destroyed it with out loss (and indeed lasted to the end of the game completely intact).

With it all going actually quite well, and Ian thinking of throwing in the towel. the Empire launched it's killing blow, with the Greatswords and the Arch Lector charging the small unit of Chaos Warriors (with To Hit and To Wound Re-rolls). Surely it doesn't get much better.

Beginning Turn 4 and the Empires actually winning!

Of course it all went suddenly wrong and the Arch Lector and the Greatswords only managing to kill 3 of the nine enemy, but they managed to kill 7 of the Greatswords. And of course I failed the panic test and of course they didn't run far and were caught and destroyed. Dang!

The game went the full 6 rounds and at the end Ian managed a minor victory on points (900 to 700). A game full of surprises and probably the first game ever that's gone the full distance.

In hind sight I should have not bothered charging at the end and done something else and I even thought that at the time but the way I played the game probably made it more memorable than if I had done the 'right thing' and actually won (though that would have been nice too).

Anyway, another game to remember and one of several firsts for WHFB's and that certainly can't be bad.

Next game of WHFB will be against Andy's Dwarves and that will be a first too.