Tales of Incompetence 1
Hi I'm Adam Murray another member of the Stevenage Wargamers Club, I include my surname only because we have another Adam at out club the irrepressible Adam Daly, no relationship to Tom...
In my section of the blog I am going to write battle reports for games I play, or perhaps even watch being played, down the club and elsewhere. I have 3 aims really;
1) Prove that yes, Warhammer Fantasy is NOT dead in Stevenage. Unfortunately my town is overrun with this other strange game with round bases, tanks and something called Space Marines. They have their own club and everything But here at Stevenage Wargamers we play Fantasy, not exclusively by any means, but mostly we play fantasy. Recently the club's been in rude health and it's never hard to get a game.
2) Shame me into painting my army. I've had an empire army for so long that I painted an ogre army whilst I was still painting it (my other army is Ogre Kingdoms) and it still isn't painted. By taking this drastic action I hope to shame myself into finally finishing it.
3) Improve as a player... hahaha. No but seriously I've been playing this game for far to long to be pulling the bullshit noob manouvas (witness the shitness) I do on a regular basis. So I hope by being 'forced' to recount my personal tales of wargaming inadequacy I'll get better maybe...
Made it this far? Ok I better start talking about the game then...
I was playing Josh Stylianou a gentleman Warhammer player with his Blasted Standard inspired Warriors of Chaos. Josh had asked for a game against a 'shooty' empire list to see if his Warriors could weather the storm and get through for the win. Josh, along with a load of other lads from the club are going to Clash of Swords at the end of the month so the game was played under that comp.
My army was
2 Lvl 4's one on heavens and one on light (I here that's a popular combo these days and I wanted to give it a go)
BSB with a standard of discipline
Pegasus Captain with dragon helm and dawnstone
3 level ones on light to get that banishment up to strength 7 (one with a scroll)
40 halberdiers
2 detachments of free company
10 archers for the wizards to hide in
2 units of knights (normal ) with musicians
6 Demigrif Knights
2 cannon
Steam Tank
Josh Had
2 characters on discs both great weapons, 3++ and one had a stubborn crown (filth) I think one was a Chaos Lord and the other was a BSB
a level 1 on Fire magic
A block of chaos warriors on Tzeentch with the Blasted Standard.
2 units of 5 Slaanesh marauder horsemen one with a champion
2 Gorebeast Chariots
1 Chimera
2 units of 3 Skullcrushers.
So we rolled up spells Josh rolled Piercing Bolts of Burning on his fire mage and wisely decided to opt for the signature fireball. I rolled my spells I managed not to roll banishment! This was going to be tough....
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| Josh's set up |
Josh set up as so with his 2 horsemen units on either flank and skull crushers just out of shot on the right. He was using proxied demigrifs as his second crusher unit
I set up to match him with my demigrifs facing off against Josh's proxied skullcrushers. My cannons out on the flanks (this turned out to be a mistake!) My halberdier block central with the wizard bunker behind them. The Stank to their right and my knights guarding the flanks.
Turn 1
Turn one was relatively quiet with Josh Vanguarding up both his units of marauder horse on the flanks and then moving up his chimera. He also threw an irresistible force 3 dice fireball at my cannon on the right doing a wound to it and killing a handful of warriors of chaos in the process.
I hit his Skullcrushers on his right with 2 cannonballs (one from the Stank) killing one and wounding another. I also got a Shems Burning gaze off on the Chimera bringing it down to one wound.
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| one down |
Turn 2
Josh charged his chimera into the knights protecting the cannon on my left and charged his marauder horsemen into the knights protecting the cannon on my right.
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| ohhh shiiiit! |
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| nom nom nom |
I was slightly more confident about the chances of the knights on the right but they also lost the combat by 1 fled and were cut down by the marauders. who overran into my cannon on the right(Lesson 1)
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| the sight that every empire player loves |
In response my cannon fired grapeshot at the chimera wounding it twice but Josh managed to pass both regen saves. The cannon on my right was killed by the horsemen who reformed to threaten my archer bunker.
Turn 3
I had pushed up my demigrifs in my previous turn as I had been worried that they might get flank charged by the chimera. This meant that Josh was able to get 2 relatively average range charges off this turn one from the skullcrusher cav (proxied) and the nurgle gorebeast chariot. He also charged me in the flank with the marauder horse.
Josh also charged the cannon with the chimera and the horsemen and charged my steam tank with his Skullcrushers, the unproxied one.
Luckily for me this meant that with some unlucky dice roles on Joshes part my demigrifs were able to weather the storm quite well and beat up on the lightly armoured horsemen in their flank to actually win the combat, making the skull crushers run off. (Maybe they remembered that they were only Demigrif Knights after all)
The chimera managed to pass another regen save from the crew before scoffing them down and running off the board.
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| After Josh's turn 3 |
The horsemen on my right charged the archer bunker who opted to flee but were caught by the horsemen. Of course in hindsight I realised I should have baled all the wizards into the nearby halberdier block. Turned the archers around and shot the horsemen. Ah, hindsight can't you play all my games for me! (lesson 2)
In response I charged my peg captain into the marauder horse in combat with the demigrifs, and aided by huge magic phase where I got 3 buffs off across my army I won the combat and ran down the horsemen and chariot with the demigrifs reforming the Pegasus captain to be ready for the returning chimera. The overrun took them into combat with the fleeing demigrif/crushers destroying them. I was able to reform at this point but being ignorant of the rules did not do this
The steam tank ground the skullcrushers down but they did not flee
Turn 4
Josh charged his chaos lord out into the flank of the demigrifs and charged his second gorebeast chariot into my steam tank.
The returning chimera marched on out of the arc of my Pegasus Captain.
The chaos lord did a couple of wounds but the unit was steadfast and went nowhere.
The Steam Tank took another couple of wounds in the combat with the chariot and skullcrushers.
In my turn the steam tank failed its engine test and was unable to do anything apart from taking another few wounds from the combat with the gorebeast chariot and skullcrushers.
I also moved my general out of the halberdier block (Lesson 3) so that he might get a shems off and finish off the chimera as I was worried it might go into combat with the demis.
I charged after the marauder cav who fled and then redirected against the warrior block knowing I'd need a 12 to get in. Luckily I didn't roll the 12. I did not fancy that combat!
My demigrif had reformed in my last turn but could not do anything to the chaos lord who hacked away doing a few more wounds but luckily I was still steadfast.
Turn 5
Josh charged my general with his marauder cav, I fled obviously. He also failed to charge it with his chimera.
Josh tried to fireball my general but I dispelled it.
The chaos lord hacked down enough demigrifs in his turn to finally take away their steadfast and run them down.
In my turn knowing I needed a miracle I decided to charge the warrior block with the captain. He was challenged by Josh's BSB. Lost the challenge and fled only to be caught by the warriors (despite being on a fricking horse with wings!)
The Steam tank again failed its steam engine test and was unable to do anything and was knocked down to its final wound in my turn.
Turn 6
Turn 6 was relatively quick as Josh had clearly won and it was getting on a bit.
The steam tank finally went down in his turn and he fired an irresistible fireball at my general, frying the silly sod.
There was nothing for me to do in my turn so we called it.
My phone that had my list on it had ran out of charge at this point so we did a rough tally with the result being a 17-3 to Josh.
All in all it was a fun game but I was a bit disappointed with my play. I need more games vs warriors and luckily with Jamie and Josh both playing them I'll have some more games soon.
Anyway if you made it this far thanks and I hope you found it amusing reading how bad I am!
This was my first ever battle report so be kind in the comments if you feel the need to comment.
Adam's Lessons from this game
1) Protect my cannons better! Putting them out wide where they could get swept up by light cav was daft. When they get to fire for 3-4 turns they win me games simple.
2) "Gotta know when to hold em.." I'm really bad at fleeing when I should hold and visa versa need to think about this better in games.
3)Don't move an unarmed level 4 out of a unit when your opponent has a fireball, nuff said!
