First game of Age of Sigmar

Last night Duncan and I finally got together for a game night, and with all the buzz surrounding it we decided to give Age of Sigmar a go. Both of us were rather skeptical from the get go, but the freedom provided with the army building (i.e. just pick the models you want to use) and the promise of a quick and easy game lured us in to giving it a go.

So having packed a lot of miniatures that have rarely seen the table, I set off to meet up with Duncan at his place and we went through the motions of setting up a game, as per the rules and played with absolutely no modification... except for some units were we couldn't make them fit with the rules given.

For instance I had a Flesh Golem which I counted as a Crypt Horror Haunter - but normally in order to field such a unit I would need to have 3 of the things. Seeing as the rest of the game system relies more on the social agreement of having fun rather than overly competetative list min-maxing, we both agreed that it wouldn't really be a problem.

This is what Duncan fielded as his army. A long neglected collection of High Elfs from days of yore when that number of miniatures was all that was required for you to play a game of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I had never seen them in the flesh and I'm pretty sure Duncan had great fun getting them back on the table. Notice all those damned Princes running around with their Charmed Shield - they're pretty damn hard to get off the table when you yourself don't rely on such magical trickery to win you the battle!

And this is then my hodgepodge collection of miniatures put on for this game. A good amount of Undead (soon to increase, once I get around painting all of my Mantic miniatures), with a couple of "Mercenary" units from by very small collection of Chaos Warriors and Orcs - an alliance of Evil, if you will, led by Niels - the Necromancer. To me, then we might as well have ended the game at that point - I was happy enough to have put all of these miniatures up for a battle - some of them freshly painted and others had been painted years and years ago and only now saw their first battle - such as this Snow Troll that I used as a Gorger in this game:

And not to forget these chaos warriors that I had painted up when I had the idea of starting an 8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy army and had to find the army with the lowest model count. Sadly, that never came to fruition (I got burned out almost instantly because of the number of models required - even for a low-model-count army such as this). So here they are then, on the table for the first time as well:

The initial turn saw us manouvering our flanks and slowly moving our centre towards each other. And by turn two we got stuck in. I won the roll-off for going first in turn two and was already within charge range of most of his units, and thus the undead horde shambled to war.

However, I hadn't enough models in any of the Skeleton Warrior unit to get their bonuses, but even then they stood their ground for a turn or two. I could easily see how you could completely overwhelm an opponent with these units - so it really does require you to think about what kind of experience you want out of the game. If you just want to win at all cost, you could easily do so. But if you want to have some fun, pushing around lead/plastic miniatures on the board and invent a narrative as you go along, then it's just as easy to go for this with minimal fuss.

With my center slowly falling apart I was doing what I could to get my right flank up to engage his left flank that was slowly coming apart. Those White Lions are pretty great but they couldn't really keep the flank secure. Unfortunately, my Chaos Mercenaries weren't overly interested in moving forward at this critical juncture - which meant that his center broke through!

My Cairn Wraith, along with some dismounted Hexwraiths out there on the far right, was doing what they could to get through and start mincing up his right flank. But alas, the Prince joined in on the battle and made short work of the Cairn Wraith - and then, with Duncan having initiative the next turn, he then proceeded to engage the Hexwraiths and stalled my flanking.

Meanwhile I tried, as best as I could, to stall his right flank going forward, with my Black Orc Big Boss (the ogre miniature here) taking out a Great Eagle, then surviving a round of fighting the Dragon... which then proceeded to make mincemeat out of him. Sad to see him go, but then again - it was to be expected - as great as a Orc Boss is, he isn't really kitted out to take care of a Dragon on his own!

As for the actual game, then it was really a great experience - so much so that it automatically triggered an idea in my head that I'm currently working on. It flowed really great and was easy to get into and play - but not so easy that it was devoid of any tactical decisions. In fact, there was a lot of tactical considerations in the game - provided, I think, that you play with "balanced" armies. Duncan had a Dragon which was, basically, impervious to most of what I had brought to the table. He wasn't himself overly keen on taking it but I did encourage him as he had just painted the thing.

Alas, it was a hard nut to crack - I simply didn't have any Mortal Wound causing units around that I needed to take care of it. The bloody thing had a Save of 4+ with a Charmed Shield, meaning that it would re-roll any failed Saves. Oh and it had something like 14 wounds as well!

But all in all - I had great fun! The game flowed really well and the freedom of choice - i.e. just put some miniatures on the table - was really welcomed. I'm pretty sure that was the main selling point for me, coupled with the fact that it was free to play as well. I for one welcome this new edition, if you can call it that, to Warhammer Fantasy and I'm hopeful for the future of the hobby with this new kid on the block. There's so much potential in this game for narrative scenarios and, provided that you play with likeminded people, then there's a ton of fun to be had by simply putting your miniatures on the table and get a game going!

As for what I'm tinkering on... well, I'll let you know in a week or so.

The Orcs are Marauding - First Game vs. Michael

The scene Wednesday night, upon deployment, as Michael and I had our second game together - and his first with his fully painted army!

Michaels great 'Ironskin' Goblins - the two units of these proved to be a pain in the neck as they seemed almost impossible to kill off!

Last wednesday I had a great game of GOB15 with my mate Michael who had painted up his very first army in, well, forever really. It looks rather good on the tabletop and this also meant that we could finally adhere to my houserules of no gaming without painted miniatures!

Astute readers may note that we're playing on a 'new' battleboard than what I've shown on the blog up until now. It's the old 4' by 4' battleboards that I made way back when and the only reason as to why I pulled them out of storage is because each of the individual boards are only 2' by 2' - making it easy to set up a nice battlefield for GOB15 that actually fits my tablespace! Still - I prefer my mats and I'm going to be making a couple of 3' by 2' mats in the spring for my GOB15 games - the current one is just a tiny bit too big for my table space.

The skeleton horde fights against the Ironskins... for something like three turns in a row, which gave the greenskins ample opportunity to outflank me.

However it also meant that my unit of the match - the Skeleton Knights - had an equal oppurtunity to outflank on the right hand side; hitting the Ironskin unit in the side again and again in the vain hope of giving me a couple of points!

Mere moments before the skeleton Horde, alongside the Necromancer are demolished by a party of War Orcs that hit them in the flank time and again, which finally freed up the Ironskins to hit my Skeleton Warriors in their flank, killing the remnants off outright and thus winning Michael the game.

The game was a good one as ever. It came down to a couple of tactical errors on my part coupled with the wrong die-result in the wrong die-roll. But once again it made it clear just how much I enjoy the game in itself. It really is great! However it is not perfect and we discussed some things that we might need to change at some point in our "league".

First off it doesn't seem "fair" that the defender may include the Camp and Baggage as part of his point cost when deploying as he has not paid for them either. We're instead suggesting that the Camp and Baggage are taken out of the equation during deployment and that the defender has to place half his points worth of troops on the table. Otherwise, there's little point in being the attacker apart from the first turn.

Further, there's still some niggles about the Camps and Baggage as well. I'd personally prefer that the camp had a number of "hit points" equal to the number of sutlers and what not that would appear as part of a habitat roll and that they would then act as a unit on their own. This would then mean that upon contacting the camp, you'd "move to contact" with the camp instead of just mosing in and setting it ablaze.

And finally - how exactly does unit foot-print work in GOB? We couldn't really figure out whether a unit could move through an enemy unit based on the unit leader or the figures around the unit leader. Does the models in a unit signify the area of no-go-zone as for movement or do you base it on the unit leader fully?

Still - a great game and we're slowly getting ready to publish a completed set of rulesadditions for GOB15 - next up, we're looking into making ourselves a couple of scenarios, especially one suited for three players. Any ideas for this are more than welcome!