So to celebrate MLK day (that is the fact that 3 of the 4 of us were off of work and I took some PTO) the four of us got together to play a game. Ryan brought his Ogres, Dave the Beasts me with Skaven and our friend Dan with his Warriors of Chaos to round out the 4 players. We went for a team game and deciding that Ryan and I had the most experience separated ourselves with Dan and Dave rolling to see who ended up where. I was teamed with Dave and his Beasts while Ryan ended up with Dan's Warriors.
To save on complications and time issues we chose not to run a scenario or any kind of crazy terrain. with 8,000 points on the table the game was going to take plenty long enough without adding extra rules to it. We also chose to use all 8ft of the table seeings as our 1,500 point 3 player game saw us with almost not enough room to actually deploy our armies.
With the preface out of the way we set up.
The Skaven/Beast battle here on the left, while the WoC/Ogres are pictured to the right.
Dave and I got the 1st turn and chose to essentially move very little. We wanted the 1st round of war machine fire knowing that Ryan and Dan with almost no shooting would be looking to close the gap very quickly. Dave had his 1 unit of 5 Ungor ambushers come up from the right flank behind Dans dogs and Marauder horsemen for harassment. Daves other Ungor moved forward to nearly mdidle table length while all my Giant Rat units moved forward as well. My Gutters scouted intot he central tower.
Dan and Ryans 1st turn saw some of Dans Warhounds charging the Ungors at
mid table. Ryan charged his Leadbelchers at the Gutter Runners in the tower, to which I killed on on the way in, lost 4 of 5 in combat and managed to hold on the Steadfast Leadership of 7. Everything else moved up heavily for turn 2 and 3 combats. You'll see the left of this picture (Dan's side of the board) that Ryan had a large Ogre unit there and Dan had both a unit of Chosen as well as some Knights that he is moving in the picture.
Me and Dave's turn 2. The Abom. made it to the Warhounds at mid table killing them. The Monks and Gor herd moved up to intercept Knights while Ryans Ogres moved for Hellpit.
I moved my Engineers out of their units into range to use their toys. The Brass Orb thrown at the unit nearest the tower containing Ryan's Slaughtermaster missed. The Doomrocket though which was fired at the large unit of Marauders in the bigger picture above between the two houses killed about half of them causing them to panic and run as seen in the two smaller pictures. My Greyseer teleported behind Dan's large unit of Khorne warriors on the far left. You can barely see it in that small picture on the left, but I killed about half of that unit with the 13th.
Combat is joined! This is the turn where all hell breaks out. I had brought my Stormvermin in the left picture up to hit what I thought would be the side of the Ogres. Sadly we faced them wrong.
This led to Ryan charging, killing and overrunning Dave's skirmishers in his turn 2 and making it into my Stormvermin which Dan had brought the remains of his Khorne Warriors into giving that unit of Ogres 2 combats for the round utterly dominating my Stormvermin unit and killing them. His Horsemen had charged the Doomflayer accompanying the vermin and although it died it killed them in response as they fought at the same Initiative. On the right you can my Slave unit sitting idle on the hill while my Clanrats had on our turn 2 been set up to give the flank charge on Dan's Knights should they charge the Ungor unit which they did.
This picture represents both excellent planning and the result of horrendous planning. My Clanrats made their flank doing exactly what Dave and I had set them up to do. The Plague Monks although having lost combat to the Chosen had held as I knew they would. The poor planning came where the Ogres and Khorne Warriors had slaughtered a full 30 man Stormvermin unit. It was sad. At this point I also used my Engineer's who no longer had their toys to plug up the Ironguts to the right of that central tower. One at a time they moved in, angled off so that Ryan would have to charge and kill and then reform to ever get towards the big units left. I did this with both engineers separately thus plugging that unit for 2 full turns. The best use I think I've ever gotten out of them. Also on the far left you'll see the Abomination finishing off those Khorne warriors in the flank. Of course it left him wide open for the Ogres but it had to be done. Also I've never used the Abomination before so I was really wanting him to see combat.
The result from the previous combats, the Chosen have become more heavily depleted while the Knights have fled from a lost combat. They rallied immediately after though and turned to rejoin combat in the future. What you really can't see here is that there is a Scraplauncher behind that tower and a little to the left. He charged my Clanrats which as you'll see in the next picture happily ran away to live another ratty day and he then failed the re-direction into the Gor herd.
This picture shows the true horrors of war. The last engineer preparing to stuff up those Ironguts. The Clanrats fleeing from the Scraplauncher and something I did not expect to see out there on the left. Ryan charged his 5 Ogre's and a Bruiser BSB into my Abomination, at which point the Abomination proceeded to suffer two wounds while doling out a tremendous 10 in return! The Ogores broke and were ran down setting the Abomination up to go and finish off that Knight unit in the next turn which they actually never got the opportunity to do.
Dave charged his Gor herd into the Knights and succesfully got off Mindrazor. He handily chopped what remained up and with a combat reform turned to get the Leadbelchers out of the tower. So before that happens the Leadbelchers fired off a volley and killed the Abomination. What you can't see out on the right flank here is that the big Marauder unit that had been running at this point had rallied, and those white models just barely in frame are Dave's Bestigor getting chewed up by the Marauders Flails. My Clanrats had rallied at the bottom and you can see one of Ryan's Gorgers having just completed eating my WLC.
Here Ryan has finally gotten his Ironguts unplugged and between them and a Gorger the Slave unit has disappeared. His 2nd Gorger has come up and as you'll see in the final picture below finished off the Catapult as well as chased the Plague Monks off. You can see in the right Dave's Minotaurs completely out of position to kill the oh so tasty Marauders near them as they got sidelined by one of Ryan's Sabertusks using it just as I had my Engineers.
Here we see the final moments of the game. The Bestigor are dead, my Clanrats hiding in a tower to avoid the charge by Ironguts and Dave's Gor herd doing the same by moving past the tower to avoid the charge. It was a truly bloody affair. All told the damages after being added up had Dave and I in the winners circle at about 2,600points to around 1,700. After a LONG day of playing we clocked in a truly phenomenal game with some great knowledge to take away.
Speaking of that knowledge, I can't say much about the others thoughts but I'll give mien. The Abomination is something I probably should have been running since 1,000 points. I hadn't because I didn't own the model and I was pretty sure I just wasn't using the army properly; I also knew it didn't have any hitting power but I had no idea how much the Abomination would fix that. Turns out, it fixes it a LOT! I don't want to say the army 'needs' an Abomination, but it is awfully damned helpful. I also imagine that versus regular Infantry armies it isn't as necessary as I think I'll find it against Ogres.
I fielded two weapons teams in this game and after having tried again and again to use them previous to this I have finally decided that the internet is about as correct as they can be, in the fact that they just aren't worth the points invested. I threw the Stormvermin away in this game, talk about a lot of points. However this was my own fault as I'm the one who instructed Dave on how to place them. It was my own folly not having the Skirmishers placed correctly for the re-direction.
My Warp Lightning Cannon's did absolutely nothing this game. I've known that the WLC is something that almost needs fielded in pairs just to create the redundancy necessary for them to be effective in a competitive environment but damned this helped cinch it. In a game where I could've really used them against some tasty it utterly failed me. The Catapult is another waste of points. I know I've only fielded it this one time, but literally against the army it seems designed for (Warriors of Chaos) it managed to kill only a 4 or 5 models durign the entire game. For 10 points less I could take that 2nd WLC.
Well that's it. I hope you all enjoyed the report. I'll try and get the others to post here too or in the comments of this thread about what they took away from the game too. Hopefully you'll all get something useful from the report. Also, even though Dan isn't writing the articles with us, he is just getting that Warriors of Chaos army going I'm going to drop him a line to get his thoughts on the game as well.
Dave's Thoughts:
First off... That was a fun game. Skaven and Beasts made a pretty good team. For me the Gors won the MVP AGAIN!! Every list I make MUST have a big block o' Gors. Withering helped them blunt what would have been a storm of death that is 10 Khorne Knights and an Exalted Hero on a Juggernaught. Dan is really improving, but dang he had it rough a few turns. I had a wizard with pit and Joe had 13th and some Warlock toys. They never seemed to work on any of Ryan's units, but when used on Dan they always worked to full effectiveness.
What won us the match had to be how we handled our left flank. The Abomination and Gors really did the dirty work and broke it down. Joe using his characters to effectively block up Ryan's heavy hitters. Although Ryan stalled my Minotaur bus (like 700pts of Minotaur's). His Sabertusks totally took them out of the game. I really should have put them closer to the center of the line and away from those cats! They have to be the best chaff in the game, and he really knows how to use them.
I need to work on deployment. Having that many points out of the game could have cost us. Bestigors needed a little more support to be truely effective and it is about time I finish and use my Shard of the herdstone. All in all, I can't wait to play another big team game.
As far as fleeing in the last turn... I will blame that on the rats!
Ryan's Thoughts:
This 8,000 point game was a lot of fun, but I have to say that it was because of playing it with friends. Spending 5 hours playing a game this size with random opponents would not have been nearly as fun. It is always good to get out of the house and just hang out and get a game in.
I really didn't take away anything earth shattering from this game though, just a few little things. Number one, 8th edition is not a quicker game than 7th. We kept the game rolling pretty smoothly the entire time, and it was still a long game. We only looked up the random rule here and there, and just went with our gut and memory on the rest of them.
Next, the Abomination is pretty ridiculous. I have not read all of it's options that it can do so I am hoping that there are some less than great results that it can get, but it really was a beast in this game. It slaughtered my unit of Ogres with my BSB with ease. Joe also did a great job slowing down my unit of 8 Ironguts with the Slaughtermaster in it. That unit never saw a legit combat. He just kept throwing little things in front of it to slow it down. In the end, it killed less than 100 vp's the entire battle.
Finally, I was really disappointed in the Lore of the Great Maw spells. Since we were playing the full eight foot table, my spells really didn't do much. Three of the four augment spells only have a twelve inch range so I really could not support the army like I wanted to, even with them being boosted it is still only a twelve inch range. I don't think this is the lore's fault, but if I know that I will be playing on a eight foot table again, I will most likely take two casters.
Overall I had a great time, and it really put me back into the hobby frame of mind. I am painting again, and should have the Ironguts finished this weekend, then I just need to finish up my BSB. Once I get him together I will throw up a picture to the blog. Also I'd like to add, that during the bottem of turn six, both Joe and Dave chose to flee as a charge response from multiple charges instead of fighting it out. To that I say COWARDS!
Dan's Thoughts:
This was my 3rd game of WHFB and I have to say that each time I play it gets better and better. A lot of it has to do with the ability to play with friends that know that game and are willing to spend a few seconds to help when needed. The game started great and I spread out all my units I kept thinking to myself that Ryan and I had too much and it was going to be an easy game. Little did I know that the Skaven and Beastmen together could field so many models and are a huge force to reckon with. The sheer numbers of Skaven and Gors made some issues for my smaller units (WOC Khorne and Marauders). One big thing I did learn is, it isn't a bad idea to play around with different builds. I would honestly have taken more warriors of Khorne and left out some of the unit's I added just for fun. My unit of 3 Plague Ogres really didn't do anything and I could have poured the 150 points into the Warriors or added a few more Knights to my "deathstar" unit. I was really surprised that my chosen didn’t do better. I rolled the +1 toughness gift at the beginning of the game and thought for sure that high point unit would have done more, but alas a large unit vs. 10 Chosen seemed to just outweigh them by numbers. I also gave them the Plague Banner and forced people to take a toughness test when in base contact with my banner holder. I think we missed it a few times though, and I may end up running these guys as Khorne or just Undivided later on.
Ryan, Joe, and Dave were awesome and able to help me with some of the tactics. I am so used to playing 40k and just putting out armored units and not having to worry about where they are placed. This is totally different and with Ryan's help I was able to place some of my units better than without. I did learn that not all "chaff" is bad. I really thought my 10 mounted Marauders of Slannesh were more of an easy kill unit and was surprised that it lasted as long as it did and was able to clear out some smaller units. I also learned that it is not the best idea to place your sorcerer into a unit of Marauders. A few hits caused them to fall back and run away because of bad leadership rolls and spent 2 turns unable to cast any of the spells I had. I think in the future I may end up putting the sorcerer in a unit that may be better suited for combat.
All in all the game went really well. I’m happy and feel like I learned a lot. The downside of this is that some rules questions came up about a few small things and felt out of the loop because it was rulings for a tournament type of setting, but alas that’s my fault because I haven't played in an actual tournament yet. I do plan on spending some more time reading some of the rules more and going thru my army book to see if I can tweak the army a little. I’d also like to add is some sort of artillery (either a Hellcanon or CD Magma Cannon). I really think having a unit like that may have helped to stave off some of the larger Beastmen units and Skaven blocks. All said, I can't wait for the next game.
