On the art of rolling 1s

[Deathwing_Matt]

Whatever happened to Father Brian?

Thus encouraged, Brian the Blessed cleaned his armour; grabbed his hammer; and rode once more to face the enemies of is god.

GORDON'S BRIAN'S ALIVE!!!! 

[roland murat]

Sadly, mini-hammer has been called off and Father Brian's return is postponed. I'm currently lining up an Empire/Skaven battle using the Hail Ceaser ruleset so he may ride again soon.

[underscore]

Just for the record I'd certainly be interested in trying a Fantasy Ceasar game at some point. Would probably have to be a Saturday as we live in opposite weekday slots, of course, but it'd be good to try a different unit-based game.

[roland murat]

Im going to do a trial run against Tom in a couple of weeks and if it works I'll do something for a weekend game

[roland murat]

A Return

For the first time in ages I actually got in a game of fantasy - using WOC against the new Dwarf army list. I was running an unkillable lord, bsb, 20 warrior (NU, halberd, sh, fc) 4 chariots, some dogs, knights and crushers.

Rob was using a Thane, 2 runesmiths, bsb, 2 blocks of quarrellers, iron drake chappies, a cannon, organ gun and 6 gyros.

We both made mistakes having not played much but it was very much a game of  halves. The gyros did a lt of damage to the warrior block (which failed to see combat) but, as my army closed on the dwarf line, they were forced to take more risks allowing me to pick them off. In combat the dwarves didn't do so well.

I'm not sure what to make of the gyrocopters. Clearly they have the potentially to be really annoying and cause havoc; particularly in  lower toughness units. But the rest of the army can't keep pace. I suspect this rather allows magic/missile weapon equipped armies to treat the dwarves as two armies. Firstly take down the gyroc (gaioning 600 odd points) and then worry about the other stuff if thats not enough to gain the win.

I'd be intereted to here how the army got on against the skaven in slot 2.

Overall, it was nice to get a win and - more importantly - a but of practice ahead of potential involvement in the next campaign.

[underscore]

They didn't do too well against them either. :)

I brought the Stormvermin/Bell Seer/BSB block supported by 2x50 Slaves, a unit of Clanrats, 2 Rat Darts, 5 Gutter Runners, 3 Rat Ogres, the unholy WLC/HPA/DW trio and a couple of Warlock Engineers and a regular Chieftan.

Was very strange playing Skaven for the first time in months, but essentially by the end of turn two the Irondrakes had been 13thed mostly away and pretty much all my infantry blocks were intact and running towards the Dwarven lines. The Gyros behind me were a pain (they managed to wipe out my entire Stormvermin block, for example, and certainly the WLC didn't last very long!) but ultimately there wasn't as much to fear from the Dwarven line as I expected. I was kinda hoping that the Doomwheel would deal with the gyros but he wasn't rolling as well as the rest of my army (and, to be fair, I was having a very good day on the dice)!

That might've been a side effect of Skaven being reasonably quick as a race, of course - it kinda seemed that having a swarm of Gyros buzzing around needs a real hard-hitting anvil for my army to smash itself on as it had no other option but to get into combat asap. But then there's always 13th/Purple Sun/etc for such things so I dunno, I suspect Rob has more qualified opinions on such things. :)

[Crompton]

I think Gyros are reasonable and certainly did good jobs. 3 took out Pete's stormvermin, BSB, Seer and put 3 wounds on the bell. However they are slightly expensive as pure chaff... and Pete's doomwheel still killed 3 or 4 out of the 6, heh. I think they need more support than they really got from the rest of the army, so I'll prob drop down to 3, get more war machines and change the nearly useless Irondrakes for Hammerers. Need to think on the character load out too, the Thane general was pretty useless, do I need 2 destroy scrolls at a cost of 230 pts (2 channels and some ap too, but essentially the pts are anti magic).

Needs more pondering...and I have to submit a tournament list by friday 

[underscore]

For what it's worth that was almost exactly the list I was expecting to face, and I wasn't particularly optimistic about my chances against it.

Those destroy scrolls are just one of those things that only feel as good as your last roll though - if you'd managed to destroy both Plague and the 13th rather than roll 3s I'm sure you'd be feeling a bit better about them! :) But then saying that; as a Daemon and Skaven player misplaced faith in the dice gods are kinda my speciality, so what do I know?

[roland murat]

So, yesterday Pete and I tried out the Hail Ceaser ruleset with converted fantasy armies. DoC took on Skaven.

Overall, it seemed pretty decent and the armies felt like they should according to the fluff but we did figure some tweaks were needed. The game is designed, seemingly, for an arrogantly large gaming table. The recommended army size is 600 points which is divided into divisions - each at least 4 units strong. To put this into perspective we played a 300 point game with 2 divsions and the skaven ones were 7 units strong.

Ok I should have gone for 3 smaller divisions but 300 points felt like a fantasy 2,400pt game. We decided 300 points was enough and units should be smaller in size. Divisions should have a minimum of 3 units to make the game a bit more managable.

More playtesting awaits - let me know if interested and what armies you want to use.

[roland murat]

Return to Lustria

So with the new campaign kicking off its time for some background.

All was quiet in the sleepy bay. A few bird circled over the trees and small lizard slept on a rock in the sun. For Hidiseeki it was a boring day. He and his fellow scouts were tasked with tracking the mercenary bands landing on the coast but at this station nothing was happening. Apart from that small dot on the horizon growing, nothing was happening at all.

The dot grew in size as HMS Vagabond slowly pulled into the bay. Behind it came a swarm of longboats as an army disembarked from the waiting transports. The watching skink had seen enough, it was time to report. As it moved the light shimmered across a bead around its throat and, somehow, the glint was spotted on the waiting warship. It answered with a crashing broadside into the trees and pain shot through the skink's body. The tree next to him had taken a direct hit, cleaving off a foot long splinter that was now lodged in its gut. Maybe he should have reported earlier.