The Raid of Proxxi Tower.

Had my first game of WFB using the new Wood Elf army book last week. I was in uncharted territory as I was playing Chaos Dwarfs (never played against them before), with a new army book (with only the internet for guidance), playing the Watchtower scenario (for the first time). Here's how I got on.

My 2000 point army consisted of:
Level 4 Spellweaver (shadow) Earthing Rod, Spells Melkoths Mystifying Miasma, Enfeebling Foe, The Withering, Mindrazor.

Elven Hero on Eagle, Dragonhelm, Charmed Shield.

Elven BSB with H.O.D arrow

Branchwraith Earth Blood

15 Glade Guard full command Moonfire shafts

10 Glade Guard full command Trueflight arrows

19 Dryads

8 Wardancers musician and Bladedancer

10 Deepwood Scouts full command Hagbane arrows

10 Waywatchers

2 Eagles

As this was my first outing with the new book I just took things I have some experience in to judge them afresh. The overall tactical plan for the army was weaken the army with bow-fire, utilise the woods to create favourable combats, use the Dryads as an anvil for anyone coming too close, use the Wardancers in tandem with them to negate ranks, and hopefully win/break units. Then we rolled for the scenario and my plans went a bit awry, it was Watchtower!  The Chaos Dwarfs got the watchtower basically making me have to try to get him out of it, so much for letting him come to me!

 Up against me, was my opponent Phil who took a Chaos Dwarf army. To say there were quite a few proxies is an a bit of an understatement. What he took was:

Level 2 Dwarf Sorceror, Chalice of Blood & Darkness (otherwise known as the magic item of horrible magic phases) Lore of Fire, Spells: Fireball & Piercing Bolts of Burning.

2 units of twenty Chaos Dwarf Blunderbussiers full command (probably)

2 units of three Bull Centaurs full command

K'Daii Destroyer!!!

Deployment

A large unit of Chaos Dwarf Blunderbusses were ensconced in the tower with the other unit to the right of it. A unit of Bull Centaurs either side of the tower with the Destroyer centrally placed to mess my elves up bigtime. My eagles were deployed on each flank and both the scouts and waywatchers were positioned on the left to hopefully destroy the nearest unit of centaurs. My Dryads were directly in front of the tower with archer and wardancer support around them. My Arrow of Kurnous took a wound off the Daemonsmith which was a nice start and got my hopes up for the game.

Turn One

I got first turn and immediately advanced the Dryads to assault the tower in turn two. Sent my eagles to distract the centaurs and started my shooting. What? No magic phase? The Chalice of Blood & Darkness basically shut down my magic phase, stealing 2 or 3 power dice from me (this was to become a common feature of the game).  Shooting killed some Dwarfs in the tower (rerolling wounds helped a bit with this) unfortunately shooting the Bull Centaurs wasn't so fruitful causing a single wound on their 3+ armoured hides! The Chaos Dwarf's turn consisted of moving up and the blunderbusses killing about 10 or more Dryads. Yikes! Magic may have killed a few more elves to fireball but due to the Bastard Chalice - my new name for it not many spells were going to be successfully cast this game.

Turn Two

I charged the now very much depleted Dryads into the watchtower hoping that hatred would see me through the barrage of Chaos Dwarf shrapnel and start beating the snot out of them. I also probably should've tried to charge the K'Dai with my eagle rider, but instead opted to take charges from the safe side of the Khemrian quicksand. Maneuvered the eagles for flank charges in turn 3. The Blunderbuss stand & shoot was devastating, leaving me with 5 or 6 Dryads to assault the building. My shooting once again proved ineffective against the Centaurs. To add insult to injury close combat saw the Chaos Dwarfs kick the piss out of the Dryads effectively ruling them out as an assault unit. The Chaos Dwarf centaurs pulled off two long charges on my Wardancer unit (which I had conveniently angled to allow any possible overrun into the Glade Guard flank), and my Eagle rider by the quicksand. I wasn't overly worried as I thought with ASF and a 3+ ward save, they could probably hold their own enough for me maneuver around them. 5 out of 8 failed ward saves later saw the Bull Centaurs crash into the side of the Glade Guards. The Eagle Rider challenged but lost the combat, didn't run though. The only ray of light in this turn was the Destroyer took a couple of wounds from internal combustion.

The K'Dai Destroyer proxy

My Eagle Rider hides behind a marsh ready to pulp the K'Dai

'Where did everybody go?'

Turn Three

Turn three saw me desperately try to salvage something from the game. I moved both eagles to reasonable charge distances to the Bull Centaurs, and advanced my scout and waywatchers to get more involved in the shooting of Chas Dwarfs. My battle standard bearer barged (if a wood elf is even capable of barging) his way into combat with the bull centaurs, meanwhile the units capable of shooting did so with limited effect. I managed to cast Enfeebling Foe which enable me to draw combat with the glade guard and centaurs, sadly my eagle rider lost the combat and fled with the pursuing centaurs overrunning into my mage's unit! when will I ever learn to move units out of the possible charge routes? Also I stupidly let my eagles into shooting range of the blunderbusses. Two dead eagles. Amazingly the K Dai failed his secong toughness test and expired! Without even getting into combat. Shoddy Chaos Dwarven Daemonsmithery! Some good rolling saw my Glade Guard route a unit of (read one) Bull Centaurs, whereas the other unit routed my other unit of Glade Guard after squishing the BSB in combat. On a plus note the sorceror blew up with an Irresistible Forced fireball. Thank Odin for Arrow of Kurnous!

Turns Four & Five

The last two turns were essentially me trying to shoot the Chaos Dwarfs out of the Tower whilst avoiding the amorous advances of the Bull Centaurs. In this I was only partially successful. The scouts and waywatchers survived but so did the rather smug Chaos Dwarfs in the tower. Victory to the Bastards of Hashut!

Some smug Chaos Dwarfs

Conclusions

I think the main reason I did so badly in the game was my own perceptions of how to win. I thought, charge in, kick the Dwarfs out, then jelly & ice cream for the Dryads. Had I taken a more measured approach I could've ignored the enemy in the tower and concentrated on everyone else. Due to a lack of forethought I let my eagles and Dryads into the abysmally short range of the blunderbusses, who are absolutely lethal when they do shoot. If I had not tried to assault the tower until the 4th turn I perhaps could have dealt with at least one unit of Bull Centaurs and the outcome may have been different. Another consideration is my choice of magic lore, admittedly The Chalice of Blood & Darkness is my least favourite magic item (at the moment anyway), which severely hampered my magic phases. I think High Magic has more versatility and I will be experimenting with that for a while.

Final thought is that Chaos Dwarfs are a resilient army that are hard to dislodge from buildings, but had I gotten to garrison the tower, the blunderbusses short range weapons would have ensured a closer fought battle. 

The Battle over the river of tranquility (Wood Elves & Brettonians vs Warriors of Chaos & Daemons of Chaos)

Recently had a game of Warhammer that was, to say the least, a bit unusual. The game was before the new Wood elf book came out but I was using a comp for a tournament that I was going to play in, simply put it was pretty similar to the new book, ASF and use of the 8 lores of magic. 3000 points. 1500 points wood elves (mine), 1500 brettonians (Stu's) vs 1500 points Daemons of Chaos (Phil's) and 1500 points of Warriors of Chaos (Aaron's).
 The Brettonians had 4 units of knights a trebuchet and a damsel (life), I took three units of *archers, 20 dryads a unit of Wardancers and a level three Shadow mage.
Warriors of chaos consisted of 25 marauders, 20 chaos warriors, 8 hounds, 4 Chaos Spawn, a chimera and a daemon prince. The Daemons were a Slaanesh force of keeper of Secrets, Daemonettes, mounted Daemonettes & Fiends.
Despite the game being played as two teams of allies, I mainly deployed to the west of a river, the Brettonians to the east. Similarly, the WoC deployed mainly opposite me, the DoC faced the Brettonians.

The Forces of Destruction got the first turn (the Brettonians were praying or something whilst the Wood Elves stared at them with a collective single raised eyebrow). So the frothing rabid forces of chaos ran pell mell across the table. The daemonettes on mounts moved easily into charge range of the archers on the bridge. The Keeper of Secrets made an attempt at being inconspicuous by trying to blend in with the tower.  There was little or no magic or missile fire from the unwholesome side of the table, one thing of note was the mysterious river turned out to be a river of light which didn't make it the ideal piece of terrain for the chaosy armies. In our turn I focused fire on the chaos hound unit as they seemed to be the most likely unit to get into combat soon as the chimera was skulking behind the Marauders (as much as an enormous three headed monster can skulk anyway). I killed 1 out of the 5 mounted daemonettes about to bring pain to the Glade Guard on the bridge. The Brettonians ponced forward in a typically heraldic display (even though they weren't painted).

Turn 1 Bad guys

Turn 1 Good guys

In turn 2 the mortal followers of chaos made their slow relentless march towards my lines. The chimera charged the advancing knights on the left flank. The advancing Brettonians weren't up for that at all and ran off the board. The daemonettes on mounts charged the Glade Guard on the bridge (henceforth to be known as the Fot'ltpb'm'tarorco't or in manspeak Fellowship Of The Liquid That Provides Benevolent Magic To All, Regardless of Religion, Caste or Temperament). As we are playing the Vaticon comp for Wood Elves they get ASF, coupled with the Daemonettes completely cocking up their attacks, my Glade Guard managed to defeat the daemons, but they wouldn't budge. The Brettonian general's unit charged the Keeper of Secrets, the rest of the movement in our turn involved moving forward a bit (Brettonian knights), shooting a bit (Glade Guard & Trebuchet) and standing around a bit (Wardancers & Dryads). My eagle charged the chaos warriors to (hopefully) prevent them charging the knights in the following turn. The KoS very nearly killed the Bretonnian general in the first round of combat, but due to him passing 1 ward save he heroic mighty blowed the crap out of it winning the combat (an in all probability this half of the table). A unit of Brettonians charged the Daemonette unit, beating them by a small amount, but not enough. The ASFing GG destroyed the Daemonettes, then reformed to face the chaos hounds who were getting ominously closer. DUN DUN DAHHNN!!!!

turn 2 bad guys

Turn 2 good guys

Turn 3 was when things started getting a bit weird. The chaos hounds charged my archer unit on the bridge.  The Fiends in the centre charged my Wardancer mage bunker. The Wardancer unit was to prove that it was perfectly capable of fighting the Fiends, winning combat. Despite killing a few more hounds in the stand & shoot reaction the hounds piled in and killed some archers, breaking the unit. They did what any self respecting missile unit would do and fled directly into the River of Light. That's when the batshit stuff started occurring. The river cast Light of Battle on the fleeing elves, instantly rallying them. Then there was a certain amount of what happens now type postulations, the upshot being that the chaos hounds couldn't pursue as the unit was now rallied, so they had to stop 1" away from them still on the bridge. The Brettonian general (avec knights) charged the chaos warriors with my great eagle in tow. Also in my turn my archer unit declared a charge on the sulking chaos hounds, another archer unit entered the tower. The combat between the knights fighting the daemonettes ground on.The unit with the damsel sloped around the back, the fourth unit of knights were still presumably galloping home to their wetnurses. The GG now got their revenge on the hounds killing all but one, and sending it fleeing into the river only to be thwarted by the river casting Light of Battle again with the same result as before! The Wardancer/Fiend combat continues with the elves winning & causing more instability damage on them.

Turn 3 bad guys

Turn 3 good guys

Turn 4 saw the chimera charge the Glade Guard unit, and with some outstanding dice from me, killed it before it got into combat. The Marauders charged the Dryads. The lone chaos hound recharged the GG. The wingless daemon prince ambled up behind the marauders as did the BSB. It is probably at this point fair to state that this was Aaron's first WFB game. As such any tactical mistakes on his behalf are more my fault for not pointing things out during army list composition and/or set up. Despite charging, and having a +3 rank bonus the marauders didn't do enough damage to the Dryads to break them. I daresay flails would have made a big difference to that. On the other side of the table the chaos warriors fought the generals unit aided & abetted by the great eagle. To my delight the Wardancers finished off the Fiends (this was probably the worst unit for them to attack as -WS on the Wardancers still lets them hit on 3+s, plus immunity to psychology helped). It was in this magic phase that I managed to cast The Withering on the Daemon Prince and due to a definite lack of magic users on his side, I was successful. what was more I managed to lower his toughness by 3, making him as resilient as a skink! This was to prove important.

Turn 5 was all about the close combat, as a chaos spawn ambled into contact with my archers on the bridge. My Dryads broke the marauders, pursuing into the weedy daemon prince (I don't get to say that a lot). The Spawn broke the archers who promptly fled & rallied a la Light of Battle again. The daemonettes broke the knights with the aid of a chaos spawn. In two rounds of combat my Dryads mullered the daemon prince. We called the game there as time was up and the game had a decidedly one sided look to it.

Turn 5 bad guys

Turn 5 good guys

*Although I very much like battle chronicler after about seven attempts to get all the units on the map I couldn't do it as each time a unit was removed by the program (or my own ineptitude). The one unit of 10 wood elf archers started the game on the bottom left side of the table, entered the building an never left it. they were as far as I remember the slayers of the Spawn on the left.

Some Freaky Shit!

I have finally finished some mutants for my ongoing mutant project, these are some of my first forays into the joys of sculpting, so they have a huge amount of time invested in them (even if it wasn't that well spent).

Cyclops

First up this mutant has ticked a few boxes on my mutations list : Cyclops, horns, hairy. He started out as an old bloodbowl orc with Necromunda Goliath arms and lashings of milliput! Giving a one eyed mutant a short ranged, fairly inaccurate pistol seemed quite fitting. I'm sure he's not able to hit a cow's arse with a banjo, let alone a sneaky Delaque hiding in a barrell of eels!

Cyclopic Hairy Horny mutant

 Obese

Games Workshop had an opinion on obesity in Rogue Trader, in that it was a mutation, not a cake addiction. Either way I'm fairly pleased how this model turned out, again bloodbowl orc legs with Goliath autopistol, with loads of rolls of fat and a scratch built head, that a mate has told me looks like a pug. Not the look I was going for, but at least it looked like something!

Fat Larry

 Huge Arm

I got a Stone Troll hand in a bits box off of ebay, hence this little beauty. Two thirds of a Goliath ganger (my favourite converting model), a Catachan lieutenant arm, troll arm and a massive play doh* head. Not show arm the lumps and extrusions at the back of his neck. They're not overly pretty. All in all I'm very happy how he came out.

Big Armed Phil

Eyestalks

This is an old Bloodbowl human, with an Orlock arm and some greenstuff (I had moved up from milliput) clothes and claws on his feet. Two bits of wire will small balls on them drilled into his eye sockets makes him convincingly tatty. He's actually carrying a lasgun, but we all know that's not allowed in Necromunda so it will have to count as an autogun with a super secret hidden magazine clip squirreled away somewhere under that festering mound of flea infested rags.

Eyestalks Mcguirk

So that is what I have been attempting to complete since 2011, so now I can get back to something started more recently. I hope.

*Not really Play Doh.

Back into Necromunda!

Started playing Necromunda again and we're having a blast! I've also updated The Slag Valley Bullett a periodical from the Slag Valley & Fornication Gulch area of the hive. Also a couple of games in my Goliath Gang The Sons of Slagarchy look like this.

Steroids for the masses!

As there is a pretty fluid group of regulars, I've decided to form up a second gang, this time Scavvys going under the name The Tomb Doggers. This is not the first time a gang with this name appeared, but it is completely new as the last gang roster has disappeared.

We Eat Cannibal!

This leads to me to my last link Yak Tribe Gaming. This is a great Necromunda resource as well as great gang roster recording tool & battle report recorder (I haven't used this bit yet but intend to shortly).

Triumph & Treachery Report or The Battle of WTF!

We had a game of Triumph & Treachery recently (I'd like to say this week, but the speed at which I write up my battle reports, it could 3 months ago), and it was a chaotic free for all with a great deal of treachery & only a little triumph!

We had 5 players, 1500 points each with the choice of another 300 points of mercenary troops or some cash to spend on 'other things' which I suspected were bribes and such. as I had brought 1500 points of Skaven & 1500 points of Warriors of Chaos, I wasn't really in the mood for lugging even more models over so I took the money and recommended that the WoC player did the same. So the forces were: Skaven (me), Warriors of Chaos (Owen was a last minute sub for Aaron), Daemons of Chaos - Nurgle- with Tzeentchian allies (Stu), Daemons of Chaos - Slaanesh - with Brettonian allies(Phil) and Ogre Kingdoms (Karl) with Skaven allies (the absolute cheek!)

A very complex battlefield

Rather than give a blow by blow game, that is really difficult due to so many things going on at once, I think I will just give some of the more interesting happenings of the game. Tzeentch in his wisdom gave my Skavenslave unit regeneration after he killed half a dozen of them. I wrecked my Doomwheel taking a shortcut through some woods to splat a Sabretusk. A unit of Plaguebearers of Nurgle found themselves labouring under the Treason of Tzeentch for about 4 player turns due to the vagaries of the who's turn is it next random card turn decider thing. A mercenary Pegasus rider totally refused to attack Ogres two turns in a row due to masses of gold being thrown his way (even though Greasus Goldtooth was no where near the battlefield). A see saw combat between a Chimera & the ever present Daemonettes saw lots of toing and froing & the only thing that saved the Chimera from being run down by vengeful ladette daemons was the liberal sowing of gold coins from the hitherto undiscovered monsters pockets, more inexplicable was the Daemonettes stopping to pick it up! There were quite a few instances of of my Plagueclaw catapult not being allowed to fire, by various nefarious schemes. and probably most amazing of all was a unit of Skavenslaves made it through the entire battle!

The Chimera incident

Time ran out before the Beasts could flank charge my Clanrats!

I have come to the conclusion that T & T is a highly enjoyable version of Warhammer that we as a group will return to on a regular basis.

Clerical Error

Due to a bit of an oversight on my behalf, I'm no longer going to participate in Vaticon on the 12th-13th April. I was really looking forward to this as I'd been playing quite a few Warhammer games honing my skillz so I could put up a good show against some of the decent WFB on this fair isle. On the bright side the rather large unit of Eternal Guard that are watching me disdainfully from the painting table can go fuck themselves until September when I believe there is another fairly local event!

Fantastical Fencing Fornication!

Apologies for the title, I'm just making a title more interesting than plain old scenery ideas. This post is not even about a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Apprentice Racketeer either.

Recent games of Warhammer have come up with some frequent results. One item that seems to be rather more frequent in the Realm Of The Dice Gods & Deities Of Arbitrary Probabilities (scenery division) that it should be is (or are) obstacles. This has forced my thinking cap on and thusly here are some new ideas for linear sceneric goodness for your perusal;

Cursed Barrier

Over the years many evil wizards & clerics of suffering built towers and temples dedicated to the pain of others, when the forces of order encountered this buildings they were oftentimes destroyed. Although centuries pass the evil magics that seeped into the stones remained. Ignorant peasants uncovered these stones and used them to make walls to keep livestock in. These barriers count as hard cover. Any unit from The Forces of Order attempting to assault a unit over the barrier suffers a -1 to hit penalty in hand to hand combat.

Daemonic Barricade

Occasionally when daemons of chaos are destroyed they are not sent back to the realms of chaos, they sometimes manage to leave a small portion of their essence in the physical world. They can inhabit living creatures but oftentimes this is of minor enjoyment to a daemon (after all, who wants to spend years as a daemonic rabbit?). So they attach themselves to inanimate objects in the hope of returning when there is sufficient magic to sustain them. In game terms, any magical spell that crosses over (draw a line between the mage and target unit, if the line comes within 2" of the terrain it is considered to cross it) one of these obstacles roll a d6, on the roll of a 4+ on a d6 D3 lesser daemons materialise within 3" of the Daemonic Barricade. They will attack the nearest unit even if they are daemonic.

Obsidian Pallisade

Sometimes artisans build walls with the express purpose of thwarting witches and other magic users, by putting small amount of obsidian in the wall. This gives the benefit of Magic Resistance (1) to any model within 3" of the wall, in addition to the standard benefits gained from standing behind the wall.

Spiked Rampart

Generally a mound of earth with sharpened stakes driven into it to deter unwelcome physical contact. Any unit charging an enemy unit defending a spiked rampart must make an Initiative test, failure results in d6 hits each one wounding on a 4+. Normal armour saves apply.

Water Filled Ditch 

This is simply a shuck filled with rainwater that the unit uses to delay charging opponents. As someone who has had the misfortune of falling into 2 feet of ditchwater, then floundered around trying to climb out of the ditch, I can tell you it's not a good place to be, particularly if you were fighting heavily armed Orcs (I wasn't at the time, thankfully). Any unit attacking a defended water filled ditch gains the Always Strikes Last special rule for the first round of combat (and wet pants too).

Poisonthorn Hedge

Venomthorn is an unpleasant plant that exudes a poison from its thorns (hence the name), any model attacking a unit defending the hedge are at -1 to hit trying to avoid the thorns, in addition any attacks that roll a natural 1 to hit inflict a ST2 poisoned attack on themselves. In addition any model fighting over a Venomthorn Hedge gains the poisoned attacks special rule for the first round of combat.