Pledge time:
Once again, I only got one game in when I was hoping for at least 2, but at least this time my opponent was quite slow as well! Although Ross has played Warmahordes for quite a long time, he hasn’t played much recently, so was a bit rusty, and unfamiliar with some of my stuff (especially newer releases like Incindiarii and the Aradus Sentinel).
Ross brought Legion, and was running:
pThagrosh
- Carnivean
- Harrier
- Harrier
- Shredder
- Shredder
- Raek
Max Ogrun Warspears
Ogrun solo who boosts the warspears
Shepherd
3x Spell martyrs
I took another pMorghoul list:
pMorghoul
- Gladiator
- Sentinel
- Molik Karn
Min handlers
Max Incindiarii
Willbreaker
Feralgheist
So 2 not-dissimilar lists, with beasts, ranged heavy infantry and a bit of support. The main difference being, of course, that I had 3 heavy beasts to his 1 heavy 5 light/lesser.
Terrain did have a bit of an effect on the game, so I’ll briefly describe it. On my side of the table, there was a set of ruins/walls on my left, a building in the centre, and a forest on the right. There was a forest just to the left of the centre of the table, and a wall just to the right, and then his side had some more walls on my left, and a hill on the right.
I won the roll off and went first, and split my deployment a bit, putting the Incindiarii to the left of the building, and the warbeasts with pMorg on the right, with the support elements. Ross deployed quite wide, all along his zone (14” control area is a lot bigger than 10”!), with the lessers split on each side, and the Raek on my left as well. Warspears and the Carnivean flanked Thagrosh in the centre, and the support was spread behind. (Note mistakes 1 and 2 – Forgot Advance deployment on the Sentinel, and stuck Morghoul in behind the beasts, meaning he’d get left behind turn 1 if he wanted to cast any speed buffs…)
In my first turn I debated a while, then cast the speed buffs anyway, and everything rushed forward apart from Morghoul who had to just sit there
In his turn he pushed forward as well (seems to be a theme in Warmahordes!), and positioned his light beasts on my left flank to threaten the incindiarii. Thagrosh put up some decent spells (e.g. concealment to every model in the army etc), and his warspears were out of range. I think the Carnivean might have tried to shoot an incindiarii through the forest but didn’t achieve much.
My turn 2, I push the incindiarii forward and take some pot shots with the ones that can see through/around the forest, putting lots of damage on a shredder and a few points on the Raek with blast damage. (Mistake 3 – forgot about the continuous fire effect. Might have killed the shredder at the start of his turn). On the other flank I pushed up a little bit with the gladiator and sentinel, and Karn ran up the right flank to hide by a wall with admonition up. Morghoul almost caught up!
In response, he threw all the light stuff on my left at the incindiarii, and the carnivean went after them as well, using his assault shot to try to catch a couple. 4 of them took varying amounts of damage, but none actually died. On the other side, he pushed up his warspears towards my beasts and took a couple of potshots which achieved nothing. He also ran a shredder to engage my gladiator.
My turn 3, Incindiarii slapped around a bit at the beasts engaging them, and 2 ran to engage / jam the carnivean as well. The beast handers enraged molik and cleared a bit of damage (mistake 4 – should have done the gladiator first), Morghoul moved up and feated, abused and rushed molik, and maltreated for another fury to put admonition on himself (Mistake 5 – should have camped 2 instead of admonition…), and the gladiator rushed the sentinel before flailing wildly at the shredder, to the point where he had to buy 2 more attacks to actually kill it. (This is when the paingivers should have activated, to clear that off…). The willbreaker put puppetmaster on Molik, and the sentinel charged in to kill/tie up 3 of the warspears, and killed 2 of them. Molik then went, with a line to a rear warspear, a sidestep to a shepherd and then sidestep to Thagrosh. Initial plan went fine, killed the warspear and sidestepped. Then he failed to kill the shepherd, even with puppetmaster (reroll any dice from 1 roll), far sight (boost AFTER rolling) and +4 strength. (Mistake 6 – I forgot he was a weaponmaster… Although I think I missed the attack anyway, so that wouldn’t have mattered). As sidestep only works off initial attacks, I was then unable to get to Thagrosh, so put up fateweaver and tried to hide from him instead.
In Ross’ turn 3, he had 2 options. He could either smash molik karn with thagrosh, or he could go for the assassination. Because I’d failed to camp anything, he went for the assassination, running a spell martyr up to within 8 inches of Morghoul, and then channeling Obliteration through him. Boosted to get the 10 to hit (so much for def 17), and then boosted damage, rolling the required 14 to kill him outright. Good rolls, sure, but I should never have been in that position in the first place. Even if he’d failed to kill me, he would have had enough fury left to smash Karn, the warspears took a chunk out of the sentinel, the carnivean was coming over, and I had far too much fury out due to the cockup with the gladiator.
Overall not a great game on my part, but I did learn a lot!
For next time, I want to try out a caster with a slightly higher control range, and remember to camp some fury!
(Spoiler - I played some games with a different caster at the weekend [with most of you
], and I'll see if I can write those up briefly as well)
My next pledge is back to Hobby, and this fortnight I plan to decide on my basing scheme and finish a test base for the painted cyclops to make sure it works. I'm also doing some basing for Tom U because he's lazy
