I've been playing Warhammer Fantasy as well, though I'm spending all the craft time on painting the 40k orks, and so the dwarves of Kazak Nyoron are unpainted gray plastic and bare metal. They also don't have a good tradition of victory - I've pulled out a few draws before, but about half the time I get stomped pretty hard. The game store has started up a league, and the first two weeks of play (1000 points, equal to a fairly small force) saw me go 0-2-2.

Today I played a larger, 1500 point game against a force of Dark Elves. The other player had warned me in advance that he was bringing two War Hydras, whose regeneration, toughness, and big pointy teeth are normally enough to wreck large units of troops. (His actual words were "bring the cheesiest list you can!" Bringing multiple Hydras in limited-points games is not considered sporting by many players.)

Thus forewarned, and absolved of worrying about accusations of cheesiness after the fact, I promptly took two cannons, an organ gun, and the Grudge Thrower, all inscribed with runes of burning (fire stops the hydras from being able to regenerate the damage). A unit of long-bearded warriors, and a second detachment with great axes, formed my battle line; the artillery was guarded by a ten-strong detachment of dwarven thunderers.

Suffice it to say that everything I had ended up performing pretty well. One of his hydras survived a cannon wound to charge the dwarven gunners, who did one wound to it with their guns as it charged, and finished it off with their belt knives as it closed. This was pretty bloody unlikely.

At the same time, his lord (mounted, wearing pretty much the best armor possible, with magic protection that got stronger the harder he was hit!) charged into the organ gun's crew. He'd already taken a couple of wounds from the thunderers who were at that moment trying not to become hydra chow, mostly through sheer luck. Under ordinary circumstances, the cannon crew would strike last, except that the powerful character would doubtless slaughter all three of them pretty darn easily. However, this particular lord was burdened with a great weapon - +2 strength, a considerable advantage when trying to hack through heavy armor, but unwieldy and forcing him to go last. (This is most unusual as well. Dwarves have terrible initiative - I tend to take great weapons along purely because they never get to go first anyway!)

Gunners swing, two hits. One hit causes a wound to the lord. Rolls a 1 for the armor save (2-6 would have saved him). Blows the ward save (which gets better with higher strength, except a dwarven gunner is not a high-strength unit!) Dies, without doing anything at all, except making me cackle like a madman.

The battle quickly became a rout. The other war hydra takes two flaming cannonballs to the face, the catapult lands a shot directly in the middle of his block of spearmen and kills nine, and in the ensuing charge, his attempts to pierce my dwarven thane's armor failed as well. Total survivors, two fleeing dark elves in their giant-lizard-drawn chariot as they fled.

And all that with my runelord, with fully a sixth of the points of my army invested in him, twiddling his thumbs the entire time. (He's a potent anti-magic character, but... the dark elves didn't bring a wizard along in the first place. D'oh.)

I really need to bring the camera along for these to snap some pictures, though today it's just as well we didn't... both our armies were unpainted and didn't look all that nice. Ah well, something to do when my orks are done (which should happen in approximately ten years at this rate, heh.)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 02:17 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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