Dark Elves Vs. Lizardmen @ 2500 Points

Did Lord Kroak just twitch? No, it couldn't be. The great toad had only been sleeping for a few centuries. It must have been a carrion beetle moving about underneath the ancient Slann's wrappings. But there it was again. Dreadlord Bait, one of the great lord's attendents looked intensly at the ancient undead being to see whether it would move again.




Slowly, the priest's mind began to fill with certain thoughts. The abominable dirtmen, sometimes called dark elves were once again trying to raid the jungles of Lustria. This would not do at all. DBait as the other priests called him for short (actually, it was hsssssss isss sss s, but the rough translation comes out DBait), quickly gave orders to the other priests to gather the cohort. "This is quite fortuitous" thought DBait. The new spawning of Saurus with their innate ability to ride cold ones need to be tested in battle. This should prove interesting.




Okay, with the fluff out of the way, lets get down to descriptions. I brought into this battle:




Lord Kroak
L2 Skink Priest w/2 Dispel Scrolls
L2 Skink Priest w/Cube of Darkness & Dragonfly of Quicksilver
Saurus Scar Veteran on Cold One
21 Saurus Warriors w/Spears, Champion, Standard Bearer
2x10 Skink Skirmishers w/Javelin & Shields
10 Temple Guard w/Champion, Standard Bearer w/War Banner
2xStegadon
8xCold One Cavalry w/Champion, Standard Bearer w/Sun Standard of Chotec




My plan was to put the Temple Guard in the middle with the Saurus to one side and a Steg or two to the other. I would use one of the Skink units to screen, and if possible use the other to harry the opponents troops. Then I placed the Saurus first and in the middle of the field, well that was silly. Especially since that meant they were smack dab in the middle of a patch of rough ground. That mistake would cost me dearly.



I put my Cold Ones on one flank so I could use the hill to shield them from missle fire. In retrospect I probably would have been better served to let them take fire since the Sun Standard makes them much more difficult to hit, and they have an impressive save. They took not one shot from a missle weapon all game. That was 40 wasted points. On the other hand, they were at full strength until their last battle, so maybe I played them exactly right.






Here is what the dark elf deploment looked like.






Here is what my setup ended up looking like.






Lizardmen Turn 1:



My magic phase was not spectacular. I managed to cast Portent of Far on one of my Stegadons. The other three spells I attempted failed to cast.




My skinks were out of range so they did not fire. Both Stegadons missed.








Dark Elf Turn 1:




His Hydra moved forward just far enough to be out of charge range, nothing else moved.




He did a lot of firing. He chewed through all 10 of my screening skink unit. He also killed 3 Saurus from my block of 21 leaving me with 18 and 1 less rank bonus.








Lizardmen Turn 2:
I again trudge forward slowly. My remaining skink unit spreads out to act as screen against the predictable hail of bolts from the dark elf line. The only other notable is my Cold Ones marching to within 3" of the enemy War Hydra. My Saurus Scar-Veteran Beday Pr'sntslay'r leading them. I realized after moving them there that "hey, that is the perfect spot to get smacked by some stanky Hydra-breath. Oh well, this was not the worst play I made all game and kept my Cold Ones out of the cross-hairs for most of the enemy army.




Magic is great this time around. I start off rolling 3 dice to cast the Lore of Heavens shield against shooting spell. I rolled snake eyes on 3 dice. Even with the other die added in I would not have made the total I would need for the spell, but the double 1s made that irrelevant. I roll an 8 on the miscast table and take a wound with one of my skink priests. The worst of it though is the magic phase ends when I still have 7 casting dice to use.





Shooting is no better than last turn. No skinks in range and I am not expecting to hit with my Stegadons needing 6s.









Dark Elf Turn 2:
He announces a charge against my Cold Ones with his War Hydra. After looking around to make sure his fellow Cold One Riders are game (aka taking a Fear test because Terror - Fear = Fear) Beday Pr'sntslay'r steadies himself and receives the charge.




On the other side of the field, the Master of Assasins appears in front of my Skinks, killing one immediately and forcing the rest to form up for combat, practically eliminating them as a shielding unit.

End of any attempt at real reporting

Unfortunately, I let this sit too long and do not recall well what actually happened in the battle. So from here on it is just going to be comments about particular details.


When the Hydra charged my Cold Ones the battle went like this: the hydra attacks hitting 3 or 4 times, wounding I think 2, and in the end all wounds were saved. The Beastmasters fared about the same. My Cavalry did a couple of wounds to the Hydra which he regenerated. In the end, one of my Cold Ones killed a Beastmaster. I outnumbered the Hydra, had a standard, and caused a wound. He lost the combat and broke. I pursued. I rolled first: WHAT!?! 3 on 3d6? Why me? Then I saw his roll: a 2 and a 1! That is ridiculous, I rolled nothing but ones and still caught his fleeing Hydra. The brief reference to a name for my Saurus Scar-Veteran above is a joke about this battle. The Hydra was a b-day gift from myself and another guy to Fixeddice. This is the first battle I played against him and I absolutely demolished it. To be fair, I had around 500 points in this battle to his 175, but it was still somewhat of a shock. Below is a picture of the dice from the pursuit roll.





This is a cool shot of my Cold Ones versus his Dreadlord on Manticore. I had broken off my Hero to try and get him into combat more quickly than the other Cold Ones were going to be able to. That turned out to be a mistake as his general charged, rolled a 6 to wound and had Killing Blow. He then overran into my Cold Ones.





This is the field at the end of the Dark Elf turn 2.



This is the field at the end of the Lizardmen turn 3.






My Cold Ones actually fared pretty well against his Dreadlord. I lost 3 in the first round, but held up because I only lost the combat by 1.





My Saurus that were in the middle who were supposed to be on the side got slaughtered. The broke and were overrun by his Cold Ones. It was not even close.





Following his overrun of my Saurus I charged his Cold Ones in the flank with my Stegadon. He ran not wanting to take the hit without the benefit of his shields.





I knew I couldn't wound his general, so I was directing my attacks at his Manticore. Had I remembered all of the rules, this would have been brilliant. As it was, it kept his general from being even more impactful.

I killed his manticore removing the part of his general that caused Terror. This meant that my Cold Ones causing Fear actually mattered. Since the general only had a unit strength of 1 and my Cold One Champion had a unit strength of 2 I outnumbered him. Since neither of us could get through the other's save, that was the only modifier on the combat resolution and I was winning the rounds of combat. Fear causes enemies you outnumber and beat in combat to auto-break barring a roll of insane courage. Barring another roll like the Hydra pursuit, my Cold One champion would have killed his general.







This is him breaking my Stegadon a turn later than he should have. (I tried to play the rules the way I thought they should be, but they would not let me. Oh well...) He caught steggy the next turn. He also finished off my last Cold One and killed a Skink priest.



Final Thoughts:

Rules:
We definitely still have a long way to go with knowing the relevant rules. I forgot at one point that any monster mount who's rider(s) is/are killed has to test using its own leadership. It took his Cold Ones an extra turn to break my Stegadon. I forgot about Fear against his general because his Manticore caused Terror effectively making it irrelevant... until I killed his Manty. I did not realize the power of rough ground until this battle.

Play:
I do not think I played particularly well or poorly in this battle. I definitely made some major mistakes like sending a lone Stegadon against a massive block of Cold Ones, but I also effectively protected my Cold Ones from fire, guessed the range I would need on Deliverance of Itza perfectly every time, and did an OK job of screening with my skinks.

MVP:
There is no question my MVP for this battle was Lord Kroak. He kept my Temple Guard from having to take a couple of panic tests, but he also leveled the enemy's firing line. He scored almost all of my points by himself. A spell that can hit everything on the field at S4 2d6 times is quite impressive, particularly against elves who all have T3. I will take Kroak any time I can against an Elven opponent.

Winner:
I lost by a marginal victory, but had I remembered a few key things I might have won by the same. If I did indeed kill his general, that is another 180+ for me, and 180 that he did not get for killing the last of my Cold Ones. Of course, had I remembered the Ridden Monster leadership thing, he could have taken down my Stegadon 1-2 turns sooner and maybe had time to take out my Temple Guard and Kroak.

All in all this was a very fun battle, and I am really looking forward to the next one, when hopefully I will do a better job.

Edit:
This is the image of Shadowblade that Fixeddice was referring to. I think this was one of my favorite parts of the battle. I got to show this pic around quite a bit and got many kudos. :)

Lizarmen Vs. Dwarfs 3-14-09

I did not take notes, so this is my best effort to recall the progression.

We set up terrain with a lake surrounded by forest on what we will call the north side of the table about 13" from the edge, a steep hill about 2" south of that, and a 12" wall just west of the eastern deployment zone.

The Dwarfs won the roll to pick sides, they chose the east side. This meant that the scenery would only serve to impede my advance in the middle, since the trees and water would not slow down my skink skirmishers, and my saurus warriors would advance on the south side.

The Dwarfs won the roll to choose who went first, they chose to let me go. Until I moved past the hill and forest there would not be many targets for the thunderers and cannons, but I had to get in close as quickly as possible because that is where I had the advantage. Fortunately, a 12" march that is not impeded by terrain (skirmishers ignore most terrain, and skinks are aquatic so they ignore water, one of the few terrains that skirmishers don't) can get you across the field pretty fast.

Lizard turn 1
I moved my whole army straight forward their full movement with a couple small exceptions. Additionally, my chameleon skinks had been placed on the northern table edge just far enough forward so I would be outside the required 12", so I moved them east-southeast to get them closer to his thunderers and behind them so they could not fire on me. I had placed my lone skink priest behind my middle which meant his line of sight would be severely limited, so I moved him off to the south flank. He was just able to get LoS to the southern line of thunderers.

Then came the magic phase, I suddenly felt naked when I realized I had not rolled for my priest's spells. We agreed to have me roll them then. I rolled a 6 and a 4 giving me a thunderbolt and meteor spell. I am going to spare the suspense and just tell you that I successfully cast the thunderbolt once in the whole game when it was not dispelled. I rolled a 1 to see how many S4 hits his unit would take, then a 1 for the "to wound" roll. Very effective spell casting.

The shooting phase was a little more successful. I was able to take out 2 of his northern thunderers with my chameleon skinks. I believe I also took out 1 with my northern skirmishers. I had made some kind of mistake moving my southern skirmishers, and they were just out of range.

Dwarf turn 1
He considered some moves, but after checking the rules on his move-or-fire units decided to just leave things as they were. He had no movement at any point during the game. As I understand it, this is how a dwarf army is supposed to operate. I do not think I could play a proper dwarf army.

His shooting phase saw some dissapointing rolls. I believe he took out 2 of my northern skirmishers. His cannons did 1 or 2 casualties. He did manage to cause my southern skirmishers to break, running back 3".

Lizard turn 2
My northern and southern troops once again marched forward. My chameleon skinks ran south behind the line of thunderers to close to within an inch of his northernmost cannon. I figured he would have to get very lucky to hit anything with a cannon at that range, and the thunderers could not turn around to fire at the chameleons. My skinks which had broken the turn before rallied. Cold Blooded is a beautiful thing! However, this still prevented my Kroxigor from advancing much because they were directly behind the skinks. I was able to get them down off the hill, but they would be out of charge range for a while yet.

Shooting saw another couple of thunderers in both lines go down to the skinks' poison blowguns. It is funny how you don't care too much that you have to roll sixes to hit when you have 14-20 shots and any sixes automatically wound. I shot at his cannon with my chameleons, but if I remember correctly did not do any damage since all of the sixes went into the cannon, and any that hit the crew failed to wound.

Dwarf turn 2
He fired away again, taking out a couple from the northern skirmishers, and one or two from the southern group. This may be the turn his cannon took out one of my saurus warriors. His northernmost cannon misfires and rolls a 2 or 3 causing it to not fire that turn or the next.

Lizard turn 3
My northern skinks walked towards his line stopping within 1" of his thunderers. Here they would be protected from his cannons, prevent his thunderers from firing at my more valuable troops, be able to use their multiple-shot blowguns, and not have the disadvantages of being in melee with a regular unit with higher WS. My southern skinks walked forward in front of the Kroxigor who were still outside of charge range. My saurus warriors wheeled on the southern flank and plodded on towards the thunderer line. Shooting went about like it had except for taking out one of his cannon crew.

Dwarf turn 3
Same as before, shoot with rifle and cannon, do a couple of wounds. At some point he managed to do a total of 3 wounds to my Kroxigor unit with his cannons. Had I taken the wounds properly, this would have taken one of my Kroxigor out.

Lizard turn 4
I charge his southern thunderers with my saurus warriors. He stands and shoots taking out 1 saurus on the way in. This is the last wound my saurus will suffer.

I fire at his cannon doing little or nothing. I fire at his northern thunderers taking them down to 3 left in the unit.

Close combat goes about like you would expect I take out all but 2 or three of his thunderers who, needing snake eyes, run like scared little girls. I pursue into the warrior unit right behind them.

Dwarf turn 4
He fires at my northern skirmishers doing some damage. Then he gets to try his northern cannon, which misfires, this is the same one that misfired on turn 2. This time it explodes. His other cannons don't do much.

In melee, I am counted as charging so I tear through several of his guys before he gets his attacks. Had we remembered how CC works, he would have only hit back with his general and his champion. As it was, he did not do much, he needed a three to stay in the fight and rolled an eight. He rolled 10 making it 9" that he ran, I rolled an 11 putting my front line on the edge of the board and overruning both of his routed units.

Lizard turn 5
My saurus reformed to face his cannons to the north. My chameleons marched towards his middle cannon. My Kroxigor, still out of charge range, marched forward behind their skink screen.

Shooting saw the southern thunderers go down to 2, and the middle cannon lose the master engineer.

Dwarf turn 5
His northern thunderers took my northern skinks down to 2 or 3 left. His southern cannon fired... and exploded. They just were not helpful to him.

Thinking this was turn 6, we called it. I missed something in there because at the end of the game he had only one crewman on his remaining cannon. At the end of the game, he had 2 thunderers and one crew on one cannon. I had lost most of one unit of skinks, 2 or 3 saurus, and taken enough wounds on my Kroxigor unit that I should have removed one.

Dwarfs versus Wood Elfs pre-game nonsense

What a day. I have been looking forward to this game since last month's devastation of Josh's Orcs at the hands of my heroic and gorgeous Wood Elf shooting army of doom.  The humiliation of waiting 14 years to play a Wardancer unit only to see them routed by a crap unit notwithstanding, the game was a lot of fun. Warhammer usually is. Plus, with the new lights Rick installed and the felt he and I covered the tables with, it should look spectacular.

So I have been painting like mad and spent a good deal of time making sure there would be competitive armies for the Goblins, a couple Dwarf armies, a Wood Elf army, a fun and competitive Vampire count army. So I got the lists all together, gathered up all the stuff and set out to pick up Chad. 

Then I returned home to pick up the army lists. And headed off to pick up Chad.

Then returned home to pick up the army I forgot to bring. Then headed off to pick up Chad.

Then turned back to get the new scenery I had purchased. 

AAAAAAAAAggggggggghhhhhhhhhh! Not a good start.

Well, knew we would be having pizza, so did not eat breakfast. Well, got there late, things were a bit discombobulated. Never did get anything ordered. No big deal...except when all was said and done I would go from 2:30 yesterday afternoon until 9:00 tonight without eating. D'oh!

Well, anyway, we started off with a good game of Heroscape. Got some nice pictures, hopefully will get my camera issues resolved soon and get them up.

Unfortunately, the one thing I did not get resolved was table space issues. So we matched up Kenneth and his Dark Elf army against Josh and the Goblins, Phillip and his lizardmen against Rick and the Dwarf army (with Chad studying the game under Rick) and Kevin's new Ogre Kingdom army against Chris and the Vampire Counts. That left me without a game.

Now, to be fair Rick offered to sit out but I could not bring myself to play when someone else was sitting out so I was just going to take pictures and notes of all the games.

Oh, remember the numerous things I forgot to bring with me this morning? Well...I also forgot to recharge my camera batteries after Friday's Blazer game so I essentially had no batteries left. Just not meant to be my day.

I mostly watched Kevin and Chris. I explained the way I built the Vampire army to work; the Cairn Wraiths working as a protective screen to allow the Skeletons and Grave Guard to get into close combat without taking a lot of damage, plus carry Mannfred the Acolyte with them and let his Sword of Unholy Power do its work.

Unfortunately, he did not quite get what I was saying and put his screening unit off on the left, leaving his Grave Guard w/Mannfred unit exposed to the Leadbelchers of Kevin. With only 1000 point armies, this was a great risk; should the leadbelchers do enough damage to cause a break test and the test fail, he conceivably could lose almost half his army to the opening volley, a totally unnecessary risk.

That is why these learning games are good, because I could freely mention the strategy upgrade and reasoning behind it.

Meanwhile, Kevin had a pretty good set-up and won the first turn. His Leadbelchers and Gut-dudes all rumbled forward. Unfortunately for him, the Leadbelchers were about 1/4" out of range and his magic phase saw either failure to cast or else dispelled by Chris.

Then Chris was able to correct his set-up. He got the Ethereal Cairn Wraiths in front of his units so they would be the only target for the Leadbelchers. That was essentially the game as it turned out.

The next turn for Kev was more maneuvering and failed Magic. Then Chris charged his Cairn Wraiths into the Leadbelchers. Open up with the Banshee Ghostly Howl and soon the Leadbelchers were gone without ever getting to fire their guns. 

That was the way the game went; Kevin had nothing that could hurt the Cairn Wraiths who rampaged through every unit he had. Ultimately, one unit of Zombies Chris managed to raise was slain by one of Kevin's units, giving him 50 points, the total he ended with. At the end of the game he had fleeing Gnoblars and 1 character (75 point character) on the table while Chris lost a total of 4 skeletons. Brutal.

Lesson: Always, always, always have some way of dealing with ethereal creatures. That one unit did ALL the damage, 925 points. 

Meanwhile, the Lizardmen/Dwarf battle was almost as bad. A major tactical error saw 2 of the 3 cannons covered up by Thunderer units; the army he decided to use had 2 10 man Thunderer units (150 points each), 3 cannons (90 points each), a Master Engineer, and a 17 man Warrior regiment meant to surround the Thane. In theory, nobody in the entire army would move until the Warriors charged late in the game. However, he missed that part of the design and planned to move his Thunderers out of the way of the Cannons. However, an all-shooting army that sees 33% of its shooters unable to shoot (Move or Fire) is going to struggle. 

Phillip put a skirmishing screen of skinks all the way across the front. Perfect. Moved forward, fired. Rinse, repeat, and roll to a massacre victory which was only helped when 2 of the cannons blew up in the same turn. *Sigh*. Poor Rick. No luck paired with sub-optimal starting position meant disaster.

And in the third game, Josh also missed part of the army design. I tried to explain that he needed to put his Spider Riders spread 10 wide, then his Archers 20 wide, then all his hand to hand units, meant to move forward, firing as they went, and allow him to numerically overwhelm the badly outnumbered Dark Elf army. Instead he bunched the Spider Riders on one wing 5 wide, the archers about 10 wide, and spread his hand-to-hand units all across the table. Worse yet, he put his general off on his right wing.

This allowed Kenneth to charge his best unit into the unsupported, unready for close combat Spider riders, shoot one of his 40 spearmen units to ribbons on their way across the field, and never outnumber the Dark Elf army. Even with a 200 point advantage, that set-up meant he was way behind. 

I almost cried on the turn he charged his remaining spearmen into the Dark Elf quarrelers and instead of flanking them with his stone troll, instead charged the stone troll solo into a unit of Dark Elf Corsairs. 

Kenneth and Josh thought it was luck that the Stone Troll died in turn one; nope. Not even close. There were 3+ ranks of Corsairs. He had a +2 for that, +1 for outnumbering, +1 for Standard bearer. Before it even started he had a +4 to his combat resolution. He only had 3 attacks. Even if he killed with all 3 of them and took no return wounds, he would have to take a break test on Leadership 4 (out of range of the general) with a -1. The troll was dying that turn. 

This is not taking anything from Kenneth. He set up his army better and moved them better. Josh was in deep trouble from the word go. 

Overall, looked like everyone had fun, so that is a good thing. Shortly will post report on my battle with Chad.

Warhammer Game 2, December 13th, 2008

Just as in the first game, we rolled for teams; 2 lowest rolls would be Dwarfs, 3 High rolls would be Goblins. I rolled a 2 and was looking forward to another shot at using the Thunderers. Rick and Kevin also rolled 2s. But Phillip and Josh, seeing those super-high numbers knew it was not going to be worth rolling so they both threw down 1s. A more pathetic roll I hardly hope to ever see. Awesomely hilarious.

They set up first which was perfect. The cannon went in the middle of the field but way forward. I thought that was a tactical error. The field was small enough the cannon could reach the entire table. The center was correct but I believed it should have been set up as close to the table edge as possible.

We responded by putting out our 20 man Night Goblin Archer unit 20 wide to cover massive frontage. The plan was simple. Advance them 4" per turn, fire, and move everything else behind them. We knew the Archers would all die but by that time, we should be close enough to get our Night Goblin Spear men, Spider Riders, and Slugdrool the Troll into close combat at or near full strength.

Plus, by keeping our General in the center, all our tests would be on a Leadership of 8 instead of 5 (and 4 for Slugdrool).

They next placed a unit of Thunderers to their left (our right) of the Cannon. We placed Night Goblin Spearmen behind the Archer screen. Then they made what I felt would turn out to be another tactical error. They placed the Warriors way out on their Right Flank (our left).

I knew what he was trying to do, which he later confirmed, was to flank us. Unfortunately, he had not played the Dwarfs before and underestimated how bad the 2" less movement per turn would hurt.

We placed our second Night Goblin Spear men on our left flank behind the Archer screen. The only remaining choice was where to place the Night Goblin Spider Riders. My plan was to put them between the Night Goblin Spear men units. Again, however, deploying second helped us.

Josh pushed his Miners up to the front line for deployment. Good choice in some respects; it would let them get into hand-to-hand as quickly as possible. However, by putting them only 12" from where we could deploy, it gave me an opportunity.

I changed my plan and put my Spider Riders to the right of a building, out of sight of the Cannon and Thunderers, but looking straight at his Miners. If we got the first turn, I would charge immediately and be able to get my Spider Riders into combat on the first turn, uninjured. Full strength, the Spider Riders might do some damage even with their pathetic Weapon Skill.

We placed our General with the Spear men on the right wing, our Shaman with the left wing Spear men, and Slugdrool in between.

We won the roll for Initiative and elected to go first.

GOBLIN TURN 1

I declared a charge with the Spider Riders. Our Archer screen advanced 4". Slugdrool passed his Stupidity test. Our army moved forward.

The Archers unleashed their hail of arrows. Rick rolled as many 6s as I have ever seen and 3 Thunderers fell in a hail of Arrows. Nazbad Wartfinger attempted Fiery Blast but it fizzled. Meanwhile, the Spider Riders slew 2 Miners. The Miners were unable to do any damage to the Spider Riders and, surprisingly, decided they did not feel like fighting!

The Spider Riders chased them but had to stop when they ran into Dragon Slayer Borri Graniteskin.

DWARF TURN 1

The Miners would turn around on a 9 or less. Josh rolled a 10. That hurt them badly. 5 Miners coming into the battle with Norri and the Spider Riders would have insured a Dwarf win in maybe one more turn.

The cannon belched fire towards the Archers. However, he overshot and the cannon ball landed on the Night Goblin Spear men, then careened through 2 more ranks, killing all 3. The Thunderers unleashed a hail of lead and killed 2 more Archers. Our screen was falling fast.




Meanwhile, on the flank, Norri killed a Spider Rider while taking no wounds himself. However, the Riders won due to having him outnumbered and their Standard. But Norri is Unbreakable. No break test...this was not going to go well for the Goblins. We needed the Spider Riders to somehow do a wound or else keep Norri occupied.


GOBLIN TURN 2

The Archer screen moved forward another 4". The entire army moved forward behind them again as Slugdrool kept his focus. The archers fired again, this time turning their attention to the Cannon, having seen it's fearsome potential. 2 Cannoneers went down under the hail of arrows. The last cannoneer had seen enough. He suddenly remembered he had left a tall, frosty mug of ale at the inn last night and got a head start on getting back to it.

At this point we were ecstatic. The archers were expected to absorb casualties, not deal them. We planned to win in hand-to-hand combat and lose the shooting phase. However, so far the score was 3 Thunderers and the Cannon for us, 5 Archers for them. I will make that trade every time. The Goblins were winning the shooting fight numerically and impact wise. Hilarious. Not for the Dwarfs, I suppose...

Meanwhile, Nazbad Wartfinger got distracted by a wart on his finger and failed to deal any Fiery Blast goodness once again. Goblin sorcery; HA! Worthless.

In close combat, Norri again slew a Spider Rider while taking no wounds yet again lost the battle to their superior numbers and Standard. Being unbreakable, unhittable, and unwoundable by the Spider Riders, he laughed it off, took a big drink from his hip flask, and settled in to deal more damage when his own turn arrived.

DWARF TURN 2

The Warriors on the left Goblin flank reformed, getting ready to charge the Night Goblin Spear men flank in another turn or 2.

The Thunderers once more fired, having great success as 5 Archers switched to a lead diet. Lead diets are seldom healthy, and even more rarely healthy when they are at the hands of Thunderers. They passed their Break Test again, though. Sweet!

Norri noticed he was not making much progress against the Spider Riders so doubled his output, putting down 2 of them. Only 5 left. But they were doing a phenomenal job of keeping him from getting into combat with the Spear men, so it was all good.

GOBLIN TURN 3

On the left flank, the Spear men started to charge, but then noticed it was Dwarf Warriors they would be facing. They started an impromptu Karaoke whistling contest which caused their charge to peter out about half way home.

Somehow inspired by the whistling, Nazbad again tried the Fiery Blast. Miracle of miracles, he rolled a 9! The Dwarfs laughed. Picking up just 3 Dispel dice, they rolled them out. 6...1...wow! All they have to get on the third die is a 2 to dispel it. And....they failed. They rolled a 1. The spell worked. 4 Dwarfs took wounds...and then Josh rolled 3 fives to keep three alive. Only 1 Warrior died.

The Archers, inspired by seeing their Shaman actually do some damage, killed 2 more Thunderers. The Thunderers were going to run but they were too busy reloading their guns so they elected to shoot them one more time at least before following the Cannoneers example.

Norri, meanwhile, was still having fun so he killed 2 more Spider Riders who passed their test.

DWARF TURN 3

On the left flank the Dwarf Warriors charged into the Spear men.

The Thunderers thought since they were only hanging around to shoot their guns they should do some damage. Blood spurted in fountains as 3 archers fell victim.

The Warriors slew 4 Spear men, who could only kill 1 Warrior in return. Somehow, though, they passed their test.

Norri then noticed the Dwarfs could use his assistance in the battle, so he got to work and slew the 3 remaining Spider Riders in one go.

GOBLIN TURN 4

Big Boss Dagskar Earscrapper noticed the Spear men he was with were planning to charge the Thunderers. He figured they could take out the 5 remaining Thunderers without his help, so headed over to offer his leadership against the Warriors who were crushing his left flank.

Meanwhile, Slugdrool the Troll found a few maggots in the Dwarf body he had been carrying around for a few weeks. He decided they would make an excellent snack so he wandered straight ahead munching on them instead of charging the Warriors flank.

The Archers elected to reform so they could charge the Warriors flank.

The Spear men charged the Thunderers. They could not slay a single one and one of their own died. Still, with rank bonus, they won the combat but the Thunderers had no intention of fleeing. They knew if they could hold on a turn or two, Norri would come in and save them.

The Warriors did not plan to wait. They killed several Night Goblins who could do no return casualties. One of the rearward Goblins who could count noticed the bodies piling up and began a rapid retrograde movement. Most armies call that a "retreat". The Warriors overran the retrograde, eliminating the unit.

Things looked bad for the Goblins. The Thunderers and Norri would no doubt make short work of the Spear men and the Archers would be no match for the Warriors. Only a huge smurf-slap by Slugdrool could sway things at this point.

DWARF TURN 4

The Warriors found themselves out of position so they reformed in preparation for charging the Archers. Norri moved towards the Thunderers.

The Thunderers then went to work...only to see 4 of their number fall to the Spear men while doing just two casualties in return. The Thunderer Champion looked around to rally his troops and noticed he was all of his troops. He elected to flee.

GOBLIN TURN 5

Slugdrool thought about charging the Warriors but decided to wait and see if they were going to wander off towards someone else, letting him attack them without danger to himself.

The Thunderer could prove a threat and Norri had their flank, so the Spear men decided to charge. The Archers unleashed a hail of Arrows at the Warriors. The Warriors laughed at the incoming flight. Unfortunately, that meant their mouths were open. Had they not been laughing, they would have lived, but the arrows took them in the throat and 3 Warriors shockingly died.

DWARF TURN 5

Angered by the carnage wrought by the Archers, the Warriors charged into them as Norri headed towards the Spear men. The Warriors were deadly, slaying 3 Goblins, but one of their own also died. With their rank bonus, the Goblins stood firm.

GOBLIN TURN 6

The Spear men reformed to face the inevitable Norri onslaught.

Slugdrool and Dagskar both elected to charge into the flanks of the deadly Dwarf Warriors. Seeing the massive Troll approaching their flank, the Warriors decided they had urgent business elsewhere and started heading towards it, only to see Slugdrool overtake them and hack them down without mercy...including Thane Godri Thunderbrand.

DWARF TURN 6

Norri, the last remaining Dwarf on the field, charged into the Night Goblin Spear men. However, he had been tippling a bit too much. As a result, he rolled 3 1s in 4 dice, killing just 1.

GOBLIN TURN 7

Slugdrool and Dagskar charged in to attack Norri. Slugdrool wounded him. Roaring in anger and frustration, Norri slew another Night Goblin, but they responded by killing him.

Review

What a great battle! So many big events, big swings in momentum. The Miners leaving the field without doing any damage was a huge blow. Then, the Spider Riders kept Norri occupied for 3 full turns (5 combat sessions). Even though they did no damage, they kept him from running roughshod over the Spear men which allowed the Spear men to destroy the Thunderers before Norri could get to them.

Additionally, the Archers outperformed all expectations. If they had just survived 3 turns we would have been ecstatic as that would have let us get our Spear men into combat safely. Instead, they dealt massive amounts of death and destruction:

1) The Cannon

2) 5 Thunderers

3) 3 Warriors in shooting, 1 more in Hand to Hand!

Total: 12 Dwarfs which rendered the War Machine worthless after killing just 3 Night Goblins.

The Warriors were pretty devastating as well, though. Once they got into action they wiped out a 20 Goblin unit of Spear men and a Shaman, then got 3 of the Archers before running from Slugdrool.

And Norri was a maniac. He single-handed killed 10 Spider Riders, his presence occupied a unit of Spear men who desperately needed to be moving towards the Warriors, and only some poor rolling kept him from wiping out a unit of Spear men in the last turn.

After the second turn, things looked bleak for the Dwarfs. Their cannon was gone, their Thunderers were at half strength already, and the Miners were gone. They were in bad, bad trouble. However, things started to look up on turn three.

After the fourth turn, things looked great for the Dwarfs. The Archers were out of position and much weakened, the Warriors had just dispatched the Spear men, the Thunderers were holding strong, and Norri was about to make the fight between Thunderers and Night Goblin Spear men into a one-sided affair favoring the Dwarves. Slugdrool was wandering off the wrong direction, Nazbad was dead, and they were well set up.

In their 5th turn the Warriors would crash into the Archers and most likely destroy them in one turn. Norri would take 2 turns to get to the Thunderer battle, but they had survived the worst of it. So the Goblins had 2 turns left before being annihilated.

Unfortunately for the Dwarfs, the Goblins got a few good rolls in the 5th turn, first killing THREE Warriors in the shooting phase...in just 3 hits...and then the Archers not running when the Warriors charged. That extra turn let the Fear-causing Slugdrool to panic the Dwarfs. Had they not failed that test the Goblins probably run in turn 5 and the Dwarfs win.

It was a close-run thing and a lot of fun.

Heroscape, December 13th, 2008

We elected to play a "rising gas, Marvel heroes" game. We were to pick an army of 400 points or less. I initially took the Knights of Weston, Captain America, the Monks, and I think some Morro warriors or something insignificant. But then I remembered we were not using the "only 1 order per turn for heroes"rule and switched to just the Hulk.

 Rick took Thanos. Kevin went with Dr. Doom, a unit of Samurai, and some Omnicrons, slightly over the point total. Josh took Spiderman and a couple heroes whose names I don't know. Phillip went with Iron Man, the Ninjas, and Guilty McGreech.

The Hulk was gnarly. I leapt out of range of everyone since I forgot I had 3 moves before the gas came. *Sigh*. Kevin moved towards Josh who responded by Spiderman injuring Dr. Doom. The Ninjas moved to attack Thanos who battled them back, taking one out. 

My second move was to move Hulk over and attack Dr. Doom, doing a couple points. 

He moved his Samurai close to me and actually hit me twice. 2 attacks versus 6 and 7 defense. Ouch. Josh then tried to kill me with a roll of 17+, but missed. Another Ninja died at the hands of Thanos.

Hulk took his vengeance, slaying Dr. Doom. The third Ninja died at the hands of Thanos, the unit never once injuring him.

The gas rose, closing off layer 1. 

Meanwhile, Hulk was pinned by two of Joshes' guys and 2 Samurai. With his wounds growing, 

he killed a Samurai with ease. 

Meanwhile, Guilty moved up to face Thanos. He actually did some damage but was not with us for long as Thanos opened up a can of whoop-smurf on him.

Hulk finished off the Samurai, but not until a Samurai had slain one of Josh's minor heroes. That freed Hulk to go after his 1-shot kill wonder, which he did, doing mass damage. 

Iron Man wiped out a couple Omnicron.

Thanos flew to level one to attack Spider-man as both Rick and I though we were on turn 2 but we were on turn 3.  That cost him his last wound and he was gone. Hulk killed the deadly 1-hit character of Joshes. Iron Man finished off the last Omnicron, thus ending Kevin's night. 

Hulk attacked Spider-man, who swung away. Iron Man then demolished Hulk, leaving him just one wound.

Hulk super-jumped away from the fray, leaving Spider-man and Iron Man in one-on-one. 

Even with Spider-man's Web-swinging, the battle was all Iron Man, who only had taken one wound at this point. I knew the only way to defeat Iron Man was for Spidey and I to work together, which Josh agreed to so I jumped into combat with Iron Man. 

Then Josh changed his mind and Spider-man killed the Hulk, only to immediately fall to Iron Man, the last Hero standing.

Very fun, fast-paced, exciting game.