A Blast from the Past

This title kind of covers a couple of different aspects of this post.

So some time ago (more than 3 months, truth be told), Pete and I decided that in honour of the games club celebrating its 20th year, we should play a retro game of Warhammer. Specifically, we should play a game of 5th edition, which was what we were playing way back when the club started. Sounded like a bit of fun. Why not?

Well, it's been 3 months and my emotional scarring has mostly healed. I am now ready to share with you my tale of misadventure and woe...

My Empire
I grew up playing Warhammer 4th and 5th edition. I played countless games against my friends, and toward the end, even a few tournaments before 6th edition came along. Much of the time, I was fighting tougher opposition in the form of Undead and Chaos. Only I was not using Empire. I was using High Elves and Wood Elves. I didn't own an Empire army. Using High Elves (mostly with the rather underwhelming 4th edition army book) was a struggle against these stronger lists, but I made do - predominantly with magic. Nowadays I do have an Empire army, and I think of it as my main army. But I really didn't use it until 8th edition. 5th was a very different, unforgiving beast...

So now I set about making a 5th ed Empire army for the first time. I did it with only a few mandatory requirements in my head. The main one was: take a level 4 wizard. I would need it to avoid being bossed horrendously in the magic phases. Oh yeah, and a volley gun. Because those were funny. In the end my list looked something like this:

• Empire General on Pegasus with Armour of Protection, Dragon Slayer Sword, Shield
• Wizard Lord with Bright Magic, Black Amulet, Skull Staff, Dispel Scroll
• 5 Knights Panther with Standard of Shielding. Led by a Hero with Blade of Leaping Copper, Potion of Strength on Barded Steed with Heavy Armour, Shield
• 5 Reiksguard Knights with War Banner. Led by a Hero with Runefang on Barded Steed with Heavy Armour, Shield
• 19 Swordsmen with Light Armour, Shields, Standard
• 8 Handgunners
• 8 Crossbowmen
• 3 Ogres with Halberds, Light Armour
• Helblaster Volley Gun

I'm not going to pretend it was a really well thought-out list. And man, does it look tiny on the field.

Pete's Vampire Counts

Unlike me, Pete was actually using this army way back in 5th edition. Well, he was using different models. But the same army book. The difference was that back then, Pete operated under some self-imposed limit of 50 point magic items. What a nice guy. Then we broke him and hardened him and turned him into something else... Something evil... Well maybe not, but his lists definitely toughened up over time. 

• Vampire Lord with Hydra Sword, Black Amulet, Carstein Ring, Pure Blood
• Necromancer Lord with Golden Crown of Atrazar, Skull Staff, Dispel Scroll, 2-Handed Weapon
• Wight Lord with Heavy Armour, Shield, 2-Handed Weapon
• 6 Wight Cavalry with Lances, Shields, Heavy Armour, Barding, Standard Bearer with Standard of Shielding
• 18 Skeletons with Shields, Standard, Musician, Banner of Might
• 17 Zombies
• 10 Zombies
• 2 Vampire Bats
• 2 Spirit Hosts
• Banshee
• Winged Nightmare

Before the game started, we needed to choose spells. We had agreed to use the Colleges of Magic from 4th edition (they were a "back of the book" option in 5th), because the soulless Battle Magic that replaced them was offensive on many levels. I chose Bright Magic in the hopes of getting a spell like Piercing Bolts of Burning and Conflagration of Doom - spells which even Vampire Lords had to respect back in the day. Unfortunately, when I actually got my spells, I didn't get either of these. In fact, I got probably the 4 worst spells in the deck for this game: Burning Head, Sanguine Swords, Scarlet Scimitar and Flamestorm. It was incredibly underwhelming. On the bright side, Necromancers got to actually pick the spells they want. So Pete had no such issues. That's fair...

How we set up. Was this a normal amount of terrain? Maybe? Who can remember, really...

Look at all that deathly majesty. Except for that scraggly-looking unit of Zombies over on the left, with their oversized movement tray. What's going on there, Pete? Yuck!

I was trying to make use of the detachment rules, which meant the Wizard Lord would help hold the missile units together so long as they stayed in range. With his glorious Leadership value of 8! Oh yeah, a natural leader! Against an army that all caused Fear... Whose idea was this again?

Pete got the first turn, and flew his Vampire Bats over on my right flank, out of sight of my General.

Other elements advanced, but back then nothing could march. It was all so slow!

Man, did they actually move?

In my turn I gambled. The Spirit Hosts were in range and I had a fancy magic sword, so I sent the General into combat and popped them. Of course, this was 5th ed. You didn't get to reform after doing that. I would have to spend the next turn setting up another charge, and hoping I could prevent the Vampire from turning and using Vanhel's to charge my flank. I did have the Drain Magic card retained after a disappointing magic phase where I tried to use my only half-decent spell in Flamestorm, only to have Pete play the Destroy Magic card and remove the spell from the game.

The Vampire Bats were sneaky, but I had a Volley Gun! All would be well. I had vivid memories of these things obliterating whole units with outrageous numbers of hits. So it was that I turned the gun and opened fire to protect my flank. It was long range, so I'd be halving the number of hits. But there were only 2 Bats. It was disappointing when I rolled a 4 on the first dice (so 2 hits), then misfired. Which meant the Volley Gun couldn't fire for the rest of the game. And I did enough damage to kill only 1 of the 2 Bats. What glorious, magnificent firepower! Tremble in fear!!!

On the left, I felt like I should be able to clean things up a bit. I had 2 units of Knights to Pete's 1 unit. I had heroes. I could do it! But I needed to estimate the ranges correctly. Didn't want to get charged prematurely.

Setting up just outside of Pete's charge range. But close enough that he would be tempted to try a charge. Controlling the flank.

Except I didn't do anything of these things, because I can no longer estimate distances! The Knights Panther were quite comfortably in range - something Pete assessed far better than I did. That was bad.

In the absence of anything good to talk about, let's instead discuss Pete's disgraceful use of a 5x2 movement tray for a 6x1 unit. What the hell, man? I have the clear moral advantage in this picture.

Right, so what is happening in this picture? Bad things, that's what. You know that one solitary Bat that I failed to shoot to death? Well, he flanked my Handgunners. We outnumbered him 8:1, but admittedly we were not great fighters. Anyway, he killed one of my troops, I lost combat by 1, I broke, and caused panic on everything within 12". 12 inches! How is that fair? I didn't remember it being quite that bad. Anyway, this resulted in the Ogres and Crossbowmen both turning and fleeing. My battle lines were running every which way.

The fleeing Ogres head toward the Vampire's unit, which as expected had turned to face my General in preparation for the magic phase.

I was sitting on the Drain Magic card, so the only way Pete would pull this off was if he cast the spell with the Total Power card... Oh, poop. Well, he's dead.

Over on the left, the Hero leading the Knights Panther got beheaded by one of the Wight cavalry. A couple of other Knights fell to the lances of the unit, and the remainder fled and were run down.

To be honest, I don't remember how I got here. It's possible I stuffed up a charge or something. I don't know why I would otherwise be sitting there in the middle of the field, being rear-charged by the Winged Nightmare. Perhaps they were just sitting there sulking about how the battle was going.

The irony of this picture is that I actually look like I have the right flank sort of under control. Of course, there is a Vampire Lord in that forest, my Volley Gun was a useless lump of wood and metal, and my Wizard Lord was basically a level 4 potato...

Clearly the rear charge from the Winged Nightmare was a cunning ploy on my part, as it is now dead, and only some of my Reiksguard are. It was a trap! Not unlike what appears to be happening to my entire army, actually...

The Reiksguard also put up a bit of a fight against the Wight cavalry, but it was a doomed cause.

By this point, the enemy were showing proper contempt. The Vampire and Necromancer were wandering toward my army alone, whilst the Skeletons sat back in the forest to watch the show. At this point there was only 1 way I could possibly win. I needed the Vampire to go to town on my Wizard Lord, and then bounce back a huge number of wounds and kill him. Of course, he had the Carstein Ring... So this needed to happen twice. Cool, so we have a plan!

And then there was Plan B. Which was to get murdered by the Vampire, but escape using the winds of magic. It was unfortunate about the fate of the rest of my troops, but at least my useless wizard would survive.

Actually, maybe I should have refused to use the card, just to teach him a lesson.

At this point we called it, as it seemed like Pete was probably going to win...

Well all in all, that obviously went very well. The experience drove home a few things for me. The first was that as much as I felt like I was fighting uphill with Elves back in the day, Empire (with their lower leadership and slightly weaker magic) would have been even worse. I had also forgotten just how hard I used to make my characters in order to try to cover the inadequacies of my lists elsewhere. It's not really compatible with my less competitive mindset of more recent years. I've gotten soft. Herohammer was no place for soft players.

Next time I decide to do something really retro, I'll ensure I give it a little more thought beforehand!