Axemaster 2024 Aftermath - Part 1

Well, it has certainly been a while. I don't think I've ever gone 6 months without a blog post before. I am ashamed, and don't really have a good excuse.

In recent months my hobby efforts have been a bit all over the place. I've spent a fair bit of time painting battlemechs and vehicles for Alpha Strike, I've refurbished a whole ton of cheap snow-covered trees into various shades of green and red, and I've played the odd game.

A whole lot of Steiner vehicles in Lyran Guard colours.

Many many trees getting the green treatment.

A game of Alpha Strike against Clan Wolf.

Even games of Battletech can start to look appealing once you introduce some 3D terrain.

This was a larger Old World game against Sean's Beastmen.

This game was a failed attempt to make Empire infantry work against High Elf cavalry (and pillars of flame). A cautionary tale.

Anyway, whilst all that was happening, someone decided we should run an Old World Axemaster tournament, and so of course I declared I would enter it. I think it was kind of intended as a practice event for Cancon (both of them are 2400pts), so all I had to do was decide what army to take. Ummm.... yeah.

I spent a lot of time thinking about various plans, being dissatisfied with them, and changing to different plans. I stared at Ogres a lot. Like, it was a whole lot of staring. You would have been impressed. But nothing ever came of it. My Ogres give me headaches at the moment. In the end I decided I would take Dwarfs, because I had bought a beer pony and Doomseekers, and needed some motivation to paint them.

Axemaster was just a one-day, 3 game event. I admit I might not have prepared for it in as dedicated fashion as I probably should have. But Cancon is a 3-day, 6 game event that's occurring in a few weeks... and I intend not to prepare for that as well as I should either. So like I say, Axemaster was good practice...

Given the tournament was in the lead-up to Christmas, it's taken me a long time to get around to putting together this blog post. Some of the details are pretty hazy, so bear with me.

Dwarf Royal Clan (2400 points)

• Ungrim Ironfist
• King on Shieldbearers with Rune of Fortitude, Rune of Preservation, Master Rune of Gromril, Great Weapon
• Dragon Slayer with Rune of the Dishonoured, Great Weapon
• Runesmith with Battle Standard, Rune of Spellbreaking, Great Weapon, Shield, Full Plate Armour
• 10 Quarrellers with Full Command, Shields
• 20 Royal Clan Warriors with Standard Bearer, Veteran, Shields, Drilled
• 8 Slayers with Great Weapons (2 Giant Slayers with Additional Hand Weapons, 1 with Standard)
• 8 Slayers with Great Weapons (2 Giant Slayers with Additional Hand Weapons)
• 19 Hammerers with Full Command, Drilled
• Bugman's Cart
• Doomseeker
• Doomseeker
• Bolt Thrower with Rune of Skewering
• Bolt Thrower with Rune of Skewering, Stalwart Rune
• 6 Irondrakes with Standard Bearer, Ironwarden with Trollhammer Torpedo
• 6 Irondrakes with Standard Bearer, Ironwarden with Trollhammer Torpedo

So that was my army. Lots of units, not a lot of war machines, but theoretically enough shooting to make a high value target think twice about just messing around in front of my lines. I was admittedly worried I'd run into an endless wall of dragons. The King was primarily a tank to give me another thing to try to hold one up. Most of my list would be annoying for a dragon to try to pick off. I didn't really think I could kill one unless something funny happened with Ungrim, but I just didn't want it to be a procession. I also took almost no magic defence, figuring I'd just have to ride the magic out. That may have been a mistake...