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...
Game 1 - Flank Attack
Jayden Barr - Orc and Goblin Troll Horde
Troll Hag (Level 2, Battle Magic) with Talisman of Protection
- Ogdruz Swampdigga (Level 3, Troll Magic)
- Troll Hag (Level 1, Troll Magic)
- Troll Hag (Level 1, Battle Magic)
- 5 River Trolls with Great Weapons
- 6 Stone Trolls with Great Weapons
- 6 Stone Trolls with Great Weapons
- 8 Goblin Spider Riders with Full Command, Da Spider Banner
- 8 Orc Boar Boys with Full Command, Cavalry Spears, Frenzy, Big 'Uns, Warpaint, Da Banner of Butchery
- Giant
I'll be honest, I had no idea what a Troll Horde did. I didn't have the book, so hadn't read about them. It was basically explained to me at the start, more or less as we were setting up. It's really not the way I would normally do things.
All set up with the enemy Boar Boys way over on the flank and my Doomseekers and Dragon Slayer having vanguarded forward a little.
Jayden got the first turn and advanced. I don't know how, but the only thing that failed Stupidity was the Troll Hag leading his army. The Hag on my right managed to cast a ward save on itself, which proved handy as all my shooting in the first turn did literally nothing. It seems a unit of Stone Trolls got ahead of the line, most likely thanks to magic. Obviously I got excited and charged them.
With the King at the front and the Warriors getting a strength bonus on the charge, I really thought this combat would be a done deal, but we couldn't do any damage - couldn't get past the re-rollable Regeneration, and my own dice. I think we actually got stuck here for a turn.
Over on the other flank, I discovered that one of the best things in the game for picking off a Dragon Slayer with a 3+ ward on his last wound is a row of Spider Riders with 5+ poison. So many poison wounds... He didn't make it.
The Boar Boys had somehow made it right around my flank in 2 turns, again with the aid of magic. I couldn't stop most of the spells that were happening, so I just had to hope the impact would be limited. When the Dragon Slayer died to the charge of the Spider Riders, they carried on into the Slayers (who I now realised would die very quickly thanks to the power of super poison!)
In the second round of combat, neither side had really taken any damage but the Stone Trolls fell back in good order through their own lines. My Warriors pursued into the flank of a Troll Hag.
In my turn the Doomseeker turned back from the main enemy lines to come and rescue his Slayer brethren, who were moaning about dying to Goblins not being the mighty doom they had signed up for. He did pretty well, carving up half the unit before they could attack. The remainder still managed to kill half of the Slayers, but they ended up fleeing with the Slayers in pursuit.
Ungrim and his Hammerers managed to complete a charge against the Giant, and the combat was surprisingly swift. The Slayer King felled the brute with a single mighty blow, and the unit then carried on into the Troll Hag general on the hill.
So... It turns out flanking a Troll Hag is only a good thing provided that they don't roll the right attack. The King and his friends arrived with great enthusiasm, managed maybe 1 wound on the Hag, and then let out a collective wail as the the thing turned and body slammed straight into the middle of the unit. Half my unit was killed. It was horrific. We fell back in good order, but the damage was done.
The shooting on the hill had started to take a toll on the Troll Hag on my right flank, and it was down to 2 wounds. It failed Stupidity, and I thought we were home and hosed... But it turned out it was just within 6" of the Bolt Thrower, so when it staggered forward it made it into combat. And that was it. It killed the Bolt Thrower, carried on into the Crossbowmen, started regaining wounds... Sigh.
The King's unit found a whole mountain of Trolls descending on them, and of course they failed to do enough damage to win the combat. Losing to a fear-causing enemy with around triple their unit strength, the unit broke and ran... 1 whole inch. What a roll. You'll be surprised to hear that they did not escape. A decent roll would have gotten them through my lines to safety.
The Troll Hag in the centre charged into the flank of my Slayers and then found itself stuck eating one Giant Slayer at a time - not going anywhere fast.
Over on the left, Ungrim's unit was flanked by River Trolls before they could get in a swing against the Hag. The Slayers nearby were still running after the fleeing Spider Riders when a rumbling from behind told them that they were about to become victims of the Boar Boys (and they did). The Slayers were wiped out, the Boar Boys overran and were then rear-charged by the Doomseeker. They broke, but got away.
Having made such short work of the Giant, hopes were high for Ungrim to bring down the Troll Hag - and he did not disappoint. He managed 2 Monster Slaying blows against the beast, which proved too much for its protective talisman. The Hag went down, the Hammerers got bogged turning to fight the River Trolls... And that's where we found that we were running out of time.
We were actually only half way through Turn 4 when the allotted 2.5 hours were up, which meant we had to turn back time a little when counting victory points. In truth not much would likely have changed if we'd been able to complete Turn 4. I have no idea what would have happened if the game had run to its proper completion. I don't really know why we ran so short of time. We were checking a lot of rules, things were in combat right from the start... I don't know, but it was unfortunately a bit of a harbinger of things to come.
Jayden had 825 victory points to my 739. I was down, but it was close enough to be a draw.
Result: 10-10 Draw
That'll do for now. I'll try to get onto the other 2 games in good order.
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