As foreshadowed in my previous post, last week I attended a one-day Old World tournament at Gaming Arena. It was an opportunity to bring out all the Nuln stuff I have been painting, using the City-State of Nuln army list. My army was basically thrown together with a focus on using as much as I could of the things I've been painting. As a result, I knew the army was not really going to tick all the boxes. I made no effort to prop the army up with magic items, and even my general was waving around a pistol in combat instead of a proper weapon. That was OK, I was sure this would in no way come back to bite me...
- General of the Empire with Full plate armour, Pistol, The White Cloak
- Captain of the Empire with Battle Standard, Full plate armour, Great weapon, Shield
- Empire Engineer on Empire War Wagon with Grenade launching blunderbuss
- Master Mage (Level 1, Daemonology)
- 24 Nuln State Troops with Halberds, Light armour, Full Command
- 5 State Missile Troops with Handguns, Sergeant (Hochland long rifle)
- 5 State Missile Troops with Handguns, Sergeant (Hochland long rifle)
- 24 Nuln State Troops with Halberds, Light armour, Full Command
- 5 State Missile Troops with Handguns, Sergeant (Hochland long rifle)
- 5 State Missile Troops with Handguns, Sergeant (Hochland long rifle)
- 5 Outriders with Sharpshooter (Grenade launching blunderbuss), Musician
- 5 Outriders with Sharpshooter, Musician
- Empire War Wagon
- Empire War Wagon
- Great Cannon
- Great Cannon
- Steam Tank
The plan for the army was to try to shoot things a bit, annoy characters with lots of Look Out Sir rolls from the Long rifles, and hope that the blocks of Halberdiers and War Wagons could save me from whatever got too close. I did not expect this plan to work especially well.
Game 1 - Chance Encounter (Special features, Baggage train, Break point)
Nathan Shipley, Cathay Jade Fleet
I'm not going to lie, my summary of this list is very incomplete. I think it's all the units, but even with a full load of items on the Shugengan and BSB, the army is nowhere near the points. There must have been items and magic banners all over the place...
- Shugengan Lord, (Level 4, Illusion), Great Spirit Longma, Some array of gear including +1 spell
- Lord Magistrate in Sky Lantern (Iron hail guns, Sky Lantern bombs) with Armour of Meteoric Iron, Talisman of Protection
- Gate Keeper, with Battle Standard, probably other gear that didn't really come up
- 24 Jade Warriors with Shields, Heavy armour, Stubborn, Full Command
- 12 Jade Warriors with Halberds, Heavy armour
- 10 Jade Lancers with Drilled, Full Command, Ring of Jet
- Cathayan Grand Cannon with Ogre Loader
- Fire Rain Rocket Battery with Ogre Loader
- Captain of the Empire on Barded Warhorse with Halberd, Twice-Blessed Armour
- 6 Empire Archers with Scouts
Cathay! This was exciting, I wasn't convinced there would even be a Cathay army at the event given the army wasn't that old.
Deployment was diagonal, and the Archers and Sky Lantern scouted in after we were finished. The Outriders then used vanguard to try to get out of the way. One of my Cannons fired and removed the Grand Cannon from the enemy hill, but the rest of my forces could only manage to do a single unsaved wound to the Sky Lantern, and kill a couple of Jade Warriors from the detachment.
The Cathayan turn commenced with the Sky Lantern floating forward, dropping bombs on my Outriders and wiping them out! That didn't seem very nice.
The Archers started to make their way around my lines to try to get to the Cannon.
Having wiped out the Outriders, the Lantern then opened fire on the nearest War Wagon and nearly killed it before drifting closer in a good show of contempt (and presumably getting too close for Impact Hits to be a factor). The Rocket Battery also fired from behind the hill and killed a fair swathe of my Halberdiers.
In my turn, a lot of things moved as little as possible in order to improve their chances to hit. The nearest Cannon and a couple of War Wagons continued to fire at the Lantern, and having done only 1 wound last turn, now they did another 7! It was actually starting to feel it. The Steam Tank rumbled forward to try to block the Jade Lancers (I didn't realise they had Drilled), and my shooting picked off one of their number. My Wizard tried to cast The Summoning at the Sky Lantern, but miscast and hurt himself. My other Cannon continued its anti-artillery work, killing the Rocket Battery.
At this point the whole Drilled thing came up and the Lancers got narrower and then charged through the gap into the Halberdiers. To their credit, my detachments fired and actually managed to kill 3 of the charging enemy on their way in.
Despite the Stand and Shoot, the combat didn't go well for me. A whole lot of Halberdiers died, the Lancers fared much better, and my unit Fell Back in Good Order through the Engineer's War Wagon. The enemy pursued into the Wagon, readying their spears again. The Lantern finished off the wounded War Wagon and floated closer in on my flank. Nathan also started casting spells at me, in response to which my Wizard decided it would be a good time to roll another double 1 and die. If he didn't want to be there, he really should have just said so.
Not sure this is what we signed up for... But honestly this combat went OK. The Wagon took 1 wound, felled the Lancer champion (I think), and then gave ground back to the Halberdiers.
My lines had been largely pinned by magic or out of range, and now the Shugengan charged into the nearest Handgunner detachment. The Long rifle-toting Sharpshooter bravely challenged him and died immediately, but his sacrifice meant the unit merely gave ground a smidge.
As usual, I'm missing some photos. The War Wagon on my left flank charged and wiped out the Jade Warrior detachment before reforming. The detachment's parent regiment wheeled into the flank of the Shugengan, did the odd wound, and managed to press him back a bit. The Steam Tank managed to charge into the Jade Warriors, thereby preventing them from getting involved in the other combats.
The fight between the Jade Lancers and War Wagon engineer continued and started to shift in my favour. The mancatcher managed to snip the head off the Empire Captain (which was very exciting), and with a detachment of Handgunners in the flank, we actually started to win combat and press them back.
I continued to try and fail to finish off the Sky Lantern. One of my Cannons blew itself up, and the rest of my shooting could only leave it on a single remaining wound. My other Cannon was silenced when the small group of Archers got to it, and eventually beat it in combat and broke it.
This is the final shot we've got, and it's near the closing stages. We did manage to do a few wounds to the Shugengan, but it counted for little. The final Lancer was felled by the War Wagon. The Sky Lantern then went to bomb all my guys, but someone fumbled the bomb, it wounded itself, and the Lantern fell from the sky right as I had made my peace with it living through the game.
At the end of the game, Nathan had control of the Special Feature in the centre of the field. Neither of us controlled a baggage train (actually I suspect I actually did control mine, but I think we missed that). I had killed the Sky Lantern, the enemy artillery, and the Captain and his Lancers. Nathan had killed my artillery, my Wizard, a War Wagon, one unit of Outriders and had crippled the other. It all added up to a difference of around 100 points.
The tournament was using a Win-Loss-Draw system with a 300 point difference to get a result. So this was a draw.
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