Sunday 15 April 2012

The Battle of Blood Valley

So I finally got down the club again, after a few weeks of family Sundays it was a chance to escape from the kids.

Well it was until I arrived, as my opponent was what the interwebz rather unkindly describe as the 'twelve year old.' I must admit my heart rather sank - not because of the kid so much as the prospect of being beaten by him. Ok I was a little unkind, having a slight hang over and desirous of a nuroushing cigarette, I rather brushed off his excited attempt to inform me of the highlights of his army - which was made from the Island of Blood with a battalion box.

My hackles rose slightly more when arriving back with freshly corrupted lungs he was discussing the merits of shadow magic with his father. Though luckily for me, he was only running a level two mage, and the prince on the griffin. And when it came to rolling for spells he got off whither and the pendulem.

We rolled watchtower which was not that pleasing either but thankfully High Elves don't have cannon.


After much humming and hahing decided against deploying the Leadbelchers in the tower on the principle that they don't get a stand and shoot he would get first turn, and I didn't fancy them fighting the Swordmasters. The High Elves didn't take the option to get control of the tower, which allowed me to use the Maneaters scout move to sneak in - there being no where sutiable for them to deploy in the High Elf deployment zone, as he had strung out his units across the board.

As so to the High Elf turn. The Elf general on the griffin charged the Maneaters in the tower. This was a little surprising, and set me searching for the rules of fighting in a building, while he moved his units.

I'm not a particularly competative player, but I do like the turn sequence to run in the right order. And as much as I enjoyed the narrative my opponent was offering throughout the game, he was rather a gadfly. Moving a unit, and then wanting to fire his bolt thrower, before giving his strategy away with a little speech about his fluff before being drawn back to the business at hand, the movement phase. In a way it was nice to play someone who is still full of the spirit of Warhammer...

Especially when their general jumps of his griffin, loses the benefit of his expensive lance, and charges into the tower to do battle with 3 Maneaters with additional hand weapons. Needless to say the general died. The griffin subsequently went nuts and spent the rest of the game charging at the tower in a frenzy.


Having burnt the scroll and the sceptre of stability dispelling the Elven magic in the first turn I was faced with a tactical problem. The Elves hadn't advanced enough to get any charges off the Ironguts and the Mournfangs and there was a chariot on the prowl that could threaten the rear of the Ironguts. This problem was eased when the Leadbelchers wiped out the Swordmasters in a round of shooting, and a sabretusk took, and survived, the chariot charge and drew it away from danger.

Having been alerted to the power of the Leabelchers the Elves concentrated all their fire power on the unit. Thus in turn three the mournfangs got the charge on a unit of spearman, rolled high on the impact hits, took two casualties in the combat and wiped out the unit.

It took until turn five to wipe the army out.

My honour was intact... phew....


After that I joined in a game of Wings of War.

The last time I played WWI dogfighting, it involved chemistry stands endangered your eyesight whenever you looked down to check your stats.

I really enjoyed the game, and managed to get a couple of kills with skillfull use of the Immelman turn.

Indeed it was such a good game that I wished we had time to play again.

Oh and I made the decision to get the few bits and pieces I need for my Ogres rather than start another army... though being a waramer, I wonder how long that will last....

peace:)

No comments:

Post a Comment