War Room Episode 2: Catching Up

So it's been a while...ok, it's been like 9 months since the first episode, but hey real life happens. In this episode I talk about what I've been up to and my impressions of Age of Sigmar post-General's Handbook.

Age of Sigmar Matched Play - First Impressions

Today my wife and I played our first game of Age of Sigmar. It's been on the To-Do list for quite a while, but what continuously stopped it from occurring is that without a point structure, how could I ensure that we had a game that would be enjoyable?

My wife isn't a serious wargamer by any means, she enjoys playing games, and enjoys beating me at them, but doesn't really have the interest in creating her own list. I could create the list myself, but which comp system should I use? Which unique comp pack rules? I just wish there was something that didn't take so much footwork...

...then came the General's Handbook...

This book resolved all of the points of contention that I had with Age of Sigmar, including all of the community created comp systems that people came out for it. The matched play gives you an easy way to come to the table with relatively balanced forces and at a scale that makes Age of Sigmar thoroughly enjoyable. 

Here were our armies:

Daemons (played by my wife)

Daemon Princess of Slaanesh

Herald of Slaanesh

Soul Grinder

10 Daemonettes

10 Bloodletters

6 Screamers of Tzeentch

TOTAL = 1000pts

Bretonnians (played by myself)

Bretonnian Lord

Paladin Standard Bearer

16 Knights of the Realm

10 Mounted Yeomen

16 Men-At-Arms

TOTAL = 980pts

Our forces deployed into line ready to capture the other's objective.

The scenario that we played was the first one out of the General's Handbook: Take and Hold. The gist of the scenario is that you hold onto your objective while trying to take your opponents. What makes it interesting is that you instantly win a major victory if you can accomplish holding both objectives at the end of your turn. You hold an objective by having at least 5 models within 6" of the objective while not having any enemy models present.

Battle Round 1

I won the first turn, moved the mounted yeomen up on the right flank and supported them with the paladin, thus giving them a 3+ to hit in shooting and close combat. The big block of knights moved up and the peasants sat on the objective. The shooting did pretty well, I believe killing a Screamer.

Daemons followed by surging towards me, the Screamers going into the Mounted Yeomen and the Soul Grinder charging into the Knights of the Realm (KotR). The Mounted Yeomen and the KotR suffered a few casualties, putting some respective hurt on their opponents as well. No one fled due to battleshock tests. 

Battle Round 2

I won initiative again for the second battle round and thought I'd try to be clever and do some retreating. The Bretonnians really shine on the charge, and it seems if you can move them in and out of combats, they'd really shine. So I retreated my KotR out of combat from the Soul Grinder and moved my Men-At-Arms along with my Bretonnian Lord in to deal with him. The Mounted Yeomen also retreated back while my Paladin Standard Bearer moved in to hold the line. 

It's at this point that I realized that I had made a vital mistake. When I moved the Men-At-Arms up, I didn't move my KotR close enough to the objective to at least contest it. I had left my objective open for the taking! My wife didn't miss my mistake either... 

The Bretonnian Lord and Men-At-Arms really did some work on the Soul Grinder, bringing the total wounds on him to 14, only 2 wounds away from killing it. The Paladin held his own against the Screamers, but was on death's door.

On my wife's turn she rushed her Daemonettes and Daemon Princess forward towards my unguarded objective, even rolling a 6 on her Daemonettes run move. The Soul Grinder died at the hand of my Lord as my Paladin fell beneath a wave of slashing Screamers. 

Battle Round 3

My wife won the initiative. Ran her Daemonettes forward and was able to control my objective while her Bloodletters held her own. There was nothing that I could do.

GAME OVER. Win for the Daemons. 

Now there are some that might look at this and say that it came down to who won the initiative for Battle Round 3, but really, it's my own stupidity that lost me the game. Had I just made sure I had a knight within 6" of the objective I would have been fine, but I didn't. I made a mistake and my opponent capitalized. 

We decided to play another game using the same lists. For the second game we played Gifts from the Heavens scenario. In this scenario there are two objectives that fall from the sky during each player's hero phase in battle round 2. Where they might land is random, but it will be somewhere in one of the 2'x2' sections on your table-half. At the end of each of your turns, for each objective that you control, you gain as many points as the battle round it currently is. For example, at the end of your turn in battle round 2, if you control one objective you would score 2 points (if you had 2 objectives, you would score 4 points). 

Battle Round 1

I again move my Mounted Yeomen up on the right flank, supported by the Paladin, hoping to destroy the Daemonettes in my first turn. Everyone else stayed still. I didn't want to get caught out and charged again like I had in the last game. The Yeomen shot, killed 4 Daemonettes, and then failed to roll high enough to charge anything....uh oh...

The Mounted Yeomen got charged by the Screamers, Daemonettes, and the Daemon Princess. Yeah, not good. When there was a lull in the fighting only 2 Yeomen were left standing, and they decided that they had seen enough and fled the field. 

Battle Round 2

I won the initiative. My objective fell out of the sky and landed on my right flank (just behind where my Yeomen were massacred). I moved my block of KotR, which were holding my center, to attack all the Daemons that were concentrated there. The Bret Lord moved towards the right. The Men-At-Arms, which were on my left, moved towards the center as well. The Paladin made his charge against the Daemons on my right, which would allow me to re-roll my charge distance with my KotR (they were about 9 away). I failed...twice.

The Daemons objective fell on her right flank (my left) and she quickly moved her Bloodletters over to capture it. The rest of the Daemons moved towards my own and engaged the KotR. This time I at least had some knights there were within 6", but not enough to hold it myself. The slaughter began. Daemons began to vanish and knights began to drop. My wife scores 2 victory points. 

Battle Round 3-4

I try to kill the Daemons as quickly as I could, but in the end fell short. I ended up killing all of the Screamers and the Daemon Princess, but not before they could reduce my KotR to a meager 2 knights with the Bretonnian Lord standing nearby. My Men-At-Arms, which decided that they were men enough to take on a group of Bloodletters, were turned into a bloody pile of mush by the Soul Grinder as they were making away to that objective. At the beginning of my turn on battle round 4 I decided that my Bretonnians had enough and conceded defeat, as I no longer had the models to capture an objective. That is, unless my wife wanted to kill all of my models. She graciously allowed me to flee the field of battle with the 3 brave men that had survived her onslaught.

GAME OVER. Daemon victory...again. 9 - 0.

Wrap Up

In all we both had a great time playing Age of Sigmar. The game provided some interesting tactical gameplay in a decent amount of time, allowing us to play two games instead of just one. I really like the model count that you get with the Matched Play rules. It's enough to give you tactical flexibility, but limiting so that you're not forced to take every model in your collection. That was one of the issues that I found with some of the comp systems that were floating around prior to the General's Handbook being released. In some of them I would have to take more than what I fielded in my 2500pt 8th Edition army. That is not the case at all with the points we've been given in the General's Handbook. I'd say they hit the scale of the game right on the head. 

Asking my wife which game she prefers between Kings of War and Age of Sigmar (she played a game of Kings of War with me earlier this year) she said that she preferred Age of Sigmar. When I asked why she said that she enjoyed the tempo at which the game played and liked that she was able to get in there and start tearing up my troops fairly quickly.

For the time being if I demonstrate any wargames to friends that are not already miniature wargamers, I'll be showing them Age of Sigmar.