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.

Miniature Versitality

Something that has become incredibly important to me over the years is that I get as much out of my models as I possibly can. How many games can I use my miniatures for? How should I base my miniatures so that I can use them to their maximum potential?

The rise of this concern for me personally is due to the following:

• Increased competition for hobby budget (starting a family will do this to you)
• Game systems disappearing or being abandoned (I'm looking at you Games Workshop)
• Investment of time assembling/painting miniatures

I'm sure that all of you can at least relate to one of those points. But who cares? If you want to play a different game, you  might as well just throw out all of your current miniatures and buy miniatures for that new games.

Right?

Well, I'm telling you that you really don't have to. If you have models that are suitable for multiple game systems, there really is no need to purchase new miniatures. In fact, my advice would be to purchase miniatures that can easily translate into multiple game systems.

For example, here is a brief list of games that I can use a few of my miniatures for:

Fireforge Miniatures Foot Sergeants: Warhammer Fantasy (Bretonnians), Age of Sigmar (Bretonnians), Lion Rampant, Warhammer Ancient Battles, Kings of War, really...any game set in the medieval period, so a countless number of games.

Games Workshop Dwarf Warriors: Warhammer Fantasy, Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Dragon Rampant, Frostgrave, and any other game that has a typical fantasy trope race such as dwarves. Ultimately dwarf miniatures are more limited than Fireforge Miniatures Foot Sergeants.

Dropzone Commander PHR Ares Walker: Dropzone Commander

Essentially when I purchase more historical medieval miniatures I can use them for a lot more games than if I purchased miniatures that are specific to a certain game. My investment into purchasing that miniature is safer.

Basing also plays a part, but not as significant as the miniature itself. The reason why it's not as important is because you can always rebase a miniature. It's just a matter of time investment and perhaps some resources if you need to buy new bases...but it can be done, it's just really annoying. If your miniature is based in such a way that it can be used for multiple games, then it's just that much more flexible.

The reason why I will NEVER rebase any of my fantasy miniatures for Age of Sigmar is because if I retain them on squares I can play older versions of Warhammer Fantasy, Kings of War, and any other skirmish game (since in most, if not all, skirmish games the base really does not matter). As soon as I rebase them on circle bases I lose that ability to easily use them in ranked up games. True, you can just put them on a special movement base, but that requires specialized movement bases which goes against the guiding principle of this article.

So after that wall of text, why should you care about miniature versatility? It's something that will save you money, save you time, and thus give you more money and time to enjoy this hobby! It's something to keep in the back of your mind when you're looking at getting into a new miniatures game, or even when looking to purchase miniatures for a game you already play.

War Room Episode 1: Introductions

Over the years I've appreciated listening to podcasts about wargaming, so I figured it's neigh time to start my own. This isn't going to be nearly as grand or complex as others that are on the interwebs, it's mainly going to be myself rambling about the hobby and what I might be up to at the moment.

This is completely unedited, so hopefully it isn't too harsh on the ears. Hopefully in time it will get smoother.

Hobby Update #2

I started I working on painting my Questing Knights and have managed to get 2 of them completely finished...alas my steam for Age of Sigmar seems to have faltered. These models are incredibly fun to paint, but they do take a while. Below are some pictures of the Questing Knight Champion.

So the hobby winds have shifted and I'm now pumped up to start working on some dropzone commander models! I was able to assemble and fully magnetize the PHR starter that I picked up and have even gotten the base coat of paint down on all of the Scourge vehicles from the starter box. I really do love the airbrush...makes painting go so much quicker. The plan is to paint up the UCM and the Scourge so I can start demoing some games. Perhaps I'll start working on the PHR, but we'll see where hobby winds blow then.

For the Scourge, since they look very crustacean like, I used the following picture for inspiration.

Here are some WIP photos of the Scourge. I'm going to try to take some nicer photos of the Scourge and UCM forces when they're all done.

I've also purchased the DBA 3.0. Fantastic set of rules. If you have any interest in historical warfare I'd urge you to pick this book up. For me the selling points are that the game plays quickly, you don't need hundreds of models, an army is incredibly affordable, and you still get that big battle feel. Other than the 28 mm figures I have already any further big battle games I only really want to play them in 15mm. Otherwise it's skirmish games for me at 28mm. And the only skirmish game I'm truly interested in at the moment is SAGA.

Age of Sigmar is fun...but it just doesn't quite do it for me. Perhaps I'll elaborate on that more in a different post though.

Hope you all have a good one! Until next time!

Hobby Update #1

I thought I'd write a post about what I've been up to hobby wise lately. I've been a little all over the place, but it's been keeping me going!

Bretonnian Knights
I finished this Knight of the Realm that I had started months ago. I had all the base layers down, so it didn't take long to finish him up. He just needs some static grass added to the base and he'll be completely done.

Of my knight errant command I only have the musician left. Yes, I know some people used the hawk signifying the champion, but when I saw it I thought this would make a great hunting/messaging bird! So he should get finished up here in the next couple of weeks.

Medieval Infantry

I plan on using these models in several different game systems. They can be Battle Pilgrims in Age of Sigmar, fierce foot or foot sergeants in Lion Rampant, a unit of Crusader Warriors in SAGA. I choose to paint up 12 for now, because that's the unit size for infantry in Lion Rampant. These are Foot Serjeants from Fireforge Miniatures. Pretty good models and fantastic value. I decided to also purchase the shield transfers for these guys. Perhaps I'll do a review on the transfers at a later date, but I have mixed feelings about them. I think the next batch I do will turn out better though.

Dragon

This is a Reaper Bones dragon that I'm currently working on. This is both my first Bones model, the first model I used a lot of airbrush work on, and my first experimentation with oil washes. So a lot of firsts for me! The pictures below below show what the dragon looked like before I gloss varnished it for the oil wash. All the green layers and yellow layers were all done with an airbrush. The smaller details like eyes, mouth, horns/claws were done by normal brush. The plan is that I'm pretty much finished with the layers, and I'll put down the final shading via oil wash. We'll see how it turns out!

Dropzone Commander

I picked up the starter box for the PHR! So now I have the starer armies for PHR, UCM, and the Scourge! I'm incredibly excited about this game and love how it plays out. Seems very tactical and the rules are pretty tight. The fact that you can also destroy buildings is just fantastic. Now I just need to find the 2-player starter set in the garage! We recently moved so there are still lots of things in boxes. Somewhere in the garage there's a box with my 2-player Dropzone Commander starter box, unopened GW daemons, and Dropzone Commander rules. Once I find it I'm probably going to start using that airbrush to pump out those starter armies! 

That's it for now. Told you that I've been all over the place!

Hope you guys have a good one! We'll see how much I got done in my next Hobby Update.

2015 Bugeater GT

For those of you that don't know what the Bugeater GT is it's a tournament for both warhammer fantasy and 40k that's held in Omaha, NE for the last 5 years I believe. The TO is a teacher at one of the local high schools, which is where the tournament is . The tournament is used as a fund raiser for the high school debate team. The debate team runs the concession stands and ferry drinks and snacks to the tables which is kind of nice.

This was actually the first year I've been able to attend the full fledged GT event. Last year I played in the team tournament which was great fun, but I wanted to get one of my armies painted up to 2500pts.

Getting my army ready was pretty much a year long project. It sounds like a lot of prep time, but between work, school, and my wife and son, I knew I'd need pretty much that entire time in order to be ready. As soon as the tournament pack was released I created a list and started painting towards it. What was interesting was that this was the first year that the Bugeater would be using Swedish comp. I was excited. I've always liked the idea of comp, so I took about a week making lists to try to get the most bang for my comp score. The list I settled on scored about 10.

Much to my disappointment the TO decided to change his mind about list  creation about 3 months before the event. Definitely not enough time for me to change anything. So I resigned myself to getting raped all weekend. Yeah...I'm still a little annoyed about that.

Here is the list I ended up taking.

Eltharion the Grim
Death magic
Stormwing

Archmage
Lvl4

Book of Hoeth
Talisman of Endurance

Noble
Bsb
Reaver bow
Potion of strength

15 Archers w/ musician

15 Archers w/ musician & banner

30 Spearman w/musician & banner

19 Phoenix Guard w/ full cmd
Banner of eternal flame

19 Swordmasters w/ full cmd
Banner of the world dragon

5 Shadow warriors x2

Bolt thrower x2

2500pts on the nose.

My High Elf army in all of it's glory

So before I go into the summary of each game one thing to mention is that the tourney used secret objectives caller "tarot cards". Before each game you'd select which card you'd be using for the game. The card had a mission associated with it along with a one use ability. If you used the ability you couldn't complete the mission. If you completed the mission you got a bonus 300VPs.

Game 1 - Hold the Pass vs Beastmen

Both my opponent and his army were pretty awesome. He brought an all chariot beastman army! It was pretty neat to see. Fortunately for me the deployment favored the shooting components of my list. There was some tense moments, but I took care of a lot of chariots with shooting. The pivotal moment was when 3 chariots (2 of which had characters) all charged into my Swordmasters. He killed 15 and I saved the 16th work a 6+ armor save. I retained my steadfast and held. My phoenix guard then hit one chariot in the flank,  overran into the next one,  and chewed through both. After that it was just trying to get as many points as possible.

I won the game 20-0.

The Beastman chariots rumble towards the High Elf line.

Game 2 - Blood & Glory vs Legions of Chaos

I wasn't looking forward to this one. Essentially his army was a bunch of solo nurgle spawn, a kitted out slaneesh daemon prince, and a big block of khorne warriors with halberds. Thankfully he didn't have a whole lot of fortitude. I knew I'd I could just kill his general I had the game. Turn 2 I was able to get a single bolt through his Tzeentch BSB on Disc's ward save and killed him outright. I won the Blood & Glory scenario right there (bonus 500VPs for me!)...however, that was not enough. His daemon prince chewed through Eltharion and had just 1 wound left on him when he went into my block of Phoenix Guard. Unfortunately for me, since they had the flaming banner and he had the dragonbane gem he got a 2+ ward save against everything I threw at him. He ended up regaining most of his wounds through souleater, and yeah, the rest of the game wasn't pretty. 

By the end of the game I don't think I had much left on the board. I lost 0-20.

Game 3 - Hold the Center! vs Warriors of Chaos

In this scenario there was an 18" square in the middle of the table. At the end of each game turn, you counted how many standard bearers were inside the box for each player (BSB counted as 2). Whoever had the most got an extra 100VPs, up to 500 VPs at the end of the game.

My opponent had a pretty nasty close combat list that would just love to chew through my T3 elves. So his first turn he marched up his Khorne warrior block that had a standard and the BSB and sat in the square. In retrospect, I probably should have been a little more aggressive putting my own BSB and Phoenix Guard in the square, but I didn't. He ended up getting 500VPs from the scenario objective.

His nurgle daemon prince ended up being amazing in this game. Making ward saves when he needed too and getting his nurgle lore attribute to gain more wounds and toughness. I did enough wounds to kill the original model, but with that lore attribute he ended up surviving the game with 1 wound remaining. 

Eltharion did pretty well, smashing through 2 Khorne chariots. He ended up charging the daemon prince in the rear, but just was killed for his effort.

At the end of the game I didn't have a whole lot. My opponent got a bonus 800VPs from the scenario and tarot card. 

I lost 0-20.

Eltharion the Grim flanking some Khorne chariots.

The High Elf Spearmen and Phoenix Guard fight for their lives. Spearmen actually had Mindrazor on them at this point...but to no avail.

Game 4 - Meeting Engagement vs Skaven

There wasn't any scenario mission in this one. It was a modified meeting engagement. Essentially one player setup first, and then the second player deployed (winning to go first on a roll of a 6). 

This was my opponent's first tournament after taking about a 15 year hiatus from the game. Pretty nice guy, but he did make some mistakes that made him frustrated and didn't know all the quirky rules for his army. It was all good though. Some highlights of the game was my being stupid and having Eltharion getting squashed by a Doomwheel. I had no idea that they were that effective. 

I ended up wiping out every single unit in his army except for his lvl 4 caster general. Surprisingly, even though he only had 1 model left on the table I only won 14-6. 

Game 5 - Return of the Relics! vs Orcs & Goblins

Another fun army made up almost entirely of Savage Orcs. My opponent was also a local guy that runs a local Warhammer club. It's always a pleasure playing him so I knew this would be a great game to end the tournament on.

My opponent's Savage Orc army

The scenario was a bit odd. Standard line deployment, but there were two "magical conduits" placed on opposite ends of the table. After deployment, we each got to select a unit that would carry a relic. At the end of our player turn, if the unit carrying the relic had at least one model resting within 3" of the opponent's magical conduit you could either drain the conduit or charge the relic. 

Draining the conduit would subtract one power & dispel dice from the opponents turn for the remainder of the game. This was cumulative.

Charging the relic would give the unit carrying the relic d3 shield tokens. Unsaved wounds would just remove a shield token.

You could do a mix of either up to 3 times, and each time would give you a bonus 75VPs (max of 300VPs)

So needless to say I gave Eltharion the relic, got first turn, flew up to the relic and drained the conduit. After a couple turns of that I pretty much could dominate the magic phase since he lost 2 power dice and 2 dispel dice each turn. 

The action in the game accelerated rather quickly as during my opponent's first turn he cast hand of gork and moved his giant block of savage orcs with multiple characters installed right in front of my swordmasters and phoenix guard. I gladly obliged him and charged right into the action. After a couple rounds of combat I killed the majority of the unit and most of the characters and they broke and fled. Eltharion was up to a bunch of schenanigans in this game, the best being charging a unit of savage orc boar boys in the flank, accepting a challenge, killing the character, and then breaking and running down the unit. 

I ended up tabling my opponent. I won 20-0.

Post-Tournament Reflection

In the end I came out of the tournament 3-2, either winning big or losing big. My overall tournament result was 13th out of 48. Not too shabby for an all infantry High Elf list! 

I had a lot of fun at the tournament. Since I haven't been able to play any games of Warhammer for about a year it was great to have an entire weekend filled with it.

My only critique of the tournament is that with the combined mission and tarot cards it makes for too much of a VP swing. To win 20-0 you just have to have a 1500+ point difference from your opponent. The descending brackets are just a difference of 150pts. That means that you can have a relatively close game of only 500pts difference which would be a 13-7 win, but if you got your scenario and tarot card objective you're catapulted to a 20-0 win. In a 2500pt game there are a lot of points on the table to get. It possibly could have been my own experience, but it seemed like most games were 20-0 games. I feel like there's no point to using that scoring system if very game is a 20-0 result. You might as well use a W-L-D system then. 

I'm interested to see in what the tournament will look like for next year with Age of Sigmar coming out. If they'll stick with 8th or move to the new edition/system. With their waffling on using Swedish comp or not, I know now that I can't rely on what rules are posted by the TOs until a few months out from the tournament. 

Goal for next year

Bretonnians! I really want to get a complete army of these painted. I have about 1000pts painted now, and we'll see what Age of Sigmar brings, but I really want to see these on the table painted and in a tournament. The part that I hate and love about painting them is that I'm painting them somewhat historically to represent as 12th century feudal european army (mostly french). That means each knight has their own heraldry with perhaps their retinue wearing their lords colors. Makes for a very colorful and unique army...but takes a long time to paint since you can't just paint whole blocks of figures. 

My hope is that Age of Sigmar has smaller forces, that way I can just focus on painting for that, and then work up to getting a 2500pt army completed in case people are still playing with 8th edition rules. Time will tell! Age of Sigmar should be here in about a month! I'm excited! 

I'm back...perhaps :)

Well, it's been about a year since I've made a post. I'll admit that I'm one to get easily sidetracked. I'll sum up what's been going on with me in the past year.

• Started going back to school part-time, one class/semester on top of working full-time
• Being a dad (little one is almost 1.5 years old now)
• Being a husband
• Changed job/career
• Bought a house and moved

So yeah, we've been pretty busy. All the while I tried to get as much painting done as possible so that I could play in the 2015 Bugeater GT. I'm just glad that I got all of my painting done. 

Check out my Google+ page B1acKn9ghtGaming to see all the photos that I took this year. Some pretty cool stuff. I might even write another blog post about that experience. Unfortunately, no battle reports. Since I haven't even played a game of warhammer in over a year, I just wanted to soak in as much warhammer as possible without worrying about taking pictures of the game and trying to remember everything. 

Well, here's to hoping that I have time to post more! :)