Saturday, December 20, 2008

Clash of swords and sorcery ..

On tuesday me and Mike squared off again in a battle of supremacy for the "olde worlde" as they call it in Warhammer Fantasy. That night we managed to get two games in, i decided to dust off my Dark Elves and Mike again used his High Elves.

My Dark Elves consisted of:

Master w/ halberd, blood armor and seal of ghrond
Sorceror w/ lvl 2, darkstar cloak and dispel scroll
Sorceress w/ tome of furion and dispel scroll

Crossbowmen x10 w/ shields
Crossbowmen x10 w/ shields
Corsairs x 15 w/ full command and warbanner (master goes here)
Corsairs x15 w/ full command (sorceror goes here)
Dark Riders x 5 w/ musician and crossbows
Harpies x6
Harpies x6

Shades x9
Cold One Chariot x2
Executioners x12 w/ musician and champ

Repeater Bolt Thrower x2

The Plan:
My plan going into the game was using the pair of magic users to case "Power of Darkness" i saved myself 20 pts by taking the magic item Tome of Furion. Especially now that Dark Elves Magicians can use ANY amount of power dice they desire i would not have a problem casting any spells...

Other than that I plenty of harassment units in the form of dark riders, harpies and shades. Also did i mention how awesome the special rule Eternal Hatred is? I get it for free on all of my units AND against High Elves it's every turn not just the initial round of combat... YES PLEASE!

The Game:

Things were going quite well even if Mike had four bolt throwers all my harassment units did their job. Minimizing the effect of the High Elf bolt throwers as well as shaving off a few soldiers from the bigger blocks of units. My Sorcerer and his escort of corsairs failed to do any damage (magic or otherwise) and were promptly run down by Mike's spearmen. Also my executioners were whittled down by archer and bolt thrower missile fire, so by the time they charged they were of negligible effect.

If i had to name MVPs i would have to say that my chariots and master (with attached corsairs) were quite good. Mike's high elves had a really hard time trying to wound my chariot, toughness 5 backed up with a 3+ save were made it nigh impossible to knock them out. The Master and his retinue made short work out of a sword master thanks to hatred, late game they even managed to bag a unit of archers.

Post Game Thoughts:

I'm not a big fan of Dark Riders, yes i know they are quite good in game but the models have never convinced me and I do not have enough points in order to take a second unit (i like to take things in pairs). I may drop them and pick up a unit of either spearmen or the brand new corsairs. Both would be quite good in the army nothing like good old blocks to make the army look cohesive. I may actually upgrade the sorceress to be level 2. The extra die can make the difference softening up or weakening enemy units...

As for as my orcs go again they were defeated by Mike (it ain't easy being green) on the upside I found out that I would enjoy playing with a giant. I'm glad all this play testing is going on while I start to slowly clip the army from the sprues. I have a solid core of troops along with some heavy and fast hitters. Slowly but surely the army list is looking more and more solid as I keep things that I am comfortable and familiar with using. Till then...


clash of swords and sorcery

Saturday, December 13, 2008

So last night I managed to get two games with the orcs (using proxies of course...) both games were against Mike's newly acquired High Elves i have only faced High Elves on a mighty two occasions... yes in the last two editions just two times..

My list: 2k pts
Black Orc Warboss w/ iron gnashes, amulet of protectyness, collar of zorga and heavy armor

Black Orc Big Boss w/ battle standard, akrit axe, nibbla's ring and heavy armor

Orc Shaman w/ lvl 2, dispel scroll and power stone
Orc Shaman w/ lvl 2, dispel scroll and power stone

Orc Boys x25 w/ shields and full command
Orc Boys x25 w/ shields and full command
Orc Boys x25 w/ shields and full command
Orc Boys x25 w/ shields and full command

Wolf Riders x5 w/ musician and bows
Wolf Riders x5 w/ musician and bows

Night Goblin Archers x21 w/ musician and fanatic
Night Goblin Archers x22 w/ musician and fanatic

Goblin Rock Lobber x2
Black Orcs x10 w/ musician and shields

Mike took something like...
Prince on Star Dragon w/ star lance and a 2+ re-roll armor save
Sorcerer w/ lvl 2 dispel scroll x2

Archers x10
Archers x10
Spear men x20

White Lions x20 w/ magical standard

Lion Chariot

Repeater Bolt Thrower x 3

Highlights:
-Gorks Warpath went off quite a few times it was so effective i guess Gork decided to stomp on some of my own units and panic them off the board. I have to admit it did do a lot of damage to hojs army taking out bolt throwers and eventually taking out his star dragon in the late game.

-Rock Lobber Crew in general but in particular when the rest of the crew (2 goblins left) took a charge from the High Elf Prince taking no damage scaring off the Prince and running him down.
-
Low Lights:
-Fanatics... they just kept ravaging my own units granted they did do some damage to the more expensive enemy units it's never a good thing when they go back towards the base camp...

-Dragon for generally harassing my units constantly washing them in his fiery breath!

-In hindsight I should of not made my night goblins archers instead i should of kept their shields for when they dropped their fanatic payload and go march into combat to hold something up...

In the second game i basically dropped or moved around a lot of the magic items on heros. I dropped the black orcs and fanatics in favor of a single troll and some squig hoppers. The second game was a much closer Mike switched out his star dragon for a second sorcerer, a fourth bolt thrower a battle standard bearer w/ d6 combat resolution banner and an extra unit of spear men.

This battle was a real meat grinder his white lions held out against more than double their number in orcs. Till eventually they broke, but they held on and caused many casualties in two of my units rendering them combat ineffective later in the game.

My magic phase didn't dominate in this game also despite Mike bolstering his magical prowess it didn't effect the game in a major way. So our magicians effectively nulled each other quite nicely.

I'm still sorely disappointed with my black orc characters sure they can hold morale but for having a reputation as the 'toughest around' i thought they would kill a few more guys! I still like their ability to quell animosity so they will stay in my roster for better or worse...

After the game I thought that i should drop the regular night goblin units from my list. Since I wasn't using them to house fanatics I figure I will use them for conversions. The Rock Lobbers as always are great the mental image of a huge boulder ruining a regiment's day is just too good to pass up!

I've been washing and clipping orc sprues for a couple of hours.. hopefully I can produce some pics to look at. till then stay classy!

Sunday, December 7, 2008

The Original Grass Roots Movement... Orcs!

Sorry for the long delay i know that i promised updates bi-weekly or at least pictures but like any good politician worth their weight in salt i couldn't complete them. Not to say that i've been away from the hobby though i must admit between a social life (drinking, gambling, and women),Warhammer Online, Fall Out 3 and Left 4 Dead that i almost fell off the hobby completely...

I guess part of the reason why i haven't been doing much on the hobby front is because my general lack of interest in warhammer 40k. The new 5th edition rule set didn't really sit all that well in the group. Also add in the fact that the group mainly is into skirmish games because we find them more challenging and rewarding. It almost completely stopped me from building my infamous "Old School" ork army (made up of all old miniatures dating from Rogue Trader and 2nd edition).

During this time i dusted off my dark elves as their rules came out, i found them to be quite fun to play! Fantasy has always been fun for me definitely more so than 40k just required more thought and planning than 40k. But even after these fun games i rarely took out the elves for more action...

When all seemed lost and my armies looking to be mothballed i decided to clean out my locker at work (full of white dwarf magazines... well among other things...). When one of my coworkers decided to browse through the magazines, well wouldn't you know it their youthful enthusiasm reminded me why i loved playing the games so much. As if on cue my good friend Hoj bought an Ogre Kingdoms army on the cheap and practically gave me an Orc and Goblin army! If that isn't great news in itself my coworker accompanied me to a local games workshop and decided on Warriors of Chaos army... because in his words "they look like they can beat the shit out of those puny goblins".

We decided to start a small escalation campaign using the mighty empires rule set and tiles in order to all get motivated to built, paint and play a string of games. Since we have 'floating' armies in the books we can hopefully convince the other players to use these armies obviously adding to the armies as time goes on. As there are a few things i want to add to my dark elves for flavor i wouldn't mind of course.

When i started counting the tally of what my friend gave me in a big box of Orcs and Goblins the running tally so far is:

Lords/Heros:
Leader box (mounted/foot)
Night Goblin Big Boss blister (2 total)
Night Goblin Big Boss on Monster Squig

Core:
Box of Orcs x2 (38 total)
OOP Metal Orcs x20 (painted..shame they have to be stripped)
Box of Night Goblins x2 (40 total)
Night Goblin Archers x40
Night Goblin Fanatics x6 (the new plastic ones, i'm prefer the metal ones though)
Box of Goblin Wolf Riders (10 total)
Orcs x20-30 (from the 6th ed box set some armed with double choppas some arrer boys)
Blister of Snotlings (makes ?)

Special:
Orc Boar Chariot


I have a few odds and ends that could result into a few more boys to even out the units. As well as a few fanatics for a nasty surprise or two heh.. but other than that i have a very viable core (as well as A LOT to keep me busy during the winter season)of core troops. I'm sure with some clever converting that i can make a bolt thrower or two.

For the first 500pts of this campaign i think ill start off light and put together some goblins as a scouting force for the "main" orc army. I have always wanted to try my hand at some more goblins (i love my grots in 40k!). Though i doubt i will strike any fear into my opponents hearts i'm sure there will be plenty of laughs and hey who knows throw enough goblins at a problem and who can tell where it will go from there!

Till then friends keep your drinks chilled, though in this weather that shouldn't be too hard!