Friday 23 October 2015

Deep Underground - Age of Sigmar Dwarfs v Goblins

The smallest boy has been reading this blog and is insistent that he should be referred to as my Gaming Heir (as opposed to his elder brother Son and Heir).

That's by way of a preamble to a game between myself and the Gaming Heir.
He's been very keen to play some Age of Sigmar recently, so we packed up quick after tea last night and set a game up. He wanted to be Night Goblins, so I dug out some Dwarfs to face off against them using the grey Frostgrave mat and various bits of underground flora and scenery.

He had:
Stabit and Gnasher (boss on giant squig)
24 Spearmen, including another Warboss
20 archers
5 spider riders
10 squigs with 6 herders
MushroomMuncha da Shaman

I took:
Throndin Groznog, Dwarf Lord
12 Warriors
10 Thunderes
Cannon
5 Miners

We set up and Gaming Heir took the first turn.
(Apologies for the odd colour in most of the pictures. Playing beneath "energy saver bulbs" is to blame for the yellowish cast)






His general ordered extra boinginess for everyone and they all (bar the archers) ran forward. The shaman cast a shield on the archers and they subsequently shot and killed a couple of thunderers, who laughed off the battleshock.

I advanced with everything except the cannon and decided to wait for the miners to arive. The Thunderers fired back at the archers, killing three, with battleshock adding another one to the pile. The cannon killed a couple of spearmen.



The warriors prepared to charge the spear goblins, but the sneaky greenskins unleashed a fanatic, bringing their charge to a halt. Fortunately that was the only combat and the dwarfs killed the ball-spinning loony before he could do any damage.




In the goblin second turn more boinging ensued and they began to surround the warriors. The shaman tried to unleash a bad moon, but instead munched a bad mushroom and stood around dribbling. The archers once more struck down a Thunderer.


In the charge phase another fanatic was unleashed, this time killing several warriors, who in turn failed to hurt the spinning dervish.


The Dwarfs Lord advanced past the pinned warriors, whilst the miners put in an appearance to the rear. Gunpowder roared and the cannon claimed a bunch o' squigs, whilst the thunderers whittled a few more archers.


Thropndin Groznog meanwhile seized his chance and charged into Stabit and Gnasher - and then felled them both with two mighty swings of his axe!
At this point some concerns were raised that "Dwarf Lords are OP!"

Backing away from the murderous Dwarf Lord the spiders headed off to deal with the miners.
The shaman managed to cast Curse of Da Bad Moon and killed three thunderers.

The spear goblins charged the dwarf warriors and the spiders charged and ran down the miners. Ten poisonous attacks can be quite fatal.


However the goblins fared less well against the warriors, but hung around. Meanwhile the squigs ate my cannon.

In my turn the Lord joined his lads and set about whittling the spear goblins still further. However the goblin warboss proved quite handy himself and killed a fair few warriors


The spiders raced back to join the fray and the squigs did likewise. Suddenly Throndin and his men were the filling in a goblin sandwich...


Shooting  and magic saw the Thunderers reduced to just three stout fellows.


And although the general acquitted himself reasonably well, ten poisoned attacks were pretty nasty and he was running out of warriors to help him.


One more turn saw the warriors all munched, the thunderers Cursed and shot out of existence and even Throndin himself succumb to ten poisonous attacks.

MushroomMuncha da Shaman roared out his triumph!


This was good fun. AoS works well at this scale and there's not too many rules for the Heir to the Gaming Throne to remember.

I look forward to a rematch.

Monday 12 October 2015

The Valley of Tromney - Age of Sigmar Campaign

Warlord Gitstik idly picked a flea from behind his ear and popped it in his mouth. 
"Two-two treasures is enough" he mused to himself. "The powers in Skavenblight will be satisfied with two-two" he nodded. 
And if they were not he had plenty of other rivals lined up to blame.
"We leave-leave tonight" he informed the Stormvermin commander.
"As you wish-wish" hissed the paw-leader. 

After the previous adventures in and around the (now ruined) town of Tromney we convened as a threesome again to play out the next stage of the campaign.
Seizing the day, with two treasures in his furry paw the Skaven Warlord has decided to make off toward Skavenblight with his loot.
General von Tanzsalle is in hot pursuit, and the (frankly rather desperate by now) Nubbinz is planning an ambush...

 The skaven horde on the starting line

 The thin black line

 Squig butts

 The skaven make a break for it as the Tromney Deference force hoves into view

 Kint Uckee's Bloo Moonz take aim

 The skaven are unharmed

 Nubbinz and Muncha bear down on the ratmen


 The cavalry arrive

 Von Tanzsalle's men splash through the mighty River Trom

 Boing! Boing! Boing!

 Twaaaang!

 Munch, slash, hack burp!

 Rats and goblins clash

 More squig butts

 Von Tanzsalle personally supervises the slaughter of the warpthrower crew

 The rats gain the upper paw

 Da Bloo Moonz get stuck in

 The shaman is surrounded

 All goblins dead the skaven break for the border

 Emerging from the woods with outriders in pursuit

With a most unskaven-like display of bravery the warlord cuts the horsemen down

This was another fun game. The skaven managed to out pace the pursuing Empire with ease and the goblins were left to fight them alone and were rather run over by a furry steamroller.

I think I may need to petition for slightly larger goblin units, or the addition of some fanatics as alone they're no match for the skaven.

The rules work fine for us at this sort of scale and we might add another unit or so each, but I'm not sure i'd want to play much bigger games than that.

And so the ratmen have escaped for now, Nubbinz is once more face down in the dirt and von Tanzsalle must do something if the treasures of Tromney are not to be lost forever...


Sunday 4 October 2015

Poseidon versus Hermes - Of Gods and Mortals game

The small boy and I convened for a game of Of Gods and Mortals. I've not quite finished the painting yet, but close enough to make this a bit more visually appealing than the previous game.

He had:
Poseidon, boosted to C5 but without the Release the Kraken rule as we don't (yet) have a Kraken model (any suitable suggestions?).
The Nemean Lion
4 Centaurs
8 Hopilites
4 Archers

I took:
Hermes
Minotaur
Hydra
8 Naked Spartans
4 Archers


Apart from dropping Poseidon in the river, he clumped most of his forces on a hill on one edge of the board.
I spread my forces more thinly.





Small boy explained that the hill was where Poseidon had placed a spring and the troops were there to defend it from me and had summoned the sea god to their aid.




I went first and began a steady advance. Some failures saw him use reactions to move Poseidon toward the Hydra and the centaurs down from the hill.
Finally Hermes sped across the board, walloped an archer off to Olympus and then sped away again.

In the sea-god turn the centaurs continued to advance and Poseidon charged the Hydra - and lost. The lion advanced into the Minotaur but didn't have enough actions to actually fight whilst the archers shot ineffectually at the Spartans.




In my turn the archers drew a bead on the centaurs, but had a failure and were promptly charged and pushed back with heavy casualties. using their remaining action to fight again was a bad plan and the sole survivor recoiled off the board.



Looking to extract vengeance the Minotaur hacked at the Lion, but the result was a tie and, lacking armour, the man/bull combo was slain.

This was not going well.

Poseidon then launched himself at the hydra and won. Foolishly the many headed beast was backed up against some impassable rocks and so he too was killed.



I was reduced to a single unit of Spartans in the buff and Hermes - things were looking bad for the messenger god!

Seizing on a failure Poseidon raced across the board and pinned the Spartans in place. He was soon joined by the Lion and the pair began consuming Spartans at an unhealthy pace. Meanwhile Hermes found himself surrounded by centaurs and hopilites



Inevitably the power of the god and the invulnerable lion proved too much even for my "300" and the death of the last Spartan handed the game to the aquatic deity.



This was a good fun game. Most of it seems fairly clear, though I'm not exactly certain how the free hack/disengage/recoil is supposed to work.
Hermes seems potentially quite powerful if used hit and run, but I'm not sure I've got the skills to properly work it all out.
There's clearly quite a lot of tactical nuances and things that are eluding me, but that's true of most games I play and I'm enjoying painting the models and, most importantly, the small boy is having plenty of fun.