40K Eldar versus Marines

In the latest episode of Tom Plays Games He Doesn't Really Enjoy Very Much its time for Age of Sigmar's misunderstood, bloated older brother 40K.
W00t!
So this was what Eldest boy wanted to play and he duly dug out his Eldar whilst small boy grabbed his Marines.
I set up a table, threw down three objectives and away they went.

 The Templars deploy

 Space Elves!

 Shooty goodness

 The rhino rumbles forward...

 ...and disgorges Templars onto the objective 

 Keep firing ladies!

 Charge!

This didn't end well for the red clad fop.

In the end the Templars had claimed two objectives and the Eldar none, so it was an Imperium victory.

Neither of the boys has really grasped tactics or how best to use their models and I'm not much help. But it passed an hour or two relatively peacefully.

I'd really like them to at least finish off painting some models, but there seems slim chance of that and I'm resisting doing it for them.

Verdict

TBH I preferred it to AoS - it was quicker (though the endless cross referencing and re-checking of conflicting special rules was wearingly familiar) and played as a series of small firefights rather than a huge bundle in the middle. I agreed with the boys that I'll help them work out a pair of 800 point forces and then we can play several games just with those so we all get a better handle on the rules.
I'm also going to get a copy of the current edition of the rules - not because I think they'll massively change things but just so eldest boy is actually playing the same game as his chums at school.

Another game of Age of Sigmar

The smallest boy fancied a game of Age of Sigmar.
So I dug out the Empire and Chaos Warriors and let him and his brother go at it.

 Karl Franz's men assemble

 The Chaos host. Gibbering.

 Forward Reiksguard!

Son and heir deployed with cannon anchoring his right flank, crossbowmen to the left of that in a field, a big unit of knights with the general in the centre, some spearmen in a walled enclosure to their left and pistoliers on the left flank.

His brother had chaos warriors on each flank, the chariot in the centre and the general and some mounted marauders just left of centre and the spawn just to the right.
Both generals decreed a genreal advance
The Empire cannon roared, but despite firing four times at the onrushing Chaos warriors failed to kill a single one all game.

The Chaos Lord led the marauders toward the centre. Where the chariot and spawn crashed into the knights. And so a grind began.

The knights quickly cut down the spawn and the chariot didn't kill many of the steel clad Empire warriors.

 March! Bang! Whizz! Thud!

First the marauders were sucked into the maelstrom. Then the pistoliers and finally the Lord himself. The crossbowmen picked off some of the marauders as the fight ground on.

 Chop, whack, save!

 And repeat...

Nice fence lads.

Eventually the battle drew to a close. The marauders and pistoliers been wiped out and the knights had only two of their number remaining. Five turns of fighting and the field lay unclaimed.

The verdict

Well it took a long time for such a relatively small game. We were constantly looking up rules, but even so, it felt quite slow (and we didn't use any magic).
"Not as good as 40K" quoth the 12 year old - a damning indictment.
The "only four pages of rules" is a flat out lie. It's four pages of rules and then an endless succession of modifiers to those rules, with each unit having at least one (and usually several) special rules that modify in some way the core mechanics. This is probably ideal for 12 year old boys, but just tiresome for me. And yes, I know Warhammer was like that - but I learned Warhammer when I was a 12y/o boy and have spent the intervening 30+ years modifying and updating that knowledge. I would have been no more enthusiastic about learning 8th edition from scratch than this. These days I like simple rules with a small number of core modifiers like Lion Rampant and (to a lesser extent) Hail Caesar.
The battle just ended up as a never-ending slug fest in the middle with only small numbers dieing and no-one running away. I daresay if you could be bothered to master all the rule modifiers there'd be ways to accelerate this but, see above.
So I'm still not feeling the AoS love. I'll play again because Stephen and Gen. B. want to, but it's not really feeling like my thing.

Frostgrave warband for smallest boy

Here's the eight models that make up the smallest boy's warband.
Most were given the dip treatment, rather than my usual basecoat, wash, highlight. However the templar and thief were both painted with washes as they were done from a black undercoat
They look OK and the small boy is very happy with them.

 Templar - a metal Crusader miniatures model from the Nickstarter

 Thief, made from the plastics

 Archer one

And Archer two

 Thug

 Thug 2

 Thug 3

Thug 4

Now to get mine finished.

Frostgrave with the kids again

Another Saturday morning saw me and the two boys set up the Frozen city once more for some treasure recovery activity.
Sadly I've been pretty slack on the painting front and thus the retinues remain a little on the brown side.
The forces we took were as in the previous game. Me and smallest boy had both made it to level two and spent our levelling on making it easier to cast spells (him and that plus a new spell (me). I also bought two healing potions.
We (or actually I in the guise of benevolent dictator father) decided we'd play five turns (based on some of the ideas in the Frostgrave threads on Lead Adventure) and we set up nine treasure tokens and went at it.

 The Chronomancer's apprentice (with bodyguards)

 The Elementalist and his thugs

The Necromancer's crew (including summoned "zombie")

Eldest son remained cautious at first, but then teleported his Necromancer unsupported across the board to attack his brother's apprentice. Meanwhile I set about grabbing some treasure tokens. The small boy's Elementalist stood out in the open a bit too much and caught a very painful crossbow bolt or two, leaving him with but a single wound.
A single wound his elder sibling was only too delighted to remove from him at the earliest opportunity.

 There's treasure this way...

 Quick lads, grab that lectern

Aim, twang, thunk, Ouch!

Meanwhile the apprentice saw off his attacker and riddled him with arrows, causing him to die, utterly on the ground.

A bit of fighting in the middle saw me accidentally kill a couple more of small boy's thugs before he managed to Leap one of the survivors from the board and grab another treasure with his thief.

Meanwhile the Necromancer's surviving posse members grabbed two treasure of their own, leaving me to escape with the remaining five.

A thief, rooted to the spot by Chromomagics

This was another fun game, though a few lips got a bit wobbly as wizards bit the snow.

The campaign phase saw everyone come back to life, though both Elementalist and his apprentice suffered wounds that needed some money spent to heal. Eldest boy has leveled up to nearly the same as me and his brother as a result of casualties he inflicted in this game

I have ended up very rich, and although our levels still remain close I'm now in a position to seriously equip my gang and start to race ahead. So I think I'll probably introduce some of the other rules from lead adventure designed to stop one gang racing ahead.

Lion Rampant with General Ballroom

Last week I sashayed over to the Ilko Gaming Hut for another restorative wargame with General Ballroom (who continues to make an excellent recovery).
I took my Lion Rampant retinue over and we split the forces down the middle giving us a pair of units each.
The good General took the Men at Arms on foot and a unit of expert archers whilst I had the other unit of expert archers and a unit of expert sergeants.
We played a simple line up and fight by way of introduction to the rules for Gen. B.

 My brave retinue

Cowardly turncoats

I started by pushing my archers into the enclosure to my right whilst advancing with the sergeants. I was fearing a rain of death from the archers, but fortunately it failed to materialise. However crafty General Ballroom pulled his MAA out of bow range and into support of his archers.

 This looks like a good spot lads

 Heads down and run at 'em, chaps!

Bugger, they've got back-up

My sergeants made contact with the bowmen and pushed them back. However this led them exposed to a MAA counter-charge. A plan foiled by a roll of just 3 when attempting to activate them. The sergeants in turn charged the MAA, however the fight went against them and they were forced to retreat. meanwhile I was having a world of trouble extricating my own archers from the enclosure.

 Time for a tactical withdrawal

I seriously don't fancy this now...

General Ballroom led his MAA into the sergeants and despite brave fighting they eventually succumbed and fled. The MAA began to advance on the remaining archers, however before they could charge home their opposite numbers took aim and a hail of withering fire forced them too to flee the field.

General Ballroom was left triumphant!

This was a fun little game - reminding me why I like LR and Gen B. certainly seemed taken with the rules, immediately beginning to plan how to turn his disparate WotR figures into a retinue.

Frostgrave Treasure Tokens

These are the six resin treasure tokens and the one metal chest from the Northstar Nickstarter for Frostgrave.

Quick and easy to paint up but I'm quite pleased with them.