The Colonel and his chicken!

Another two weeks gone in, and too much time has passed before getting back to the blog... Its putting me in the mind of a certain Mike Myers film and his Dad's fortnightly craving for CHICKEN! Damn the Colonel, with his wee beady eyes! Anyhows, been mind blowingly busy with work <again>, cant wait until April for it to blow over again... No halt to the gaming though!

A week last Sunday I had a second go at Tam's Warriors of Chaos. After Geoffers' withdrawal from the vets league and Harky's no show, it opened up a space for the gloriously placed 9th place player to come in. Lo and behold the Vampire Counts have risen again (who would have guessed it!). I needed some practice at the 2k points total set for the vet's league, so it was high time for a game. I felt like I'd pretty much beat out all the most useful permutations for the 1500pts tally set for last years WFB league, but now there was scope for some juicy new toys. The 2k list I'd run the week before in the double header with Robert against Angus and Craddock seemed fun to play and fairly effective if used correctly, so I tweaked that and gave it a whirl.

When I met him in the league, Tam was a hardened 40k player, but a relative fresh faced noob to fantasy. His army was unusual, as he is the first person I've seen run WoC for a good 15 years, and he was already tasting success. I had a couple of vamps, a black coach, ghouls, wraiths, grave guard and the usual core cheese. I knew his troops were hard, but I thought I had a fair chance. For his part, he was fielding the hellcannon, 5 knights and a couple of big units of warriors. Turned out it was a massacre! I managed to ding a couple of knights, but it was truly a grim spectacle to behold as he steamrollered me with his big, tough, nigh invulnerable troops... Grim times indeed.

Ye trusty coach - been a while since its been out of the mausoleum.

So this was revenge time then. I'd played alongside Tam since with his WoC, in a 6 player dark vs light storms of magic game. It was 2k a player then, and to be fair his army alone could have won the game for us. This game was going to be tough! I took a plethora of cheese - nearly 100 zombies and 40 skellies to tarpit him on one flank, with two necromancers to restore casualties. On the other flank was the heavy right hook - a mortis engine, alongside 5 crypt horrors and a grave guard unit with a supercharged strigoi-ghoul king. I also had a terrorgheist to give back-up. Tam's army was an evolution of his 1500 force, with the knights dropped for 12 chosen warriors, a level 4 mage for general, a new war altar and some warhounds to make up the points.

Chosen Warriors: 95% immune to death.

My tactic was to hold back with the cheese, move to get round the back on the left with the terrorgheist, and go in on the right with my heavy 'hook'. I had 3 screams to soften them up - scabscrath on the ghoul king, the banshees on the mortis engine, and best of all the terrorgheist. Hopefully this would get past all that chaos armour and down some of those walking tanks!

The tactics bore some fruit. He met my 'hook' with his chosen: 4+ armor and 3+ ward saves all round! The screams did some fair damage, downing a few. I managed to take down the war altar, but it had already done its work, augmenting his chosen at the outset of the game. His L4 mage swooped around behind me on his disc, but I was spared much damage from him or the hellcannon by Tam's appalling rolls. In turn 3 his mage even nuked himself and cascaded off into the warp. Heh. I'd hoped to put the grave guard and the crypthorrors in at the same time on the chosen, but the grave guard couldn't make the charge due to spacing. Instead I charged the strigoi out solo to aid the horrors. Dangerous, but it was an eggs in one basket list - he cost the points and he'd have to earn them. Disastrously though, the horrors made it and he didn't. They survived two rounds of combat with S5 WS6 A2 troops with a 4+/3+ save, but the strigoi took 3 TURNS to charge those 10 inches. By the time he got there, the task was too much even for him (even so, he damn well nearly did it, gah!) Not meant to be. The mortis engine got hellcannoned and went nuclear about the same time. Through his misfortune as much as my design, I'd reduced the warhounds, altar, mage lord and taken down half the chosen on one flank, but now my cheese wing faced two units of 18 warriors backed with a hellcannon. It would only be a matter of time...

The Mortis Engine- with any luck mine will look not too far off this in a couple of months

The terrorgheist did some good work though. With Tam unsettled by the Mortis Engine, he focussed the hellcannon fire on that, allowing the Terrorgheist free rein. I worked him around the back of Tam's line and screamed into the warrior unit on his right flank, reducing it down to only 6 warriors before the general died and the crumble test snuffed it out.

Post game analysis? Did much better than last time out, and the screams did some notable damage. There was a fair dead pile on Tam's side - but at the same time he was quite unlucky with his own dice rolls this time out. My general's double failed charge was critical - but once he, the grave guard and the horrors went down, the army had almost no teeth to it. Quite grim to see actually! The ward saves the chaos troops get with the table they roll on seem almost insurmountable when combined with how good individual rank and file are in hand to hand. The best way to deal with the hellcannon also seems to be to leave it alone and hope that it blows itself up... Not good! Hopefully the new book will balance the WoC out a bit more before I face them again.

Life in the 40k universe - walk softly and carry a big gun... oh, and always use 'burst fire'. It rocks.

The following Tuesday, 'Gunner' Cutter got his autopistol out again for round two of Dark Heresy at Robert's. Martin joined us for this one, bringing a cog boy into the group. Playing out the 'Illumination' mission, we went off to hunt down the aborigine seeress after she turned her back on the Abbot and legged it. By the time we'd questioned her and gotten back to the cathedral, everything had predictably gone pete tong. Brother Lazarus was down and bleeding out through a selection of new holes in his chest in the Abbot's house, where we found a smashed in data slate telling us our superior had been possessed by a local godly spirit and was hellbent on opening a gate into warp space inside the cathedral. Off we went to finally get a look inside the cathedral and there he was floating in the air with tarot cards spinning around him as he chanted to a big swirling warp rift in the ceiling.

Shoot him in the bulbs!

As we went in to get him, the Abbot revealed himself as the true villain - completely possessed by the spirit of the Crowfather, and noodling about like something out of Silent Hill. He made a mess of James' scribe and it all seemed a bit hopeless and grim with most of the party paralysed by terror until Craddock's PC double tapped the critter in its milky white bulbs with his autopistol and blew the tainted swine back into the screaming warp. Gah, we'll never hear the end of it! Perhaps death and eternal soulless damnation would have been preferable to sharing a space cruiser to the next mission with a new 'Hero of the Imperium'... Good game again though, so props to Robert. Still feels quite fresh, and I'm enjoying the system and the setting. The party took a group award for XP and a bounty and all busied themselves buying upgrades for their characters, so no doubt next time we'll have some new toys to use!

Last Sunday it was back to the club again, this time for my second match in the Flames of War 600 league. This time I'd be leading my Wehrmacht Infantry Company against Dougie's filthy, lice-ridden Commie dogs. The scenario was a straight up battle, with two objectives in either deployment zone. To win, you had to start a turn with one of your units on an objective in the enemy's DZ.

He had so many men! Dougie literally filled his side of table from side to side. He had a carpet of infantry, with a couple of hmg teams attached to the platoons. The red dogs had 4 field artillery guns for support. My single platoon of infantry, mortar platoon, StugD and half track seemed paltry in comparison; however this game taught me the value of getting infantry dug in. Whilst my mortars rained down barrage fire on the red wave, my infantry dug in over one objective, ably covered by a wood. The StugD held the other along with my company command. As he came at me, my Stuka's (all but useless, they only turned up twice) harried his artillery and his left flank infantry. They were slowed but came on - as his platoon crested a rise across the middle of the field, my platoon opened up with 12 dice and butchered them! Dougie's surviving platoon members failed their break test and legged it off the field. One objective would be safe at least.

Cant you see them, Yuri? The Germans are the trees over there!

The mortar platoon bogged down the Russian platoon moving up to occupy the village in the centre, supported with occasional fire from a base of my dug in infanrty and an odd shot by the StugD. They would sit there in cover in the centre of the table for the duration of the game. On Dougie's right, my StugD and the half track held the objective against Dougie's last infantry platoon, which he initially held back. My company command made a bold attack - and even got close enough to assault the enemy in their DZ, but got plastered for their efforts. As the Ruskies came back at me, the mortars and my lonely armour pinned them continuously and whittled them away. I even eventually forced him to make a break test on them (if he failed they'd be off and I'd win by default), after which the survivors scarpered off to hide in terrain in the table centre.

Pesky Russian artillery.

This left the path open for the noble StugD to scoot off solo and drive onto the objective in Uncle Joe's right flank DZ! By this point it was turn 14 - the scenario imposed no turn limit, and both sides had been bogged down and pinned into a stalemate by turn 6, so I felt this had some potential. If I could survive Dougie's turn, then the game was mine! The StugD had studiously avoided LoS from Dougie's artillery for the entire game after a near fatal speculative shot early on, and it now took 6 rounds from the 3.5" guns that could draw a line on it. Three shots hit and I saved on two and drew on the last. If Dougie could pass a firepower test, he'd save his bacon - other than that the game was mine.

Poor, beat up StuG. So brave, so naive.

He passed it. Balls. The Fuhrer will be disappointed. The StugD went pop (note to self: buy bigger Stug), and the ruskies in the centre broke out and made for the now hideously exposed and unprotected mortar platoon. Ah well, that was it all over now. Still though, I got 2 league pts for breaking one of Dougie's platoons, so not a total loss - and it was an pic game! It flowed much better this time round, thanks to Dougie's knowledge of the rules. Looking forward to my next opponent - I think it may be Kev, with his weak-kneed Highlanders.

Nice components - lots of pieces though!

Last of all, D&D was called off on Tuesday as a couple of the guys couldn't make it. We played the 'Game of Thrones' board game for the first time. It was great! All houses - except for Arryn - can be played, and players vie for land, power, wealth and station just as in the books. At first look, the game seemed quite complex, with many steps and procedures in a game turn. Martin had predicted we'd only get to turn two or three, but we rattled along and made it to the full ten.

I drew House Stark, which was quite a fun position. Up in the north the resources are stretched thin across great swathes of land, but you dont have to contend with rivals snapping at you from all sides like the Martells, Baratheons and Lannisters did! The map makes for some really excellent strategic minefields as the players balance for power and risk conquests vs. consolidation.

For a little while at least, winter was coming...

In the end, Robert blocked my bid for glory - the git - and in a three way tie for the turn 10 win between Martin's Greyjoys, Tam's Tyrells and myself, it came down to seeing who had the most strongholds (home provinces) and then to who had the highest supply rating. Tam took it in the end. That man really does have the golden touch. I cant wait until I own him one day and hammer the shit out of him!

Looking forward to next Sunday at the club now. I've got a 2k practice game lined up against Rambo to have one last practice with my VC list for the vet's League. I also hope to get the next scenarios up for the club;s Necromunda campaign, as its been a fair while and I dont want to leave it hanging.