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| In no time at all, we were cooking up a storm... |
GAUNTLET OF SORCERY – WFB STORMS OF MAGIC MULTIPLAYER SCENARIO
I want to run a Warhammer storms of magic scenario at the club, which is open to several players (could be 2 up to 8). I’m using the ‘Gauntlet of Sorcery’ scenario from WD 389 (May 2012). You don’t need to own or know Storms of Magic to take part, others who have it will keep you right. To remind you, Storms games are magic heavy. Wizards (or runesmiths) are a must, and you get an extra 25% of your starting points to spend on goodies from the Storms book (bound monsters and magic items. If you have a big critter model – this is your chance to use it!) We can take care of your storms extras selection the week in advance, or quite quickly on the night. The game is played with 4d6 magic dice (rather than the usual 2d6). Here is the intro blurb from the WD:
THE GAUNTLET OF SORCERY
‘Dire chance has caused many Arcane Fulcrums to appear in close proximity. Will the wizards ally to deny victory to their hated foes, or will they merely fight amongst themselves?’
The table is a square of 9 realm of battle tiles (so 6’ x 6’). On it will be a circle of 8 fulcrums (objectives which can only be occupied by casters), each placed an equal distance apart, and 12” from the nearest board edge, to make our ‘wheel’ of magic. Dead centre in the middle will be a ninth fulcrum. Players win by holding the most fulcrums after 6 turns – the central fulcrum is worth 3 fulcrums when totting up the result!
Each player deploys around one fulcrum on the ‘wheel’ to start. They may place one wizard on it. The Armies will be 1200 pts in size,and must deploy no further than 6” out from the footprint of the fulcrum, so think carefully about your units! If it doesn’t fit, it comes on as a reserve from your nearest table edge. The astute amongst you will have realised that you will need at least two casters to be in with a chance of victory – if you cant afford them in your list, casters are available from 185 pts in your additional ‘storms’ points allowance. Wizards shouldn't be too vulnerable in the game (although everyone will be trying to kill them), as any casters standing atop a fulcrum gain a 3+ ward save.
To determine who goes first, each player chooses a different wind of magic. Then, we spin the spinner. The player who chose the wind of magic that the spinner comes to rest on goes first, with play proceeding clockwise around the Wheel of Magic. We do this EACH TURN. Each player then plays out their turn. For the magic phase, the player whose turn it is rolls the power dice, and the dispel dice are shared out evenly as possible amongst the rest. Will your opponents band together to thwart you, or sit back and see their other opponents burn!?
This scenario presents an exciting opportunity for Machiavellian scheming, cunning use of deployment and army selection, with lots of devastating cataclysm spells going off whilst players cut adhoc deals on the hoof amongst themselves as the tides of fortune ebb and flow. The game will play a week on Sunday (July 7th).
Including myself, I got 5 players buying into the game: Martin with his High Elves, Tam's WoC, Angus with his Woodies, Robert with his Dark Elves, and my own VC.We played a fulcrum each (so cutting down to 5 fulcrums in the outer ring) with the uber-fulcrum in the centre.
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| My VC held the skull fulcrum to the right of the table. Angus is to my left starting on the tower, whilst Robert was on my right, beginning on the spiral fulcrum. Tam's WoC had appalling luck and cascaded their main mage into the warp with a miscast on turn 1. I'm just glad it wasnt me... |
Robert won the spin for first turn (the random spinner determining who went first worked really well, and helped to make the game a tense one) and promptly bee-lined for me! There were whispers of a pact between Martin on the far side of the table and Angus on my left, but as soon as Angus' turn came around this proved to be poison lies! He spent the rest of the game bombarding me with bowfire (he nailed my varghulf, and wounded my Necromancer lord on the fulcrum), raising up blood forests under my units to pelt my troops or otherwise charging straight for me!
Almost everyone made a move to seize the prizewinning central fulcrum early on. Robert sent a lone mage out on horseback to seize it. Apparently she had a magical item which was the only thing in the game that could destroy a fulcrum. He planned out take that out, denying the objective points to everyone, and then nab a second fulcrum off me to go for the win. Apparently the vampire counts on his left flank looked a softer prospect than the WoC on his right! He sent his entire army for me except for the hydra. Even though Tam rained down everything he had on that thing, it survived the game, whereas Tam's mages both nuked themselves, and his hellcannon misfired and blew up!
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| Robert's army charges over to chew up the deadites as Tam considers his fate on the Tree of Woe... |
Caught between two enemies sandwiching me, I tried to raise zombie speedbumps to delay and redirect Robert, along with blocking my fulcrum with my unit of 25 zombies. The junior necro and his skeletons made off for the prizewinning fulcrum in the centre, whilst the shiny stuff ran forwards with him to draw fire and generally ope up some opportunities (ok, so I didn't really know what to do with them. If the vargheists or Varghulf charged Robert, his higher initiative and frenzy would have torn through my expensive units before they got a hit in. Against Angus, his stand and fire would have probably done for me).
Needless to say, I got sandwiched, shot to bits, magicked and mauled! Martin even appeared with a cockatrice (turned out I'd underrated those!) and his new phoenix from the opposite side of the table to have a go at me! Tam's rancid luck pretty much took him out of the game, so mostly the others beat seven shades of shit out of me whilst maneuvering to make their own play for the win. Martin (thankfully) sniped Robert's suicide mage and saved the central fulcrum.
It all boiled down to the last turn, and I was going last. By then my Necromancer Lord was dead, I'd lost my fulcrum and all I had left was a junior necromancer and about 12 skeletons fighting a cockatrice. It looked bleaker than an October break in Wales... By now Angus had killed my Necromancer Lord with a branchwraith and taken my fulcrum, stepping into the lead on objectives held. Martin made his play next, using cantrips to get his level 4 mage onto the central fulcrum, even though abandoning his own to do it. This gave him 3 objective points. With no mages left, Tam was out of the race, and could only noodle about with two depleted units of chaos warriors (which are still tougher than dried mutton). Robert used a cantrip of his own to push Martin's mage off the central fulcrum, taking the High Elves out of contention. He only managed equal Martin in the roll-off however; enough to push the elf off, but not enough to occupy it himself.
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| Martin's High Elf sorceror went for glory, only to be thrown from a four storey building for his trouble. If only X-factpr contestants were dealt with in a similar manner. |
With two fulcrums to Robert's one, and with Martin, Tam and myself holding none, Angus seemed to have it stitched up. Step up one plucky and underrated junior necromancer! Having amazingly beaten the cockatrice in combat, chased it down and killed it with only a dozen skellies he stepped forward as a contender. Unable to simply march up and take the big fulcrum (because even though he was now in charge of the army, he wasn't technically general so couldn't march...), I used a cantrip to blast Angus's branchwraith off my fulcrum and take it back. I then put 6 dice into the cantrip which would allow me to swap fulcrum and take the big one. Amazingly I got it off with out rolling any double 6's, getting some obscenely high casting number.If this came off, I'd come from nowhere to take the game! Martin threw four dice to try and dispel it and rolled three '6s'. Bastard!
I guess it wasnt to be! Still I tied with Angus for the win on one fulcrum each. With the length of the game, even though we started pretty early, we only had time to play out 4 turns. Moves and fighting were short but Angus had a lot of shooting, and everyone's magic took a while. Still, with the free-for-all format (and trying to fend off three players attacking at once!) it made for a tense and enjoyable format as we all smack talked each other and grasped for sneaky alliances and deals. One things I learned for certain is to never trust Angus... The format of the game worked really well, I thought. The army sizes were just right and the system of magic where we divided up the dispel dice amongst the other players was great for the machiavellian deals that were being cut. Robert melted my fighty vampire on hellsteed (my objective pincher) who had death magic in his turn one - before I'd even had a chance to use him. Unfortunately, the rest of my casters were using the lore of vampires, so I had virtually no offensive magic! The plan was to summon the vampire back using the cantrip spell, but it never quite came off! I felt a bit for Tam too, who had a hard one as his mages got bombed out early on and his hellcannon proved less than effective. The game was impossible for him after that. Had his mage lived however with a 3+ ward on his disc, and re-rolling all rolls of a '1', he would have been nigh on impossible to shift. Cheesy bastard!
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| Chaos sorceror on a disc. Well nigh unkillable, the cheesy git! |
Following on from the previous post, I've been busy today building models. In preparation for the graveyard scenario I'm running at the club on Sunday, I finally built 31 new Zombies! Its been a long time since I've done a serious amount of building, and I'm really impressed with the quality of the mantic zombies. Even better, I got them for a song at the Carronade flea market this year - only £8 for 30!
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| Lovely new zombies. Now for a big tin of Army Painter from Geoff! |
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