Battle of Azgaar's tomb

Havin thrown together the outline of the fantasy rules in a word document and created some stats, I fought a trial battle today between the Dwarf and Chaos armies. The scenario called for the capture of Azgaar's tomb, a source of strong Chaos magic, which the Dwarfs are defending.

The Chaos battleline deployed

The Dwarven battle line, minus the miners who are digging under the earth somewhere.

Chaos had the first turn, and the first activation failure saw the Dwarf cannon react with a miss. 

The cannon was upgraded to a Runic Cannon, enabling it to reroll scatter dice. It didn't help this turn.

The Chaos hordes surge towards the Dwarfs.

The Runesmith casts Rune of Fire on the Giant.

 For the majority of the game I was playing the magic rules wrong. I wrote them last night when I was feeling extremely tired and was wondering why the casting was so hit and miss. Then I remembered how it was supposed to work and the game was much better.

The cannon misses again!

That's OK! Runic reroll!

Ooof! The Beastmen are battered.

The Miners appear and charge the Chaos Sorcerer!

The Wizard takes most of the hits, but it is the Dwarfs who fall back due to failing to batter the Sorcerer.

The Gyrocopter had attacked the Giant with its steam gun, but was then charged by the lumbering beast. Here it is fleeing from that encounter!

After suffering the fire of the Dwarf cannon, the Chaos Lord charges the Dwarf King and his bodyguard.

But is wiped out.

At this stage the Handgunners have seen off a unit of Beastmen, the Giant has attacked the Warrior shieldwall and been repulsed, and the Dwarf King has eliminated another unit of Beastmen.

A blast of magic from the Runesmith and the Giant is out of here!

The Gyrocopter rallies and returns, but the Chaos Warriors are closing.

Chaos flank attack! The Dwarf King was wiped out here. I think that flank attacks in the future will reduce resilience by 1 as opposed to reducing it to 1. Either way, this unit still would have been destroyed.

On the flank the Chaos Warriors run down the Dwarfs as they fall back from combat.

The Chaos Warriors surround the remaining Dwarfs.

Beastmen and Giant continue to rout, but the Sorcerer destroys the Miners.

As the sun pours onto the table the Dwarf defeat becomes apparent.

The Dwarfs deployed 33 points, and Chaos 34 points, and the battle was relatively even, so I think the points are about right. However, I also made quite a few changes to the lists as I went, so as a playtest it was a good first run.

I need to write the lists for the Empire and Orcs now, and hopefully have another game soon.

Nate

Dwarves finished and ready for battle

Yes, with the addition of A Runesmith, Gyrocopter and a unit of Tunnellers, the Dwarves are complete. Built for 36 points in Dragon Rampant we'll see how they fare when I start playing with the rules a bit.

The Dwarven army in all of its glory - 7 units

The Runelord with his hand-painted banner

The hardy tunnellers

I love the candles on their helmets.

A crazy Dwarf in his Gyrocopter

Red, blue and yellow - the flying circus is in town!

 I'm going to give the Fantasy painting a rest for a while and head back to Ancients, although I have a dozen 54mm Great War figures that I want to complete first. I did, however, begin to get into another Fantasy army last night.

Nightmare time!

The blue regiment and red regiment - try to guess which is which.

 But I decided that I would come back to the Undead army at a later date. I have four Fantasy armies and my current goal is getting them on the table for a battle, which means time working on the rules..

Finally, because I was painting a banner for the Runesmith I thought I might retro my Ultramarines a bit more. So here's a Primarus Marine with a banner, as nature intended!

Much better with a banner

Nate

Dwarf King

The Dwarven painting mission continues with the completion of the Dwarf King and a cannon.

Surrounded by his guard of Hammerers

He towers over them - on his rock!

A Dwarf master gunner aims his cannon

This one will make a big boom!

The Tunnellers, Runesmith and gyrocopter are well underway, so should appear here soon. School ahs officially started again, and I am teaching on-line from home, which is interesting and just as time consuming as going to work normally. But it does mean I can go to the garage during my lunch break and finish my basing!

Nate

Dwarfs!

Yes, the first Dwarfs are based and ready to fight. They are another example of my Oldhammer leanings, being painted in vibrant tones to contrast with their doughty natures.

Axe wielding regiment in orange

Regiment with shooty sticks in green

Side by side in all their glory

Dwarfs are my favourite fantasy race. Even though I am tall, I still identify with their love of beer and their slow moving, large bellied nature. Also, they have horns on their helmets. Nice.

The rest of the Dwarf army is on my painting tray at the moment. A regiment of tunnellers, the King and his bodyguard, a cannon, a Runelord and a gyrocopter.

As for the Dragon Rampant rules, I am looking at adjusting them in the same way that I did Lion Rampant for the Gallic Wars. For a start, no switching sides when an activation fails. What it will do is trigger a possible reaction from a single unit on the opposite side, before returning to the original side to try and activate again. This system is used in Song of Drums and Shakos Large Battles, and punishes a non-activation without the potentially devastating effects of losing the initiative entirely.
The activation roll will be a generic one for the type of unit, not for specific actions. The number of dice rolled in combat will be equal to the remaining strength points that a unit possesses. I plan on trawling through Warhammer 4th edition and dragging out a whole pile of potential magic and special weapons to adapt the system. In truth it will not be Dragon Rampant anymore. Oldhammer Rampant?

Nate

How to surprise yourself

A few posts ago Jonathan asked me how I surprise myself with painting. Well, I do this by making plans. For instance, I've been planning to paint Star Wars Legion and Ancients for the next couple of months. All of my figures are undercoated and ready to go, and I have a vague idea of what I will paint when. As soon as my Marlburian generals were done I had a dozen Star Wars legion figures lined up to paint, with the second half of a Macedonian pike phalanx behind that. Three days ago I finished the Marlburian generals, so far so good.

French and Spanish generals for the Bourbons

English and Dutch generals for the Confederates

And then I figured I'd undercoat some of my other figures before winter set in and spray undercoat became a touch and go event. This included some of my fantasy armies. You know, just in case. And then I thought, 'what would happen if I undercoated the Beastmen with my $6 can from the cheap emporium'. And then I thought, 'I need to paint a few and see how they look'. Fast forward three days:

A Chaos Army for Dragon Rampant

The cheaply undercoated Beastmen

Rebased Chaos Warriors, although I didn't paint them.

I did paint these Chaos Knights though

And this Avatars of War Chaos Sorcerer, looking appropriately freaky!

And this Gant that I painted this morning

I love this model

Have dead sheep, will travel.

Now on a philosophical level, knowing that I get easily distracted, can you truly say I 've surprised myself? It was almost certain that I wouldn't stick to the plan for two whole months. But the point is, I never know what the distraction is going to be. Just like the WW2 Pacific campaign in the middle of everything, it was a 'one-day' project that somehow became a 'today' project.

Anyhow, I now have another Fantasy army ready to hit the table, which it will as soon as I've played out the WSS game I've set up on the games table. As the weather turns a bit colder getting a last couple of games in out in the shed would be a good idea.

Nate

Infiltration - Grimgob's raids continue

The Orc campaign continues, and Grimgob heads west after his victory, aiming for the riches of Geradefurt and the important trading city of Dunzell.

Grimgob moves towards Dunzell.

Along the way the Southern realms have been putting a force together with supplies coming from Sasterten. Hearing of this, Grimgob has dispatched a small force northwards to try to burn the human supplies and weaken their defence of Dunzell.

This was scenario 25 from One Hour Wargames (amended slightly) which has 4 units trying to move off the north edge of the table while the opposition arrive in the battle piecemeal.

All deployment was rolled for. The Orc chariot ended up on the road while the Orc boyz were scattered along the baseline. A unit of handgunners was the lonely defensive force on the hill.

The other two Orc units on the extreme left.

The supply dump - plenty of important goodies here.

The first turn saw the handgunners inflict casualties on a advancing Orc mob - who promptly failed their morale after only one casualty and then proceeded to never rally again all turn.

Despite their initial victory the handgunners couldn't stand toe to toe wit he next unit of Orcs who chased them out of their defenses.

Meanwhile the orc chariot careened towards the supply dump.

The handgunners are still retreating as Grimgob arrives beside the dump, but it is turn 3 and reinforcements have arrived for the humans!

In their second round of hand to hand the Orcs failed their morale. Like their mates, they never rallied for the rest of the game...

Distracted by the need to wildly charge at the enemy, the Orc chariot goes head to head with spearmen.

The last unit of Orc boyz is hit with a devastating volley before it can reach the dump and set fire to it.

Dispatched from the main army at Dunzell as an escort, Southern reinforcements arrive.

Oh dear. A battered Orc unit, and guess what it couldn't manage to do for the rest of the game...

The Orc chariot stands alone, but both sides are battered.

The noose is tightening as the chariot rallies and makes one last charge.

Which the spears are equal to - just! The supplies are safe!

This was a diversion from the next main game, the battle of Dunzell, where both armies will be arrayed in full. Had the Southern Realms lost the supply dump, they would also have lost a random unit from the next battle. Now it will be full forces clashing in the next game, where the leaders will have boasts to fulfill as well.

Nate