Orcs in the House game 2 of 3

HE vs OnG ode to the 6 dice monkey

Game 2 means it's time for the High Elves to defend the pass.

My list:

Prince on moon dragon: GW, armour of caledor, vambraces of defence,  other trickster's shard

lvl2: scroll, high magic (drain magic, shield, flames of phoenix)

BSB: DA, GW

38 Spears: FC-flame

2x10 archers: m

26 White lions: FC-amulet of light

26 White lions: FC

2 Eagles

So rather compact list, but a robust list designed to punch holes panzer style.

Anywho deployment:

TURN ONE:

High Elves:

I get first turn and advance with style. The right most Wlion unit enters the forest (stupid forest). The rest of the army pushes forward towards Ronald, spider riders, and ddiver hoping to use the building to split the Orcs and get behind them. Only concern was the trolls swinging to help support, but they should be an easy beat.

 Magic = IF shield on spears, and lvl2 takes a wound. Shooting pings a wound off the spider riders.

OnG:

Everything just kinda moves up. The Manglers move the most and threaten to destroy my wlions in the forest. Ronald feels a little picked on, so moves back a bit to the sound of much booing and hissing from the crowd.

I stop the scary spells (hand and foot).

TURN TWO:

High Elves:

Well, not much to do except continue to put pressure on Ronald, Eagles play catch the Mangler and the Wlions in the forest fail their first of many failed ldship tests, so stumble forward.

 

In the magic phase I IF (again), but this time casting drain magic = small explosion killing the lvl2 (who needs magic anyway??), taking away my crucial scroll, and killing 4 archers.

 

Since all my archers moved up, there was no shooting to note.

OnG:

 The OnG turn starts with a gobbo chariot charge on the stupid Wlions. Stupid giving ItP = I had to wear the charge and hope the dice were favourable. The dice were favourable in that Ronald failed his march blocked test and could not get away from all the scary stuff. HOWEVER in the magic phase Ronald escapes with a hand from Gork. In other news the Trolls take the bait and enter the building.

 

In the above pick the Wlions have taken two wounds from the chariots, cut them down, then combat reformed (gotta love the rules for that!) around the front left model to fact off with Ronald. Distance to Savages is 17 inch, so safe.

TURN THREE:

High Elves:

So now to execute my clever plan. Archers charge solo troll to get out the way (check-fails charge, but moves far enough to get out of the way). Wlions pass stupid test to charge Ronald (fail...), Dragon rolls 6 or more to successfully take out doomdiver (fail...). Not looking good. So plan B comes into play-Wlions and spears turn to face Ronald. My thinking being that I can stop Foot OR Hand, so want to force Ben to cast Hand not Foot.

Shooting takes a wound off Ronald.

OnG:

Ronald, feeling a little trapped decides it's a good time to learn to pass ldship tests and marches away to safety.

Gork then gets angry and IF's foot on Stupid whitelions...

and Doomdiver takes 2 wounds from Dragon.  Trolls exit building Behind Wlions (as expected).

TURN FOUR

High Elves:

Dragon decides he can now casually glide into the Doomdiver, Wlions turn to face the trolls . In other news the Rest of my army starts to gang up on Ronald.

Note the archers behind the weakened wlions to catch Ronald for spear fun times.

Dragon vs Doomdiver....Prince hits 3 times and then rolls 3 1's to wound. Dragon finishes the job-reforms to make a Troll sandwich (as planned).

 

OnG:

As predicted Ronald exits stage right towards my lines (and in keeping chase I keep my stuff away from his blocks). I'm up on points so comfortable to do this-especially as the Trolls are effectively free points at this stage... Trolls fail stupid so dont charge (love that subtle rule change from 7th). The main Orc bus enters the building and Savages stroll across. I think it is this turn the lobba blows up, or it could have been earlier. Either way it didnt do anything all game and died without my help.  Now come the magic phase...6 dice monkey Foot results in this:

yes, 2 direct hits on the spears effectively removing any chance I had at killing Ronald.

TURN FIVE:

High Elves:

So Troll Sandwich it is.

 Everything else does a disappearing act to avoid the (now scary) spider.

In the Combat I kill 3 trolls, break them and they come frustratingly close to running off the board edge, rolling a 10 to flee which I cannot catch.

OnG:

Ronald continues to be scary, but not "in combat" scary. Trolls are handed to safety and Dragon is footed down to 1 wound (prince took 2 wounds from Troll vomit, so very close to dead). Somehow I have turned around-not sure how that happened. I think this might all happen a turn earlier-or we played 7 turns...

TURN SIX??:

High Elves:

I charge into the trolls,

 and the stupid Small White lion unit fails march block test so cannot get away = Swift reform to face, maximise attacks and move up to engage (dont think I could get an archer unit in the way to block.).

I beat the Trolls (kill down to 1 wound left), but story of my life = it flees away, blocking the savages, but preserving the points.

OnG:

Savages cant charge = awesome, but Ronald gets his pain on. I pass terror, but fail fear once in combat = Ronald lives with 2 wounds left, but wlions die. I did the combat again with a passed fear check, and I still get wiped out with Ronald on  1 wound left....damn.

RESULT:

With the last troll alive and a White lion unit dead I lose the game-but not by much. All his chaff had died and I had some serious points left on the board saving me from a serious defeat. As I said earlier if 8th was pointed based on battle field position I think I successfully broke through the pass with Wlions and Dragon on the way through, but with everything else running for safety. Only Ronald made it past the half way mark from the Orcs, so they were not very good at getting through the pass.

Player of the match: lvl4 shaman with some very well timed Hand and Footing. Even if the Foots still went off, without the hand I would have killed Ronald and got the Trolls (ie my original plan) for an easy win. Just goes to show how sneaky the Orcs can be and also how well written their book is. All day there was not a single failed animosity test, and the army was scary to face with lots of hurt and sneaky tricks to upset the best of plans. I was also starting to suspect that the winds of magic favoured the green as 2nd game in a row where my Mage died very early on to miscasts....

Game three to come!

So the Orcs came to town game 1 of 3

EMP vs OnG

Random deployment

So an exciting day of gaming, but a sad day as this was my last chance to duke it out with Ben before he jets off to Australia to show them over there how to really play warhammer. This is the first of 3 battle reports. The other two will go up in a couple of days.

Ben brought his OnG to have some fun. He also brought afghans with a caramel bit. Note to other people I play-I am very much open to baking related bribes.

His list:

Warboss: +1 to hit sword, 4++, crown of stubborn

lvl4: scroll

savage lvl1: shrunken head

Black Ork BSB: 4++

Black Orc: HA

5 spider riders

30 something Savage Orc Big Uns

30 something board and sword orcs

6 trolls

1 troll

pair of gobbo chariots

2 manglers

doomdiver

rock lobba

Big spider thing (Ronald Reagen)

My Empire list was:

GTM: Runefang, ch.shield, luckstone                        250

lvl4: scroll (light)                                                            225

BSB: Bsteed, FPA, Sh, SOM                                          129

Engineer                                                                          65

13 ICKS: FC                                                                      355

10 xbows                                                                         90

2x5 archers detach                                                        70

30 Halberds: M, SB                                                        200

10 RICKS: FC-gleming Pendant                                   305

2 cannons                                                                        240

3 Dgriffs                                                                           174

3 Dgriffs                                                                           174

Hellblaster                                                                       120

2397

So an interesting matchup. I have a wall of steel, gunpowder, and a heroic sense of "being the good guy" and Ben has a green wall of smelly gross stuff that in the story provides a scary threat, but really is just a plot device for the dashing hero to discover something about them self.

Any who deployment. I had the honour of "deploying" my army first.

It went like this:

so yeah-all my knights on 1 flank and behind a forest... Also engineer is MILES away from the hellblaster. Please also note the painted skull temple hill thing. Did that the night before having initially bought it on pre-order...the sticky up bits are pinned in for easy storage.

Ben's orcs deploying in kind like this:

SO yeah-both manglers looking at my knights along with both artillery pieces and savage orcs to nicely swing by and clean up. Fun.

However the Orcs fail to steal first turn.

TURN ONE:

Empire:

Starts with me trying to untangle the left flank. The RICKS test the forest-venom thicket (of course), so opt to march through as no benefit to just walking. one of the DGriffs waltz's into the forest too, while the other unit reforms into a unit and looks to swing to the middle of the table white the bus decides to wait and see what the orcs do.

Magic phase opens with an IF burning gaze on the mangler my cannons cannot see. = dead mangler (yay), but also dead lvl4 (not so yay). Only kills 2 of his mates in the process + wounds the hellblaster.

The cannons open up and kill the 2nd mangler, while the other fails to wound Ronald. 1 archer detach kills a spider.

Orcs:

Well, what to do? The spiders declare a charge on the archer detachment, and fail. Something happens to them-I think they flee from a panic and end off the board-I believe it could have been from this.  The rest of the army hangs back, lurking around to see if the shaman can foot FTW.

In the magic phase the first foot gets off. This kills a few of the RICKS puts a wound on a DGriff. The WAAAGHtillery also targets the RICKS who were pushing the left flank hard.

TURN TWO:

Empire:

The WAAGHtillery was a little too far to charge this turn, so the RICKS move up aggressively to threaten both machines. The bus also decides to commit and moves to look the Savages in the face-but not without some DGRiff support. The other Dgriff unit moves towards the middle of the board.

With no magic it is straight to shooting. The archers manage to put a wound on the solo troll and the cannons bounce off Ronald. sigh. I might have gotten 1 wound on him. No Combat so straight to The Orcs

Orcs:

Ronald feels his time has come, so charges an archer detachment, who flees (voluntarily), but are run down. Best option really as it meant Ronald couldnt over run into the MANtillery.

The foot struck again killing a few ICKS. DDiver might have helped the foot clean up the RICKS as there were only 6 left at this stage. + 2 of the DGriffs are now dead, so I blame the foot (most likely candidate as that thing just kept on going...) No combat.

TURN THREE:

Empire:

The Grand templar, disgusted at the lack of combat decides enough is enough and orders the charge. The ICKS + remaining Dgriff smash into the Savages, while the RICKS decide to give the rock lobba a taste of some cold hard steel.  To support the charge, my remaining detachment moved up to block and divert any supporting charge from the Orc bus. I saw an "opportunity" to flank Ronald with the halberds, but an opportunity does not always = "good idea" so didn't. Instead I kept my respectful distance  due to gobbo chariots and trolls + black orc leadership that were slowly closing in. Shooting was a good as it was ever going to get. 2 cannons at Ronald + hellblaster at long range = ronald down to 3 wounds. the MANtillery is looking rather pathetic at this stage.

Combat : RICKS take out the lobba and reform in a way so they can support the ICKS combat, or charge the Ddiver. The main combat was a bit of a wiff TBH. RUNEFANG vs 5++...yeah...DGriff vs 5++ ward??? HELL YEAH. Dont need no fancy magic sword! The combat resulted in a draw, so we both reformed to look like this:

Orcs:

The bus, clearly annoyed by not been able to flank the ICKS takes it out on the poor down trodden detachment who was only doing as ordered (dead-reform to face ICKS). Ronald flies into cannon (dead-overrun into engineer). While solo troll moves to block the now central Dgriffs

 

Now I believe it is this magic phase where I lose some more RICKS (down to 4), but also get to foot the chariots-who flee having previously taken a wound or 2 from the super archers. I may not have a wizard, but I still get to kill stuff in the magic phase! The doomdiver then decides to explode having just been moved with the hand to safety.

In combat the ICKS do a lot better, but the savages hold as they gave it back just as good-but not good enough.

TURN FOUR:

Empire:

SO Dgriffs charge the troll and wipe it out. They reform to be a little closer to the orc bus. The Trolls, now being a little threatening, mean the halberds set up to charge them. The RICKS flank charge the savages to swing the combat my way with an awesome display of martial prowess, the Savages are beaten, flee and are cut down by the valiant knights, who all over run conveniently out of the Orc Bus's LOS. In the shooting phase I checked the engineer rules and it seems that they can still look after a warmachine EVEN IF ENGAGED IN COMBAT-only restriction is distance and not shooting...weird. Anywho the remaining cannon tries to snipe the black orc from the Trolls, misfires, engineer re-rolls to another misfire (probably because busy being eaten by a giant spider)...sigh.

(ps-the empty movement tray on the hill is where the 3 remaining RICKS should be. They just fell over and was easier to just put the tray where they should be)

Orcs:

A little miffed that the knights escaped, the bus reforms to face the DGriffs to avoid a rear charge. Ronal decides to eat another cannon, but fails to overrun into the Hellblaster. The Trolls are hand of gorked to a scary position.

TURN FIVE:

Empire:

After much thinking, the DGriffs charge the bus, confident that they have held up super Vamp busses (a very convenient thing to know). the knights all reform to face the rear of the bus (the solo DGriff runs to threaten the gobbo chariot that is on the board edge just in case it rallies).

 

The Halberds re-form to draw the trolls away from the bus combat and the hell blaster opens fire. The xbows move forward to avoid a potential over run.

Now short range, no engineer, get 24 shots = 12 should hit = 4 should wound = dead Ronald right???? Well I got 12 hits and this was my "to wound" roll:

...yeah Ronald has 1 wound left and a free pass to continue killing stuff.

In the combat my Dgriffs do amazing!  winning by heaps, and forcing a stubborn ldship check.

Orcs:

Bye bye hellblaster +and trolls charge into the Halberds.

...and I fail my fear AND my steadfast check and run (away)

TURN SIX:

Empire: 

ICKS rear charge the bus and Halberds rally and face off with the trolls for round 2.

I kill everything except the warboss and BSB in the combat.

Orcs:

Ronald is looking hungry for his next kill...

DENIED!!!!! by a failed terror test = flee 11 inches through building to safety!!!! However, the trolls still love eating halberds who once again flee (but die this time). The warboss and BSB survive a round of attacks, but only just.

 

RESULT

A sweet, sweet victory for the Empire. The MANtillery has some soul searching to do as it utterly failed to kill a giant spider. 5 hits for 3 wounds is stupid for cannons. Hellblaster was sans engineer, so can be forgiven. Ronald was player of the match.

Empire Painting Update

Hi All,

I figured it was time for another painting update.

What I've been up to:
Before the cancellation of the Wellington Achievements event I was frantically getting my woodelf army ready for it. My next painting post will "show case" my (what could have been) event taking woodie list of awesome.

Anywho, with that out the way (and conveniently all the painting for the woodies finished) I have started getting the Empire up to scratch as well as finishing off my 2nd horde of whitelions for Call to Arms in August (yes, you read that right!).

So without further delay, my Empire painting progress:\

My New lvl4 of Light:

So no prizes for guessing it is from the Mage wagon kit. I bought the box kit on pre order all excited by the shiny new stuff (Hi my name is Joel and I am a recovering GW fan boy). The hurriculum thing is in various stages of assembly, but I whipped the mage together and gave it a master class with a reverse colour scheme that GW uses for the robes. I'm rather happy with how he turned out.


The Plastic Warrior Priest:

SO yet another rather expensive single mini. I also bought the new war alter...and then saw the rules haha. Good thing it came with a sweet warrior priest though. The war alter, like the hurriculum, is sitting in various stages of assembly. It and the Hurriculum will probably end up being a project for when I get everything up to date and painted/based/movement trayed....ie never.

Updated Mounted BSB:

Basically my old BSB with a new paint job and the sword from the griffon kit (from horde of bitz-I'm not THAT wasteful of entire kits. The griffon was one of the things I didn't buy!) I did a sword swap because I will be running a Runefang'ed GTM (still being converted) and I didn't want the Runefang appearing twice in the army!

The Rick-Rollers:

The main motivator for me to re-fresh my Empire was how completely and utterly horrible my knights were! These are the old vomit inducing gross "off white" knights with a black look. Basically took the Blazing Sun look and added some purple and left the riders black. I have finished 10 with Full Command and due to the fact they dont have shields (they block with their bad-ass attitudes) they will be my Reik knights or RICKS as I refer to them. Next to do will be 13 or so Inner Circle Knights which I will do with the direct order Blazing Knight upgrade kit so they look different.


Blaze of Glory:

So Hellblasters are the new sexy. Unlike all the band wagon jumpers out there I had 3 of these from when they were not so cool (meaning I can officially declare myself a "hobbiest" not a "WAACer"...ignore the fact I have no spearmen or big blocks of free company). This is one of the OLD metal ones. Only 2 of the metal crew have survived into the army. The guy carrying the mug of beer got whip ganged into my Mordheim witch hunter warband (who have also gained a new member thanks to failcast release). If it ever turns up, I picked up the dogs of war travelling explorer guy off ebay who will eventually join the crew.






Battle Budgies:

The only "inspired" pre purchase I made (other than armybook!) was 2 boxes of the battle budgies. Both units look exactly like the above-the other one just has different helmets and shields from the selection offered in the kit. I have armed them with lances to get the 1+ armour save of awesome.

So that is my progress. Still to do is the rest of the knights (aiming for a unit of 13 Inner Circle Knights to bodyguard GTM and BSB) and the plastic steam tank I bought a while ago (yet to make an appearance with new book, but keen to try it out if I can pull myself away from the new stuff!)


On the gaming front I have been unable to successfully stop Ryan's super vamp bus of dumb from killing everything yet-though I now have an evil plan that will probably fail.

In case anyone wants to steal my "net list" I am currently fielding:

Grand Templar Master: Runefang, ch.shield, luckstone        250
lvl4: scroll (light)                225

BSB: Bsteed, FPA, Sh, SOMight            129
Engineer                    65

13 ICKS: FC                    355
10 xbows                    90
30 Halberds: M, SB                200
2x5 archers detach                70

10 RICKS: FC-gleming Pendant            305
2 cannons                    240
3 Dgriffs                    174
3 Dgriffs                    174

Hellblaster                    120

2397

I disagree with the current fashionable "knights + artillery + stank" lists that are doing the rounds because they look designed for a win/draw/loss system that only plays battleline. + they tend not to field the Grand Templar with Runefang so they must be rubbish!