Holiday gaming day 2: The day of reckoning has arrived...

Yo yo yo,

Day 2 of my holiday gaming schedule is a trip out to Will's house to take on the fatties + check out his new fancy Realm of Battle table that he impulse bought one day.

Now Will has for a while been all "Joel I want to play your Woodies cos I've never played them" etc etc...yet my long Dwarf-like memory recalls a certain campaign weekend at Château Dunn where Will consistently put the "cannot challenge" perk on me...I don't actually think Will wants to play vs Woodies. Yet here we finally were in a situation where he could not avoid them.

Anywho - I rock up with the exact list I used at the campaign with 1 small change (so not the exact same list...)

Treeman Ancient "Ye Olde Prunned Tree" (head had fallen off in storage)
Life Weaver lvl4: Divination Orb (was a scroll)
BSB: Dragonbane gem, Aysendi's bane, Hail of Doom Arrow
17 Glade Guard: M, SB - flame
5x10 Glade Guard: M
3x8 Dryads
5 Wildriders: M
Treeman
Eagle
Eagle

For those not familiar with the amazing (but very dated) Woodie armybook the Divination Orb provides a free dispel dice whenever your opponent uses more than 3 power dice to case. Naff in 6th and 7th...but useful, if not underrated, in 8th where people like to "go big or go home"...but don't like to 6 dice every spell for fear of IF.

Will was using a standard Ogre list...Heavens Slaughtermaster, stubborn BSB in Ironguts etc etc kittycats, scouting maneaters, mournfang, funblaster etc etc

Anywho to keep things simple we set up for battle line:

In true Woodie fashion, the "free forest" is placed completely out of the way. The "stone forest" also quickly found itself removed from the board.

Please note the classic "models fall off movement trays" issue the ROB tables are famous for.

I got the first turn and unleashed my 68 shots + HODA into the Irongut bus with Slaughtermaster and BSB and this was the result:

Bus panics off the board, panicking the Ironblaster with it...ouch. Will then rolls his first magic phase...

INSTABILITY TESTS! oh wait, wrong bad guy. Instead the Butcher decides to IF the s2 MMissile (2 dead archers) and blow up huge...avoiding the pit, but still. Game went downhill from there as my Archers cleaned up everything. There were some lolz moments when Treeman Ancient vs Maneaters = 5 1's to wound and t7 Wildriders beating up the other bus to then run them down, but generally it was a classic case of picking apart targets who had nothing to get points from.

Big win to the Hippies.

We reset for a 2nd game and this time I deployed my archers closer to the tower on the hill for a "Refused flank" set up to try unhinge any tactics picked up in the first game.

Will got 1st turn and did something every Ogre general would be proud of:

Sorry for the potato photo - my ipad is very inconsistent!

He moved up max...but kept out of 15 (but not 20...). This of course was then followed by an IF comet right in my lines meaning I lost the 2 turns of shooting resetting the bowline and 25 archers who couldnt get away. OUCH.

In my 1st turn I taught Will why you dont enter forests when 3 Treesinging castings (with a bluff Throne of Vines to start) = dead maneaters. But this then set up something I forgot to take a pic of...so I'll recreate it with Demigryphs...

1. The Dryads who were facing off against the (now dead) Maneaters are flanked by Mournfang:

2. The Mournfang smash face, and the dryad holds on a stubborn roll:

3. In a classic Woodie move the counter charge comes in:

Who wins this fight? oh right yeah...the Mournfang kill 3 Wildriders, finish off the solo dryad (stomps) and kill the entire flanking dryad unit for the loss of....not a single wound.

This is a classic example of why the Woodies suffer - we struggle to hold up monstrous calv in combat - even in favourable situations. This unit of Mournfang then took out another unit of dryads + an eagle and was the only unit left untouched in the Ogre army at the end of the game winning it unit of the match.

The game came down to me with Treeman Ancient, the unit of 17 + lvl4 and BSB (in the building on the hill)+ 2 supporting archer units backing into a corner. The Treeman took 4 cannon shots to die (thank you lore attribute!). In the end classic frustration tactics won. The "bus" charged the building and drew - putting it out of position, the Slaughtermaster then soloed a unit of Glade Guard only to be shot to death (had 3 wounds left).

In the end I had BSB, lvl4, Treeman Ancient, 1 unit of 10 Glade Guard, and 4 of the unit of 17 left alive. Will had BSB, 1 Irongut unit, Ironblaster, firebelly and 2 mournfang left giving me a 200pt win!

In conclusion: It was a good run out for the woodies - their 1st in 12 months and Will now doesn't want to play them anymore. Hopefully they will see the table top a few more times, and HOPEFULLY that new armybook is just around the corner...

Next up:  The holiday gaming concludes with a day of Gaming in Levin on Sunday. FUNTIMES!