Topic: Empire vs Warriors of Chaos - 3250pts

[Hoodling]

Another 8th edition battle report. It's possible the next report I do will be Kings of War instead. We'll see how that goes.

http://hoodlinghole.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/the-battle-of-blood-valley-part-1.html
http://hoodlinghole.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/the-battle-of-blood-valley-part-2.html
http://hoodlinghole.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/the-battle-of-blood-valley-part-3.html

Cheers! 

[Yvain]

Neat!

Also cool model, great paint jobs.

[Vauln]

Great read.

[red shift]

That deamon prince is fantastic (I know not one of yours!).

I felt there was some key work from your halberdiers in keeping the daemon prince occupied long enough for it to not gum up the works too long - with the help of your sacrificial characters of course! Also, your cannons seem to be laser guided, I remember similar luck in your hel fenn report.

I am still waiting for the biggie, battle at the gates of kislev (although your auric bastion fight was pretty big).

Not sure how I feel about kings of war having read your summary, the lack of characters in units and the combat 'bounce' are strange to me. Would love to see a report to find out how it works in practice.

[Hoodling]

Cannons are very all-or-nothing. In this case they definitely fell into the "all" category. They were pretty outrageous, and definitely dictated the game. To be honest nearly all of the luck was on my side. About the only things that went wrong for me were a couple of charge and pursuit rolls.

The Halberdiers did do important work, but even they were lucky. They tested for terror on their base leadership, and they also passed a steadfast break test on the same. I can't claim to have played the game brilliantly, but my troops fought well.

Kislev is still on the cards, but getting all the pieces into place and actually making it happen may prove more difficult than it would have before AoS. Also, I need to assess whether the game will need any major change-ups in order to make it more interesting and less of a static grind. These big games choke the table up with troops something shocking. Might be good to find a way to change that up a bit.

Kings of War is very different, but I think it's a pretty good game in its own right. I think people hoping it will be a straight-up replacement for Warhammer will be the most disappointed. It's not quite like-for-like, although it's closer than Warhammer and AoS.

[Naitsabes]

Great report. Well written.

Cannons are broken. There I said it. The very least one could do is make templates not hit both rider and mount, would have helped that poor wizard on manticore. But, it was very refreshing to see these quirky lists. There aren't too many good battle reports, even less that aren't youtube (which I can't stand) and then even less that don't feature the standard tournament lists.

Big bonus points for sticking with 8th edition. I am concerned about the flirt with KoW in your blog. Don't venture too far into other things, stay the course! ...all the way to the Gates of Kislev.

[red shift]

Thanks for the reply. I remember in one of your other big reports you mentioned a traffic jam of units and obviously that is a big constrain in these mega battles. I suppose with Kislev you have the dwarfs attacking the baggage train/reserves before joining the main fight and also the charge of the empire knights so there are some 'will they arrive/when' which would be interesting for a scenario. May be a nightmare to pack into a day though.

As per cannons they seem at times crazy good but imo empire are fairly poorly costed, which probably blances things out, there was another of your reports Hoodling I think empire cav vs dark elves and I was amazed at how many dark elves there were on the table, it seems like executioners and with elfs must be almost the cost of halberdiers to be able to field so many.

Another shout out for your reports in general I don't mind the youtube ones but they vary between amusing/very watchable to painfully boring narration over rubbish camera work so my preference is always well written/narrative reports with pictures and maps. Shame white dwarf sucks so hard as they used to do that kind of thing all the time (not that warhammer would be in them now anyway).

[Hoodling]

even less that don't feature the standard tournament lists.

I hate standard tournament lists. Even my tournament lists tend to be very different from the tournament standard.

Big bonus points for sticking with 8th edition. I am concerned about the flirt with KoW in your blog. Don't venture too far into other things, stay the course! ...all the way to the Gates of Kislev.

I'm not giving up on Warhammer, but KoW merits some of my attention. There's no reason I can't do both. Regardless of what I end up doing, I can't please everyone.

Thanks for the reply. I remember in one of your other big reports you mentioned a traffic jam of units and obviously that is a big constrain in these mega battles. I suppose with Kislev you have the dwarfs attacking the baggage train/reserves before joining the main fight and also the charge of the empire knights so there are some 'will they arrive/when' which would be interesting for a scenario. May be a nightmare to pack into a day though.

As per cannons they seem at times crazy good but imo empire are fairly poorly costed, which probably blances things out, there was another of your reports Hoodling I think empire cav vs dark elves and I was amazed at how many dark elves there were on the table, it seems like executioners and with elfs must be almost the cost of halberdiers to be able to field so many.

I'll work something out to alleviate the traffic jams. Assuming people are still interested in playing another big game, with all that has happened to Warhammer in recent times. I don't want to imagine that being a danger, but it is.

The internal balance in the Empire book is not great. Most state troops are over-costed, in particular the missile troops. Demigryphs are much too cheap. Only half of the artillery is worth looking at. But that's the way these things go.