Yesterday I managed to get three games of Age of Sigmar played in the time it would have taken me to play a single game of 8th Edition. This is the first of the battles, there are no pictures I’m afraid as I am building the army from scratch and they aren’t started yet.
My Army
I am basing my army around a nautical theme, I have a massive pop out and put together pirate ship which is perfect scale and have named it the Nordland. The Nordland is led by Kapitan Theodoric Gausser who ever since he received a head wound believes he was a big deal in the World before Time and is trying to build up an Empire. His crew consist of humans, elves, dwarfs and even an ogre.
In battle 1 a shore party is sent out to gather supplies and runs into a Chaos war band.
My Forces
Nordland Shoreparty (State Troop Detachment Formation) – 2 units of handgunner, 1 Swordman unit, Empire General on foot and 1 unit of Greatswords.
Empire General on Griffin
The Enemy
Chaos Lord on Chimera, chariot, 20 chaos warriors with 2 weapons, 10 chaos warriors with sword and shields and 3 blood crushers as well as a chaos wizard.
Chaos won the roll and chose to set up diagonally and as we were using formations we both set up at the same time so he got to choose. He let me go first, nice of him but I was quite far away so couldn’t hurt him anyway.
My bulk of my forces were set up on the left of the field supported by the general so that he could use his “hold the line” command ability. As I was using proxies (actually just bases) I decided to punish myself and not have champions, banners or musicians. My griffin advance to the right with greatswords following more slowly behind them.
His turn saw him advance his warrior blocks slowly forward and match my swing to the right with his Chaos Lord and chariot.
Turn 2 Empire wins the roll
The Chaos Lord was in perfect range and so for movie effect I thought I would test out the Empire Griffin. Whilst the bulk of the army stayed in gunline, the greatswords swung over to block his chariot from joining the clash of titan and the Empire Griffin smashed into his lord. I chose to block instead of charge the greatswords as I didn’t want two combats and therefore lose initiative on one. It turns out Empire Generals are just as good at fighting as Chaos Lords. Mine was equipped with a Runefang and Shield and dealt an amazing 8 wounds but taking 6 in reply.
He responded in his turn by crashing into the greatswords with the chariot killing a few with impact hits but doing only passing damage in combat whilst the greatswords caused 2 damage. The greatswords passed their battleshock test. That left me open to strike first with my Griffin who tore apart the lord but had taken additional wounds from being struck by arcane bolt.
Turn 3 Chaos win the roll
The wizard scores more wounds on the griffin and things are looking desperate for him with a mere wound left and the horde move ever closer to my gun line. However, the wizard was not done and he launch himself against the Griffin, poked it with his stick killing beast and rider.
The two blocks finally crashed together with his lord with banner running ahead and planting the flag to drive his minions on, supported by the blood crushers who rushed the first unit of handgunners.
The Empire struck back when the second handgunners fired a volley killing two bloodcrushers and my general charged into the survivor. To protect their lord, my ten brave swordsmen marched in front of the warriors of chaos to become surrounded by them, however their shields proved fantastic round after round keeping the usually weak soldiers fighting on.
In a moment of madness that could only be due to the proximity of the Blood God, the greatswords slaughtered on of their own at a statue of a monkey to help them finish the chariot although this left a sole survivor that was promptly finished by the enemy wizard.
Turn 4 Chaos win the roll
From this moment on the game was up for the Empire although we played several more turns. My general fell to 10 Chaos Warriors after he killed the BloodCrusher and soon the handgunners followed.
The swordsmen remained and although just 3 left, 20 Chaos warriors just couldn’t kill them. We decided that Khorne had favoured them and they became his champions.
A really enjoyable first game. I know people will say there are no tactics but there are in the fact that it is very situational. Like in my second game, I hid behind a deadly wall to avoid being charged or secured a mystical wood (very powerful). Also the synergy is what it is all about, it is like playing magic the gathering the battlegame.
Let me know what you think.