You like photos of actual gaming, do you?
Played a lot of games this winter/spring. Here are some pictures, generally one from a game.
This Dwarfs & Brets vs. Orcs&Goblins & Skaven game started my 6th ed gaming anew after a long hiatus. My Dwarf warmachines killed something like four orcs during the whole game. My Thunderers did nominally better. Really miserable shooting. But the Gyrocopter slowed down and misdirected the Orcs, and eventually a flank charge by the ordinary Dwarf Warriors killed their main unit that was locked in combat against the Longbeards. And subsequently we saw even the Trolls flee.
Played several unlucky games with my Dwarfs to learn the 6th ed. Weak list and worst die-rolling ever. My best was seven 1's in one roll. Participated in one tournament where I lost EVERY single game to Fear autobreak. Silly strong in the 6th ed, and of course all the tournament gamers built their lists around that feature. It sucked. A lot. Grudges for the next decade at least. And the main reason why I painted so many new Dwarf units over this spring: Gotta have a stronger list!
Empire vs. Halflings. My artillery killed his Hot Pot before diligently self-destroying. He then maneuvered backwards and fed the mercenary Ogres to my IC Knights so that I didn't have the time to make contact with any Halfling units. A frustrating draw.
Empire vs. Tzeentch Chaos. He had 12 magic dice, I had 4 dispel dice and one scroll. Totally unfun game, although my two Pistolier units on the left flank cleared all the chaff in front of them and brought home a flank charge on the Chaos Marauder infantry - but failed. These tournament gamers build really nasty lists.
Have avoided their ilk since.
Empire vs. Orcs&Goblins. He was playing full Savage Orcs and full magic Gobbo characters. Very non-O&G army that didn't much suffer from the unpredictability of normal O&G. My IC Knights got a 13.5" charge home on their Boar Boyz but only killed one of them, then got the NG on their flank and spent the rest of the game regrouping and skirmishing on the flank. His magic was super annoying, and together with that unlucky charge won the game. It was a veritable 54!tstorm, but last turn my general faced all his magic by his own and didn't sustain one wound, claiming the only hill on their deployment zone. So a moral victory.
Second game against the aforementioned O&G player. Here I have everything nicely ordered up. Then came a silly magic missile that killed my Pistoliers to a man and caused ALL my units to panic in subsequent turns. Had to do the mathammer afterwards, and it was about 1 % chance. There went that game. We laughed a lot - he during the game, me two days later.
Empire vs. Ogres. My artillery failed totally: Even if I got some nine shots out of my two cannons, I could still bring nothing down. Whether the giant or nice side shots on the ogre flanks, it was either studs, overshots or ones for wounding. Hate it when that happens! (OK, I sniped his BSB after luring him out of the unit.) My cavalry charged too early and was gunned & beaten down.
Here is a fun Empire vs. Empire (Cult of Ulric) game. I tried near full shooting & full magic. Caused a ton of panic rolls on the Ulricians, and they kept failing nearly all of them. Sadly my cavalry failed on my left flank and eventually fled, resulting in a draw.
Played a DoW vs. DoW game with my newly painted DoW. However, the photos were poor, so here are some of my opponent's units instead. He has a very colourful and striking painting pattern. And nice alternative models. Learned the hard way that DoW pikemen can't kill a thing despite their rules. Very overcosted for their complete mediocrity. Both of our Paymasters died, but my units didn't flee as badly as his.
Empire (& Halflings) vs. Orcs&Goblins megabattle. IIRC there were 37,500 points on the table. Empire lost miserably. Partly because the flank you can see here didn't have depth and couldn't fire their cannons the first turn. Mixed Empire forces lost their ability to maneuver & shoot, and that was hard going against all those Wyverns.
Small Empire vs. Orcs&Goblins game. He could beat my left flank, but two turns after this photo, there was but a single goblin left on the table. It's fun to be victorious, although I was quite lucky with my rolls.
Empire vs. Halflings. Neither wanted to really close in, but my shooting was stronger. If you look closely, you can see his Lt Cav hero fighting my cannon on the hill on the left. The cannon crew held, and in total that brought me a minor victory. This is the situation at the end.
Hel Fenn megabattle, 20K points per side and 11 players. I was playing Dwarfs and fared OK, but the Empire centre was erased and the 'good' side lost against the undead horde. Weak humans failed even when I used my scroll and many a dispel dice to defend them. Just what the Longbeards were anticipating.
My Dwarf centre from the Hell Fenn megabattle.
That's like half of my games over the past 7 months. I've learned two things: lists & deployments matter a lot, but this is still a lottery.
-Z
