First game against dwarves. Obviously the two ancient allies were hesitatant to trade blows, as they got off to a cagey start. Gyrocopters flashed up my left flank, but fluffed their charges, exposing themselves to the cannons. I faffed around to reposition my knights, and steed of shadows fly the great swords up behind the rangers.
Disaster! Ranger crossbows killed and panicked the veteran greatswords and they fled off the board, big oof.
On the left, my demigryphs took a pounding going into the iron drakes. Ultimately they struggled through the first unit before being gunned down by the second.
My cannons and level 4 almost dealt with the gyrocopters. Unfortunately the remaining 1 on one wound cleared up both my cannons with impact hits. I got greedy and fired at the longbeards when I should have focussed on ending the warmachine threat.
In the centre our units were very cagey, except for the magic hammer slinging thane who killed my engineer and general. Note, dont leave characters exposed to magic missies! 800 point differential win to the dwarves.
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Game 2 against orks and goblins. Early victory as the helblaster rolled 30 shots, killing 14 night goblins and panicking. Annoyingly they continued to flee slowly and rallied by the end. We actually made a mistake since they were under 25%.
On the right the other night goblins arcane urgencied towards me to unleash fanatics. Luckily my halberdiers picked up an opportunistic flank charge, crushing them and pursuing into wolf riders. They were subsequently rear charged by black orks, but fell back in good order and stayed healthy.
On my left flank, horror. Wyvern, bone grinder an walloper one hit wonder cave squid came for the warmachines. A misfire and combat prevented me from cannoning any of the big beasts. An amazing effort from the great swords and an early finish saved the warmachines. I won, but by a very narrow margin.
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Game three was an empire civil war against a talabecland knight/war machine list. We blasted at each other, but I failed to counter deploy against the knights and peg captain coming for my warmachines. Demis chewed up knights, and my state troops ploughed forward to destroy his artillery. Ultimately I didn't have enough flexibility to catch or kill off his lone characters and I lost by 250.
Over all a good day! Love war machines and statetroops. Core knights were pretty disappointing. I need to watch out for leaving characters exposed. I might try dropping the knights, but unsure for what.
Sadly I came 19th out of 22. The placings were ranked by wins, then total claimed points. Had I won my last game (perhaps by killing my opponents level 4 since I came close a few times) I would have rocketed up to 9th place at the bottom of the 2 win bracket. Using 6ed style points differentials I think my ranking would have been better(?). Better luck next time! Overall a great day of gaming.
