At last!

After month after agonizing month the 2015 Warhammer 40K league has come to an end. As expected, Jon Q went on to win following a mighty game to see who would take the crown for 1st place. Well done mate, you deserved it.

It has left some issues though which will need to be resolved before the next time we do a league. I have an Age of Sigmar league-ish to do first anyway though. The main issue was that i went on far far too long but in defence of that we have so many players for 40K that I feel it rude not to allow people to play. In future there will have to be a limit though with certain players having to be left out (frequent drop outs, suspected of cheating...etc) which will help. It would also help if we had more than three tables but for the cost of the night I'm not going to complain too much. We also had some instances of potential cheating which no one really caught until after the fact nearly every time. That individual will not be being invited back next time.

However, despite the drawn out nature I think we all had fun which is the point at the end of the day. I'm looking forward to the Age of Sigmar event next year more and more though.

The club is now finished until the start of January so plenty of opportunity to rest and/or maybe get some friendly games in.

Moosive Battle to the Death!

Last night my chum Mike and I played a battle of Age of Sigmar featuring everything we had. My undead force came in at around 275 wounds and his Stormcast Eternals at about 265 wounds. Surprisingly the game took about two and a half to three hours to play.

To start with my undead did really well but I was claiming the initiative so I was able to replenish my units and models quite nicely and it kept him busy as everything else moved up to pile in. Half way through the game the tide turned and he had initiative. At that point my lines folded as I couldn't recover quickly enough to keep my units intact. I think the game went 6 or 7 turns before I conceded with about 6 skeleton warriors left on the table.

Surprise unit of the night went to the Carrion who are hard as nails and putting out 4 attacks a piece (5 bird unit) and although they did take casualties were great at holding up units that were otherwise being a pain.

Well done Mike. Looking forward to a somewhat smaller rematch. :)

Midas Crusade 2015

For some time I've been planning a local 40K event. I had wanted to try and get a large scale event going but due to costs and a not so great amount of interest among local players things were scaled down. Thankfully one of our local players, Jon, offered us the use of his extremely large garage. We lost a couple players but today six players met to battle it out in a large scale series of games.

Rules were:

* 2000 point games.
* Fixed list.
* Three games with three hour time limit.
* Unbound or FOC.
* Super Heavies, Gargantuan Monstrous Creatures and Lords of War are legal.
* Warhammer 40K Only - no Horus Heresy.
* No proxies.
* Cost: £5 paid in advance so I can organise prizes.
* Missions will be Cleanse & Control, Spoils of War, and then finally Tactical Escalation.
* Victory Points will be totaled over the day to determine the winner.

Using VP's to collectively determine the winner was something new and it worked so well that I think we'll use it in future for events and leagues.

Jon  : Orks.
Jaime : Farsight Enclave.
Ashleigh : Astra Militarum.
Sylvain : Blood Angels.
Benjo : Dark Angels with Imperial Knight allies.
Brian : Orks.

The unusual suspects.

 Three Imperial Knights march to war.

 The Blood Angels 1st company seize the high ground.

The forces of the Farsight Enclave.

The Astra Militarum prepare to defend against the Orks. 

A mighty Stompa!

The day's winner with his trophy!

I think the event went well enough that I plan to do a second event same time next year. Hopefully we can get some more players and a bigger event. 

Only a half dozen weeks to go and the league is done. Really it was far too big but for the most part it is nice to see the club being active and used.  The victor at this stage still looks like Jon to me but there are friendly bets floating around that it may be Jason or Ashleigh. I feel bad for Brian though as he never has the best of luck and this league hasn't done him any favours.

Once the league ends we can have some friendlies and just chill with fun games. I'm hoping to turn a few of the old Warhammer Fantasy players over to Age of Sigmar before I start a league for that next year.

Age of Sigmar

After a couple more games of Age of Sigmar I have pretty much fallen in love with this version of Warhammer. It is just so much fun win or lose, and yes, I have lost all my games so far. Mainly because my opponent plays Ogors (ogres) and they are bloody tough.

One player who has pretty much quit Warhammer has given me his entire Tomb Kings army which gives me the basis for a legion of the undead that I want. Now that the silly must have a vampire and crumbling army rules are gone, it is feasible to play one. I'm looking at finding a suitable necromancer figure to represent Heinrich Kemmler aka the Lichemaster, who will be my regular commander.

I find it odd that I really want to get into this game now. I am going to give an uncharacteristic thumbs up to Games Workshop for what they have created here.

League Update

The league is slowly progressing towards it's end with just another month and a bit to go. Unfortunately since I last posted about it we have had a couple more players drop out for various reasons. Disappointing but understandable. We have also had some problems with one player who may or may not be cheating which is frustrating. Next time definitely going to have to cherry pick who plays next time to avoid these issues.

My money is still on Jon winning but Jason and Mark both have a chance. I really want Jon to win though. He has worked hard to achieve it and it would be cool to see Necrons win again.

Age of Sigmar

Last night at the club I had my first game of Age of Sigmar, the newest iteration of Warhammer Fantasy. You have to be aware that I was already positively disposed towards this before I had the game. It looked to me to be exactly what I wanted from a fantasy war game. My friend Brian build two lists, one ogre and the other wood elves. Both were balanced to 55 wounds total with no monsters. I chose wood elves and off we went.

Movement is now more like 40K in that your units are essentially skirmishing which is much more historically correct and you can just move as you want without all the old wheeling nonsense. Much more preferable to what we used to have.

The magic system seems nice and basic although it did screw me over severely. Brian had a magician in his list and I didn't. I had a nice tough hero though. He only did the spell once but it basically opened up the ground and devoured an entire unit of elf warriors.We had a good laugh about it but even with a 50/50 chance of ending the spell kept going and it was frustrating. I'm not going to hold it against the game for now as it was just dumb luck one way or another.

Combat was good and simple and there still are tactical decisions to be made if you end up with a multi-unit melee. In an odd sort of way it reminded me of very early Warhammer and Rogue Trader. The only issue that I had run through my head was the multi-wound ogres compared to my little elves. It was much much harder to drop a single ogre and thus their unit effectiveness, than it was for them to smash through my units. It should balance out but something still niggled.

Brian's ogres did me in ultimately as I gave up the ghost when I was down to two archers and my hero. At least my elf lord died giving the ogres a good thrashing.

I don't like the world setting and shall just ignore it, but I found the system to be just about (maybe 80%) what I want from a fantasy game. Saying that, it isn't going to be good for the traditional Warhammer Fantasy player who wants the OTT level of complexity that Fantasy had. But for casual players and newcomers to this sort of hobby, Age of Sigmar is going to be a breath of fresh air.