Gaming Update

With Monday off, the weekend was breaking just right to get in some gaming. It did not disappoint.

Game one, on Saturday, was against a club regular. I don’t play nearly enough to say I have regular opponents, but we’ve played a number of times and always have good games.

We played the watchtower scenario with my Khorne Warriors pitted against his Skaven. I run two blocks of 20 Warriors, 2 units of knights, a warshrine, a Daemon Prince and some other things. It’s less optimal than I would like, and the local metagame seems to be pushing higher up the competitive scale.

For example, I was asked what I think about the Prince, and my snap response was, “It’s a really nice model.” Toughness 5, a 5+ ward save, and no real options to make him more survivable means he goes down to any concentrated effort. He’s stubborn but only on leadership 8, and since he can’t keep up with rank bonuses and banners, he’s really only good as a war machine hunter or as a supplement to some other combat unit. At around 350-400 points, he costs way too much on his own, especially for those roles, but he also squeezes the points available for a Chaos Lord, which I need to take for his leadership 9 on frenzy checks. I ought to take a big block of Marauders over the second unit of knights, and I want to throw in a wizard and maybe Ogres instead of the Prince, but currently I have the models for neither. I desperately need the magic defense, with a +0 on dispels currently, and I would love to have some range. Considering how sparingly I play though, what I have is viable enough to finish painting all my other stuff before I set about expanding.

The game turned out to be epic. My opponent garrisoned the watchtower with 20 Stormvermin. I promptly sent my Warriors with Halberds into it, toting my Chaos Lord. It took two turns, but it was over quickly, and pretty brutal. It was at this point that I started feeling pretty good about myself. Then I failed to charge his warp lightning cannon with my Prince, which left him staring down a Doomwheel. Then my dual axe wielding Warrior block with my Battle Standard charged his big block of Plague Monks with a Plague Furnace, whiffed on their attacks, and were promptly run down.

He charged my guys in the watchtower on turn 3 with his Abomination, but my knights had run it down far enough that what was left of my unit killed it in one go before it could attack. It, of course, promptly returned to life. The top of turn 4 saw me with only five guys left in the watchtower and three warhounds running around the table. His bombardment on the bottom of 4 was less than accurate, but still accounted for everyone but the Chaos Lord and the dogs. With only one model of consequence left on the table, I rolled for the end of the game and turned up a six that I desperately needed. You’ve gotta love shady club dice at crucial moments.

To be continued...