And the wizard stayed in the pub!

Friday saw Adelle feeling more like playing hostess to Carina, so the teams were Lachies' Lizard and my Empire V Tom's Chaos & Nathan's Night Goblins, each army at 750 points.

We played "Early Morning Battle" #2, with deployment being randomised by zone: left flank, centre or right flank. The naughtiness alliance won the choice, and wisely stayed away from the buildings, and got a reasonably well spaced deployment. The lizards went first and took the centre, while the Empire filled in the holes, and seemed to be obsessed with the pub located on the left flank!

One the battle got rolling, their were a few feints and fiddles, with a detachement of swordsmen playing the feint game to fail charge some warhouds, but the traffic jam it casued was at the expense of less cannon shots. Hard to say if the trade was worth it.

The Saurus got stuck into the goblins, slightly worn down by missile fire, and got them running away. The humans stayed in the pub, waiting for the Chaos Warriors to arrive. On the left, a thin frontage Saurus broke some Marauders.

In the magic and shooting, a shaman ripped apart a Scar veteran hero, and kept away some charging. After Turn two the skink priest had taken out the Wizard of Tzeench by 'wind bumping' him into nearby units, and zapping him with burning head, and the shaman's were turned around and destroyed by mortar fire.

However, around turn three, the Trolls came to play, and the Warriors started getting their charges. The trolls were machines, smashing Saurus units and taking back the accumulated banners. By the end, all the gobbos had run and the trolls were sitting around wrapped in FIVE banners. Easily a man of the match performance.

Out on the empire left flank, the Warriors hit the pub. 8th Ed has some 'ten on ten' rules for building combat, and the Warriors ripped apart the first ten halberdiers without a return blow being thrown. Luckily the 25 halberdiers outnumbered the 10 Warriors even after the carnage, and made their steadfast leadership roll. We claimed that they were to drunk to know what was going on, and were piling out the windows and off the roof, and the door was too jammed with corpses for the Warriors to get in!

A fifteen Skink javelins units did good work, taking out Hounds, peppering some Warriors, and keeping the Priest alive.

After the game I looked at my army and found I had made a tactical error - I had a second wizard, who I forgot to roll for, and forgot to field. We decided that he must have enjoyed the pub too much, and passed out under a table and enjoyed a good nap.

The traffic jam was declared a good tactic, as there were about 250 points more "Good guys" left at the end. However, the trolls recoving all the gobbo banners, and holding two Sarus Banners, and the Warriors holding the pub Halberdiers banners seem to give the balance. We calculated at the old rule of 100 points per banner. This is a handy win of 50 points to the naughtiness alliance.

The next day, Tom was reading the rules, and banners are only worth 25 points, which turned it back to 175 point victory to the  good guys.

We all had a great time, and want to do it again.

Practicalities seem to mean that we are going to split into two types of games - "Adult" night, where we play larger games at our place and go later, and "Kids" nights at Toms where we start earlier and play smaller points, with a roughly fortnightly rotations.

Green is best!

The scenario was capture the fortress. A lizardmen cohort held the fort, and Triksiliksi the skink priest convinced   the goblin shaman Zogzog that they were green enough, and the bashing would be good. The Tzeenchian sorcerer Gamile similarly trick a local Empire Garrison to help him capture the fortress.

The Human alliance went straight to business, closing in on the fort, with the marksmen firing poorly, and the mortar rounds exploding harmlessly mid air. The Greenies similarly moved in, with their spells making more headway, halving a warrior of Chaos unit.

Next turn the mortar took more of a toll, the purple sun spell hurt the lizardmen sorely, and the guns whittled more Orcs. The warriors of chaos were repulsed by the skink skirmishers occupying the building,  The greenskins tried countercharge, but were caught in the water. Triksiliksi tried to save the day with powerful magics, but blasted his own intelligence instead, and wandered around the field dazed.

A Lizardmen block was destroyed by the Chaos warriors, and their brothers made it into the fort. Only to be blasted out by the Orcs.

Then Black Orks blasted through the ranked Halberdiers, taking eight kills on the first impact. The Warriors saw the last of the Saurus fall, but failed to turn on the building in time. As the day ended, the Orcs held the fort, and the forces of Mankind left the field to return another day.

Mini Apocalypse 40k Experiment: Bart's Orks V Sui's Terminators

Sunday night fight was a bit of a thought experiment - What does it take for the Orks to bust the Imperials hardest armour?

Sui took a Land Raider and 2 lots of five Terminators and one lot of ten.  I took three Kopters with rockets, 10 boys with rokkit and Nob with power Klaw in a rokkit truck x2, and one mob of 30 Orks with 3 rokkits and Ghazgul.

The scene was a building littered desert.

On the way in, the raider retreated to a corner to take up a clean firing position, and boomed a truck, and thinned boys. Turn two it did similar, but started taking rokkits. Well, 5 to hit, 6 to pen and 5 to make the table mean anything meant that it took some doing. The Orks never wavered - I never failed a leadership roll all game. And Sui had industrially awful reserve rolls.

In a perfect experiment, the Orks all got to pound away with rokkits, and eventually Power Klaws. The Raider took until turn 3 to immobilise, and turn 5 to Pop, and that took Ghazguls s5 Power Klaw.

The termies popping out from the raider caused good rollicking carnage, and the boys gave back. They dispatched them over two turns. One lot of five had a terminal teleporter accident, and the ten man squad ended up out of close combat, arriving turn 5. 

So in the end, I lost three points - one lot of truck boys, Ghaghulls 30 mates, and the kopters. Sui lost the teleporter 5, the raider, and it's passenger 5.

So the game was a tie, but that took insane luck with the six ones for the reserve rolls, and the teleporter deaths.

Next investigations - ZZap guns or Tank Buster boys?