Monday, October 11, 2010

The Gaming Table's Innaugural Match

Thursday saw the first game played on my home-made gaming table.  For about $50 in supplies and a little experimentation it turned out pretty nice.

The first battle was 1000 points Skaven vs. Seth's Warriors of Chaos.  Having never played more than 500 points vs. Chaos (and it was Hordes of  Chaos back then) I certainly had an idea how dangerous they can be.  What surprised me wat the one squad of 12 warriors with the Mark of Tzeentch ended up nearly unstoppable, taking only one wound the entire game from, of all things, a slave unit popping.  Winning entire combats on "static combat res" doesn't quite cut it against these guys.

Deployment certainly reminded me that I hadn't played in a while, as I made the rookie error of deploying my general on the opposite side of the board from my main blocks of clanrats and slaves.  Even when steadfast, slaves hold up a lot better at Ld7+ranks than they do at Ld2+ranks.  The Warlord general (on bonebreaker) ended up on the opposite side in a unit of rat ogres with a single block of slaves.

My only caster was a Warlock Engineer, lvl 2, who had the misfortune of rolling skitterleap for his 2nd spell.  I was really hoping for something more ... destructive.  Anyway, with the number of dispel dice my opponent had to throw most turns it was nearly impossible to get a spell off, and I only got warp lightning off once, after skitterleaping over next to the chaos knights.  This was the single 40k vs. fantasy moment, as Seth was perplexed by the fact that he couldn't attack the engineer with the knights that were 3" from him.  He had his revenge by reforming a unit of warhounds and making an epically long charge to hit the engineer.

So on that far side of the tables where the two generals (mounted chaos sorcerer and bonebreaker mounted warlord) faced off, the slaves made the shortest charge in Skaven history.... 7 inches.  They were charged in turn by the warhounds, who popped them and restrained pursuit.  They then fled when charged by the warlord's unit, leaving the warlord flapping in the breeze to be charged by the chaos knights, the sorcerer and the other unit of warhounds (fresh off wiping out my engineer.)

In the middle of the table, things weren't going much better for me.  A unit of warriors with 2 hand weapons is a force to be reckoned with when you are WS3 T3.  Choppity choppity chop.  A few attacks back, a wound or two, saved by the 5+/5+ combo and he wins by an awful lot.  The marauders were a fairly even match, but those warriors!  It really made me wish I had brought a warpfire thrower or a few globadiers or something
So I left 70 rats hanging in the breeze while the warlord rode his Moulder toy to his own demise.

Next time, I think I'll remember what makes Skaven a force to be respected.

Strength.
In.
Numbers.

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