Was off to my first ever Age of Sigmar tournament this weekend, with my newly painted Trogdor and about one million skinks. This was just a little local tournament among the store regulars, so seven-ish tables (I think there were seven tables), very low pressure, but a WHOLE LOT of trash talk all day. My favorite kind of event. (For the record, there was one Death player, one Daemons player, one Skaven player, and everyone else was playing Order. Not sure if that says something about our locals or about the game itself, but given that the two Order forces that absolutely dominated the day were made specifically for AoS, I'm thinking it's the game itself.) My army looked like this: That's: Slann Skink Starpriest Troglodon 10 Chameleon Skinks 10 Skinks with Boltspitters and Bucklers 10 Skinks with Boltspitters and Bucklers 40 Skinks with Boltspitters and Bucklers 6 Terradons (Alpha with Bola and Sword) Shadowstrike Warscroll Looking around, I felt pretty good. My army was way bigger than most everyone else's, but somehow still managed to have a lot fewer drops. I think it's because I only have two Leaders and one Behemoth. That was on the low side in both categories based on what else I saw. On to game one!
GAME ONE Completely random draw in the first round, so I ended up across the table from a super nice, very new player named Steve. This game took a really long time because both of us are still working through learning the rules, and neither of us had movement trays. I figured this would play a lot like 40k, so I didn't bother to make/bring trays. In the future - movement trays. For sure. His army was (roughly): Vampire Lord on a horse Wight King (this guy is an asshole - his command skill is definitely the star of that show) Necromancer 20 Skeletons w/ full command 20 Skeletons w/ full command 5 Black Knights w/ full command 10 Black Knights w/full command 2 Morghasts? (I think that's what he called the big flappy things) A bunch of summoning points and all the Fell Bats in the world on his tray, so I had an idea of what his game plan was gonna be. In this tournament, we were limited to one warscroll and one artifact, and both the artifact and the command trait had to be rolled at the beginning of the game. Bleh. Fortunately, the dice gods ended up being in my favor all day (at least for command trait). In this game, I was rocking the Coronal Shield (pretty useless on my Slann), but I got Great Rememberer, which my whole army is designed around. I held off the Chameleons and the Terradons, and put everything else center-ish of the table. The objective in this game: have done the most wounds by the end of the game. This was good for me, and very, very bad for a summoning Vampire army. Turn one to me... TURN ONE Before the game, I used my Shadowstrike scout move to shift the 40 skinks slightly forward. By "slightly," I mean, "10 inches." I used the priest's staff on the Troglodon, cast both Mystic Shield and Summon Starlight on him, and sent him flying with Master of Space and Time to the Vampire flank. I then gave "A Trap is Sprung" to the 40 Skinks, and Master of Space and Timed them to join the Troglodon. Steve was ... nervous. Then he realized Skink shooting isn't as scary as you think it is, and my Troglodon straight up failed at both spitting and charging. So ... that didn't work out like I planned. Steve tried to summon some bats at me, but he learned the hard way that my Slann and Troglodon were not going to be letting him cast. Anything. At all. I could slap down four spells per turn, and he could only cast two, so there's that. He did use the Wight King's command to make his 10 block of Black Knights super scary - those guys do not need +1 attack. He just did a bit of shuffling on his right side, and moved in for the kill on the left. No shooting, so he just charged at my face. Both Black Knights and one block of Skeletons came into my 40 skinks and Trogdor. He activated the 10 Knights first, and did four wounds on my Trog. Then I activated Wary Fighters and backed completely out of the combat with my 40 strong unit. Steve was ... unamused. Troglodon fights back at the 10 man unit and kills one. TURN TWO Initiative to me. I put "A Trap is Sprung" on the big unit of Skinks, then cast Mystic Shield and Starlight on the small 10 man Skinks at left. I also popped the Chameleon Skinks up on the side of the mountain, and brought my Terradons down to play rough in the center of the field. Then I used Master of Space and Time to reposition both the Troglodon and the big Skinks - and the Skinks got to move as normal, so that was fun. Rocks dropped on the Vampire Lord and ended his day before it even really had begun. I think I got either 4d3 or 5d3 mortal wounds off, but however many it was, he died a horrible undeath. Chameleons nearly added the Necromancer to that, but he has some rule that lets him shift wounds onto the Skeletons next to him, so he ended up only taking two wounds himself. Troglodon missed its spit AGAIN. On the other side of the field, the spell-covered Skinks ended up killing a Black Knight and putting a wound on a second in the 5-man unit. Skinks and Terradon Javelins whittled down a lot of the unit, and then the Terradons charged in and beat the Skeleton unit down to just a handful. Steve's rules let him bring back a bunch of his dead, so he got both the Black Knights units back up to full, and added six Skeletons to the depleted unit. He tried to summon the Fell Bats again, but Lustria protects, even when Lustria doesn't exist any more. Black Knights move around for a rampage, as does the big block of Skeletons. Both Knights charge my little Skinks, the Skeletons charge the Troglodon, and the Morghasts charge the big Skinks. He activates the Morghasts and they rail through a little over half a dozen Skinks. Then I use Wary Fighters to get away from the Black Knights. Skeletons can't do much to the Troglodon other than peel off two wounds, and then my Terradons finished off both the Necromancer and all but one of the Skeletons. Troglodon eats a few Skellies, and then my Wary Fighter big unit backs away from the fight. At this point, due to the insane number of models we both had, the lack of movement trays, and us having to play each round by the checklist as neither of us had ever played more than three games before the tournament, time limit ran out. I'm pretty confident I would have won anyway, as he couldn't summon anything because I killed his two casters, I was fully prepared to run away from his Black Knights with Master of Space and Time for the rest of the game, and I still had the vast majority of my models - he had only done about 20ish wounds by the end of the game, and I was up over 40. Great game, great guy. He ended up getting my vote for Best Sportsmanship. Super fun game, and a 12-4 victory to me to start the day! Coming soon: Game two, and the scariest army I've ever seen in, like, 17 years of playing Warhammer...
GAME TWO The scenario here was "Capture the Objective," but we wouldn't know where the objective was until Turn 3 ... and it came up in a randomized location based on a die roll and a chart. I felt okay about this, because I had Chameleons, and they can be, like, EVERYWHERE. Oh, and to make up for that, for the first three turns, everyone on the table is bloodthirsty and moves and charges an extra 3". Game automatically ends at the end of five turns. (This will be important later.) Dice Gods were super nice to me this game, and I got both Great Rememberer and Incandescent Rectrices, which is what I really wanted. Across the table from me, Kharadron Overlords. Now. Let me say something about Kharadron Overlords: WHO DESIGNED THIS NONSENSE? Like, for reals. Every new thing my opponent told me they could do, I said, "Well, that seems legit." No wonder there were so many Overlords players in the room... I'm probably going to butcher what was actually in his army, but from what I remember him saying: 2 Chemists? Another character with a thing that let him, once per game, put out like 140 million shots Giant Ironclad Zepplin w/ 3 balloon guys and a unit of 10 sky dwarves 2 more units of sky dwarves with multiple miniguns 2 units of jump infantry balloon guys with exploding drill things A warscroll of some kind that let him do ridiculous things So, given the nature of his army, I hid. A lot. In the trees. Because that Zepplin has 18 wounds and a 4+ save and all the shooting in the universe around and inside of it. I am not exaggerating that, even though Mike was a really nice guy, I was 100% not looking forward to playing against his army. At all. It was terrifying on paper. TURN ONE I had the fewest drops, so it was Turn One to me to start. My general game plan here was: Hey. F*ck that Zepplin. A lot. No thank you for that Zepplin. That Zepplin can go away now, plzkthx. To that end, I used the Starpriest's staff to double the Troglodon's bite power, then cast Starlight on him, and the Trap is Sprung on the big Skinks (as pointed out below, we played this rule wrong all day, but in this case, it would've been played right anyway, because that balloon had to go). Mystic Shield on the Big Skinks, and away they both went with Master of Space and Time. For good measure, I also brought down the Terradons, who all dropped their rocks directly onto the Zepplin as they landed. 5d3 wounds later, and the Zepplin was down to 10. 10, I can work with. Troglodon spit put another 2 wounds down, and then the javelins and skink shooting downed the stupid Ironclad before it could go anywhere or do anything. A couple of the space dwarves died inside the falling balloon, and the rest got out into the woods. The Troglodon charged the remaining space dwarves, gobbling them up easily with 4 wounds per bite attack. The three balloon guys behind them got pulled into the combat, which was irritating, and did about 700 wounds with their enhanced drills (some character kept letting those drills do extra stuff and it was five kinds of bullshit). On his turn one, he just turned all his dwarves toward my Troglodon, and melted him. It was sad. Also, the Terradons caught quite a few shots as well, and were whittled down to half ... with wounds on the fourth. More sadder. TURN TWO Initiative went to him. Bleh. Shooting pretty much decimated my Terradons, and that was the end of their journey in this game. But it took shooting from most of his units to get it done. His balloon guys charged my big Skinks and pinned them there. I could have Wary Fighters them, but I thought I could take him, 40 to 3. That's a dumb way to think about this game. Just so you know. He killed like six of my Skinks, and I did exactly one wound with 34 attacks. Because "I can take him 40 to 3" is a dumb way to think about this game. My turn was short and sweet: Master of Space and Time, and steampunk dwarves can go to hell ... I'll just wait for the objective to pop up on Turn Three. TURN THREE You know how the cardinal rule of Warhammer is never say anything out loud that you don't want to come true? So right here, I said, "As long as the objective comes up anywhere but that corner of the table over there, I'll be fine." I said it out loud. I've been playing forever. I know better. I said it out loud and the universe punished me. The objective came up in his corner, basically right in the middle of his army. He laughed out loud, surrounded it with steampunk dwarves, and dared me to come over there. Now, I could have taken pictures for the rest of the game, but you know what happened from here. I can't get over there to crack that open, and he knows it. EXCEPT... Here's what happened: End of Turn Three, I just cast a bunch of protection on myself. Turn Four, initiative went to me. I recast all my protection. Turn Four, he sits on top of the objective. Turn Five, he says, out loud, "Well, I really need to not win this initiative roll." Then he wins the initiative roll. So he's kind of pissed about it, naturally, and decides to take it out on me by hopping two units of balloon guys over toward me, and then shooting like 700 drill shots at my Slann. They do a really good job of killing him, because they kill him. BUT I HAVE INCANDESCENT RECTRICES. And I roll a 3, then a 5, and stand him back up with 3 wounds. Mike was ... displeased. Turn Five, I bring up my Chameleons in the one place that I can, and then Master of Space and Time the big unit of Skinks. They have to go kind of far away, but I luck out and roll a 6 and they can move normally. At this point, there is no way I can get to the objective. He has it bubble wrapped too well. But I have 16" range, and he left me enough space to maneuver. So what's left to do? I machine gun the crap out of that one unit of steampunk dwarves and kill them down to zero. With no one left within 3" of the objective, the game is declared a draw. Given that this army was effing BRUTAL to face, an 8-8 tie was perfectly fine by me. I'll take that and put it in my pocket, thank you very much. Especially considering I was definitely going to lose the game three minutes before I turned it into a draw... Next up ... a four way tie for first place after Round Two leaves me on one of the two top tables, where I absolutely did not want to be ...
I enjoyed reading this battlereport so much. Lots of laugh and awesome pictures ! Talking about awesomeness.. what a WONDERFUL army man ! I L O V E it. I wish my army will be half as good as this one and I will be super happy ! *** by the way you misinterpret the Shadowstrike ability ! You do not pick one of your units. You pick a unit Visible to your Shadowstrikes' leader of your OPPONENT and EVERYTHING from the batallion gets the rerolls against that units ! You do NOT get to pick just 1 of yours, it's way stronger !
Nice report! I enjoyed it very much because I play both of those armies myself. First I thought "uh-oh" because a Shadowstrike isn't necessarily the best option if the Deathrattle player bubble-wraps his stuff properly, but when I read that you were actually able to snipe his heroes my figurative money was on you. Your dispells were working well, which is good. Because the last thing you needed is a Danse Macabre spell by the Necromancer on those Black Knights or Skeletons.
Laughed so hard again. I even dare say that the 2nd was even better than the first which was already awesome. Keep me coming !!
Sure. Nothing says the Terradons cannot move normally. Abilities preventing movement tell you in their descriptions.
Very nice battle reports! And pictures! That always does seem to be the case. Anyone know of a "lore" reason on how the armies of Order could possibly be split into entirely separate factions?
Hmmm yeah maybe some get too evil and become the new Outcast grand alliance. Dark Elves and one or two others. Or Alarielle gets sick of Sigmar's SCE and stuff and takes the Elves with her to found the new Life grand alliance.