Found myself tonight, a day after Gen Con, with an itch to play some Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. It was really a last minute decision as work and life really have had me busy, but the stars aligned and I was able to get out the door and to Pegasus Games with the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar starter box and the hardcover book.
When I got there, one of the local players, Fred, was happy to play me with his high elves. We didn’t agree on anything too fancy. I was really limited to what models I had in the starter box and so we ad-hoc’ed a couple of lists together, largely based on wounds and after some discussion picked the scenario Breakthrough. After a roll off, the high elves began to launch their assault.
The high elves started out early, playing very cautious. Since I controlled much of the terrain, it was easy to have cover saves so his shooting was pretty minimal in the damage it did. Since there really wasn’t any reason to break cover and run forward, I counted on my armor to help keep me alive early.
One of the good things with this scenario is that it has a set number of turns, so a definitive end. It puts some pressure on the attacker to get things moving and done. Knowing that, the first couple of turns the high elves positioned and juked a bit, but didn’t really get aggressive. Turn 3 my khorne lord locked up with the swordmasters with my khorne lord just at the edge of the forest so he got the bonus armor and the elves couldn’t get it. The swordmasters on the first round still managed to get three wounds through. Not sure how this guy got to be a Khorne lord, but he literally whiffed it big. Following turn, the swordmasters, with a little help, hacked him down.
As the game continued, much of this same kind of dice luck seemed to be biting me, but there was hope if I could get the game to end early, he didn’t have enough models off the table to score a victory. As it turns out, it wasn’t enough and at the bottom of turn 6, I pulled off my last model though by this point the swordmasters were wiped and we were down to just a handful of Pheonix Guard.
I am not sure, it’s easy to guess at things in hindsight, but I think tactically I should have pressed with some units towards the center to threaten and slow down his infantry blocks. In order to obtain a major victory, he had to get some of the models of infantry off the table and this might have bought me some time. The other option would have been to pull back a bit, rather then deploy up towards and in the terrain. The big thing to note is that with swordmasters, pheonix gaurd, Teclis, Tyrion, and a dragon on the table, with just the chaos in the starter box I didn’t feel like I was super overwhelmed and in this scenario, I may have lost all of my models, but I was close to holding out and even closer if it would have ended on turn 5 to possibly even scoring a win. Couple of dice rolls that should have been better if they would have been average and it’s very possible I would be writing about a win.
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