My have things grown since I have been away ....

Recently Games Workshop re hashed White Dwarf and gave a away a free figure, so I bought it!

Now apart from paint (and Lord of the Rings stuff of eBay) this is the first Citadel mini I have bought in years. Now I am fully aware that minis have been growing from 25mm to 28mm to "heroic" 28mm etc.

I am also aware that Chaos dudes in Warhammer worlds and now the Age of Sigmar were bigger than the usual rank and file .....

But how they have grown .......

Now I actually quite like the slaughterpriest but as a human is is the size of an ogre. All of my humans are about waist height. I am now pondering if I put him on the 40 base or the 25mm I planned as he is a "human". The fit of the parts is really impressive and a long way from the psychostrene dwarfs which started the move to plastic. The only thing was that the pieces only seemed to go together one way so conversions would be more difficult to do. 

The copy of White Dwarf is quite a reasonable read and indicate that Games Workshop appear to be moving in the direction of smaller self contained games .... Which are introductions to 40K and Age of Sigmar and allowing the use of the miniatures from the smaller games in the main ones .... I would say that they have copied Mantic here with the mini/boardgame hybrids such as Dungeon Saga and Deadzone. 

Morts

Third and final competition games

This time I was up against the Toymaster and his Dwarfs!

I made a couple of poor tactical decisions from the start - I put the the dragon out on a limb to try and get around the flank and behind the dwarves, but just succeeded in taking it out of the game for 2 turns. The elven archers were initially out of range. I also let the Toymaster have the first turn .......

The first two moves - The Toymaster managed to waver two units on the first turn I gave him!

I also had to move the archers forward to get in range which weaken the attack - however the archers did rout a regiment of shieldbreakers .... Things might be ok. But this left the Brock riders undamaged. 

The elf Knights charged a regiment of Brock riders and only just failed to rout them but this left them exposed .....

Over in the centre the elf spears and archers managed to waver the dwarfs in front of them - but the dwarfs headstrong rule meant that the dwarfs could ignore the waver rule and so they were flanked an routed!

The elf guard had done significant damage to the remaining Brock riders but again failed to rout them so they were ridden over!

The final turn - the dragon flame attacked and routed the last regiment of shieldbreakers and a Mage fireballed the last Brock riders .....

The final scores were the elves had killed 1000 points of dwarfs and the dwarfs had killed 1335 of elves! So a good win for the dwarfs - in fact apart from a bolt thrower the elves only had the dragon and characters left!

The elves were doing damage but I wasn't rolling high enough to forces the routs! The headstrong rule was a pain as two  dwarf units were able to charge the elf spear .... I might invest in some new dice as my blues don't seem to be working nor do the bolt throwers for that matter!

At the end I finished the competition with 2 draws and a loss - 5 points and in bottom place! But I enjoyed the experience and had 3 interesting and challenging games against armies I had faced before! 

Morts 

Second competition game .........

On Thursday I played my second game in the local Kings of War tournament. 

The time I was up against the Ratkin hordes lead by Pete - an army and opponent I haven't faced before. 

The battlefield picked out of the hat was a road running down the long diagonal with 2 woods at one end and one at the other. 

I decided to go for a flank attack down the right, with all the cavalry and the dragon deployed there. The rest of the army was deployed as an anvil on the right/centre. 

Pete had the first move started with an advance!

This meant that the elves did a lot of shooting - which was reasonably effective in weakening the rat-ogres and some giant mutant thing!

Over on the right the elves were attacked with flame and arrows - Poor placement by me left these units exposed for a counter attack!

The combined fire from the bolt shooters and archers took out the rat-ogres and mutant thing....Hurrah!

The ratkins artillery was doing annoying amounts of damage to the elven units as well.

The elves counter attack the Ratkin hordes in the centre - spear elves charge - archers shoot!

Mean while over on the right a gamble to take out the demon spawn and horde of rats partly came off ...... The horde was destroyed but the demon spawn was tougher than I had expected .....the dragon and the Knights were eventually destroyed! The flank attack had failed!

However the anvil had been successful - all of the Ratkin units had been destroyed apart for the cannon thing and a flame thrower team!

The image below is how the game ended. The top of the picture shows the situation in the centre .... One Ratkin wizard facing elf guard, archers, bolt throwers (out of picture are a flame thrower team and a warmachine). The bottom shows the right flank with one troop of light cavalry (the elf guard are in the distance) the Ratkin demon spawn (out of picture is the wheel of doom!). 

The result was a 65 point advantage to the elves - so another draw! (A 200 point advantage is needed for a win). So another close game. As usual the dice didn't always go my way - the elf guard got held up for 2 or 3 turns by a single character, Pete rolling double 6 meant he got a waver on a unit so they couldn't counter-attack, so they were destroyed on Pete's next turn. The unsupported attack by the dragon on the demon spawn was an error as I didn't know how tough he was. I should have used the dragon to attack the artillery and get in behind the Rats over in the centre .....

So I stuck to the plan which almost won the day, even though the sweeping flank attack failed!

Next up is the Toymaster and his Dwarfs ..... But I am undefeated* in the competition so who knows!

Morts

*i have won a game yet either!