The Floating Dead (Age of Sigmar 28)

Welcome one and all to the #AoS28 experiment post!
This is all about AoS28 and my forray into the campagin.

What is AoS28?
Glad you asked, (all information has been taken from http://www.exprofundis.com/introducing-aos28-inq28-meets-age-sigmar/ in order not to butcher the original intention of the project)
Inq28 explores the lesser known aspects of the Warhammer 40,000 universe and has been a huge success, inspiring Blanchitsu articles, numerous blogs and countless incredible miniatures. Inq28 has become a term that describes not just a particular game but a whole approach to the hobby: an approach that puts creativity and imagination first.
AoS28 is an attempt to bring that same approach to the Nine Realms.
The Age of Sigmar has the potential for all sorts of stories, and just because we mainly see the epic, cinematic god-battles in the Games Workshop books doesn’t mean there aren’t other stories just out of frame, or just off the beaten path. That’s not to say your warband can’t include a few heroes, just that not every hero has to have a duel with Archaon.

What makes an AoS28 model?
Conversions – The Age of Sigmar range contains loads of great miniatures but you’ll probably want to convert them in order to personalise them. This could be a kitbash or a complete resculpt. The important thing is to make the model yours.
Character is essential – you don’t have to write a full background story, but you’ll have to think about your character’s personality, they aren’t just pieces on a gaming board: what are their motivations? How have they survived the Chaos apocalypse? What do they think about the return of Sigmar? What secrets do they have?
Extra grimdark – Age of Sigmar has a distinctive, vibrant style, but there is a lot of darkness that is waiting to be explored. You think 40k has a monopoly on grimdark? The Nine Realms were conquered by Chaos, we are only just beginning to learn about the horrors that were unleashed.

What rules do I use?
We’ll be supporting the Hinterlands Rules for AoS28, however your warband could be designed with games of Silver Tower, Mordheim, Realm of Chaos, Frostgrave or countless others in mind – or not for gaming with at all. The focus should be to make models you think are cool, rather than being constrained by points costs or restrictions. (http://www.tga.community/forums/topic/5923-hinterlands-skirmish-campaigns-in-the-mortal-realms/)

How do I join in?
You’ll need to make a warband – probably between 2 and 8 models – led by a hero. The warband can be based on the theme below, or can be anything else you want to make.

Use the hashtag #aos28 on instagram and twitter.

Join the AoS28 facebook group

Find the forum thread on TGA

Or if you have a blog already, let people know where to find it by posting your updates in the AoS28 thread on tga.community or by emailing aos28@exprofundis.com

If you don’t want to make a miniature or two, you could join in by writing stories or making art.

So, there is quite a lot to get your teeth into here!
For me, I'm looking at a small Death force which revolves around a Vampire!

I have started to write a bit of background to my warband and as soon as I'm happy with it, I'll put it up here. Meanwhile, I have been creating miniatures! As of yet, I haven't come up with a name for my warband but I think that will come when I finish the background piece!

Using the Hinterland rules, I have been able to create three models however, only two of them will be used during the campaign and one of them (the converted Blood Knight) was just an experiment to see how something would look.
I have also created a small warband using the rule set which looks like this:
*Leila De Klyn (Vampire) Leila, in translation, means Dead Beauty.
*Kharis (Banshee) Meaning Grace or Charm
*Akantha (Grave Guard) Thorn
*Serafino (Grave Guard) Serpent
  
My models then look like this;

Leila De Klyn

Kharis

Now, my experimental model...

My original intention was for it to be coming out of the ground - like rising from the grave but I'm not sure I've achieved that! What I will try next is having the horse upright on the base and it 'coming through' the grave. This means that one half would be painted in spectral colours and the other half 'earth/real-life colours' as it transfers from one realm to another!




It is also worth noting that for both Leila and Kharis I have added small chunks of fire to the hands/cup in order to give it more of a spectral effect.
As I've got a holiday week this week I will be looking at getting at least one of these painted!

Next, I need to build two Grave Guard for my warband!

Well, that's it from me.
Thanks for reading.

I'll see you soon
@geekphotoguy

Wild Wyld Woods (Age of Sigmar)

Trudging cautiously through the gnarlled branches, the pristine armour of the scouting party became entwined as the forest took hold. They were careful, but not careful enough. The wood had awakened and the tree's roots slithered subtly under foot. Unaware, the party advanced deeper into to realm's seemingly neverending


Right, enough of the awesome background to this battle (available for hire, Black Library ;p ) and on to the battle!

So, Pete (@petehumpage) and I have been friends for a fairly long time and we have played against each other many times, however never at AoS due to us missing each other with other commitments. This was our first chance to come up against each other with the new system and to check where we are at. Recently, Pete finished 16th at Heat 1 of the GT with Slyvaneth and he is very capable player so it would most certainly be a challenge.

Before this game, a group of us decided to make the journey across to Heat 3 (presuming everything is okay) so we will be using this time now as practice and the chance to try new things in tournament style practice games, where we can talk about decisions, plays and tactics. I must admit, when playing games like Malifaux and 40k (before it got confusing), I enjoyed this types of games where you can thrash things out with your opponent and come up with the best moves possbile, helping you learn for future occasions.
With this in mind, this game would quickly become a learning curve. Now, I've not faced Slyvaneth before but heard a lot about them. There have been numerous podcasts which give you good information on the tree people and I knew that I had to stand in the woods to stop stuff getting out! Now, that's okay... until they plant more trees... bloody environmentalists!

I would be taking Warrior Brotherhood against the Slyvaneth GT list. This was something that Pete hasn't faced before either, so it was guarenteed to be entertaining.

Anyway, here we go - The roll off for deployment! Whoever won this would be not deploying their forces on the board. Well, that's a lie! I still wouldn't in order to play against a situation which would give me experience of playing from behind. As it happened,

I WON! So Pete set some of his army up like so:

He did leave the Kernoth Hunters and Reavers in the woods for later but put the majority of his force on that left flank.
This gave me a chance to drop and occupy the woods in order to force him to go elsewhere. Unfortunately, elsewhere meant to closer to my objective (when it drops in turn 2).

Two Good
*Having turn one enabled me to take the drop and nullify woods and the surrounding area, penning the Slyvaneth in, forcing Pete to break his units up in order to deal with multiple threats.
*First few turns, my dice rolling was incredible and this enabled me to take a strong grasp on the game.
*Tactically, looking at the beginning of the game, Iwas able to pen Pete in. What didn't work so well was that units which dropped outside of the 'conventional' drop became piece-meal and an opportunity for Pete's units to escape.

Two Bad
*Kernoth Hunters... with bows... are just obscene! They easily removed both Retributors and Liberator units across the course of the game.
*I didn't properly cover my objective with rings of units which allowed dryads and Durthu to smash through and hold the meteorite!

Now... Turn 5 priority roll basically comes down to this... If I win the roll - I win the game. If Pete wins the roll - he wins the game. We were poised so finely on a knife edge that either one of us could make it impossible for the player going second to score during their turn, making this roll huge!
We roll...
We reveal our dice...
Pete wins!

Lessons Learnt
That fecking acorn! The trees are a great escape for the Slyvaneth and they provide the perfect spread across the board. There is very litte that the Stormcast can do to nullify this threat but it has been something which needs to be considered. I did keep my Retributor unit in the sky for two turns while we got to grips with the trees. When they did drop, they did a good job of protecting the objective but did get picked off by Kernoth Hunters and Durthu! Although they have 3 wounds with a 4+, they aren't particularly survivable - deceptive really!
I needed to either focus on my objective or taking Pete's. As it stood, I didn't really do either and kind of played into his hands by splitting my force. Had I of played that way it would have been a much different game - not high scoring and slightly boring. I'm not sure in a tournament situation what I would have done fully knowing the threat which is lurking in those trees!
It was a great game and I was a bit deflated after the game as I did work incredibly hard to get myself into a position in order to win and it is gutting when it comes down to a single dice roll but exciting none-the-less.

Looking to the future
I felt that the game was never out of my reach and coming down to a dice roll to determine margins is just a great way to end the game.
Looking forward, I think a Knight Azeros is the next addition to my force. I know he's been altered slightly but he is still an option which is most certainly worth exploring.

I am very excited to try the new Vanguard Auxiliary - more specifically, painting them as Final Fantasy Chocobos!

Well, that's it from me!
I'll see you soon!

@geekphotoguy

Kingdom of the Dead (Age of Sigmar)

It's never nice when the dead rise up and try to kill you. Admittedly, it's not my favourite sight on the battlefield! Nor is a shed ton of ghouls...
Now, I was speculating last time out about what I could be facing from my opponent, Feri, in our game. He did bring the Flesh Eater Courts but an unconvential twist to some of the armies doing the rounds on the tournament scene currently.
I was lucky enough to have two games with him on two separate occasions, both of which I'll cover now!

The first game took place on a cold Saturday morning which took the form of a Death vs. Destruction battle.

I thought that I could give Feri a game against the Spiderfang!

We rolled for scenario and ended up with:

My list was the same as always:

Feri's took a very different approach to what I'd consider a conventional list. He took:

Eventually, set up looked like this:

Two Good
*Feri's rolls for Death saves were incredible, throughout the whole game. I think it's fair to say that they really are a saviour for the army. Having a 5+ save on top of everything else is just absolutely amazing. By far the best ability out of the 4!
*Unit of 20 spiders poured 20 mortal wounds onto a Terrorgeist... 17 were saved!

Two Bad
*9 Crypt Horrors in a unit really hampered my progress and being able to regain wounds is a huge blow for the Spiders after piling on mortal wounds. It didn't help that I was caught off guard when he made a 10" charge out of nowhere into a unit of spiders which were more or less unprotected on the flank. This forced me back slightly, which enabled him to come in and hit hard.
*Terrorgeists screeching down on units of spiders, removing models contributed to a flank collapsing while he took advantage with a unit of flayers to mop up the rest.

Final Result: Death Major Victory!

Lessons Learnt
Death is an incredibly strong faction with such amazing abilities. In summation, it wasn't really much of a game for Feri, as the core of my army was ripped apart by turn 3 and I just couldn't keep up with the models being lost. The ability to just regrown models seems absolutely crazy! Next time I play them, I need to look at completely destroying units. Instead of setting up across the table, I need to look at focusing power into one unit/area to clear out and move across.
I think for the vast majority of the time, staying away from the Terrorgeists and bigger gribblies would be more useful while I get rid of battleline/larger units. This, of course, is easier said than done but as a general rule would make it easier to sort other parts of the board and drag them out of position.
An army that kicks out and can save mortal wounds is just so deadly. I can't really give you any further points to my two good/two bad because it was just a poor game from my perspective and very poorly played.
As I said, it wasn't much of a battle for Feri really who mopped up and held both the objectives. 

Game two was a much closer run affair and this time I changed armies and went down the route of the Warrior Brotherhood (and groans appear from all side of the internet).

I ended up with:
*Lord on Dracoth
*Lord Celestant
*10 Retributors
*5 (Big Axe guys...)
*10 Liberators
*5 Liberators
*10 Judicators
*5 Judicators (Crossbows)
*3 Prosecutors

I wanted to give Feri a better game than just running riot over my spiders, so I went for a list which is a little more resiliant!

Feri took a different approach. Originally he was going to use the 'ghoul patrol' batallion but decided against it. Instead he went for a different approach and ended up with:

*The Terrorgeist on the far right is actually a Zombie Dragon - it's just a cunning disguise!

So, another massive challenge, particularly with the scenario of:
Border War!


Like I said previously, I needed to hone in on a specific area of the board. With the Terrorgeist and Zombie Dragon on the far side of the board and achievable objectives for the taking, it was my thought that I should drop and kill the unit of 6 Horrors before working acorss the board to get rid of the rest. The only factor that was going to be against me is time!
I had learnt from the defeat to Keith that I had to drop tactically but around the objectives in order to score points at the correct moment.

Two Good
*Stormcast dropped and nullified Feri's left flank in the first turn.
*Feri did a decent job of making sure that his objective was held firm and I wasn't able to drop within 9" of it!
*Yet again, Death saves just went mental! I swear those dice are loaded!!!
*Unit of liberators scores 4 points on Feri's objective as his units move too far up the board!

Two Bad
*Prosecutors... hmm... Prosecutors... Need a unit of 6 - at least! Perhaps 9!
*Lord on Dracoth dies at the first hurdle... a painful death in one shot to the Horrors!
*Liberators and Prosecutors cannot hold my objective and finally it succumbs to 6 Flayers.

Final Result: Order: 18 / Death: 23 - Death Major Victory.

Lessons Learnt
Knight Azyeros' would have been excellent in this scenario, as I could have scored 4 points from the start from claiming the objective, forcing Feri to come back onto himself which would have left me iscolating units out with the hammers and axes. As it happens, I don't have any of them... until eBay sung it's beautiful tune and now I've ended up with two. What will be a difficult choice is what to drop - I think the Lord on Dracoth can go but I need to play with the list construction and see how I can get maximum potential out of the alpha strike.

Overall
So two hard games which both ended in defeat. The second game was a lot closer and resulted in both of us having to think very hard about our choices in the game which could result in victory. The first game left a bitter taste in my mouth as it was a huge culture shock to come up against a list with so many tricks with seemingly limited downside. Having a lord who has 3 saves in succession in order to ignore wounds is just crazy and I know that wounds can slip through the net but in the games that we played it was very uncommon for that to happen. I was very impressed with the Stormcast, and like I said previously - had a Knight Azyeros been there then maybe the outcome would have been slightly different.
I really enjoyed both games though as it gave me a different army to face and a new tactical challenge to try and overcome. When I have tweaked my Stormcast list, I will be playing again for sure hopefully with a more pleasing outcome for the forces of Order!



Anyway, that's it from me for today!

Thanks for reading,
I'll see you soon!

@geekphotoguy