The End Times (of 2016) (Age of Sigmar)

As the sun draws ever closer to the horizon, night’s bitter chill starts to grasp hold. The concrete jungle of the industrial West Midlands begun to glaze over with ice, the sun rose on Sigmar’s finest as they trudged slowly into battle against the bloodbound Chaos forces.

Welcome back! It’s nearly the end of 2016 and just before we leave all of it behind us, I’ve managed to cram in two games of Age of Sigmar against Keith (Chaos – Khorne Bloodbound) and Chris (Ogres).

After a comprehensive win last time, it was time for a slight change in proceedings as the Spiders get swapped out for Stormcast. I said in my last post that I wanted to get an army from each of the factions and this was my Order attempt.

Before I played the first game against Keith, I wrote two lists – both had one trick in it that I wanted to try out but were slightly different in play style.

List A:
*Knight-Vexillor
*Lord-Celestant (Reckless Trait and Obstinate Blade)
*Battlemage
*Battlemage
*Judicators
*Judicators
*Judicators (Crossbows)
*Retributors (10)
*Decimators
*Liberators (10)
*Liberators (10)
*Prosectuors (Lances)

List B:

*Warrior Brotherhood Battalion
*Lord Celestant (Reckless Trait)
*Lord on Dracoth (Obstinate Blade)
*Prosecutors (Lances)
*Retributors (10)
*Decimators
*Liberators
*Liberators
*Liberators (10)
*Judicators (10)
*Judicators (Crossbows)

I asked Keith to choose a list and, in his wisdom, he chose A. So, on with the show!

Forces of Order vs. Forces of Chaos – Khorne Warriors and Demons.

 Scenario:Blood and Glory

Being able to set up the whole force on the table was something which I didn’t really want. In truth, I had hoped Keith picked list B but it was good to test out different things against an aggressive Chaos list.

Keith took:

*Lord of Khorne (with Khorne Hound)
*Blood Stoker
*Blood Secrator
* Exalted Deathbringer
*Bloodstoker
*20 Chaos Warriors
*Demon Prince (Khorne)
*10 Bloodletters
*Korgorath (2)
*Blood Warriors (10)
*Blood Warriors (10)
*Blood Reavers (20)
*Mighty Skullcrushers (3)

In deployment, I made a grievous mistake in that I set my Lord-Celestant up on the left flank and not in the middle next to my Retributors in order ot give them the bonuses for hitting. Everything else in this situation I was more than happy with.

In to the game, and where to start? Well, I left my left flank hugely exposed. At one stage in the game there were 24 wounds left on Keith’s side of the board against a very minimal force of Stormcast as all my efforts were taken up with dealing with the mass of troops on my right flank. In all honesty, had I wanted to end the game quickly and win a major victory sinking the Retributors into the Demon Prince, Bloodletters and Korgoraths would have been an optimal choice before piecemealing the right flank with a strong force.

So, what went well?

Two Good:

*Celestant vs. Demon Prince in 1-on-1 combat with the Lord coming out on top after charging in.

*Retributors hold their own against Khorne Lord, Blood Secrator, Whip-guy (not the technical name I know!) and 20 Blood Reavers and come out the other side in-tact.

*5 out of 20 Chaos Warriors rolled a 1 when charging on top of dead terrain, resulting in their slaughter.

*Chaos Cultists (Not cultists but you get the idea) roll a ‘6’ for a charge, falling short and stopping the rest of the Chaos army from advancing forward. This results in a bottleneck which I manage to take control of. Using this advantage, I teleport my Retributors in to the units behind preventing them from expanding across the board and use the Liberators to smash into the cultists in the following turn. 

Two Bad:

*Keith forgetting that the banner gives him an additional 12 attacks in combat and only remembering it the turn after when those troops are dead!

*Leaving a very exposed left flank and having to recover late in the game.

Final Result: Major victory for the Stormcast Eternals.

Lessons Learnt:

The first time playing this list, I’ve learnt a great deal. I learnt that the force selection wasn’t actually that bad and it was a list which was fairly versatile against everything thrown at it. I was super impressed with the Liberators because when I see them on paper, I just think they offer nothing up to the army but actually, they are a 2 wound buffer which did a fair bit of herding and damage control. Running 2 units of 10 was fairly good in this because they could survive battleshock between the rounds and still have troops left the fight.

Dice had a part to play too. Everything was going swimmingly for Keith right up until Turn 3’s combat. With my Retributors bearing down on his Blood Warriors and Heroes, Keith’s all-out offensive caved after a series of poor dice rolls allowed for my Rets to wreck face and end the lives of the heroes in combat, effectively stopping the banner/command traits.

I took a few risks during the game to really test out what the Stormcast can do. Even though I left the flank exposed, it was a good test of seeing which models will interact and hold their own.

I was impressed with the durability of the Stormcast. They appear an all-round force with plenty of potential. Like I said, I’d have preferred to have dropped in using the other list and surrounded Keith’s force piece by piece and picked it off but it was interesting to see them out as a battle line.

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Next up is Chris’ Ogres. I’ve played Chris once before in a doubles game where we played 2 ogre armies vs. Chaos Forces (Skaven and Warriors).This is an entirely different game!

Scenario: Border War

You know by now, I’m using list B with the ‘drop down’ style force. Now, this scenario doesn’t actually play in to the hands of the ‘reserve’ style list and… I actually forgot the rules of the mission when I elected to keep everything in the sky and gave Chris 5 VPs on the first turn with any reply!

Chris took:

*Tyrant
*Butcher
*Bragg the Gutsman
*Ogres (5)
*Ogres
*Ogres
*Ogres
*Ironguts
*Ironguts
*Ironguts
*Leadbelchers
*Leadbelchers
*Ironblaster

Like I said, 5 VPs to Chris on the first turn without reply was something I completely forgot when I read the rules and I should have kept one unit of Liberators back on my objective to at least score something.

 

Doing this caused for some drastic action! The sky fell down! All of it. It fell so badly that Adele wouldn’t even write a song about it – oh, wait…

I knew I needed to really capture and control Chris’ objective, so the majority of my force dropped into the centre of the table; behind Chris’s army. I needed to try and at least neutrilise the flanks at some point, so I dropped token units down to distract him, although it wasn’t a huge deal that he would get 2 VPs if I was controlling my objective and his objective in the long run. After all, it’s a 5 turn game with VPs scored at the end of each turn!

Two Good:

*Starsoul Maces causing 5 mortal wounds to the Ironblaster.

*Ironguts causing 15 wounds on Liberators in a single combat.

*Lord on Dracoth charging and causing 12 wounds on a unit of Ogres. 

*Judicators destroying 2 units through 2 turns of shooting.

*Prosectuors did a job… held an objective without doing anything all game!

*Decimators saved 6 6+ saves in a row!

Two Bad:

*Chris’ dice rolling to hit and wound! (These are Chris' saving throws of 5+)

*Crossbow fire vs. damage output.

*Decimators attacks in combat – what attacks?!

Final Result: Major Victory to the Stormcast Eternals (23 – 11).

Lessons Learnt:

This was another game where dice rolling played a huge part. Chris’ rolls to wound with his ogres were, in a word, appalling! He missed an absolute ton of 3+ and 4+ rolls which could have hugely swung the game! I do recommend burning dice after such a performance!

I did learn that Decimators are pretty useless in a match up such as this due to the lack of numbers which they thrive on. They are effectively caddys for the Starsoul Maces and as it happened, they provided a great deal of use on the field in chipping wounds off units. It’s true, ogres are tough to take down due to the volume of wounds but once you start chipping, it does come away bit by bit, making a huge difference in the long run.

I did well in shutting down the range threat caused by the ogres. In this game, I did so well that I killed the major threat in turn one which stopped him picking off the odd unit or model here and there.

I was unsure during the first turn whether or not to drop my Decimators down over the left side of the field and take the ogres out there but again, this was an experiment to see what they can do. As it happened, it worked quite fortuitously that I stopped Chris from claiming either objective on the flanks. If I were him, I would have left them alone for a while in order to get into a better position and rack up the VPs.
I must remember my warlord trait, artefacts and allegiance abilities!
My final lesson learnt was the Judicators' crossbow option - I don't know really what to do with them. Yes, they get a ton of shots if they don't move but that's all their doing - no rend, etc. Iguess in this game it wasn't their time (although they did lay down close ranged firepower when I needed it).

Overall, two games and two wins but I have learnt a lot from it! I need to go back and think about what is included in my lists in order to deal with all threats but that's something for another day!

Anyway, thanks for reading.

I'll see you soon!

@geekphotoguy