Stormy Teacups

At some point over the past few days, the following thoughts popped into my head in po particular order:

• My wife is somewhat interested in Warhammer
• I have two painted Warhammer Fantasy armies
• I have one of the spiffy Citadel gaming tables that has been used precisely once since obtaining it the day they were released
• I only normally get to play at tournaments
• My wife has never actually played WFB

Clearly then the answer was to challenge the missus to a round of toy soldiers!

I offered her the choice of armies and, somewhat unsurprisingly, she chose the Daemons leaving me to command the Dwarfs.

Her army looked like this:

Lord of Change, level 4 Wizard, Daemonic Robes, Flames of Tzeentch, Power Vortex

Herald of Slaanesh, Battle Standard Bearer, Banner of Unholy Victory, Etherblade

Herald of Tzeentch, Flames of Tzeentch, Daemonic Robes

10 Horrors

12 Horrors

15 Daemonettes, Full Command

14 Daemonettes, Full Command

5 Screamers

5 Flamers

A pretty solid list, I recommended that she swap the Screamers for Flesh Hounds but she wanted to keep the Slaanesh/Tzeentch theme going.

For my part I was going to try to reduce her magic phase as much as possible but other than that to take a fairly soft army.

My Dwarf army featured:

Thorek Ironbrow

Runsmith, Master Rune of Balance, Great Weapon

Thane, BSB, Master Rune of Valaya, Rune of Courage, Ancestor Rune

17 Longbeards, Great Weapons, Shields, Full Command, Rune of Slowness

14 Warriors, Shields, Full Command

10 Thunderers, Shields

10 Thunderers, Shields

15 Iron Breakers, Full Command, Rune of Courage

Organ Gun

I was going to take it easy on her but I wasn’t going to take a wholly inappropriate army. My two major blocks were immune to Fear and between Thorek, the Runesmith, the Valaya rune and the Balance rune I felt I could weather the magical holocaust that was brewing. I didn’t want to shut it down altogether though, the point of the game for me wasn’t to win but to show Dawn how to play and for her to have fun – that meant letting a few spells through.

I set the table up and Dawn won the roll off for table edge.

My deployment was a pretty standard castle formation, I had Thunderers on a hill against the table edge, Thorek on the back line with the Iron Breakers and Longbeards in front of him. The warriors and the Organ Gun protected the exposed flank.

Dawn set up in a loose line across her deployment zone using the coaching inn at the centre of the table as cover for her more fragile or tempting targets (honestly who builds a coaching inn on a plain of skulls anyhow?)

She also won the roll to start and made me go first. I decided not to hasten my inevitable spiky demise and left my units exactly where they were for the first couple of turns. Thorek struck the Rune of Wrath and Ruin to deplete the numbers of Daemonettes but only killed three of them, Dawn spent her first turn manoeuvring around the coaching inn, The Daemonettes containing the Herald decided that they were completely out of position and ran down the deployment zone to follow in the tracks of their diabolic sistren. Screamers moved up beside the leading Daemonette unit and everything else shuffled forwards. Between bad dice rolls on Dawn’s part, few spells being in range and my pool of dispel dice the first Daemonic magic phase achieved precisely nothing.

The second turn was pretty much more of the same. Thorek runed up the Screamers and killed three of those. Unfortunately for me they were out of Thunderer range so I wasn’t able to finish off the unit. Dawn moved stuff closer still ready for a charge, the Flamers sprinted up to take positions behind the wall of the coaching inn’s well yard and, in a bold move the Lord of Change flew over the building in front of my entire army. Another poor magic phase saw me escape without casualties once again but Dawn managed to draw blood when the Lord of Change fired his Flames of Tzeentch at the Anvil of Doom and killed one of the guards.

Now I had a bit of a dilemma. The obvious choice would be to let fly with everything at the Lord of Change but that would have made for a dull game and, having lost more than one Lord of Change to massed fire, I’m acutely aware of how easy they are to kill if you suddenly have trouble rolling ward saves. In the end I decided not to target the Lord of Change at all, trusting in my pile of dispel dice to protect me from nastiness. Thorek struck the Rune of Hearth and Hold with ancient power, making my entire army immune to fear and terror as well as giving me a reroll on panic tests and break tests. The Organ gun fired at the unit of Horrors containing the Herald and killed a couple, The Thunderers decided to concentrate on the Daemonettes rather than the stragglers from the Screamer unit and a few more fell to Dwarf shot reducing the unit to only two ranks.

Now things were getting hotter! The Daemonettes charged the Longbeards and despite the Rune of Slowness made contact. The Screamers flew out of arc of the Thunderers ready for some fly-past attacks and the second Daemonette unit along with both units of Horrors moved up. Dawn finally had a magic phase that worked and had a particularly lucky Flickering Fire of Tzeentch versus the Organ gun, taking two wounds off the warmachine as well as killing two of the crew. The Lord of Change managed to get Tzeentch’s Firestorm off against the Anvil of Doom and killed the second guard. He then followed up with his shooting attack and killed Kraggi, leaving Thorek alone with the precious relic. Meanwhile the Flamers flung magical flame at the Organ gun and managed to destroy it leaving the surviving crewman to scuttle towards Thorek for safety.

Combat didn’t go well for the Daemonettes as they found the sturdy Dwarfs hard to kill. The Longbeards chopped up a few of the shrieking Daemons and won the combat but the leadership test was passed easily.

The battle was much more interesting now. I still held the centre of the table and was in a strong position, I had moved the Iron Breakers up to threaten the Lord of Change and swung the Warriors out to head off the flanking Horrors led by their Herald. The Lord of Change was a big threat and Thorek still stood defiant over the Anvil of Doom despite the death of all his guards and his assistant. Meanwhile the second unit of Daemonettes was moving up into threat range and the Flamers would be a constant menace unless they were dealt with.

In my fifth turn I went to strike the Rune of Wrath and Ruin but Thorek clearly didn’t have his mind on the job and failed the roll, with Kraggi blasted into a charred ruin there was no reroll and so I rolled on the misfire table. Of course there is no other result possible at this stage except a 1 (why do they even bother printing the rest of the table?) and Thorek blew himself into the halls of his ancestors. With my Runelord dead I was not looking forward to the Daemonic magic phases at all. The Thunderers fired at the smaller unit of Horrors and managed to wipe them out entirely. The Longbeards also wiped out the Daemonettes through a combination of Dwarf steel and Daemonic Instability. Dawn had countered the threatened Iron Breaker charge by flying the Lord of Change over behind my line to the smoking crater that had once been an Organ Gun. I prepared myself for a magical battering but, much to my relief, the Herald of Tzeentch managed to completely fluff his spell, suffering a wound from the miscast and prematurely ending the magic phase before the Lord of Change had even rolled up his sleeves. No doubt severe words were had about that after the battle (and by ‘severe words’ I mean eternities of pain and suffering).

Dawn had charged the Longbeards with her second unit of Daemonettes, and once more the Rune of Slowness failed to protect the doughty veterans. This time, as both of our battle standards were in the fight, I explained the challenge rules and Dawn decided to issue one with her Herald. I accepted with my Thane and the fight was on! Sadly it was also rather quick as the Slaaneshi Herald cut through the Gromril armour of the Thane like smoke and killed him before he could react. Elsewhere the fight was going little better for the Dwarfs, while the other Daemonettes were not so effective at wounding the Longbeards neither were the Longbeard’s great axes able to pierce the daemonic ward saves. In the end the Daemonettes won and and as the Longbeards were no longer immune to fear they automatically broke and were run down by the cackling succubi.

We were going into the last turn and things looked very different to the situation only a single turn ago.  I had lost my General, the main combat block had been chopped up and destroyed utterly. My Thunderers were being strafed by the surviving pair of Screamers, the Lord of Change was entirely untouched and free to wreak arcane ruin over my Dwarfs. On the positive side, both the Iron Breakers and the Warriors were at full strength and there was little chance the Screamers would seriously damage my Thunderer units.

I began by declaring charges with the Warriors against the Horrors and the Ironbreakers against the Flamers. The Flamers fired as the wrathful Dwarfs rushed in but failed to seriously dent the heavily armoured elites. The Warriors on the other hand found themselves just out of range and so their bid for glory came to an ignominious halt three inches from where they set off. As the Flamers were defending an obstacle, the Ironbreakers didn’t get to strike first but in the end the combat was pretty inconclusive. The skill of the Dwarfs easily parried the clumsy blows of the Flamers but the tough fungoid bodies of the Daemons proved impervious to the Dwarf axes. The Daemons won despite the static combat resolution but the Dwarfs easily made their break test. Over on the other side of the table, the Thunderers fired a salvo at the Daemonettes and killed a few but not enough to bring the unit below half strength. It was going to be a bad result for me barring a miracle in Dawn’s last turn.

The Lord of Change declared a charge against the flank of the beleagured Iron Breakers and the Daemonettes swung around behind them to block their escape. The Screamers killed a couple more Thunderers with slashing attacks but there was no risk of a panic test. The magic phase was mostly uneventful, the Horrors and Herald cast Flickering Fire of Tzeentch at the Warriors and managed to kill one between them, the Lord of Change attempted Glory of Chaos but failed and so we were left with the last combat round of the game. This time, the Ironbreakers were not so lucky as the Lord of Change tore through them, killing five. The Flamers added to the tally and the Dwarfs were unable to injure the daemons yet again. At least they were immune to fear due to their Rune of Courage so they weren’t going to break automatically however they had lost by a lot and there was no battle standard for a reroll. I failed the test and they fled, stopping just short of the wating arms of the Daemonettes. The Flamers pursued but got tangled up in the fence and ended up some way behind.

With that the game was over and it was time to tot up the points. I could see that I had lost, it was just a question of how much. There were a lot of dead Daemons but all of my expensive units were dead or fleeing. All the table quarters were contested but Thorek and the Longbeards were a huge chunk of points between them and the final result reflected that. Dawn won by 1210 points which was a massacre. Not bad for a newbie!