On Sunday 23 September Steve, Rodion and I played a series of games in a second attempt to get a Warbands campaign off the ground. In December last year Erik proposed a similar style escalation league, but unfortunately it never got going. Steve and I played the sole game in that league before the Shimo-Kitazawa PubCon event disintegrated - the organizer left due to clashes with the venue owner and the JIGG management, and the player base was scattered to the four winds. I stopped playing for six months or so to do other things, and the whole thing just dried up and blew away.
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| My Empire Warband. |
With a new organizer now in place (cheers, Robert!) we headed on down to Yoga to play Warbands again. We were playing with Warhammer 7th edition rules and army books (power creep be damned) just to make things easier. I'm going slightly insane trying to keep track of all the rules in my head. Originally I started brushing up on 5th edition rules because Joshua had proposed a 5th edition game in Kashiwa, but that fell through so Rodion and I arranged a 9th edition game in Yoga instead. 9th edition is very dense - it's like the Advanced Squad Leader version of Warhammer if you've ever played that monstrosity - so it's hard going, but I'm starting to come around to its particular brand of anal retentiveness. Unfortunately I also had to brush up on 7th edition Warhammer for Warbands, so I was having bouts of schizophrenia flipping from one edition to another. All this bouncing back and forth on Warhammer editions is making me yearn for the simplicity of Kings of War. It doesn't have the granularity of Warhammer, but in the end it's still about fantasy armies so it gives me my miniature gaming fix. I would love to convert some of the Japanese KoW players over to Warhammer or to T9A, but the sheer detail required to explain the game would overload my Japanese and make my head explode.
Anyway Warbands was refreshingly simple, fast and most importantly, fun. Games took less than an hour - probably closer to 30 minutes - for each one. In comparison my T9A game with Rodion took four hours to play three turns, as we kept bogging down on rule details which could only be clarified by looking up the rules on my iPad Mini. We did play 4000 points, which I thought was huge, until a visit to the T9A forums seemed to indicate that a standard game was 4500 points. Jeebus.
Playing Warbands, by contrast, felt like slipping into an old, well-worn sweater. I stopped playing Warhammer before the release of 7th edition, but the rules were quite familiar, queries were quickly dealt with, and turns were lightning fast. I liked that we were playing campaign rules, too, which means an ongoing narrative for each warband. In fact, the fun for me in most narrative Ameri-trash games is the quasi-narrative supplied by the dynamic between the players, the scenario and the dice rolls. A lot of that would be forthcoming in the three games we played on Sunday.
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| My Orc Warband. |
Game 1: Chaos versus Empire
The first game we played was a tussle between my Empire band and Steve's Chaos Warriors. My warband was composed of a Warrior-Priest, a small unit of halberdiers with a standard, a unit of four huntsmen and four handgunners. Steve had a Chaos Hero, two small units of three Chaos Warriors apiece and a single Ogre. For my Archetype I chose Intellectual for my Warrior-Priest and dubbed her Grunhilda. She's armed with the Armor of Meteoric Iron which gives her a 1+ save. She also has a great weapon to give her a little bit of clout in close combat.
The Empire did amazingly well. For some reason I thought Steve was a Warhammer veteran, but it turned out that the bulk of his experience was in 40K. My halberdiers saw off the Ogre and one unit of Warriors. The other unit of Chaos Warriors chased and destroyed my handgunners, while his Hero, the dude I most feared in his list, went off and chased off my huntsmen. Both units then turned around to engage the halberdiers, but the halberdiers, augmented by Grunhilda, standard and outnumbering bonuses, saw them off in the final combat of the game. In the end the Empire won a Massacre victory and earned 100 Experience points. After rolling for casualties - each model that falls in game dies on a roll of 1-2 during a postgame sequence - I found that the Empire had lost four men. We had 101 Experience points in hand, and after spending 33 points to replace our losses we had 68 points left to purchase more troops or upgrades.
Steve's warband on the other hand, was decimated by a spate of poor casualty rolls. He lost his Ogre and two Chaos Warriors. In his addition his Chaos Hero suffered amnesia (Heroes roll on a separate casualty table), which meant he lost his Hero's Archetype abilities and the capacity to gain new ones. Ouch. Defeated warbands still get 25 points, but his warband had been badly diminished.
Game 2: Chaos versus High Elves
Since Steve's warband had been so badly mauled we agreed that starting a new warband could be an option. The next game was Steve's new warband (exactly the same roster) against Rodion's High Elves. Rodion had an Elven Mage, two units of three Lothern Sea Guard apiece, and two mounted Dragon Princes. The High Elves would try to blow Chaos apart as they advanced, and they very nearly did. Steve was slumping lower and lower in his chair with every magical and missile casualty. One Convocation (?) by Rodion totally annihilated one Chaos Warrior unit. I was trying to pump him up by saying, "Just get into combat, dude!" Once his Chaos Hero made it into combat however, he tore apart the Sea Guard. The Ogre with one Wound left somehow survived a charge by the Dragon Princes and drove them off, then limped into combat against the other Sea Guard unit and broke them. In the end the whole Elven force was fleeing or destroyed, and despite his casualties, Steve came away with a Massacre victory.
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| The survivors of the battle versus the High Elves. Only one Chaos Warrior died, but he was clearly too weak to live and was claimed by Khorne. |
More good news for Chaos was that all his fallen soldiers passed their casualty rolls and came back to life. Rodion's force, however, couldn't roll higher than a 2, and in the end all that was left of his warband was his mage, one Dragon Prince and two Sea Guard from separate units. According to the rules if you can't replenish your soldiers to minimum sizes (three for infantry) then they are disbanded. This meant that Rodion would also lose the other Sea Guard, as his 25 point allotment could only buy back one soldier, which would not be enough to replenish either unit. Brutal.
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| The High Elves were decimated by the Orcs. |
Game 3: High Elves versus Orcs
The final game of the day would be my Orc warband versus Rodion's High Elves. Like Steve, Rodion opted for a brand new warband after the horrendous casualties his first warband had suffered. After seeing the shooting gallery of the previous game we started the game on the reverse slope of a hill to avoid first turn shooting. The Orc advance was further delayed by an outbreak of Animosity and Stupidity by the Troll, but once the boyz got underway they started getting peppered by the Elves. Fortunately the Orcs were very resilient to shooting, and also Rodion's magic phase was not as lethal as it had been in the previous game against Chaos. Rather than direct damage spells he had opted for re-rolls and buffs, and bow fire, even when augmented, were not as effective against the Orc's high Toughness. The Orcs were able to cross the field without taking any casualties and drove the Sea Guard off the hill. The only iffy part was when the Dragon Princes charged my Troll, which I pushed up to protect the chariot's left flank. The Dragon Princes needed to score three Wounds to kill the Troll, but they were only able to inflict one thanks to Regeneration. In return the Troll vomited and killed one knight, and auto-broke the last one due to Fear.
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| The Orcs advance on the Elves. |
In the end the Orcs came away with a Massacre win without taking any casualties, and Rodion's Elves took another shellacking. I don't think Rodion did his casualty rolls for his second warband, as we had to get out of the venue pretty quickly, but the Orcs are sitting pretty with 100 Experience points in the bank and no casualties to speak of.
The only question now is whether we can keep this campaign rolling in the future. Both my warbands performed quite well, but I'm quite happy to scratch them both and bring new ones as long as we keep playing. The best thing about warbands is that it gives me achievable painting goals. If I don't play I don't paint, and warbands allow me to paint different factions. If we play again I could perhaps prepare a Tomb Kings, Dark Elves or High Elves warband. I could even put together a makeshift Ogre Kingdoms warband, but that's the beauty of this format. Given the small model count you can paint the models up to a high standard as opposed to painting an army. My Orcs are still largely composed of three color models, but warbands can become based, shaded and highlighted. It's a different mode of painting, and variety is the spice of life when it comes to wading into a seemingly endless sea of miniatures.
The only question now is whether we can keep this campaign rolling in the future. Both my warbands performed quite well, but I'm quite happy to scratch them both and bring new ones as long as we keep playing. The best thing about warbands is that it gives me achievable painting goals. If I don't play I don't paint, and warbands allow me to paint different factions. If we play again I could perhaps prepare a Tomb Kings, Dark Elves or High Elves warband. I could even put together a makeshift Ogre Kingdoms warband, but that's the beauty of this format. Given the small model count you can paint the models up to a high standard as opposed to painting an army. My Orcs are still largely composed of three color models, but warbands can become based, shaded and highlighted. It's a different mode of painting, and variety is the spice of life when it comes to wading into a seemingly endless sea of miniatures.
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