Kings of War/The Ninth Age/Warhammer - Dark Elves, Part II


On 13 January I played my first game of rank and file fantasy battle for 2019. My opponent was Rodion, my army were my Dark Elves, and the system we used was The Ninth Age (T9A). We gatecrashed another JIGG event to use as a venue, and we were lucky that we came early as the place was quite small but packed with people. I felt a little guilty appropriating a table for just the two of us, but since most tables averaged four we were only putting out two people. That's how I rationalized it to myself, anyway.

Diagonal deployment.

I would like to regale the reader with an epic tale of a closely fought encounter, but that's not how it panned out. I got my ass well and truly handed to me. On his very first turn Rodion incited panic tests all along my cluttered right flank by destroying a unit of fast cavalry, and all my units passed their Leadership tests of 10 or under with the sole exception of my general's unit. The unit promptly fled, taking my general and wizard lord with it. To add insult to injury we were playing with truncated tables and thus there was no room for my general to rally. All I could do was watch glumly as 1000 points of my army ran off.

After the initial dismay wore off I thought I'd try to play for a draw but that idea was nixed as the game developed and Rodion methodically picked my army apart. Rodion always takes magic heavy armies, but this time he supplemented it with more shooting in the form of skirmishers. He did a great job destroying my army in detail before smashing the remnants with his shock troops. Without magic protection I ate spell after spell, and this time around I did not have the luxury of cheap troops and/or bad magic phases from Rodion as I did in our previous game when I used Orcs and Goblins.

My Cauldron of Blood debuts on the tabletop.

Even if my general and sorceress lord had not fled I am quite certain that I would have still lost. I should not have gone mano e mano with his light troops, and instead denied him easy targets on his first turn by pulling everything all the way back. We were playing with diagonal deployment zones, and I was unfortunate (or foolish) in putting my general's unit near the edge of the table. I also stacked all my characters in one unit as apparently I'd forgotten the old adage of not putting all your eggs in one basket. There was plenty of space deeper in the corners where I could have waited for him to come to me. Instead I thought I would take his first turn shooting, which is always a bad idea if you have expensive troops, and come back with my own. Unfortunately for me his first turn of shooting paid massive dividends, and I was playing catch-up from the start.

Clash of skirmishers and fast cavalry.

I initially thought that my army selection was quite poor, as it straddled the line between being a shooty army and a melee army without committing to either paradigm. After further thought however, I believe that the army was fine - I just deployed it poorly. Elves do combined arms well, as Rodion would demonstrate in the coming turns. He had the initiative from the start, and never let go. He made the point that I was being too reactive, and I agree with him. I also struggled with the Ambush rule the High Elves have, which allow them to come in on the flanks or rear. It really played havoc with my plans, and even though this time around I assigned a unit to deal with the ambushing unit, it still fractured my line badly. There were many things I could have done which had nothing to do with bad RNG, and so these are the things I will focus on for next time.

Speaking of next time T9A has just released the second edition of their game, and it signals a shift from the Warhammer model, particularly in the stat lines used to differentiate units. Many statistics, such as Wounds and Toughness, have been renamed. Others have been split further such as Weapon Skill which has been divided into Offensive and Defensive Skill, and Movement, which has been split further into Advance and March Rates. While late as last year I would have resisted such a move, nowadays I am more open to alternatives. I already play Kings of War (KoW) which is a completely different beast to Warhammer, so why the hell not. The rules committee of T9A have claimed that 2.0 is the definitive version of their particular brand of fantasy wargaming, and while I'm skeptical about that, I'm more amenable to learning a living system which still has support from players around the world rather than investing time in a game whose player base continues to shrink year by year. We all have to move on, I suppose, and if fantasy wargaming has a future beyond old diehards like myself, it will be in the hands of KoW and T9A. The only annoying thing is that I'm going to have to learn a new system. Again.

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