The Glorious Path to Verminhood

The road goes ever on...

In my last post I spoke at length about how I was getting back into Age of Sigmar via the Path to Glory campaign system.

Well, I've made some progress both in the campaign and with painting up my growing warband, so let's jump straight in with some pictures!

Mouldering beasts!

I'll come right out and say it - I love clan Moulder.  For those of you not familiar with Skaven clans, they're the disgusting flesh crafters who are responsible for breed grotesque (and deadly!) rat based monstrosities which are sold to warlords for exorbitant amounts of warpstone...

My love of Clan Moulder has led to a number of large beasties in my Skaven PTG Warband.  I always find that prepping for games / campaigns helps keep me focussed on getting things finished and this particular campaign is no different as I'm munching my way through painting my hideous rat beasts! 

Behold the gnashing, screeching fruit of my labours so far!



My beautiful beasties....









My Packmaster with his faithful pet Wolf rat pup

 

 

Do you have a hideous malformed twin?  Try new laser rat removal!



 

Sloth love Chunk!

It started as a pimple and he scratched it...

The ad said Golden Retriever...



MY NAME IS TREVOR!  I LIKE ASTRONOMY!  WHY ARE YOU RUNNING?!



Where is everybody?

Running with the Wolf rats





My objective token!

 

So what the hell happened next?!

In short, I won my battle against Albie - read on if you want the longer version!

Setup

We randomly selected a Battleplan from the Path to Glory book and it turned out to be Cornered.  It's a fun scenario, where a group of raiders get caught with their pants down while they're pillaging.

Surrounded and with only half of Santa's normal elf quota, the general has to escape the board before being bludgeoned to death by the attacking force.

Albie lost the roll off and ended up as the raiders - he split his force in two and I picked half for him to deploy with his general in the middle of the board.  The rest of his force didn't get to bathe in the blood of their enemies today and were had to watch from the side lines.

Once Albie's units were placed, I could set up anywhere on the board no more than 6" from the table edge.

I set up my forces pretty evenly and hoped that I would be able to slow down the general enough to catch him with one of my big hitters and cave his head in...



Deployment

Albie got to take the first turn.  Now, I had made a rather critical error during setup.  Thinking only about how my Skryre Acolytes and Arch Warlock  would pepper the enemy with poison wind orbs, magic and warpfire, I forgot that Albie wouldn't stand in the middle of the board and let me kill him...

Khorne turn 1

Somewhat inevitably, Albie walks around the building with his Bloodreavers and easily beats my Skaven Acolytes to death.  They never stood a chance!

The Khorgorath made its hideous Cronenberg-esque bone tentacle shooting attack against the Hellpit Abomination causing only a single wound.  The Khorgorath then failed his charge.  The Hellpit Abomination simply thumbed his nose and limbered up for lunch time.

The Bloodsecrator stayed where he was and open the skull portal, granting his mates an extra attack each in the combat phase.

The General and Blood Warriors charged towards my very lonely looking Arch Warlock and I was pleasantly surprised when he only took a single wound thanks to his heavy armour granting him a hefty 3+ save!  In response, he sliced a Blood Warrior in half with his Stormcage halberd!

At this point, I was on the back foot and worried about how long my Arch Warlock would feasibly be able to hold up the frothing Khorne maniacs...

Skaven turn 1

I needn't have worried as pretty much everything went in my favour during my first turn!

During my Hero phase, my Arch Warlock failed to cast Arcane bolt, but then miraculously pulled off a Warpstorm casting keeping me very much in the game as it caused a Blood Warrior to fall down dead, the general took a mortal wound and the Bloodreavers lost 2 men!  In the shooting phase, my Arch Warlock also bathed the Khorne Lord and his Juggernaut in Warpfire causing another nmortal wound!

The Rat Ogres stomped forward and made an 11" charge into the surprised looking Bloodreavers!  The Packmaster ambled along behind, with his aura ability just out of range.  I'd hope he was cooking up some devious plan, but it's more likely he was hoping most of the fighting was done by the time he got there...

My trusty Wolf Rats stormed forward, running an additional 2" on top of their 12" move.  If my Arch Warlock could hold out for one more turn, then the Wolf Rats could intercept Albie's general.

The Hellpit Abomination didn't disappoint, utterly crushing the Khorgorath in a single messy barrage of attacks.  You could say that Albie's plan to hold up the Abomination was not really working...

A lot of people say that rat ogres are rubbish - I completely disagree!!  In this game, they absolutely brutalised Albie's Bloodreavers!  Due to getting the charge and rolling a couple of 6's, they got two additional attacks and proceeded to rip 8 terrified looking Bloodreavers to bloody pieces! One rat ogre was reduced to a single wound in response.

Despite taking two more wounds, my Arch Warlock still managed to punch out another Blood Warrior in the combat phase.  The fact that most attacks appeared to bounce off his armour made me start to hope that he'd survive Albie's next turn too and cast another juicy Warpstorm!

Khorne turn 2

The Bloodsecrator appeared oblivious to the Hellpit abomination dragging its hideous meaty form up behind him.  The skull portal remained open, but only the general and Bloodreavers were still in range of its aura effect thanks to attrition shrinking the Blood Warrior unit!

Despite my hopes for the mighty Arch Warlock's survival, he was unceremoniously crushed to death by the Khorne Lord's Juggernaut in the combat phase before he could even think about squirting the musk of fear!

All of the Bloodreavers aside from the champion and standard bearer were gobbled up by the apparently unstoppable rat ogres!  They did manage to bring down one rat ogre and severely wound the remaining beast during the combat.  Thanks to the stalwart Bloodsecrator, they didn't run off this turn.

Skaven turn 2

As planned, the speedy Wolf Rats easily moved up and charged the now unengaged Lord of Khorne and Bloodwarrior - they wouldn't be escaping this turn as only a single Wolf Rat died after they caused several wounds on the Lord and his Juggerbeasty.

Unsurprisingly to everyone, except the Bloodsecrator (I suspect he had his headphones in), the Hellpit Abomination barely broke step as it messily turned the Bloodsecrator to paste!

The remaining Rat ogre casually ate the last two Bloodreavers, sniffing the air and turning towards the Wolf rat combat with a hungry look in its pitiless red eyes...

Meanwhile, the Packmaster came round the corner of the building whistling the sun has got his hat on with his hands in his pockets.

Khorne turn 3

The loss of the Bloodsecrator to the combination of mutant rat monster and Thrash Metal in his earphones, the Lord of Khorne was starting to look extremely sweaty and nervous.  That may be why he fumbled his axe, only managing a single wound on an already injured Wolf rat, sending him to the big sewer in the sky.  The Blood Warrior did nothing.  Literally nothing.  He'd better hope Khorne was catching up on Downton Abbey instead of watching this battle...

Skaven turn 3

The surviving Rat Ogre charged into the Khorne Lord, then the Hellpit abomination let out a spine chilling screech as it tumbled forward in an avalanche of flesh, making my second 11" charge of the game!  The bloody Packmaster continued his stroll , ending up just outside of charge range, but conveniently in range of the empty townhouses which most assuredly would contain cheese.

With zero self control, the Hellpit abomination utterly destroyed the Lord of Khorne, emptying his contents out on the floor before gobbling up the offal.  The wounds caused would have been enough to kill him twice over at full health!  Maximum deletion occurred.  Meanwhile, the remaining Blood warrior hid at the back, a loose bowel movement trickling out of his trousers.  Crouching down, he started making what he thought were friendly squeaking noises.

Clean up on aisle 7!!

This was probably my favourite game of AoS 2.0 so far!  My botched deployment almost lost me the game on turn one, but I managed to pull it back with a combination of luck and excessive violence from my Moulder beasties!!  I felt a bit sorry for Albie when the Hellpit Abomination completely wrecked everything it touched, taking only minor injuries then immediately healing itself at the start of each of my turns!  He's my MVP without a doubt!

The dice were with me again when I rolled for my glory and came away with another 3, bring my total so far to 7!  I chose to spend one of my glory points to boost my next post game pick - a trio of Stormfiends!



What really won me the game!  Rat catcher dice for Guild ball - perfect for Skaven armies!

Here are the scores on the doors:

Lee (Skaven) - 2 wins, 1 loss.  6 Glory
Tom (Beastclaw Raiders) - 2 wins, 1 loss.  3 Glory
Albie (Khorne Bloodbound) - 1 win, 1 draw, 1 loss.  4 Glory
Sam (Stormcast Eternals) - 1 Draw, 2 losses.  3 Glory

Despite the difference in battle outcomes, the glory scores are still pretty close and it could all change pretty quickly!

It's all still to play for and I can't wait for my next game!

TTFN...

Looking back on WD Battle Reports

I came across an older article today and thought I'd resurrect the discussion which was so eloquently laid out by the author (neverness).  I'd urge people to go and have a look through his post as it really does describe exactly how I have felt about battle reports in White Dwarf over the years!

The absolute low point of battle reports was in the accursed Warhammer Visions publication doorstop which genuinely almost brought me to tears.  It was the epitome of everything I hated about GWs attitude towards big fat money sacks (their customers as we're known again now).  In this £8 advertising supplement, the 'Battle Report' was a two page spread with some really dull one line comments.  It may as well have just been a Codex 'flavour' pic.

Looking back on the battle report heritage of GW, it's hard to see how they fell so far.  But my question is whether or not they have recovered from this face plant.  My conclusion is... sort of.

Battle reports began to interest me again since WD was brought back in its monthly format - which is also the first time I re-subscribed to the magazine after cancelling in disgust at the Visions / WD Weekly shitfest. .  While not exactly a radical reinvention of the magazine, it did at least return with some of the content which I used to enjoy even if it still contains a lot of rampant marketing junk.

The battle reports are still very new army-centric and rarely feature themed armies or any which have not received a new codex since the latest edition dropped.  I can forgive them that though as they've at least started to return to form.  The content is more engaging again, but as neverness wrote in his blog post, tactical planning, execution and review is still very thin on the ground and is often guided purely by one new character combo or new unit's 'time to shine'.

What I will say for the new battle reports is that while they were gone (DAMN YOU VISIONS!), the player community filled the gap by expanding the available content across the net.  GW seems to have realised that they're nothing without the community.  People who build enthusiasm and additional spin-off content on the net.

GW are running to catch up now that they have at last re-engaged their community and I think that's a good thing as the magazine battle reports are now being held to higher standards with player content some times outshining the dry GW coverage of new releases.  The rigorous battering that new armies and rules get on the net is forcing GW to be more insightful in their articles as they know that a few pictures and one-liners just doesn't cut the mustard any more!

Lastly I'd like to share my favourite ever battle report with you.  If you've not read it, go back and take a peek, it's worth the read!

White Dwarf 351... Assault on Fort Wrath battle report.

I must have re-read this battle report a hundred times!  It's an absolutely huge Apocalypse battle, which also being fought across several smaller tables - each had their own theme and mission objectives which then tied in together on the main table.

The fact that the players had individual objectives led to some hilarious antics as one of the Ork warlords had to 'accidentally' take out a rival whilst Phil Kelly's Warboss is ordered to 'Kill something big' and subsequently punches out a Warhound titan before being turned into red (green?) mist by the whole Imperial Battleline!

It makes me cry with laughter whenever I read it.  Also, the fact that there are so many Stompas (11 I think), really gives it an epic feel!

Thanks go to neverness for inspiring this random post!  His 'not-squat' drawing is great and makes me want him to revisit his fanzine vision in web format! :)