Warhammer Fantasy Battle, or ‘light the blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance…’

I had my first game of WFB in like 15 years last Saturday. I was very excited at the prospect of playing some swords and sorcery stuff again, as it’s been a while. Me and Dethtron had decided on a 1500 point list, mainly to just get used to the rules and whatnot. The battle saw my small force of wimpy looking Tomb Kings vs. Dethtron’s veritable tank of an Empire army.

I won’t bore everyone to tears with a Batrep, but we did have a good game, with some truly ludicrous things happening. Dethtron very wisely put his ordnance on hills, which already got me worrying as I only had one Screaming Skull catapult to reciprocate with. So, I was facing a mortar, an effing great big cannon and a crazy looking rocket launcher thingy that looked like a pyromaniacs dream come true.

I pretty much stayed my distance and just unleashed plenty of volleys of arrows, while my Tomb King and unit of Chariots took to the flank to try and push them all to center field to end up as more arrow fodder. They ended up against a unit of heavily armored cavalry, after routing another unit of Pistoliers off the table. I was pretty certain that my Tomb King was doomed against these guys, but thankfully held them up in combat for a couple of turns, but alas was sent back to the void after being crushed under the hefty unit. Magic was thrown hither and thither (what?) with some dispels being successful, and others farting out into nothing.

We were trading shots for a while too, whittling each side down, although we both had abilities to replenish fallen troops, but I think I had a slight edge on the frequency and amount that this was used. Dethtron scored some direct hits with artillery but then suffered the Wrath of the Ancient Ones, as he rolled successive misfires on each of his artillery pieces, resulting in them being destroyed. Not only did this make me a little less worried about my troops getting mangled, but it also took away my primary targets for my ‘deep striking’ Tomb Scorpion and Tomb Swarms. While my Scorpion’s performance was a little lackluster, the tomb swarms held up two of the Empire units, resulting in him losing his Wizard, and consequently, his army general. With no spells being thrown around (and also no dispels) I was given a little more flexibility.

All in all it was a great game. I quickly learnt some strong and weak points concerning the Tomb Kings forces and am pretty excited to have a go at a larger game with some other unusual pieces added.

After going toe to toe I only just squeaked out a victory, which I am sure was mostly due to the unlucky misfires from the artillery, but it was still a blast. Geddit? Artillery? Blast? >sigh<

While 40K is still my favorite, this was a helluva lot of fun, who doesn’t like throwing fists full of dice down?