WFB 8 Battle Report: Beastmen vs Goblins (or– Thank you Anvil of Vaul!)

Cain indulged the current obsession for the fourth time this weekend hauling his Night Goblin swarm over to pit them against the primal fury of the beastmen in Warhammer Fantasy Battle.   We rolled ‘battle for the pass’ for the scenario,  which means the armies fight it out starting on the short ends of the 6′ X 4′ table rather than the long ones as normal.  This gave a very compact center with little room on the flanks for maneuver or trickery.   At 1500 points per side, that made for quite the crowded table with few places to escape the big blocks of rank n file.  A tough fight for the goblins to start with as the table set up neutralized the Gobbo advantages on the flanks (there weren’t any!) was exacerbated by a bit of terrain that worked just a wee too well in the beastmen’s favor: the Anvil of Vaul (oh and his fanatics).

The fanatic didn’t go exactly the right way shortly after this shot

Under normal circumstances, the Anvil of Vaul, which gives Flaming and Magical attack augmentation to all units within 6″, would be a pretty even bonus for both sides in a fight, but I just happened to choose Blackened Plate as my only magic item for the army (man was 1500 points a squeeze).  Blackened Plate gives a 2 up ward save to the wearer against flaming attacks AND a 4 up ward save for any unit he is with.  In the clutch block on block fights during the battle, all within 6″ of the Anvil of Vaul, this gave my main Gor unit, who usually go skin with no save at all, a horrific advantage over the Goblins leading to their decimation, flight and subsequently ending up inside a stomach for their pains.  Still it was a great game and we’re finally getting down the rules.  It’s been tough to remember the fiddly bits here and there and to remember that Charges are resolved before compulsory movement (a big change from almost every Warhammer ruleset I’ve ever played) but we’re getting closer.  One makes a big investment getting into a game like Warhammer, and committing to an edition and so far I couldn’t be more pleased with the games played– all just a total blast that makes 4 hours go by in a wink.

My list was finally legal after struggling to reconcile the 7th edition book with the 8th edition rules (sorry Cain) but was not fully painted, which is my personal shame as I really dislike hitting the table with unpainted stuff:

Gorbull (General)
Blackened Plate*

Wargor (Battle Standard Bearer)

Bray Shaman Level 1 (Lore of Beasts)

Core:

38 Gor with additional hand weapons, standard, musician and champion (both the Gorebull and Wargor joined this unit)

10 Gor with additional hand weapons, musician (in ambush)

29 Ungor with spears and shields, standard, musician (the Bray Shaman joined the ungor)

2 Tuskagor Chariots

5 Chaos Hounds

Special:

Razorgor (played by a Hound of Scathach from Confrontation)

Rare:

A big fat Giant!

What to play on the Win2K box?

With my gaming rig down for the count and Bulletstorm, Singularity, BFBC2 and Shogun Total War 2 are a distant dream so I’ve spanned some time on my Windows 2000  box that is going on 11 years old now and still cranking!  Typically I use it for Close Combat almost exclusively as I have most of the series installed (though I have to dig around for the cd’s–how antiquated…).  Yesterday I found a gem installed right on the C: drive:  CHAOS OVERLORDS published by New World Computing back in the elder times — also responsible for HOMM and Hammer of the Gods.  It’s a CCG-like game of area control and gang warfare that allows you to research tech, hire gangs that randomly come up in a queue and extort protection money for the businesses and buildings in your regions.  Like Imperialism from back in the day, Chaos Overlords is notable because I have NEVER won a game.  Even without victory, it’s quite fun to play until you get simultaneously attacked by all the other gangs at once.

Secondly, one of my favorite games from the 90’s– King of Dragon Pass is still hanging out on my win2K’s hard drive awaiting invocation.  While it requires the disk during play, this is a game that I cannot believe hasn’t come out on Steam or GOG, though it looks like it’s being developed for the iPad.  It’s difficult to describe as it’s a little like a Koei strategy title but also a bit of an adventure game with a series of random events obviously very keyed to your current situation in the game.  These random events path, so if your clan adopts a certain red-headed girl when prompted, later random events will be keyed to the fact that she is part of your clan.  If you never accepted her, another set of events are keyed.  Since this happens across a myriad of events, it’s never the same game twice, though you will see the beginnings of event-trees over and over.    My initial games were extremely blood thirsty, choosing to fill my Elder Circle with followers of Humakt (the god of war) and go forth and kick ass on my rival clans.  It turns out the balanced path is the one that wins the game as it’s not about conquest, but forming a tribe of other clans, and then a kingdom through a series of rituals where a member of your Elder circle enters into the lands of the gods.  A brilliantly unique experience.

I can abide 2 weeks or so of this… maybe…

Safe as possible

Great article here about the success of the reactors in Japan in the face of this catastrophe.  Of course things are looking dire and all, but these reactors have taken terrible beatings and power failures on just about every back up system preventing cooling and operation—far exceeding what they were built to sustain.  The title of the article is alarmist: just because the Japanese can build reactors this steadfast does not mean, not by any stretch of the imagination, that the USA or any other country could build them (and maintain them) this solidly.  Especially here, one year you’d have budget cuts that reduced the staff and staff pay, and then the next it would be privatized and the next year OSHA standards would be reduced to ‘allow more business to be done’ and then boom.

Computer death!

And there it goes, my main gaming rig (I have a win2k box in the basement for the old stuff…. so much good old stuff….) died this weekend and it simply has to be replaced, what with the computer desk I just got a few weeks back.  I’ve been waiting for awhile to get a new one and here is the perfect excuse.  Honestly I think it’s just the power supply, but really, the socket 939 has got to be put out to pasture.  The rig served me well since late 2006 with long hours of Oblivion, UT3, Mount and Blade, Fallout, BF 2142 and allowing me to play through the single player of BFBC2 stretching to the limit it’s capabilities with only one video card upgrade.

Needless to say I haven’t gotten any computer gaming this past week at all, and I’m going to start feeling withdrawal symptoms soon– a week with no Torchlight?  No Shogun Total War 2 Demo?  And what will my Caribbean beer empire do without me in Port Royale?  My biggest issue with getting a new rig is that I have no more excuses not to spend a heap of cash and months on Starcraft 2, or splurge on Crysis 2, Bulletstorm and shortly, Brink.  Mraaak!

Ooops, I won!

Look at the part that hits.

Nodamage and I headed out to Plattcon yesterday and though it’s a smallesque nerdcon, it had a very big game for me– the Wisconsin State Shadowfist Championships organized by John Monett.  The board game room was dead (where were the free-rental board game guys that made it to the similarly sized Gaming Hoopla?) so Nodamage was dragged into 5 hours or so of Shadowfist as an almost n00b.  Not expecting it at all but I pulled enough points to get to the winners table and then caught a few breaks in the final for the win.  I’m the Shadowfist Wisconsin state champion for 2011, the big cheese as it were.

My first game was horrible with just a spew of foundation characters coming from my hand and I figured I wouldn’t be able to do anything during the tournament, but game 2, even without any Dragon resources, I was able to rapine through defenses with everyone’s favorite dude with a rock chained to him: Shun Dai.

The final was a mosh, Decks were (as far as I can tell): Dragon/Monarchs, Monarch Fire deck, Jammer Deck and my Hand/Dragon.  The Monarch Fire player got to 4 sites really fast with two Fire Mystics who were also hurting everyone’s cards whenever an event hit the table, what’s more, the Jammer deck had Frag the G out for more site damage– so sites were falling fast to smallish characters.  Three turns to the end I had no sites on the table and one in my burned for victory pile with what looked like no way to win.  But the worm turned and I got a couple sites out and a Big Bruiser who started hitting the damaged sites with no blockers that could stand up to his beats.  A big part of the endgame was that Ting Ting, played by the Monarch/Dragon player, got toasted by a card I had never even seen before— ouch.

My MVP cards were:

Character: Shun Dai (got me into the final)

Event: Blue Meditation

State: No states in the deck

Edge: Chinese Connection

Sites: Tomb of Angry Spirits

I didn’t take notes like I do at Gencon about decks, but there was a scary Jammer deck there and of course, whatever Willow puts together usually hits like a ton of bricks, but I only played her in the final and didn’t see enough to know what her combos were about.  All in all some great games and looking forward to seeing everyone at Gencon for some more beatings.

Smell my book!

I accidentally picked up a Dark Elf army real cheap today with the 7th edition book in tow.  I cracked it open a few minutes ago and not only has it been obviously exposed to rooms filled constantly with smoke from them tweeds, it reeks as if it was regularly used to hold quantities while it’s former owner was, say, packing a bowl or rolling a fatty not that I would know about any sort of things like that.