Another Page in the Book of Grudges

The thirteen robed figures, faces obscured by ragged hoods, horns growing from their heads, gathered in a circle around the Great Rune of the Great Horned One.

"Much warp stone found in east mountains, yes-yes!"

Whispers as they discussed the new find.

Another voice: "Stunted man-things have many burrows there, yes-yes! They fight. Deny warp stone to servants of Great Horned One."

Agitated chittering and whispers as this new wrinkle is examined. 

A third voice in the shadows: "Send 

Bloodclaw with many Clan Rats! Kill Stunty-Things! Take Warp stone for the Horned One! Yesyes!"

And so Dangar Foe-Hammer's doom was sealed in shadows far from his halls.

Pasha Dan was pretty excited when I started painting Skaven and issued a challenge from his Dwarves. Pasha Dan loves Dwarves in every incarnation. "You should play an army that looks like you!" he always says. His dwarves are a lot of old school Warhammer Fantasy figures. He has more than enough to match my Skaven verminhorde. Even when I expand the verminhorde, he'll be able to match me without painting any more.

Crossbows and a gyrocopter

Warriors with his red mohawk crested army commander

Warriors with another gyrocopter

Scratch built balloon, which worked the same as the gyrocopters. Stupid gyrocopters.

Massed shooters with handguns

My left wing, Gutter Runners on the flank, Rat Ogres and Storm Vermin

Center; artillery and jezzails. Right flank is Clanrats. You'll notice I don't have any grey plastic now. All of the figures have at least the requisite 3 colours on them.

 The plan is to shoot things in the center. Hold on the right and then smash with my left. I should have given the right more support.

Darktan Bloodclaw gets stuck in

Rat Ogres don't need much encouragement to smash Dwarf warriors!

Ka-blooie! One of my cannon explodes even with a reroll from Hamnpork. Oops. Surprisingly little harm to surrounding units. Although it'd have been nice if one of the pesky gyrocopters had been nearby to catch some shrapnel. 

The fighting is furious between the two commanders and their troops. The stormvermin are wiped out but Dangar is wounded. Smelling blood, Darktan challenges the Dwarf king to single combat!

Rat Ogres keep smashing, destroying the line of warriors and then killing the two heroes

Stormvermin advancing. Darktan and the Dwarf King dueling. Dangar Foe-Hammer is killed by Darktan! The Dwarf Reputation plummets into the negatives. 

It's all over. The Dwarves try mightily during their turn to push the Skaven Reputation below their own, killing off a few units of clanrats, but at the end of the turn they are at -10 Reputation and the Skaven are only at -4.

Center. My Stormvermin are starting to turn the Dwarf flank

Right wing is a shambles with 1 unit of Clanrats facing 3 units of Dwarves! But I'm sure it would have been worse if they didn't have any paint on them at all!

I did better against Dan's wall of Armour 4 warriors than I thought I would. Better positioning for my artillery and remembering my Grey Seers really helped. But I need more shooty units. More jezzails for a base of fire and more Gutter Runners to help secure the other flank. Even some skirmishers with slings would be useful. Long range missile fire could certainly help suppress dwarven artillery. Some Swarms of Rats (Horde unit with Relentless) would be useful to pin things down, or absorb missile fire and initial charges before my Stormvermin get stuck in. Some sort of mobile element like a Doomwheel could be fun too.

Game 36!

The Council of Thirteen gathered again to examine the reports from the battle. Each member had their own spies and sneaks reporting to them, embellishments woven to curry favor. The squeaking and chittering rose and fell as each claimed their part in the victory and argued for a bigger share of the warp stone.

One figure was silent, pondering the rent armour and robes that had once been worn by his protégé Darktan Bloodclaw. He would have them examined for poison. He reached a clawed hand out and picked up the Doomglaive, still glowing with arcane magiks, that Darktan had used to send many sacrifices to their Horned God. Dangar Foe-Hammer would be a worthy offering and gain Darktan a place in the Horned One's Retinue. Yesyes, he would have the remains examined for poison, and if any were found there would be another offering made right here.

Old vs. New

Painting all the Skaven and getting the Midgard movement trays ready for them got me all excited so I put on a rather big game. 710 points a side, I used the army list posted on the previous post. Normally I don't put unpainted plastic on the table, but I guess that is an advantage to the Games Workshop approach; everything is assembled on their bases ready to play with, and you can paint figures as you go. And Pasha Dan has challenged me with his Chaos Dwarfs, so I wanted to test drive the Vermin-horde and get a feel for it.

For the Empire I made a selection from my armies of 15th century troops: knights, sergeants, pikemen, halberds, skirimishing handgunners and some artillery. So some of my oldest figures were facing off against some of my newest.

The Vermin-horde of Darktan (L) ready to bring ruin upon the hosts of the Man-things/the Empire (R)

 

Essex longbows, Citadel cavalry, Old Glory halberds. Those two stands of Citadel knights with the pale green bases are my oldest bsing technique, which has survived various rebasings and rationalizations.

Old Glory Swiss shutzen

Warp Cannon

Darktan urging the clans forward

Minifigs longbowmen. My oldest figures, part of my first "proper lead army" given to me by Mrs Rabbitman for our first Christmas living together. She also painted these ones to see what my hobby was all about.

Hildegaard von Bruggen. The Empire's magic user.

Lots of mostly Old Glory Swiss pikes.

Citadel Wars of the Roses cavalry. Yes, cocktail skewers to replace broken lances.

Light artillery. Can't remember the make of the guns. Another Christmas present from Mrs. Rabbitman. Crew are Old Glory.

I figured a mix of Wars of the Roses, Swiss, Burgundian Ordannance and 15th century Germans would make a good ersatz Empire army. After all, that's what was used in the first "Warhammer Armies" book.

I set up a fun, dramatic table that made me think "Olde World" and then diced. High roll got to pick the table edge and the low roll had to set up first. Skaven lost. The Empire thought that low hill would be nice to put the cannon on.

Turn 1. Skaven make a general advance and the Empire advances it's missile troops. Shutzen on bottom snipe at the warp cannon causing them to not be able to fire.

Peaches makes the first charge of the game, urging her mutated charges into the battle. Unfortunately, she is killed by a stray arrow. Not that the Rat Ogres notice. The blue archers do not break, thannks to magical help and hold the monstrosity for a turn.

The archers are falling back to keep shooting while staying hopefully out of charge range. Sometimes it even works.

Cavalry moving up on the right to charge the Stormvermin. Pikemen getting stuck in in the center.

Clanrats fall. Darktan is wounded.

Empire horse charge a Rat Ogre causing it to stampede through the clanrats behind.

End of turn 4 I think

Sunday afternoon I played out turn 5 to finish the battle. The Empire put charges in across the battlefield.

Pikes smash into Darktan and another unit of Clanrats. Darktan uses Today We Fight to Win and gets a 6, but the rats are at half stamina. His Warp Glaive (Legendary Weapon, and he's Brutal) does three hits, slaughtering the pikes, but the pikemen did 9 hits in return, handily wiping out the clanrats and causing a nasty Risk to Heroes roll; 3d6 give double 1s. Darktan goes down! The Skaven Reputation plummets another 8 points!

Hildegaard casts Weakness on the Rat Ogre reducing it to a more manageable Armour 4. The beast also fails to Counter-charge. The halberdiers cut it down.

Knights charge down a poor, weakend company of rats.

On the right flank, more knights charge down other clanrats.

After the dust settles, the Skaven have lost 17 Reputation Points in one turn!

End of game.

With their turn come up the Skaven couldn't do anything really. They were at -14 Reputation and the Empire stood at 17 still. No significant numbers of troops left and more importantly, they had lost three of their heroes, They couldn't do anything to get back into the positives or bring the Empire down past them.

So, lessons learned:

•  the Skaven need more rank and file. Midgard does reward quantity and aggression. 
• The Warp Cannons were intimidating, but if your enemy doesn't oblige you by marching in front of them then they're a lot of points doing nothing. So I must rethink the deployment of the Warp Cannons.
• The Rat Ogres were terrifying. You need something very hard hitting to get stuck in and cut them down. Fortunately for their opponents they only have three stamina. 
• I'm sure the Skaven will also do better if I remember their Grey Seers. Nyquil cast Battle Rage once which was useful. Remember to use the sorcerers to do sorcerous things. That's what you're paying them for.
• Hamnpork has his shiny warp jezzail, but if he's hanging about the artillery to keep it from exploding (which he did, twice), it's hard to snipe enemy heroes. 
• unpainted troops really do perform worse

This was Game 35 for the year!