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!