Wednesday 23 April, 2008: Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Due to commitments with his puppetry course – awesome! – Johnny wasn’t able to join us this week. Therefore, we weren’t able to play Warhammer Fantasy Role-play as we had originally planned. Instead, Olly and I played a 1750 point Warhammer Fantasy Battles game with my Brettonians vs. his Dwarves.

Dwarves (Olly): Thane with shiny bits; dragon slayer with shiny bits; cannon with engineer and magic words; cannon with master engineer and magic words; flame cannon; 2(10x) thunderers, both with command groups; 15x long beards with command group; 15x miners with command group and blasting charges; 10x warriors with command group.

Brettonians (Carl): paladin on horse with great weapon, questing vow, gromril great helm; paladin battle standard bearer on horse with Twilight banner; level 2 damsel on warhorse; level 2 damsel with prayer icon of Quenelles; 5x questing knights with command group; 9x knights of the realm with command group; 4x Pegasus knights with standard bearer; 9x knights errant with command group and Standard of Shalloms; 16x peasant bowmen with defensive steaks and command group; 16x peasant bowmen skirmishers with command group; 25x men at arms with command group and spears.

I had my misgivings from the start. Usually our boards are fairly liberally covered with terrain, this one was rather barren. There was a wall of buildings near one end (representing the wall and gate of a town), a couple of hills and a church scattered along the centre and a wood near the other end. Light brigade style, I lined my knights up in front of the guns and prayed. Olly took advantage of my piety to take the first turn. A cannon ball ploughed through a pair of knights of the realm. They both made their Blessing ward saves. “This is easy,” I thought as another cannon ball splattered 3 of my knights errant across the ground.

My own first turn saw a general charge towards the enemy. I got into a bit of a traffic jam behind the woods where combats held up my crap knights so that my questing knights and their characters couldn’t get to grips with the enemy on their preferred terms. I only got to declare 3 out of the many charges in the game thus making my lances completely impotent. My magic didn’t succeed throughout the entire game (hooray for uber-resistent dwarves and crap spell roles). My shootin was also appalling with the master engineer’s entrenching ability paying dividends in the ranged battle in front of the city. My men at arms trudged stoically along under constant handgun fire until they were in charge range. At this point they failed a leadership test due to casualties and equally determinedly ran off of the board, nearly taking a unit of archers with them. Both of my damsels died the same horrible death under the template of the flame cannon. When my last knight had been bludgeoned to death by Olly’s dice rolls, I capitulated.

It was actually a fun game. Olly made a fairly valid point about how easy it is to allow knights to outpace the rest of the army and get stranded. This is true but this game saw their apparently devastating charges fail utterly. One charge, for example, saw me role 4 twos out of 6 dice to hit. The terrain also favoured the dwarves dramatically. In order to avoid difficult terrain (which was actually my main mistake) I compliantly went down the vast fire lanes set up. His guns were able to support one another to bring all the firepower they wished to bear where it was most required. I also woefully under-used my special abilities and equipment and allowed myself to be slaughtered.

I think it is the army. I absolutely love the medieval feel of the Brettonians. They represent a side of Warhammer which has always appealed to me: swords, knights and bows and arrows. I shall try them again on Wednesday with 2000 points – yes that’s right, a lord choice – vs 1000 points each of Dwarves and Ogre Kingdoms in an alliance. Come back and see how it goes.

Commander Portman