Spearhead - Doubles

Late last year, Games Workshop released some Doubles rules for Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead. So back in December we decided to try it out. Orion  and Nick were coming over to play Soulbound on a Sunday afternoon and brought over her two Soulblight Gravelord armies to play with in the evening after we had some pizza! Orion  and Nick played the Soulblight Gravelord armies, and Amanda and I played with our Sylvaneth and Stormcast Eternal forces, respectively. 

(Originally I'd through of playing the two Khorne Spearhead armies so it could be an Soulblight versus Khorne battle... but Amanda has a hard enough time remembering the rules for the rules for the Sylvaneth that she's played at least half a dozen times, so I thought it would be best to stick with that, and the Stormcast do team up with the Sylvaneth quite regularly in the greater narrative of the Age of Sigmar, so....) 

Orion played the Soulblight Gravelord Deathrattle Tomb Host army and Nick played the Soulblight Gravelord Bloodcrave Hunt. Amanda played the Sylvaneth Bitterbark Copse, and I played the Stormcast Eternal Vigilant Brotherhood.

We had the first go, I advised caution, but Amanda wanted to play aggressively and just go for it... 

So her Treelord advanced and seized an objective... 

The Stormcast also surged forward... 

So both sort of advancing evenly... 

And then the Charge Phase happened 

And the Stormcast swept forward into the Undead lines... 

The Prosecutors took the fight right to the Enemy General! 

It got... messy... 

and drew most of the two spearhead forces into a savage melee! 

and... Amanda and Orions armies just sort of stared at each other across the grassy green fields of Ghyran... 

We took an initial lead in the Victory Points... which really just meant Nick and Orion were the underdogs for the entire game and got all the advantages of being so... 

On the bottom of the first round, Some skeletons charged the Tree-Revenants...

Meanwhile, my Stormcast Eternals were almost entirely destroyed! 

The Lord Veritant took charge of the remaining Liberators and tried to hold on to ALL THE OBJECTIVES... 

Amanda sent the treelord over my way to help out... 

Since most of the fighting was going on over on my side of the table!? 

Kurnothi and Tree-Revenants trying to deal with one unit of skeletal warriors that just kept standing up again as fast as the treeples could knock them down... 

More savage combat over on my side of the table... now involving a Tree-Lord! 

Tree-Revenants were finally killed off and a replacement unit brought back mid-field for... reasons...? 

MORE brutal combat over this ONE Objective location!? 

Kurnoth Hunters holding the left flank! 

All the stormcast destroyed, only the Treelord remained to fight off the Vampire and Wight cavalry... 

Kurnoth Hunters used Strike and Fade to slip out of combat and deep behind enemy lines and seize one of their objectives. 

Tree-Revenants did similar with their other teleport ability... 

Reinforcement Prosecutors arrive to harass skeletons and keep them contained and from running all over the left flank seising all the objectives... 

Vargheists drop in and seize objectives... 

Vampire General does the same... 

Treelord still fighting the Undead that just won't go away... 

Liberator reinforcements arrive and attack the Vampire General 

End of the game... not a lot left on the table... 

On their final turn of the final round, Nick and Orion scored enough points to tie up the game... 

It was a fun game. I liked it better than regular Spearhead. It was a long day of gaming and a long game and ended up being a bit of a let down to fight so hard to hang onto that early lead only to have it tied up at the very end. I swear if we (okay, if **I**) could only make AVERAGE rolls, it would have been a pretty solid victory... 

Would play this again, though! 

What We Do in the Realm of Shadows - Episode Seven

Previously, on What We Do in the Realm of Shadows... our "heroes" confronted a force of Maggotkin that were attempting to summon a Great Unclean One. They failed to prevent the worshippers of Nurgle from doing so and ended up fleeing the scene with Sir Raven's lifeless corpse in tow... 

They fled through endless leagues of foetid swamps, corrupted with the taint of Nurgle. 

Just when they thought they would never escape this recently mire, they spotted a mound rising out of the dank marshlands. Upon the mount rose a tower. It was an old stone watch tower, in a state of some disrepair, but still clearly in use as warm light shone through the upper windows. 

The Characters climbed the small hill and approached the front door - a large and heavy wooden door reinforced by many bands of steel. After considerable banging on the Knocker, the view port opened up and strange eyes stared at them, silently for an uncomfortably long moment. The Port then closed, followed by the sound of many locks and bolts being undone on the other side of the door and the door opened inward, creaking loudly. 

Inside was a warm and comfortable looking parlour, with plush couches and a raging fire in a fireplace warmed the entire building. From a massive old char, with it's back facing the door, an ancient vampire leaned around becoming the group to enter and warm themselves by the fire... 

None needed to be asked twice and all barged in past the extremely large doorman... and something immediately seemed... wrong... the Old vampire started laughing at them and then reality swirled and then turned black and all were falling. 

When they regained consciousness they found themselves upon an ornate platform surrounded by the blackest void... After some time, a glowing magical portal opened and all stepped through, as there was little else to do! 

in the room beyond they encountered several Tzangors, which attacked them... and were slain. 

Beyond that room was another filled with Karic Acolytes and gibbering daemons... they too were slain... The room was filled with piles and piles of coin which made traversing the room challenging - especially in high-heeled shoes the vampires like to wear! Sir Raven slipped and fell mid-combat! 

Beyond that there was a library occupied by a solitary Pink Horror, who was looking at books and muttering to itself... 

Sir Renmould charged in and chopped it to pieces before it could even say a word... 

Then a Tazangor Shaman and two guards, all on discs of Tzeentch, were battled... 

the pace was incredible as all charged through this maze of rooms. 

All were required to finish off the Tzangor Shaman and friends... 

That Shaman was hard to take down and dealt some damage... 

Finally they entered a great hall with large prisms focusing the light that shone from above that burned to a crisp anything the beam passed over... 

while dodging the beam, the group had to fight off another group of Tzangors... and dodge spells being hurled at them by an Ogroid Thaumaturge!  

Eventually they figured out how to turn the prisms and shone them both on the statue of the eldritch entity... and that cracked and the Thaumaturge disappeared and they met their host - a Gaunt summoner of Tzeentch who had trapped the group in his Silver Tower. The Deamon-Wizard gave them a fragment of a shattered amulet and said if they could pass the Nine Challenges and gather all the shards of the amulet, they would be granted a boon and released from the Silver Tower... if they failed, they would be trapped here for all eternity... and/or die...  

And that's where we left it with the Gaunt Summoner fading away laughing just as the ancient vampire did in the old watch tower they encountered at the beginning of the episode! 

If that weren't enough gaming for one day... afterwards we had some pizza then set up a game of Spearhead DOUBLES to try out those new rules...  

Still very behind on game reports... I've had very little time or energy for any hobby pursuits this past week or so as I've been adjusting to my return to school. Hopefully I'll get a few more done this weekend... but I will likely not be keeping up with the same level of gaming and miniature painting as I did last year...  

Age of Sigmar: Spearhead - Sylvaneth and Nighthaunt in Dolorum

For the first game of the year, Amanda and I played a game of Age of Sigmar in the Spearhead format. I am less keen on Spearhead these days, but I had recently finished painting the Nighthaunt Cursed Shacklehorde, so Amanda gathered her Sylvaneth Bitterbark Copse and gave battle. We played in Shyish using the Sand & Bone gaming pack and fought in Dolorum. 

Amanda found it a little confusing to switch back to Spearhead, because so many things are just slightly different than regular Age of Sigmar, which she was just starting to get her head around... 

I've liked trying to type up narrative reports for these games, rather than simply a play by play of what was going on in the game... but it's so hard to make up any sort of narrative that makes sense of the wild back and forth movements to snatch objective areas from opponents from turn to turn in games of Spearhead. So... 

Amanda was the attacker and chose to go second, which was probably a mistake. The Nighthaunts are CRAZY fast and on my first turn I was across the table and fighting all her forces in her territory vying for control of the objectives in her territory... and scoring a lot of points in the process. 

The Twist for there first round was players scored a bonus victory point for each friendly unit in combat at the end of their turn. 

Harald, the Spirit Torment, General of the Cursed Shacklehorde failed his charge roll and was kind of left behind...  (calling this Spirit Torment Harald because that's the name of Amanda's Spirit Torment character in our What We Do in the Realm of Shadows role-playing campaign) 

The Chainghasts charged the Tree-Revenants on one of the objectives I was holding a victory point card for... they REALLY needed the Spirit Torment to have joined them to a) hopefully destroy a few Tree-Revenants and b) provide a few more control points...  

The Dreadblade Harrows charged the Treelord, hoping to distract the Treelord from the Chaingasts and/or score the "be within 3" of the enemy long edge" scoring card which I also held. 

The rest charged the Kurnothi Hunters and Branchwych... 

So my whole army (less the Spirit Torment General) Was deep in enemy territory on round one engaging them on their objective markers... 

I ended up scoring 7 points at the end of my turn... three for units engaged two or three for objectives...? and one or two for cards. 

By the end of her turn which followed Amanda had killed both the Dreadblade Harrows and the Chainghasts... 

and I'd killed the Branchwych... 

And the Kurnothi had used Strike and Fade to teleport out of combat... so she gained NO points for units in combat (the twist bonus), two for holding objectives and one for cards... 

which put me in a four point lead at the end of the first round... 

At the beginning of the second turn, Amanda won the Priority Roll and decided to take a double turn (going first in Round Two after going second in the first). The penalty for this was not being able to draw new cards.. but she was still holding two from the previous turn, so.. 

All her army on the move... 

and then suddenly converging on Harald! 

Seriously, I though naming my General Harald - after her character in the role-playing game, saying this was back before the campaign when Harald lead an entire army, would mean my General would be safe and Amanda would leave him be! Not so!!

LUCKILY, I was holding the card with the command ability "translucent flesh" which makes any attacks that target a selected unit not cound any rolls of 1-2-3 to hit or wound!? This TOTALLY saved Harald!!

And then he retreated out of there as quick as he could on my next turn! Running for the protection of a reserve unit of Dreadscythe Harridans that had just entered the field of battle, seizing one of the Sylvaneth's objectives! 

The Sylvaneth split up and went off to seize other objective and destroy other units of mine... 

The Treelord went after the remains of the Dreadscythe Harridan unit that had started on the table at the beginning of the game. 

Both the Dreadscythe Harridans and Bladegheist Revenants - which are normally fielded in units of 10, in regular Age of Sigmar - are broken up into two units of five and one of each of those units remains in reserve at the beginning of the game and starting on Round Two I can bring ONE of them on as reserves in my movement phase... 

Kurnoth Hunters and Tree-Revenants went after the Bladegheist Revenants... but both failed charge rolls. 

The Treelord did not and the last of those Dreadscythe Harridans were destroyed! 

The following turn the Tree-Revenants charged the Bladegheist Revenants and did them in over two turns of fighting.

The Kurnoth Hunters moved on an obejective I was holding with two reinforcement Dreadscythe Harridans.. They didn't charge. They didn't need to... they each had a toe on the Objective and had a higher control score, so they flipped the control on that objective at the end of their turn... 

Having secured the objective in the corner, the Treelord returned to the middle of the battlefield to secure the objective there... Some newly arrived Bladegheist Revenant reserves charged the massive creature thinking they might take it down... 

ha... 

Dreadscythe Harridans weren't going to take that objective back just standing there and charged... and one got destroyed, further consolodating the Sylvaneth hold on the objective (kind of forgot the Kurnoth had FIVE WOUNDS and 4+ saves... ) 

The Dreadscythe Harridans joined in... but they couldn't even carve their initials on that giant tree, let along fell it! 

that last Bladegheist Revenant went down fighting... and took exactly ZERO Tree-Revenants with them... it kept dealing ONE damage... which the Tree-revenants would immediately heal at the end of the turn after the Combat Phase because they were within 3" of Terrain!?

I did manage to squeak out a victory - in terms of victory points (20-16) - largely because I'd take that lead in the first round and then we both scored about the same every turn for the rest of the game - Amanda slowly scoring more each round, me slowly scoring less... but she just couldn't score enough to catch up! There was very little left of my force at the end of the game... while most of Amanda's army was still on the field of battle... If more rounds were played I'd have certainly lost! 

I'd really like to try these out in regular Age of Sigmar - as a Path to Glory force... I'm not sure they'd be all that effective, but I think they'd be fun and interesting!!

I'm quite behind on game reports... I have several drafts for games played in December (and one from October?!) that I'd like to finish up!? There is the Finale for the Ravaged Coast campaign, two episodes of the What We Do in the Realm of Shadows role-playing game, two Warhammer Quest: Cursed City Journeys - hunting down Kritza the Rat Prince, the aforementioned Bolt Action game played in October, and a test game of Warhammer Quest: Darkwater?!

I hope I get a chance to get a few of them done this week. I'd REALLY like to, at least, get the Warhammer Quest: Cursed City reports done BEFORE the next Cursed City game on Tuesday! We shall see...