Tuesday, June 11, 2024

Warhammer Underworlds - The Chaos Gargant Hunt!

I recently finished up my Stand-In Chaos Gargant, so of course we needed to try out the Chaos Gargant scenario from the December 2018 edition of White Dwarf! 

The scenario pits multiple Warhammer Underworlds warbands against a Chaos Gargant! In the scenario Objective decks are not used, instead Glory is only gained from dealing damage to the Gargant or taking out Enemy Fighters - so, good to play a hard-hitting murder-y warband! Until the Gargant is at half wounds, warbands get One Glory for EACH POINT of Damage dealt! After it's down to half wounds warbands recieve One Glory each time they deal damage to the Gargant, regardless of how much damage they dealt. 

The Gargant itself is treated as an additional player which always goes first each round. Each turn, the players roll-off to see who controls the Gargant. On it's first turn each round, the Gargant goes on Guard. Thereafter the Gargant moves (if it can't move it does a Furious Bellow action - dealing One Damage to EVERY fighter on the table). Then it kicks an adjacent fighter, dealing one damage and pushing it one hex. Then it does one of it's attacks - Smashing someone adjacent, or throwing a boulder at someone up to 3 hexes away! 

Instead of playing three rounds, up to four rounds are played. If the Gargant is dead at the beginning of any End Phase the scenario ends and whoever has the most Glory Points wins. If the Gargant is still alive at the beginning of the fourth End Phase, the players ALL LOSE!!

I'd mentioned planning to play the scenario on Reddit and someone mentioned they'd played the scenario and it was fun... but they rarely made it past TWO ROUNDS! Modern Warbands are much more powerful than the warbands of the Shadespire/Nightvault era - when the scenario was written. 

Because the rules were written BEFORE Stagger was a thing, we just said that the Gargant could not be Staggered (otherwise it would just be two easy if Cyreni's Razors showed up. Cyreni's Hammertide action would just BREAK the Gargant's AI)

(I think maybe after the first turn or two, we forgot to 

Nic and Orion joined us to try out the Gargant Scenario. Orion brought she super-deadly Hexbane's Hunters. Nic decided to try out Ephilim's Pandaemonium. Amanda decided to try Storm of Celestus - because it's a shooty warband and they wouldn't have to get that close! I rolled out with Magore's Fiends! 

Just because of the way the boards worked out and where the Gargant was in relation to my starting hexes - I started with Zharkus the Bloodsighted adjacent to the Gargant. As the Gargant spent it's first turn going on Guard, I figured I'd get to hit it first and deal some damage and not even have to charge... 

Zharkus missed... 

Fighters started moving in - mostly shooting the first few activations

Conveniently, I controlled the Gargant the first turn it did things and I moved it forward, Kicked Apo'trax and chucked a boulder at Flamespooler. I was a little concerned that flamespooler might just start throwing it's flamsplash attack every turn - which splashes all adjacent fighters with warpfire... which deals a damage to each at the end of the round (I did not realize at the time, it just deals ONE damage, regardless of how many warping counters are on the affected fighters... still...) 

It was kind of funny watching all these fighers that would normally be fighting each other chasing after the Gargant, side-by-side trying to bring it down. 

Hexbane got thumped good at this point - but survived! 

Started getting a little crowded... when Orion blocked my path to the Gargant with Aemos and a dog... I just starting hitting who ever I could get to!

Once Aemos was in there, Orion started racking up the Glory! 

SMASH FLAMESPOOLER! 

Once the Gargant has taken damage equal to half it's health it inspires and gets MEANER... 

We probably COULD have ended it by the end of Round Two... but I think Nic had snuck just ahead of Orion for points.... 

So pretty much everyone that was NOT WINNING just started hitting other fighters to keep the Gargant from dying off, giving us all another round to get points from the Gargant - AND taking out a few fighters... 

We did finish off the Gargant in the third round.... Actually I think it finished itself off, by backing into a hazard hex and dealing itself one last point of damage 

The last few activations were spent trying to finish each other off for a few more points... but no one really had any chance of catching up to Orion at that point... Maybe Nic could have, but the Pandaemonium wasn't really positioned to strike at anyone they could potentially kill... 

Orion ended with 13 Glory points! Nic wasn't too far behind with 11 (which was pretty amazing, considering they were playing the warband for the first time without ever having looked at the cards - and playing with a Rivals deck!). I had 7... and Amanda only scored 4!? She just could not get fighters positioned to shoot and the few times she attack, she just missed (also she was playing with a Warband she'd never played before and their rivals deck that she'd never even looked at - and there weren't a lot of Power Cards that were particularly helpful - most were for positioning to get the warband onto Objectives and help them hold them - which are useless in this scenario)! 

It was a super fun scenario to play, though!! Definitely looking forward to trying it again. I really want to get my Gen-u-ine Games Workshop Chaos Gargant finished up and take it out to the Warhammer Store to play on a Friday - as I think it would be a fun one to play as a four-player game there! 

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