August Games

We played games in August.. Here is what we got up to... (Mostly Age of Sigmar and related games!?)

Wednesday, 6 August 2025

I got in two games of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead with Orion this afternoon. 

First I played the brand new Fangs of the Blood God against her Soulblight Gravelords Bloodcrave Hunt force... and lost... 

You can read about it here:

Spearhead: Dogs and Bones in the Realm of Death

She still had time when we were done so we set up another game. I tried another game with the Fangs of the Blood God and she borrowed my Hedonites of Slaanesh - Blades of the Lurid Dream army... and beat down the dogs again! (It was nice to see the Hedonites win a game, tho!) 

You can read about that one here:

Spearhead:  Khorne versus Slaanesh in the Realm of Death

Tuesday, 12 August 2025

we finally got in a game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound - after making characters three weeks ago (though no one is playing soulbound characters)!

Nick is playing Lady Esmerelda (She/her) Vampire Lord. Orion is playing Sir Raven the Dour (They/them) Blood Knight, Finnegan is playing Sir Renmould of Sylum Field (the/them) Grave Guard. Amanda just made up a Spirit Torment character, but doesn't yet have a name... maybe it forgot it's name... 

You can read about it here:

What We Do in the Realm of Shadows - Episode One

I did not get in any games of Spearhead this week... 

Tuesday, 19 August 2025

The following Tuesday, the adventure continued... The group, now in Ghyran - the Realm of Life, had NO IDEA how to get to the next realmgate that would hopefully take them back to Shyish - the Realm of Death! They found a path and decided to follow it, hoping it would either take them to the next realmgate, or to some community where they might find out which way they needed to travel to find the next realmgate! You can read about the ensuing shenannigans here: What We Do in the Realm of Shadows - Episode Two

Friday, 22 August 2025

Orion stopped by Friday evening and we got in another game of Spearhead. I tried out my freshly painted Stormcast Eternals Vigilant Brotherhood. You can read all about it here:

Spearhead - Anvils of Heldenhammer Vigilant Brotherhood versus Soulblight Gravelords in Shyish 

Friday, 29 August 2025

Friday morning I rolled out to the Warhammer Store and played a quick game of Age of Sigmar: Spearhead with John. You can read about that disaster here:

Spearhead - Fangs of the Blood God Fight Ironjawz in Ghyran!

Later in the evening, I finally got AMANDA to sit down and try a game!!

She tried out the Sylvaneth Bitterbark Copse and I stuck with the Fangs of the Blood God, as they were relatively fresh in my head... we ended up only getting through the first turn or round one!?

Saturday, 30 August 2025

Saturday we finished the game we'd started the previous evening. Originally we'd planned to play Spearhead on the Friday evening and a full game of regular Age of Sigmar Saturday afternoon... instead, the Spearhead game took most of the day!?

You can read about the battle here: 

Spearhead - Fangs of the Blood God Mark Trees in Ghyran

She did say she'd play again. Hopefully I can convince her to do so BEFORE she forgets ALL of the rules and we have to start from square one again... 

Sunday, 31 August 2025

Sunday... 

Originally we were supposed to play a Role-Playing-Game session on Tuesday (26 August)... but something came up...? Then Orion got a new job and all Tuesdays were out and the only day that would work was Sundays... but only every THIRD Sunday, maybe... but THIS Sunday was supposed to work... but then Orion and Nick ended up all being sick... 

So Amanda and I played another game of Spearhead! 

Amanda played the Sylvaneth again and I dug out to try the Hedonites of Slaanesh for the first time since the rules update... and folks... I won a game of Spearhead! the first one in SIXTEEN games I've played... it did feel a little cheap beating Amanda, this only being her second game... 

You can read about the encounter here:

Spearhead: Defending the Soulpod Grove

What games did YOU get up to this past month!?

Age of Sigmar - Fyreslayers Auric Runesmiter

 This is the Store Anniversary Special Edition Miniature from 2024. I picked it up almost a year ago when the new Warhammer Store in Saskatoon celebrated it's first anniversary. The second is coming up soon and there are more store anniversary special edition miniatures, one of which I was thinking of picking up... and I figured I couldn't justify to myself doing so if I hadn't finished the one from last year... 

Auric Runesmiter

The figure was named "Brakki the Guilded Key", but I don't think that's actually a character from any stories from the black library or a named character of any sort from the Fyreslayer battletome... so I'm just going to use it as a generic Auric Runesmiter... should I ever need one. 

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what an Auric Runesmiter actually does for a living... though I have a feeling it might be the dude that hammers ur-golf runes into the skin of Fyreslayer warriors that give them all their powers and stuff...? I'm also pretty sure they're a playable Archtype in Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound. So I though it would be fun to pick up for that... just in case anyone ever wanted to run one. 

I don't have a lot of Fyreslayers... the only other ones I have are The Chosen Axes Warhammer Underworlds Warband... Which is plenty, for me... 

There is a part of my brain that thinks it would be fun to have one miniature for each playable archtype in Soulbound... but as they're almost alway Hero-Character models... that could get pretty expensive... Even if they weren't, since you can't buy (or field in the game) anything less than a full unit, it would get to be a lot to collect them ALL! 

The new Age of Sigmar Store Anniversary Special Edition Miniature for 2025 is a Knight-Zephyros - one of Sigmars Hunter/Assassins... They hunt down evil chaos sorcerers... and kill them... though I've seen the term assassin used to describe them, I don't think stealth or subtlety is their way... I think there might be stats for them in Soulbound... but I don't think there are any for regular tabletop Age of Sigmar... other than Neve Blacktallon - a named character, who comes with a group of odd friends!? 

Anyway, it's a neat looking model and I'll probably pick it up... 

(There is also a 40K model - a genestealer holding a marine helmet... and... honestly... if we were regularly playing Space Hulk, I would totally get that too! But we haven't played in ages, so...) 

Spearhead - Fangs of the Blood God Mark Trees in Ghyran

 TWO GAMES of SPEARHEAD in ONE DAY!? 

(Well... not quite...) 

After playing John at the Warhammer store in the morning... I finally got Amanda to sit down and try a game in the evening. 

She decided to try out the Sylvaneth Bitterbark Copse. I played with the Fangs of the Blood God again, as they were fresh in my head and I figured I'd be having to keep track of ALL THE THINGS for the Sylvaneth as well... 

There is a LOT of things to keep track of... and, and the end of a long day...  at the end of a long work week... Amanda was finding it a bit much. 

We did play through her first turn... 

Her Treelord and Kurnothi both made ranged attacks against one of my units of Flesh Hounds, destroying all but one of them... The Treelord had planned on charging the Flesh Hounds... but the last surviving one was now too far away... 

At the end of the round Amanda scored 5VP (3 for holding objective locations, one for the twist, and one from a card requiring her to hold the Dracotion objective - the other one she'd hoped to score was one requiring the use of a fight ability... which she wasn't able to do... because she killed too many Flesh Hounds with SHOOTING!?) 

At that point, we kind of had to call it though. Amanda was just too tired. Also, Morgan's room is right next door to the game room, and Amanda was worried they might not get to sleep if we were playing a game in there (They've started a job at a donut store, but they START at 5AM!?)

On my first turn, everything surged forward to the isolated unit of Tree-Revenants holding the objective in the center of the field of battle... 

and CHARGED!!!

One of my first rolls... Yeah... that's EIGHT ones... out of twenty-four dice... 

Despite abysmal dice rolling... they were utterly annihilated.. because... NUMBERS! 

So I scored three for objectives, one from the twist and one from a card, tying up the game. 

Starting off the next round, Amanda brought those Tree-Revenants right back onto the table as reinforcements... 

...and then used Walkers of the Hidden Paths to teleport them into my rear to potentially hold one of two objective areas... 

The Treelord maneuvered to charge into the mass of khorne daemons and cultists.

The Treelord charged Karanak

Just so you don't think I was the only one making crazy bad rolls... This was the Treelords first attack... needed 4+ to hit. Any that hit wounded on 2+ and then had one or two rend, dealing two or three damage each... I SHOULD have easily dealt 7+ damage, utterly destroying Karanak in one attack... but instead only did two damage!!?

Then Karanak tried to bite back... 

Apparently he was SO BUSY dodging the Treelords blows, he wasn't able to get one good chomp in!? (needed 4+ to hit...) 

Then the Treelord used the Sylvaneth Strike and Fade ability to just teleport out of there... 

With the Treelord there, it flipped one of the objectives and the Tree-Revenants scored the other. 

Amanda scored another six victory points (three for objectives and three for scoring all three cards!), bringing her total to eleven! 

On my turn, Karanak charged and managed to get all the way around the Kurnothi Hunters and get at the Branchwych! 

On the other side of the battlefield, some Flesh Hounds ran over and stood by the wall... okay, they probably peed on the wall... They did not engage the Treelord as it would have killed them and they needed to stay alive to score some points... 

This is what drives me a little crazy about this game... it is ALL about positioning and scoring points through objectives and you could conceivably play an entire game without fighting at all... and score lots of points... 

Karanak ate the Branchwych. 

The Kurnothi savaged the Claws of Karanak. 

I only got four victory points this round - two for holding objectives and two for cards... so now Amanda was ahead eleven to nine... 

The next round fighting continued in the one corner and the Kurnoth Hunters finished off the Claws of Karanak. 

The Treelord lumbered back into the middle of the Battlefield to seize the objective there. 

At the end of her turn, Amanda scored SEVEN Victory Points!? Three for holding three or more objective locations, one for the twist, and all three Tactic cards!? This pu her at Eighteen (double my nine points!?) 

The Claws of Karanak returned as reinforcements on my turn and they, along with one of the units of Flesh Hounds charged the isolated unit of Tree-Revenants... again... 

and... didn't QUITE wipe them out... but killed enough of them that I was able to take back an objective location.

Meanwhile, on the other flank, Karanak had whittled the Kurnothi down to ONE... 

At the end of the turn I only scored three points... two for objectives and one for the twist... 

Starting off the final round. The Treelord decided it was time for the Sylvaneth to get some vengeance... and utterly destroyed Karanak with some totally average rolls... The Kurnoth Hunter also finally killed the last Flesh Hound in the unit that had been reduced to one in her first turn... and then she just refused to kill it off, knowing that if she did, a full unit of five would return as reinforcements?! 

The last Tree-Revenant went down swinging! 

At the end of the turn Amanda scored three for objective locations and one for a card (Take the Head - for destroying Karanak and sending them back to the Brass Citadel) which brought her final tally to TWENTY-TWO Victory Points... 

Considering I was starting my final turn TEN points behind... things were not looking good. 

The Reinforcement unit of Flesh Hounds did, in fact, appear... and they went to hunt down that last Kurnothi.

Having despatched the last of the Tree-Revenants on Amanda's turn, the Claws of Karanak were free to spread out and seize another Objective loaction (all while keeping folks close enough to one of the Short Table Edges to score a card!) 

The other unit of Flesh Hounds likewise charged into the center of the battlefield to snatch back one of the other objective location! 

The reinforcement Flesh Hounds tore the Kurnothi apart into severalgood sized sticks, which they carried off and had a good chew on... 

In the end I scored a staggering SEVEN victory points! Three for objective locations, all three tactic cards, AND the Twist... it didn't help much though... 

it brought my total to Nineteen victory points, which meant Amanda won with her Twenty-Two!!

We'd originally planned to play a different game on Saturday afternoon, but this game took almost five hours...? There were a LOT of distractions and I had to explain a LOT to Amanda... and then reexplain it... F

Fun was had, though, and she says she'd be willing to play again and really like the Sylvaneth! 

Spearhead - Fangs of the Blood God Fight Ironjawz in Ghyran!

I rolled out to the Warhammer Store this morning to play a little game of Age of Sigmar: Spearhead against John's new Ironjawz Bigmob Spearhead army. I brought my Fangs of the Blood God army. 

It was a very warm ride! Luckily I got there before it was above 30°C... and at least it is air conditioned in the store once I got there! 

He had the fancy neoprene spearhead matt that they'll be giving away at the store anniversary event, so, obviously we had to play on THAT! 

His Megaboss' name is WAAAAGHbert... which made my day. 

I suggested the leader of the Brute Ragerz should be Waaaghdewick

As Karanak is Khorne's Hound of Vengeance, who only leaves the Brass Citadel to mete out Khorne's wrath upon those who have drawn his attention, and not in a good way! I pointed out we'd need to figure out how, precisely,  Waaaghbert had raised the Blood God's ire... I had suggested perhaps he had stopped spilling blood and become a vegan and a pacifist!? Was trying to preach peace and love to all orruk-kind? (John had said he'd decided one of the units of 'Ard Boyz were, in fact, farmers, giving up WAAAAAAGH for faaaaghming... after they had done NOTHING in a previous game, other than secure objectives...?)

Or, possibly, he was challenged to a dance battle and lost... and just accepted the defeat and left without spilling blood...

We never did settle on one. 

(I'm going with the dance battle, in my head!) 

I was the attacker and took the first turn and just went for it - everything charges! 

Karanak charged Waaaghbert the Megaboss - as this tactic has worked pretty well in the last two games... 

Waaaaghbert is a bit better armoured than the Vampire Lord or the Shardspeaker of Slaanesh that Karanak has met before... but MathHammer tells us that six attack hitting on 4+ should mean three hits... wounding on 3+ means two of those hits should wound. Karanak had Rend 1 with Anti-Hero Rend +1 and the Megaboss has a 3+ save... so he'd need 5+ to save those wounds... he might save one... so taking 2-4 damage... he's got a health of 8... so... probably not going to take him out in the first round... but I've got Flesh Hounds there to throw some attacks his way, AND I tried taking the Furious Bites enhancement which deals D3 mortal wounds at the end of the turn if Karanak is in combat with his Quarry... so... all I had to do was survive until the end of the round... I could potentially deal up to 6 damage with Karanak, if I could just make AVERAGE dice rolls... 

So... that's me hitting once, and then I rolled a two for the wound roll and caused ZERO damage to the Megaboss... 

Then Waaaghbert the Megaboss turned to Karanak and absolutely DESTROYED it! Send him straight back to the side of his master on the Skull Throne in the Brass Citadel... Didn't even get to use Furious Bites... because Karanak did not survive to the end of the first turn of round one. 

(my Flesh Hounds did deal two damage to Waaaghbert the Megaboss)  

By the end of my turn, Karanak was gone and half of my Flesh Hounds and 2/3 of the Claws of Karanak (before they even got to attack anything...). I think I took out one of the Ard Boyz and one Brute Rager...

at least I kept a toe on an objective marker and scored that along with a card and ended my first turn with 4VP... 

By the end of the round, only three Flesh Hounds were left on the table... 

One my second turn, I brought back one unit of Flesh Hounds and reinforcements, and I had a card to bring back a second unit of reinforcements, but with only d3 members, instead of the full unit. I did so, as it allowed me to capture an objective that turn and score a few objective cards... The smarter move would probably have been to NOT do that and be the underdog for a turn or two and come back with FULL reinforcement units and score more points later in the game...

Alas... 

The sole surviving unit of Flesh Hounds from the beginnning of the game nearly took out a unit of 'Ard Boyz... 

but then on their turn, John played a card that allowed them to retreat and rally and gained two members back... and then Waaaghbert was about to charge... and... 

John had a couple bad rolls as well... this was Waaaghbert the Megaboss' charge roll when he was standing 3" away from the Flesh Hounds... so they survived a round longer than they otherwise would have! 

The Burte Ragerz just shredded the understrength reinforcement unit of the Claws of Karanak... 

The next round the reinforcement unit of Flesh Hounds charged the two remaining Brute Ragerz... and.. with TWENTY ATTACKS... managed to kill ONE of them... 

End of my third turn...? beginning of John's...? 

The Flesh Hounds finished off the last of the Brute Ragerz... but Waaaghbert killed two of the Flesh Hounds. 

The 'Ard Boyz finished off the other Flesh Hounds and the Brutes arrived and just took an Objective... 

End of Round Three... Two Flesh Hounds left on the table... 

The Iron Jawz are down one unit of three Brute Ragerz and one unit of 'Ard Boyz has lost two of five. The Brutes and second unit of 'Ard boyz are at full strength... Waaaghbert the Megaboss, still taking only two damage (vs health of 8).

At the beginning of Round Four, John won the priority roll and decided to take a double turn. (i.e. he went second in the third round, but then went first in the fourth) The penalty for doing so was not getting to draw cards... buuuuuut... he had a bit of a lead by that point... would definitely destroy ALL my units and hold ALL of the Objectives... and didn't think the single unit I could bring on as reinforcements on my turn could possibly score enough points to catch up...  

Everyone attacked the remaining Flesh Hounds... well.. tried to... The Brutes went first and destroyed the last two. 

Tabled. 

And Orruks controlling ALL FIVE Objectives!?

I forgot to take a picture of the end of my last turn. I did have one unit of Flesh Hounds that could still be brought on as reinforcements... and I did bring them on and had them snake over on the left flank and steal the Dracothion Objective as I had a card that scored a bonus victory point for doing so. 

In the end John had 16 Victory Points to my 14. 

It was a pretty fun game, despite the staggering defeat... His Ironjawz look great! He'd painted them in a day to have ready for a tournament at the Canadian warhammer store managers conference a few weeks back! 

Amanda said she'd be willing to try out Spearhead a while back and has finally found some time in the scedule to play THIS EVENING!! So.. stay tuned to see how that turns out!!