Age of Sigmar: Spearhead - Sap for the Sap God...?

Last Wednesday I rode out to the Warhammer store, again, to play another game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Spearhead with John. 

This time I brought TWO armies - the Khorne and Sylvaneth forces. John has a Sylvaneth army that he's still assembling and painting and planning on taking to an event in a few weeks, so I suggested he could borrow mine if he wanted a chance to play with them and get a sense for how they worked. 

Though I dragged the Sand & Bone set out with me, John already had Fire & Jade set out, so we just played with that! 

John won the initial roll off and decided he'd like to defend Ghyran (which kind of makes sense as he was playing Sylvaneth!) 

I ended up taking the first turn in the first round. 

The first round my Mighty Skullcrushers made it into combat with the Treelord. Blood Warriors, not-so-much. The Mighty Skullcrushers can deal some terrifying damage when they charge... But the Twist for the Round had allowed John to give the Treelord a Ward 6+ save, and then he played a card (Fight to the Last) which also gave (or increased) a ward save... and so they only dealt three damage to the lumbering beast (all of which was saved by my next turn...) 

The other Blood Warriors got into it with the Kurnothi, charging right past the objective that I probably should have had them take... but they're BLOOD WARRIORS?! Like I wasn't going to take an opportunity to do some fighting?! 

Also, had I not, the Kurnothi probably would have just stood in the corner and shot at them next round

End of my first round, I think...? 

On the Sylvaneth turn the Tree-Revenants sallied out to attack the Blood Warriors, mostly just to keep them from joining the Mighty Skullcrushers and taking down the Treelord (who was in NO danger, given how my dice were rolling...) 

Bloodreavers join the last few Blood Warriors to help finish off the Kurnothi

Which was handy because this is how I was rolling for the Blood Warriors. Three Blood Warriors remaining, three attacks each, they hit on 4+, so I should get 4-5 hits... nope, 2... fail to wound on one, the other was saved... 

Luckily the weight of numbers finally took the last Kurnothi out... 

Blood Warriors faired a little better against the Tree-Revenants. 

But then the Treelord dipped out of combat and charged my Slaughterpriest and squished him to a pulp with one mighty swing of his trunk-like arms. 

Branchwych slinked in and finished off the last of the Mighty Skullcrushers, who were reeling from the assaults of the Treelord... 

At least the Blood Warriors were able to beat down the last Tree-Revenant. 

Because Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows (or, SAP apparently!?) I got a whole bunch of Blood Tithe points in the final round. Mostly from my OWN units dying... 

Just at the Blood Warriors finished off the one unit of Tree-Revenants another unit arrived on the battlefield. 

They'd charge the remaining Blood Warriors and Bloodreavers and I had really, REALLY hoped to finish them off here... (so I could move these blood reavers away and hopefully have enough of them on the objective in the middle of the battlefield to contest it in my final turn... 

Alas... 

Five Bloodreavers, two attacks each, hitting on 4+... I should score 5 hits... 

NOT. ONE. HIT.... 

The last two Blood Warriors had fucked off from that melee, taking mortal wounds that killed one in the process, but left one alive to contest an objective. 

Similarly the other unit of Blood Warriors retreated from the combat with the Treelord to take an objective on my final turn. 

I didn't like that. It didn't feel RIGHT retreating from combat with Blood Warriors... but... you win the game by scoring victory points and you score victory points by holding objectives... (or scoring cards, which generally are about holding SPECIFIC objectives or being in specific parts of the table, etc). 

Even so, I only managed to TIE the game... I don't think there was even enough Bloodreavers left to contest the center objective, even if they could have gotten away. 

Ten games, nine losses, one tie! Things are looking up!

I'm supposed to play another game with Orion tomorrow afternoon. I'm hoping to finish up the Claws of Karanak tonight, so I can try out the new Fangs of Khorne Spearhead army! So I'm off to do that, and blowing off another RPGaDAY prompt... even though I had an idea for today... Ah well...