Cold Blood vs Old Bones

I ventured out to a chum's place for a quick game of WFB last night. We both work in the same school and, as a result, are both knackered: as such we cracked out the beers, ordered some pizzas and knocked together some army lists.

As my Dark Elves are still Missing In Action a year after the house move I used his Lizardmen. Given that I started with 3rd editon and he quite like the End Times rules, we decided to bin off the force composition requirements and both ploughed a huge number of points into our respective generals*.

So here are my forces arrayed for battle. I love his painting style - much more blocked colour than mine but so vivid and it requires a huge amount of brush control and precision.

As time was short we just went for a straight scrap (I normally prefer scenario based play but we were both rushing to beat the onset of yawning).

My basic plan was to launch my heavy hitters (Saurus Warriors and cold one riders) down the centre while flanking with my skinks down the right (they're so generally useless that the best way to deploy them is to use them to attack an already engaged unit to boost combat resolution). The Flying Cicus of the Terradons would be used to hold up the Hexwraiths who I regard as one of the most deadly units the undead can field; I regarded that as sacrifice similar to a chess move - I didn't dare allow those ghost riders in the sky to reach my army core. My general, mounted on a humongous dinosaur is the same Skink Priest that destroyed my whole army with one spell last time we played.

Turn one, and the undead summoned a whopping great block of skeletons in the centre of the field. This is one of those fascinating pivot points as it ended up bogging down the core of the army. I started with a Cold One charge into these after the cold ones survived a nasty cloud of death spell. 

I have a long history with Cold ones. Who doesn't love do dinosaur cavalry? In my dark elf army I spent ages scouring ebay to find the right riders and the right out of production cold ones to create a unit round which to build my army. I played them half a dozen times and not once - not once - did they ever do anything useful. Instead they always failed their stupidity tests and ended up gazing in awe and wonder at a daisy on the battlefield.

Guess what happened here?

Yes, it must have been a very lovely daisy. 

Stubbornly unattacked skeletons blocking the movement of my hardest hitting unit. 

(I've always had bad luck with dice rolls and bizarrely seems I operate as a good luck charm for my opponents. As an example on the cloud spell mentioned earlier, the rules informed us it would inflict 3d6 hits. This is what he rolled:

See?)

Thankfully my big Flappyosaurs did their job and pinned down the Hexwraiths:

And then the huge Engine of the Gods on the back of the Stegodon let rip. This is a very nice bit of kit and, were I a lizardman player, I'd probably field two. In one shot it took out half the skeletons, half the ghouls and seriously wounded the Vargulf. 

In the next round the vicious undead Necromancer, scourge of the living and defiler of the dead, totally forgot his magic phase. 

He instead launched his general and Vargulf at my general. And started hacking at the dinosaur - the brute!

The noble steed could not withstand this assault and fell over leaving my opponent crowing like a cut price Legolas. I charged in my Saurus Warriors for a flanking attack while the Cold Ones - finally! - smashed into the side of the Vargulf. 

A alas, at this point it was pushing 11 and, aware that the Small People would be waking me at around 4, I called it a night at this point. Aside from anything else, even though I had wiped out quite a few of his units the points value of the Stegadin meant he had easily won

Another fun game. The current edition of WFB has its faults - most of the structural in the way armies are organised and designed - but at around 1000pts it does run quite fast and smoothly for a mass battle game. 

I think we'll be having another WFB next week and then it'll be either LOTR or - if I can get the retinues finished - some Lio Rampant. 

Til then, dear readers, farewell. 

*I recall a 3rd edition Chaos army I had where over half the points total was in my general and standard bearer. Built with the Realms of Chaos books, that one chap took out a 2000pt Skaven army single handedly.