Round One is a wrap! Characters were named, dice were blamed and castling tactics were shamed. We’ll cover this in two parts:
- Today’s article will run through the games played and campaign activities undertake by each of the four teams
- Then Part Two will cover the map campaign section itself
Mission of the Round: Hakan vs Daniel Bonacci
Hakan‘s Skaven (Cult of the Third Eye) took on Daniel‘s Cities (Drakmire Lords) on War of Storms, with double points at stake for the winner.
In Daniel’s words:
My Cities tried, ooh boy they tried. Being the attacker taking top of turn one gave me the lead on trying to push the storm front away from our home land. La Valette (my general) tried to hold back the ratmen, decreasing their chances for a successful charge but the rats were to nimble and the hordes to great to hold back…while trying to maintain a castle formation the rats dug their way all across the lands, claiming territory after territory, forcing the Knights of Malta to retreat and surrender.
It was great playing the custom battle plan, felt like an uphill battle facing Skaven since they can be everywhere and anywhere, especially versus a castle army.
And from Hakan’s perspective:
Really enjoyed the mission of the round! Probably gave me an advantage against a Cities castle, but it was a nice change of pace not playing for objectives/tactics. Giving him first, while he was the Attacker, ended up risky as he could score a bit and then I was one dice down on most charges. But we managed to engage and kill his General at the bottom of round 1.
After R2 the storm front was 24″ in my favour and we called it as he had 3 units left to my 8; terrain dominance all but guaranteed. Gnawholes were a handy tool to get extra terrain, while Daniel had his terrain as well and managed to negate some of mine.
They played for pink slips too, winner takes both dice:
And da boys even shared a beer afterwards: the whole thing was way more civilized than I would expect from a couple of Sunbury boys tbh.
I’ll be polishing up the four Missions of the Round and putting them into a pdf once this is all wrapped up. Quite a few people played this mission and the feedback was generally very positive: I’m honestly delighted to hear that it was a tough ‘un for castle armies, because I think all wargaming should be, but in v2 of this mission I probably should specify that Faction terrain doesn’t count towards moving the Stormfront.
If you did want to give this one a crack, it’s right here:
Drakmire Lords Ascendent
Thanks to Dan S (Toesucker) for writing up this Admiral’s Log from his general Drake Chudson:
Admiral’s Log, Drake Chudson of the Calamity~
Ever since the “incident” regarding “losses” sustained in our skirmish with the Nighthaunt, as well as “inappropriate use of a Celestium Burst Grenade” (which is all complete RUBBISH), the Lord-Magnate has since seen to personally press ganging me into a new venture under his explicit watch: rendezvous with contacts from the Khazalite Holds. I’ve been hearing rumblings about these “crusading” Duardin and their fool’s errand of taking back their holds. A bunch of senseless, overzealous wazzocks if you ask me! The skies are fine as is, why in Grungni’s name would you want to go back to those hovels?! I digress, this is apparently a “lucrative” enough venture that the Lord-Magnate sees it worth our time. Chief Endrinmaster Mods Mikkelson agrees with him, (at least I think he does, I can barely understand that loony wazzock) as does Chief Navigator Notarat Ratson. Mods is a maniac on a good day, but I trust the council of Notarat. Mighty fine Duardin, him, if a bit funny looking—long in the nose, buck in the teeth, and thin in the beard, but hey, I’m not winning any beauty contests either! At any rate, the Lord-Magnate says the Khazalites have a wealth of supplies needed for our larger on-going campaign with the Darkmire Lords, but only if we can help them retake one of their holds. Easy enough, I suppose. After all, we have the might of the Calamity on our side! Well, that and a couple other volunteers in the form of a detachment of Skywardens from Barak-Mohnar to see to any beasties that plague us, and a cantankerous and dour Fyreslayer(?)—calls himself “Gotrek Gurnisson”, said he wants to see these Khazalites for himself. He’s got a mighty fine axe and the body to heft it, so why not, we’ll need it as we see ourselves crossing into gargant country. Indeed, storm clouds gather on the horizon even as I write this very entry. Let’s see if all this is worth it…
Admiral’s Log, Drake Chudson of the Calamity~
I am recording this log as we make a hasty escape from the storm—and a mighty ferocious one at that! To start, we were accosted by a roving group of gargants, to little surprise, this has been known to be their stomping grounds for a while. However, they were strangely organized, being led by a rather ornamented matriarch from the rear, and seemed much less drunkenly belligerent than usual. That said, the wazzocks were still drunkenly belligerent enough to attack us after hearing one of the pistons in the Calamity misfiring and mistaking it for gunfire… perhaps the follow-up warning shot from the grand cannon did it too when it struck one in the chest, but I digress! Worse yet, when Chief Navigator Notarat Ratson attempted to scout ahead with our Gunhauler, he was dashed to pieces by an errant stone chucked by one of those brutish wazzocks! Poor Ratson, he was a good and noble Duardin to the end. He must have been hiding a terrible illness, because the smear he left was that of horrible black ichor. Would explain his nervous stuttering and constant audible wheezing between sentences. At least he’s at peace now. We managed to return the favor and fell one of theirs before uh tactically retreating as the storm approached, much to the chagrin of our Fyreslayer compatriot. That storm, however, is a complete mystery to me, as it seemed to whip up in a fury at random! Yes, completely unexplainable! By Valaya’s massive bountiful bosom, how were we supposed to… oh, there’s a report under my flagon here I must have missed it … ah, it’s Ratson’s report on the phenomenon… in full detail… Right well, Lord-Magnate doesn’t need to see this, or this recording for that matter- CHZZZZCK
Credit to Dan S (Toesucker)
Meanwhile Fittsy has been pounding out the games (and wins) with his KO, raining down a hailstorm of merciless capitalism from the clouds. He kicked off a flurry of Ws for the Drakmire Lords when Krid swooped in on his Ironclad, The Hammer, to blast an Ogor Tyrant on Glutthorn clean off the board, and he’s barely slowed down since.
I’m not sure, but I think Fittsy expected us to feel sorry for him here? As opposed to the reality, which was everyone feeling bloody delighted. Gooooooooo Skragrott!
Other notable achievements from the Drakmire Lords included Daze playing (and winning) with his Khorne: in fact, every single member of this team played at least one game in Round One. Go you good things!
Stoneklaw’s Mob
Grant (Farmhammer) really smashed out the games over the last couple of weeks, racking up 5 wins from 6 games with his mighty Ironjawz.
Meanwhile Chris Riley took his campaign army to a GT, racking up a creditable 3-2 result plus another win on the side, led by his Tyrant Lethal Steve and Elmer Fudd the Hunter:
Cult of the Third Eye
We had to make our first ruling on the fly here: Josh Clark crunched out a draw, which we decided would be worth 0.5 points, and as you’ll see in the final table that ended up mattering: it gave the Cult the edge over the Giant’s Bane in the race to pick 3rd on the map.
Hakan (Graal) is a confirmed Warhammer beast and in addition to picking up the W in the mission of the round, he managed to roll over his mate’s DOK too:
Cara did manage one landmark win against Grant’s IJ:
Cara and Grant played this one for bits (winner gets to raid their opponent’s bits box for some trophies) and Cara came away with a bunch of sick Orruk heads to show for her troubles.
Finally, shout out to Maximus for perhaps my favourite named character so far: Yeast Infection the Poxbringer. Simple things please simple minds, hey?
The Giants’ Bane
Last, and I’m afraid statistically least, The Giants’ Bane were lead by Andy Jennings and ThomasX this week. The Redoubtable Mr Jennings cracked out a couple of good wins with his heavily-converted Ogors, lowering the colours of some imperialist Sigmarite assholes before towelling up Kragnos as an encore:
While ThomasX also took his campaign army to a GT, delivering a solid 2-3 result while he keeps chasing that 3-2:
Summary
So this is where we ended up after Round One:
Stoneklaw’s Mob with the most Wins will take first dibs on choosing a map location, while the Drakmire Lords earned the most Achievement points for bidding on packages of resources through the marketplace.
Thanks to everyone who took part and to you, dear reader, for following along. Keep an eye out for Part Two where we’ll see how the whole worker placement game went down.
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