Wargames weekend - 8th/9th February 2002

Saturday - Warmaster

Margaret (Empire), Chris (Dwarves) and Simon (High Elves)
Richard W (Undead), Richard H (undead) and Cliff (Chaos)
Due to work being allowed to interfere with gaming commitments the game started late as the referee turned up late and so the game didn't start until early afternoon. The morning was spent with Cliff and Chris (who had played Warmaster before) teaching the other players how the rules work.
The good guys set up with the dwarves on the left flank, Empire in the middle and Elves on the right flank. The forces of naughtiness had Chaos on the left flank facing the elves, Richard H's undead in the centre and Richard W's undead on the right facing the dwarves.
Early on the undead in the centre and Chaos moved forward pretty energetically with the undead facing the dwarves lagging behind due to unlucky command rolls, the Empire and dwarf armies were affected by some poor command rolls, but did manage to get some of their units moving, but both armies artillery were noticably slow moving and did not make their mark till quite late in the game (though it did turn out to be quite a mark when the did!).
Richard's undead army in the centre was the first to reach its break point, but not before it had inflicted a notable amount of damage with its monsters. This left a sizable gap in the centre of the bad guys position.
The chaos marauders and warriors clashed with the elven spearmen in the woods and by the ferocity of their attack and good die rolls drove them back eliminating one unit and taking the other down to one base, which ran away. Attacks by the Elven cavalry against the Chaos cavalry did some damage, but resulted in the Elves being taken to their break point, leaving the forces of goodness with an open flank, but at about this point the Empire and dwarves started to get some of their tardy units into action and in one round destroyed the chaos warrior unit with massed artillery and handgun fire. Attacks by the Empire cavalry supported by the dwarven gyrocopter broke the ogres and did enough damage to the Chaos cavalry to break the Chaos army. Unfortunately casualties to the Empire army caused it to break at the same time leaving only two armies to decide things.
Finally it came down to the dwarves against the undead army which made the slower start and the weight of the undead monsters told helping the skeleton infantry and cavalry to grind down the tough dwarves.
Here (courtesy of Margaret) are some piccies of the game (I've kept them as links as they are big images 250-350 kb).

A view of the armies of niceness at the start of the game with Dwarves (being deployed by Chris) nearest the camera, Empire in the centre and High Elves at the far side near Alan (aka Simon to all but Cliff).

Ouch! Elven Silver Helms and Reavers charge an isolated skeleton unit - no prizes for guessing who won!

Dwarves against Undead late in the game At this point these were the only two intact armies and they squared off against each other for a close combat slog. Also visible are the dwarf cannons which were at this point in the process of pounding an unfortunate Chaos Warrior regiment, who were also the targets for an Empire cannon unit and a handgunner unit.

Reviewing the rules after the game I came across a few things that we missed out or didn't apply correctly, some of which were pointed out during play, which I've listed below to help remind us to use them next time.

Rules that we missed or didn't use properly

  1. A unit can only do one advance after combat each turn - the distance that it goes depends on how many ROUNDS the combat took. If the enemy was destroyed in a single round the advance is 20cm, if it takes two or more rounds the advance is 10cm.
  2. Units which are forced to retreat in combat into impassible terrain or units which are in combat (or have been in combat) are eliminated.
  3. Only initiative charges and advances after a victorious combat are required to be against the nearest unit, ordered charges can be against any unit the charging unit can see.
  4. Corner contact counts to allow a base to participate in combat.
  5. A base to the side of a unit in combat counts as support as well as one behind
  6. An advance is counted as being like a charge with bonuses and stand and shoot.
  7. The -1 modifier for being attacked in the flank or rear only applies if the unit to the flank or rear is contacting with its front edge (sides or rears don't count).
  8. Dwarven trollslayers aren't driven back by shooting.

Sunday - Space Dreadnought 3000

Firstly the climax of the short Kaylon, Talliscian and Earth campaign involving about 420EU of Talliscians defending a naval base against 700EU of Kaylon. Margaret was the unfortunate Talliscian tactical commander aided by Richard L who was the Talliscian strategic commander. The Kaylon tactical commander was Simon with Chris as the strategic commander. The resulting in-system battle was predictably one-sided, particularly when the Kaylon seemed be relatively lucky as well as having superior numbers and better ships.

Since this battle had lasted much less time than expected we then did 3 simultaneous two-player games.
Vargon (Margaret) against Earth (Richard H), won by the Earth ships which had a decided advantage in that it was nearly impossible to unsupply the earth ships and the Vargon's only advantage over them came when they were unsupplied, which all-in-all made it a very depressing day for Margaret.
Kaylon (Richard L) against Altaran (Chris) which the Altarans won due to catching the Kaylons unsupplied a couple of times and being somewhat lucky with dice rolls. The game did at least show that the best fleet in the game can be beaten by one of the worst.
Quallaris (Simon) against Talliscian (Richard W) won by Simon?