Sigmar's Blood - the Climax (17)

And so to the final game of the campaign.
This was to be a biggie - all the forces from the previous games, plus a few more besides. Fortunately the kids were away, so we were able to get started early!

I was once again the Vampires as we figured I'd played them the most.

I deployed with my infantry in the centre, the cavalry and weird chariot thingy on my left and held the right with just a couple of ethereals.
My main plan was to use Von Carstein to buff the dead daylights out of my infantry in the centre, whilst sending the Vargheists in pursuit of Volkmar.

Mannfred von Carstein's Boney Army

Volkmar's boys in blue

And largely this was a plan that worked very well.
Whether because this scenario is a bit imbalanced in favour of the undead, or just because (for once) I was fortunate with the dice all went very well for me.
The Ghouls were buffed to the max and creamed the swordsmen and ran them and the level four light wizard down. The Zombies were flattened by the flagellants, who overran into a poorly positioned Mannfred. But he duly demonstrated that he's at least as good a fighter as spell caster and chopped them down. The chariot thingy held the knights for a turn or two before crumbling but Mannfreds marvelous magic saw them off. The Dire Wolves were dire and failed to kill the handgunners but the ethereal cavalry finished them off.
In the centre the arch lector piled into the ghouls, but some frantic buffing from Mannfred and the timely arrival of the Vargheists saw the War Altar chopped into kindling and Volkmar carried off to the tower.

The swordsmen get grabbed by the ghoulies

Dearly beloved we are gathered here today to TRAMPLE GHOULS!

The Bloody Wolves come to a bloody end

Empire reinforcements crept on over on my right but were held up by some ethereals. In the end the ghouls got overexcited and charged the Reiksguard and were duly despatched.

However by this stage I was well in front and my only worry were the demigryph knights heading for the tower to try and release the arch lector.

If we sneak quietly around here...

At this point I made a substantial error and in my eagerness to thin the demigryphs I left Mannfred exposed to a cannon shot.
The inevitable happened and, from a huge lead, crumbling rapidly reduced the forces of undeath. Fortunately the damage done to the demigryphs meant the Vargheists were able to hold on to the arch lector and their prize.

And so the game drew to a close.
I was ahead on seven victory points to six. However we had each achieved a goal in the game that was worth D3 victory points.
We rolled, and the empire got the full three to my measly one.
The Empire had triumphed and Sylvania remains just out of Mannfred's grasp!

This was actually a great fun game to play. We had the hang of most of the rules and it was largely a stand-up pitched battle affair without too much nonsense.. Probably my favourite game of the whole campaign.

However I did feel a bit gyped by the end resolution of the game.The entire campaign came down to a single dice roll. We could have just rolled a dice each at four months ago for the same result. A fixed VP each for achieving our goals would have seen me win, but an insistence on randomness turns a narrow victory for me into a narrow victory for my opponent.

That said I've largely enjoyed the experience of collecting the armies and the narrative element of the campaign. Just slightly let down by the execution of the scenarios.

Sigmar's Blood (16) Empire Militia

Here are the Bloody Wolves, a unit of twenty Middenheim Empire militia that I painted for the Sigmar's Blood campaign.

Pretty easy to paint up, with lots of browns and blue and white (the Middenheim state colours) to tie them together a bit. A mixture of the Mordheim sprues and a few of the old Empire multi-part infantry. Mostly armed with hammers for added Middenheim-iness
I'm quite tempted now to do a unit of state troops and use these as a detachment for them.
A few shots of individuals

 Erik "Two Hammers" Knackwurst - the champion

 Just Rolf - bearing aloft the sign from the pub where they were formed and that gives them their name - the Bloody Wolves

"Tuneless" Kurt Schwanstucker - musician

I'm not even sure militia can have a command, but what the heck - 'snot a regiment without a flag.

Sigmar's Blood (15) The Hidden Necropolis

Well this didn't go great.

Once more we convened to a lovely table with all the models present and correct.

However the game itself was not one of the best.

The scenario is very poor and seems not to have been playtested.

The vampires are all ethereal, so can only be harmed by magic, but have no magic of their own. And the Empire have a Lvl 4 and the Lazer Gun chariot (Luminark).

I think the idea is that you should have a kind of "cat and mouse" chase around the buildings, but essentially strong winds of magic made it relatively easy for the Wizard and big laser to blow apart the vampire force in short order.

 The Ethereals

 Empire defenders (including converted Luminark)

 Whispering Nell and the Neverending Cairn Wraith break cover

 The wizard heads for the tower

The third or fourth version of the Cairn Wraith hacks feebly at the Luminark

We had time to reset and swap sides, but were so disillusioned with the game we didn't bother.

A real shame, as the forces we've collected look great and are a bit esoteric, but the actual games (apart from the first) don't live up to it.

A more linear expansion of the forces, with fewer special rules (my force consisted of eight models, all with special rules, and two with special rules that varied from the special rules for the models as printed in the VC army book!) and magic levels added in more gradually would make, for a better campaign experience I reckon. As it is, game one feels like a good intro scenario, game two is a good scenario, hampered by the steep learning curve and unbalancing nature of powerful special characters attached to relatively small forces. While game three is a poor scenario with too many complex rules on only a small number of models.

We're going to play game four, just because we've collected and painted everything, but we're not feeling the love, really.

As my chum said,he writes better rules, and I write better fluff, so why are we shelling out £20 each for this?

Sigmar's Blood (14) Parley of Blades

So we once again convened for game two in the Sigmar's Blood campaign.
The forces for this were essentially the same as the previous game but with the addition of a 500 point special character each.
Nice smooth escalation there.
The object is for the Empire forces to smash their way through three narrow gateways and lay Von Carstein low.
This was the table as set up when I arrived.

It was fairly clear we'd be lucky to get through the game twice, so we diced to see who had which force, with me landing the Vampires.
I placed the zombies, with Corpse Cart in support over on my right and also put the Vargheists behind the tower in the hope of avoiding an early cannon shot.I covered the central gate with the ghouls and had the skeletons ready to block the left hand gate with the Dire Wolves in front of them ready to zoom out cannon hunting.
The Empire weighted their left flank, setting the flagellants to take out the zombies supported by Volkmar and his War Altar. Handgunners settled on the central hill with swordsmen aimed at the central gate. The cannon occupied the big tower and the knights lined up on the right flank.

 Just off for a ride around on my church on wheels...

   Who let the dogs ou...Sorry.

As the game started my plan was to simply block the gateways with blocks of troops, raise more to bolster them and send the dogs out to hunt the cannon and the vargheists to kill the handgunners, before ploughing into the rear of whichever Empire unit looked like it was most in danger of breaking my lines.

Sadly this plan rather relied on me getting some magic off in order to buff my units and raise up the inevitable casualties.
So I duly rolled double 1 for the first winds of magic.
Fortunately Manfred is allowed to re-roll on of his dice, so I did so.
I also had two channeling attempts.
At the end of this I still only had two dice with which to wield power beyond mortal ken.
In subsequent turns I continued to roll hopelessly for the winds of magic, meaning one of the most powerful wizards in the Warhammer world was something of a busted flush.
This pattern continued until about turn six.

 The swolen purple ghoulies go about their business

 The ghouls inflicted two wounds on the Witchhunter. This was his save roll. Sigh

 Brawn meets braaaainzzzz

 What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile the ghouls, seeing the swordsmen pull up short decided to charge home. Whatever crypt they had emerged from was clearly one where the stocks of poison were running low as I don't think they managed an automatic wound all game. They performed abysmally on the charge and were soon overwhelmed by the swordsmen. Over on my right the zombies were pumelled by the flagellants, and in an act of desparation I threw in the corpse cart to try and swing the combat. It failed to kill anyone on the charge and was chopped into kindling.

 It's OK, there'll be three vargheists along in a second. Oh.

Not quite the same picture as the one above. It just felt that way.

The left flank held out a little hope as the skeletons were able to charge the knights, and duly held them in an endless grind. meanhwile the dogs ran over to the tower, munched the cannon crew and turned back to try and stop the swordsmen.

My vargheists flapped to the centre of the board and were lined up to inflict carnage on the empire state troops when Volkmar remembered where he'd put his spell books and Banished two of them, severely blunting their attacking prowess.
A fact demonstrated moments later when he flew into the rear of the handgunners, missed all his attacks and popped.

 Have at you, foul creature of the night!!!

 No, no, I'll walk. I'm fine.

Finally, as the net began to close around him the winds of magic grew to a tornado and Manfred started hurling some big spells around.
Purple sun threw a misfire (of course) and offed some extra skeletons, but Curse of Years made things (briefly) hairy for the Empire.

Volkmar, seeing the Vampire alone charged in with his war alter, but Manfred proved a better fighter than spellcaster and chopped the chariot to pieces, leaving Volkmar running away (I would actually have lost victory points if I'd run him down) but the field belonging to the Empire.

This was a bit of a frustrating game.
I'm not too familiar with the VC army list (or the Empire one for that matter) so the sudden addition of a very powerful special character with thirteen (!) spells at his disposal and a bunch of special rules to boot, felt like a pretty steep curve from the simplicity of the first game.
I also rolled diabolically for most of the game, which placed me further on the back foot.
That said it did all look rather splendid.

Sigmar's Blood (13) - The Midnight Hunt

At last, after several months of preparation and painting and a hiatus whilst we attempted to synchronise calendars (he was in Poland, Scandinavia and the US. I went to Swindon) it was finally time to play the first game(s) of the Sigmar's Blood Campaign.

This was the sight that greeted me when arriving at my Chum's gaff.
Splendid looking table with all the bits present and correct as shown in the campaign book (albeit in slightly different colours). Marvellous!

Behold the field of battle!

The buildings in particular looked lovely, some new GW verdigris paint really enhancing the copper roofs.

The Witchunter leads the Empire forward

Noble blackpowderists

The forces of evil...

And so after a prolonged Admiring Our Handiwork phase we decided we should probably actually play a game or something.

I won the roll-off for army choice and decided to go with the Empire.
I deployed the swordsmen just back from the deployment line with the cavalry poised to sweep out left and the handgunners ready to race toward the tower. Getting models into the tower gives a benefit later in the campaign and the hand gunners seemed the best chaps for that particular job.
The necromancer and his hideous minions assembled on the start line and we were off.
The forces of undeath (almost inevitably) won the roll-off for first turn, and not wanting to stare down the cannon barrel for any longer than necessary went first, trundling toward my lines.

The classic undead pincer

Foolishly I had deployed too far forward. The undead moved first and with the said of Vanhels they were almost on top of me before I'd taken a turn.
In an attempt to minimise the damage to my swordsmen I maneuvered the knights in front of the skeletons and backed the swordsmen up to try to prevent the Corpse cart rampaging home. Over on my right the handgunners sprinted toward the tower.
Taking careful aim with 'Owd Betty', the imperial cannon, I bounced a cannonball straight into the corpse cart. The steel ball caught the necromancer himself full in the face and killed him stone dead. Well that improved my odds a bit.

Crumbling begins in earnest

The dogs prepare to fly into the flank

Immediately the undead began to crumble including the newly arrived Dire wolves.
Despite the loss of their guiding power the undead shambled home and began to lay about the empire troops.
The ghoul champion launched himself at the Witchhunter and pulled him to the ground before the Empire hero could even swing. However the rest of the unit took a toll on the ghouls and the units stayed locked in combat. The skeletons meanwhile flailed uselessly at the heavily armoured knights and suffered at the hands of the Empire and their horses. As the combat ground on the wolves maneuvered to charge but the cannon and crumbling meant they were unable to swing the combat.
Meanwhile the hand gunners gained the tower and sent their message asking for help.

The knights wreak destruction on their bony foes

As the undead forces began to fade away the men of the Empire were able to crush the last resistance and claim the field as their own.

And so, with the first game over in under an hour we swapped sides and went at it again.

Come to us, dead dudes

I deployed the forces of undeath in similar fashion to the first game. I considered not using the Direwolf vanguard rule and using them to block the hand gunners from accessing the tower but in the end decided to leave them. The empire, learning from the first game deployed deeper.

Shamble, drool, creak

Once more with the pincer

I rushed the undead forces forward but the better positioning of the knights saw them able to charge into my ghouls. 'Owd Betty' spat her inevitable iron ball at the corpse cart but this time it struck the cart itself and regeneration saved any damage.

The ghouls take it hard in the front

Good, doggies, niiiice doggies...

The knights wreaked havoc on the ghouls, though a few fell in return. The skeletons charged the swordsmen on the hill and the Corpse Cart thundered into the knights battering the horsemen whilst the Direwolves positioned themselves between tower and hand gunners. In the combat the skeletons made little impact on the swordsmen and lost several of their own in return. The knights killed more ghouls but still more were pulled down.

A one sided grind

As the empire took their turn the handgunners blasted the dogs to ruin but it was in the combat phase that the damage  was done. Having already killed the ghoul champion the Preceptor of the knights challenged the necromancer and duly cut him down. Despite their ghouls pulling two more knights down  the inevitable crumbling began and the undead threat faded away...

So we played two good fun games with very similar results in a couple of hours.

We both felt this game favoured the empire, but then that's the nature of campaigns - not always a fair fight.
Really looking forward to the next game now, when it all jumps up a level with the arrival of a Von Carstein and an Arch Lector.
No game next week as my opponent is off to Las Vegas. And I'm back to Swindon.