Age of Sigmar - Solo Play

So one of the reasons I re-started the blog today is because I'm on holidays, and had an opportunity to finally get my Realm of Battle board out last night and play some Warhammer. Last night was a Ninth Age game against Doom and Darkness, but this morning, I decided to give the board another whirl since it was still setup from the game the night before.
Since I haven't been able to play any of the scenarios I've been producing yet, I thought, why not just give it a crack against myself. At least it'll give me some ideas as to how the scenario plays, and what pain points it might have.
So without further adieu, I present the Cursed Wellspring - Highborn Aelves vs Brayherd.
Army Lists
Both Armies would chose 6 points worth of models from the Independent AoS Pool Choices document. To keep things simple, I didn't bother choosing an additional 3 points of total force (so just preset 6 point forces playing against each other).

High Elf Mage - Theron Starseeker
10 Swordmasters
10 Lothern Sea Guard
5 Ellyrion Reavers

Beastlord Guttoroath
10 Gor with Shields
10 Bestigor
3 Minotaurs with Great Weapons
1 Tuskgor Chariot

Deployment
The two war bands met at the Cursed Wellspring, in desperate need for some shelter and water. The mage Theron Starseeker heard the guttural braying of the herd ahead, and quickly set about organising his fellow Aelves into a hasty battle line. The reavers were sent off to the flanks to stall the oncoming beastmen. Guttoroath had a similar idea, sending the Gor to hold up the Aelves while his Bestigor guard, Minotaur and Chariot could swoop in to attack.

Deployment

Battle Round 1

The bray herds ran up into the arcane lakes. The gor however didn't quite make it, so were quite out in the open to be shot at. The sea guard move up to the outer rim of the forest so they will be the only ones to benefit from the cover, but fail to pick off any Gors in the open. The reavers open fire on the chariot in the lead and manage to inflict two wounds, but they fail to get far after their shots. Theron's mystic shield falters even while being close to the Arcane Woods.

The end of battle round 1

Battle Round 2

Guttoroath lets out a savage cry, everything surges forwards. The Gors charge the Sea Guard while the Tuskgor Chariot manages to crash into the Ellyrion Reavers. The Gors can't manage to get through the shields of the Seaguard while one Gor is felled in return. The Reavers miss with their spears, but the steeds miraculously put 3 wounds on the Chariot, where the Bestigor and Tuskgors fell a Reaver and wound another. I don't have notes for the Highborn turn, but from the blurry pictures I think shooting basically whiffed again or killed 1 Gor. The reavers put another wound on the chariot while the Chariot whiffs. The Seaguard kill a few Gor, and a few more flee the battle.

2 Gor Flee the battle

Battle Round 3

The storm is closing, and the Wellspring must be secured. The Swordmasters move up to contest the well and Theron finally casts Shield of Saphery to give extra protection to the Swordmasters and Seaguard nearby. The Aelven shooting still proves to be ineffective, as the Reavers cannot slay the Tuskgor Chariot and the Seaguard only kill a single Gor. The Reavers go in for the kill in combat, but the Tuskgor Chariot makes its save but cannot hit the agile reavers. The Gor slay a Seaguard, while the Seaguard slay a Gor in return.

The Bestigor finally get the opportunity to kill, and swoop in on the Swordmasters. The Minotaurs and Guttoroath close in on the Wellspring as well to contest the water source.  The Bestigor murder 6 Swordmasters, and 2 are slain in return. The Reavers finally finish off the chariot, while the Seaguard fight to a stale mate against the Gor.

Battle Round 4

Guttoroath wins the roll for iniative, but the cunning Beastlord lets the Aelves take the first turn so he can swoop in for victory afterwards. This could prove to be Guttoroaths mistake, as Theron Starseeker devises a last minute plan to save the Swordmasters. They would need the Sea Guards help but would also need to survive, so the Mage casts the protective spell of Shield of Saphery. The evil spirits of the Wellspring lash out and slay a Swordmaster, had the day been lost already!? The Sea Guard fire into the Gor and still, the arrows bounce off their rotten shields. The Gors let out guttural laughs, mocking the Aelves but suddenly 3 white fletched arrows sink into the throats of the remaining Gor! The Ellyrion Reavers had arrived after fighting off the Chariot!

The Reavers arrive in the nick of time to shoot down the Gor!

The almighty force of the Highborn descended upon the Bestigor and the Wellspring! The swordmasters hack into the Bestigor and slay 2 while Theron beats one in the head with his Sword. The Bestigor retaliate by slaying a Reaver, but the rest of the attacks cannot get through the protective magics of Aelves.

The battle is nearing it's finish, the spirits of the Wellspring grow restless and lash out, dealing 3 wounds to a Minotaur. The battle would be a close deal, Guttoroath was sick of not being in the fight, he charged into the Seaguard while the Minotaurs went into the Ellyrion Reavers.

Beast vs Aelf - Every model fighting

The Bestigor start the last combat off by slaughtering the Swordmasters before they could even retaliate, in return the Reavers slay the Minotaur Musician but are cut down by the Minotaur Great Axes in return. Guttoroath can't manage to land a blow on the Seaguard, while the Seaguard and Mage all but finish off the Bestigors in return.

The Casualties of War

And finally, when the dust settled... this is how things really looked like

The Minotaur Standard flees the battle

That's right, the Highborn Aelves had won the battle by the nick of their teeth. With the minotaur standard bearer fleeing the battle at the sight of the cut-down musician, the Highborn had won with 13 wounds in the vincity of the Wellspring, while the Brayheard only had 10. Guttoroath would have to slink back to the forests to find another place to defile.

Thoughts On The Game

So overall, I'm happy enough with how the game went. The Highborn shooting was a little lacklustre, certainly not helped by the Seaguard rolling below average every time. But it was a close game and came down to the last roll of the battle! Nothing much closer than that.

Some observations were, the core of the Beastmen force didn't even engage until the last turn or so. I wonder if 2 combat armies would just sit back and try and swoop in at the last minute to put more wounds near the objective. Since the Highborn had shooting, the Brayherd had to do something to tie them up to stop them getting to the well. The Highborn certainly caught a break when the Minotaurs took 3 mortal wounds from the Evil Spirits in the Well though. In terms of mistakes, in the last round I put Inspiring Presence on the Bestigor rather than the Minotaurs. Should've just put it on the Minotaurs, as each one is worth far more wounds than the already diminished Bestigor. Of course, hindsight is 20-20, so who knew the Minotaur would've fled on that roll of 6.

Bonus Content

So I actually played a second game solo as well. It went a lot faster, but the outcome isn't quite what I would like. I tried converting a Warhammer Skirmish scenario into Age of Sigmar. Cut the Bridges. In this scenario, the defender is trying to destroy a bridge spanning the river so the Invaders won't have an easy passage into their land and the defenders can rally troops to stop an invasion. In Skirmish, every model is an individual and didn't have the concept of this area you can't really go into.

I tried playing the game, made some mistakes, but overall, it just didn't feel quite right. It's easy to block up the ford to become just a stale mate, and you can't really make a gap to swing models through since we're talking units, and not individuals. The same for destroying the bridge itself. 

In the end of this game, the Bray herd failed to destroy the bridge (but only just) on the last turn. We can pretend that due to the turn limit on this one, more Invaders turned up to drive off the defenders before they could destroy the bridge.

So I consider this a failure of a scenario at this point. I guess since Skirmish was meant for even less models than what I'm playing with, it's a little difficult to adapt the scenarios to this size of game.

On Solo Play

Was an interesting experience. I thought it wasn't too bad actually. But at the end of the day, you are playing against yourself. You obviously don't get the social interaction of the hobby! But you also don't get the opponent with different ideas of how things could've been played out. It was a good learning exercise though, as I got to figure out some of the kinks in 2 of the scenarios I had been writing up.

Southern Escalation

As I talked about briefly in my last post, I'm organising an Escalation Campaign for Age of Sigmar at the Southern Wargamers club in South Australia.

Here are links to The Escalation Pack and a Scenario Pack I've created.

The basic idea was to scale down the popular Independent AoS Pool Choices from the default 20 played pool choices, down to something smaller. I've also taken some comp rules from the Clash of Kings comp pack, but not all. This is important, because I'm not after a completely fair experience that is wanted in a tournament game. I want I guess what GW are trying to push, a more scenario driven and cinematic game. So one of the most broken things like summoning, I have relaxed a little in this pack. We'll have to see how this plays out.
It is potentially a little scary stepping outside the bounds that more experienced players of Age of Sigmar have set, hopefully everyone will come into the campaign with a fresh, clear mind and not go in wanting to abuse the system.

At the moment the thing I'm worried about most however is the lack of feedback. Nobody has commented, good or bad, about the pack. I've had a few people say they will play, but no feedback. The scenarios also haven't been presented yet, and certainly are basically untested. So no idea how things will really play out.

Anyway, fears aside, I'm hoping this Escalation Campaign will be the motivation for people to start up some small armies for Age of Sigmar. I've put in the main document, but essentially a Battalion and a Hero will get your month 1 stuff, and then it's basically adding a unit or 2 each month. I think very achievable.
I am certainly using it as a driving force for myself, to start an Undivided Slaves to Darkness Warband. It's something I've wanted to do for years now (after picking up the Be'Lakor and Crom the Conquerer models), but never really wanted to for WFB because nobody wants to play small games (like 1000-1200 points), but I didn't want to build a 1500+ point army.
So a little while ago, I made the dive and bought some cheap second hand Chaos and basically have all the models I need for the campaign.

And I'll leave it there for now. There'll definitely be more posts about this in future, but thought this can be a little prelude into future campaign posts.

Get me back into the fight!

Well, it's been almost 5 years since I've posted in this blog, but it's time for a reboot!
For the last 5 years, I've been hobbying along. I don't think I've made huge progress, mainly been working on rebooting my Lizardmen with new models for 8th edition Warhammer.

With the advent of Age of Sigmar, I've been branching out a bit. Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoy Age of Sigmar and the style of game it is, and will be talking more about it below. But I have diversified my Hobby, and have been looking into some of the Mantic offerings on the side.
I attended a Kings of War tournament after having only played 1 demo game (I was hoping to get some games in before it, but it didn't eventuate). Did pretty poorly, but the game was enjoyable.

I also picked up Arcadia Quest and Dungeon Saga in terms of Board games over the last year. I haven't managed to play either, and I'm thinking of getting rid of Arcadia Quest. I've only painted like 6 models in Arcadia Quest, and I guess I'm not finding motivation to paint them up. Additionally my current board games group, I think they might not take to it as it'll be long to set up (And with partners around who aren't so interested in learning complicated rules, it's hard to get into these things). Dungeon Saga on the other hand I blitzed through about 20 models, and am having fun painting some simple things again.

I also haven't been all quiet on the Warhammer front. In fact, I played a game of Ninth Age last night against Doom and Darkness, and will post a link when he gets that bat rep up.

Lastly, at the current time, I'm the one leading the war efforts for getting an Age of Sigmar community going. I haven't played many games, but I do really enjoy the laid back style of the game and the scenario driven agenda it has. I think it's terrible without some kind of setting and scenario to play (i.e straight out of the box). The lack of balance is something the community has quickly fixed themselves with a myriad of points systems available.

Down here in South Australia I will be starting an escalation campaign that uses the popular points system Independent AoS Pool System. There hasn't been too much interest so far, but whether it's 4 or 20 people, I'm sure we'll have a blast.

So a big part of re-starting this blog will be to assist in getting the community involved with Age of Sigmar. Whether I post hobby updates, battle reports, current thoughts, tactics, hopefully some people will enjoy reading about it.