Waking Dead

Round one of our Warhammer Fantasy Battle: Dark Shadows campaign was played on Sunday 28th August. Myself as the glorious Empire (Talabheim; I’m a traditionalist) defended the coastline of Albion from the evil Chaos insurgents. It didn’t exactly go according to plan…

The scenario has 500 points of attacking forces making their way onto the beach in boats, whilst the defender holds the hilltop with 3 war machines and 50 points of core units. Chaos (attacking) brought 2 units of Warriors and a unit of Marauders, plus a Chaos Champion. I had 2 Great Cannons, a Hellblaster and 6 lonely Handgunners. Because this battle uses skirmish rules, you can deploy pretty much where you like, and each mini is considered an individual for the purposes of movement and such.

Note: I will get round to painting my minis soon; I’d just rather be playing!

Deployment was fairly straightforward. As you can see from the picture I had all my War Machines in an elevated position, though with the battle conditions I had to roll the Artillary Dice because of the mist. Take the number on the dice, treble it; that’s how far you can see. An ! on the dice means you can see everywhere.

After a couple of turns of shooty-shooty, my Hellblaster blew up. Now, I’d taken out a whole unit of Chaos Warriors by this point, but as you can see from the pic, the Marauders had swum like Olympians to almost break through my line (3+ for swimming in heavy armour; Chad got lucky!). With the main focus of my offense out of action, the Cannons had to be used at very close range. It’s no fun guessing ranges of 1″ then rolling 10 on the Artillary Dice, I can tell you…

At this point I was considering throwing in the towel, but with the Chaos Champion out of action and all 6 of my Handgunners still standing, there was a chance damnit! I used the Cannons as much as I could, but taking out a single miniature each turn is not a great use of points. The Handgunners did a little better, but I kept rolling low for resolution and knocking them over. I want them dead, not on their backs!

As you can imagine, it wasn’t long before the might of the Chaos Warriors closed in on my Cannon crews and effectively won the game for Chad. I held out as long as I could, but I could smell defeat the minute the Hellblaster went kaput. If only the rules let me field an Engineer…