It was time for my fourth game of The Old World, and I thought I’d bring out one of my other armies! At some point in 8th edition, I got an outrageously good deal on a bunch of second-hand, assembled but unpainted Skaven – $300 for 60 Clan Rats, 20 Night Runners, 40 Stormvermin, 20 Plague Monks, a Plague Furnace, a Doomwheel, a Hellpit Abomination, a Warp Lightning Cannon and a handful of Weapon Teams. A total steal.
I was inspired by my friend’s Lustrian themed Ogre Kingdoms army, which used lots of Lizardman bits (including his Mournfang Cav being the old Carnosaur model!) and I really liked the opportunities for kit-bashing. I started thinking how I could combine two armies and maybe even get a cheeky two-for-one with playability. I loved the idea of crazy war machines and was also drawn to Dwarfs. And so, the very early idea for my Skaven/Dwarfs was born.
I started with the intention that these could either be run as Skaven that had raided a Dwarf fortress and stolen all their equipment or run them as Dwarfs that had been cursed by the Great Horned Rat and were trying to maintain their “Dwarfmanity”. I’m not too locked into exactly which scenario made the most sense and some of my conversions make more sense with one story than the other, but in each case it was just an opportunity for some cool models. I’ll do a deep dive on them in a future post.
At any rate, for my fourth game of The Old World, I decided to bring them out as a Dwarf list. Here’s what I ran:
# Main Force [2000pts]
## Characters [865pts]
Anvil of Doom [270pts]: Master Rune of Balance
Dwarf Engineer [62pts]:
– 1x Engineer [62pts]: Handgun, Great Weapon
King [309pts]: Great Weapon, Shieldbearers, General, 2x Rune of Fury, Master Rune of Gromril, Rune of Preservation
Thane [224pts]: Great Weapon, Battle Standard Bearer, Master Rune of Grungni, Rune of Parrying, Rune of Striking, Rune of Stone
## Core [603pts]
Longbeards [328pts]: Drilled
– 19x Longbeard [14pts]: Great Weapon, Shield
– 1x Elder [6pts]
– 1x Musician [6pts]
– 1x Standard Bearer [31pts]: Rune of Battle
Rangers [140pts]:
– 10x Ranger [14pts]: Great Weapon, Shield, Crossbow
Thunderers [135pts]:
– 10x Thunderer [13pts]: Great Weapon, Shield
– 1x Veteran [5pts]
## Special [115pts]
Cannon [115pts]: Rune of Reloading, Rune of Burning
## Rare [417pts]
Gyrobomber [105pts]: Clattergun
2x Irondrakes [96pts]:
– 5x Irondrake [15pts]
– 1x Ironwarden [21pts]: Trollhammer Torpedo
Organ Gun [120pts]
My opponent brought his Troll Horde.
# Main Force [2000pts]
## Named Characters [195pts]
Ogdruz Swampdigga [195pts]: Wizard Level 3, Troll Magic, Elementalism
## Characters [803pts]
Goblin Bigboss [63pts]: Light Armour, Battle Standard Bearer
Goblin Oddnob [165pts]: Waaagh! Magic, Wizard Level 4
Troll Hag [305pts]: Wizard Level 2, Troll Magic, General, Effigy Of Mork
Troll Hag [270pts]: Wizard Level 2, Troll Magic
## Core [1002pts]
Goblin Mobs [84pts]: Skirmishers
– 21x Goblin [4pts]: Shortbow
River Troll Mobs [318pts]:
– 6x River Troll [53pts]: Great Weapon
River Troll Mobs [159pts]:
– 3x River Troll [53pts]: Great Weapon
Stone Troll Mobs [294pts]:
– 6x Stone Troll [49pts]: Great Weapon
Stone Troll Mobs [147pts]:
– 3x Stone Troll [49pts]: Great Weapon
We rolled up a scenario and played Meeting Engagement. It’s a diagonal deployment with only 12″ between deployment zones. Each player rolls a die for each unit and if you roll a 1, that unit or character starts in reserve and may move onto the board in a later turn. My opponent’s named character, Ogdruz, started off the board, but I had my King, Thane and a unit of Irondrakes start off the board (195 points to my 440 points), which hurt.
It felt a bit cliché but in true Dwarf style, I set my battery of war machines and thunderers up on a hill in the corner. My opponent did the matching thing and in true Troll style deployed on the edge of his deployment zone and we were more-or-less ready to go. I had wanted to deploy my King and Thane in my big unit of Longbeards in front of my shooting units, but ended up hedging between having the unit close to the board edge so the characters could join when they arrived, but also as far forward as possible. It was quite awkward to not have much of an anvil unit to protect the front line.
As with most of my rambling battle reports, rather than tell the story of the battle, I’ll go through some of the interesting things that happened. Perhaps the first thing to note is that Trolls are Stupid. I mean that in a rules sense. Each turn they must pass a Leadership test or just move forwards. What is interesting this edition is that some poor wording doesn’t make it clear that the unit moves forwards as far as they can, like it used to. I’ve seen this discussed online a lot and it’ll be another one for the next FAQ, I suspect. We played it as we expected it should be played, but that was also mostly what my opponent would want – to at least move forwards – so that was fine. The Troll Horde allows you to use the Leadership of nearby Troll Hags or Orc/Goblin Shamans which makes things much more reliable but also paints a big target on those key Leadership pieces. Some heavy artillery fire brought down both Troll hags before they made it into combat, and a bit of luck going my way meant that my opponent failed quite a few Stupidity checks throughout the game, which slowed his advance enough for me to get several more shots in.
I deployed my Rangers up the back as Scouts and had a good chuckle that his army, without anything slow or stationary, had few targets for them and so they ended up shooting things a lot more than chasing them. I think they’re a great utility unit but, in this game, I might’ve been better off just putting them on the hill with my other shooting units.
Dwarf infantry is a funny thing. As a new player to the army, I didn’t immediately see the differences between Warriors, Longbeards, Hammerers and Ironbreakers. On paper, I figured there wouldn’t be much difference. They have similar stat-lines, similar armour, similar weapons, and similar special rules. I figured they were all slow, hard-hitting, and resilient. In the broad sense, I’m not wrong, but there’s certainly more to consider. When a group of Stone Trolls crashed into my Warrriors, I figured I would weather the attacks and then great weapons would keep things even. In practice, I think I’m supposed to use Hand Weapons and Shields in that match-up. Even with great weapons, I’m just so rarely doing enough to break through.
One thing that we realised after the game is that we had forgotten to keep track of wounds that were Regenerated for the purpose of combat resolution. I think that would’ve pushed some of the combats in my favour. In the age-old Warhammer tradition though, there was a lot that we missed. I forgot basically every item that my characters had and even forgot to attack with the shieldbearers. I’m sure my opponent forgot things too.
There were a couple of other useful lessons for me this game. Line of Sight is so different to 8th edition. “Model’s eye view” was flavourful and relatively easy, but sometimes problematic. The current rules require a bit more forethought for war machines. I got caught out a bit with my cannons not being able to see what I wanted to shoot at. I had one instance where I wanted to shoot my Organ Gun at the unit of goblins, and I rolled up 18 shots (close to the maximum). I then realised that it was at -3 to hit (Long Range and Soft Cover but I’d forgotten that they were Skirmishers), which would mean I was hitting on “7s” (an impossibility but represented by rolling a 6, then a 4 to hit). My opponent offered to let me change targets and reroll the dice, which seemed fair. I opted to stick with it, knowing that rolling 6+, 4+, 2+ was unlikely, but hey. I managed to kill 4 of them. Some quick coding tells me that that’s about a 3.3% chance, so better lucky than good, I guess.
We ran out of time to finish the game, and we sort of theory-crafted the last few turns. I think it probably ends up close, with us each killing about half the others’ army. I probably get a small edge by killing his general and keeping mine alive.
The last thing to discuss from the game is a tricky rules interaction that left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth at the time. I asked around and tried to keep my questions impartial and it seemed both my friends and strangers-on-the-internet tended to agree with my interpretation of the rules in the spirit of the game, but conceded it wasn’t clear. I ended up writing to Games Workshop’s team and if there’s a note in the next FAQ to clear things up, that can be my claim to fame! The situation could have been resolved from clarity in order of operations. For instance, when you are rolling multiple dice for the actions of a unit, are you rolling every dice to hit, then every dice to wound etc. or are you rolling one die to hit, then to wound, then moving on to the next die? Below is the email that I sent to Games Workshop. If you fancy yourself a Rules Lawyer, poke around here https://tow.whfb.app and tell me what you find!
A unit of River Trolls was charging a unit of Irondrakes. The Ironwarden was equipped (very sensibly) with a Trollhammer Torpedo. The trolls had already taken 3 wounds, so one troll was effectively on 1 wound remaining. The Irondrakes opted to stand and shoot. I rolled the attacks for the Drakeguns and the Trollhammer Torpedo simultaneously, but with different coloured dice to make it clear which was which. I had two wounding hits with the Drakeguns, with no Armour Saves due to AP, and no Regeneration Saves due to Flaming Attacks. The Trollhammer Torpedo also wounded with no saves, and I rolled a 3 on the D3 for the Multiple Wounds special rule.
The situation we found ourselves in was one where it was actually important which order we allocated those wounds in. If we allocated the Trollhammer Torpedo wound first, the model with 1 wound left would take 3 wounds, but the Excess Wounds do not spill over; effectively negating two wounds. Then a second troll would take two wounds from the Drakeguns. If we allocated the Drakegun wounds first, then the first wound would kill that troll, then a second troll would take 1 wound, then it would take 3 more wounds from the Trollhammer Torpedo and be removed.
On page 102, it states “You cannot spread the loss of Wounds throughout the unit to avoid casualties.”, but my opponent argued that he wasn’t “spreading” the loss of wounds, he was “allocating” wounds in order. In Warhammer: 40,000, I think this argument holds water, but that game explicitly talks about allocating attacks and who does it (the player controlling the target unit).
This was quite a unique situation with two weapons with different profiles happening at the same time. I’d love to have some clarification on how it should be played. On page 138, there’s a section on Fast Dice Rolling which talks about rolling batches of dice, but it doesn’t specify which order things happen in, and if either player gets to make a choice.