I’m three games in to The Old World now, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s just so good to get the square bases out again and even if there are things I preferred about 8th edition, overall it’s feeling great. There’s a lot to cover here and so I’ll split it across a few posts.
All three games so far are with my High Elves and the first game I played was 1000 points against Bretonnians.
Here’s what I took.
High Elf Realms – 1K starter – [998pts]
## Characters [410pts]
Mage [143pts]: High Magic, Wizard Level 2, Barded Elven Steed, General, Silvery Wand
Noble [267pts]: Shield, Full Plate Armour, Great Weapon, Griffon, Battle Standard Bearer, Dragon Helm, Seed of Rebirth, Pure of Heart
## Core [256pts]
Lothern Sea Guard [256pts]: Magic Standard
• 17x Lothern Sea Guard [12pts]: Shield
• 1x Sea Master [7pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [45pts]: Razor Standard
## Special [192pts]
Swordmasters of Hoeth [192pts]:
• 12x Swordmaster [15pts]: Drilled
• 1x Bladelord [6pts]
• 1x Standard Bearer [6pts]
## Rare [140pts]
Eagle-Claw Bolt Thrower [80pts]
Great Eagles [60pts]
And here’s what my opponent brought.
++ Characters [392 pts] ++
Prophetess [181 pts]
(Hand weapon, Wizard Level 4, Bretonnian Warhorse, Battle Magic)
Paladin [211 pts]
(Lance, Heavy armour, Shield, General, Battle Standard Bearer, Rampaging Banner, Royal Pegasus, Gromril Greathelm, Virtue of Confidence)
++ Core Units [250 pts] ++
6 Mounted Knights of the Realm (1+**) [200 pts]
(Hand weapons, Lances, Shields, Heavy armour, First Knight, Luckstone, Standard bearer, Banner of Châlons, Musician)
10 Peasant Bowmen (1+*) [50 pts]
(Hand weapons, Longbows, Unarmoured, Skirmishers)
++ Special Units [358 pts] ++
3 Pegasus Knights [179 pts]
(Hand weapon, Lances, Shields, Heavy armour, First Knight, Standard bearer)
3 Pegasus Knights [179 pts]
(Hand weapon, Lances, Shields, Heavy armour, First Knight, Standard bearer)
As was true in 8th edition, 1000 point games can be quite swingy. It’s much harder to bring a “balanced list” and oftentimes you’ll end up in a Rock-Paper-Scissors scenario. Luckily, I don’t think that happened here, and we had an enjoyable game. This was a few weeks ago now, so I’ll try to remember how it all went down.
Arguably the first mistake we made was the way we set the board up. We used an old favourite of mine which is to divide the board into six 2’x2′ squares and put one terrain piece in the centre of each, then scatter it 2d6 inches. You end up with something organic and interesting and you can’t claim that one player has set it up in their favour. The problem was that we ended up with two hills more-or-less in the middle of the battlefield and hills block line of sight. This meant that shooting, and charges, were both heavily affected, and we noticed after the game that it recommends not having any terrain in the middle. Oh well.
Deployment was interesting. Knowing that over half his army (in terms of points) could Fly and effectively re-deploy, I was thinking the sensible thing for me to do would be to try to hold the centre and march forward with my block of Seaguard, protecting one flank with the Swordmasters and the other with my Noble on Griffon. My Repeater Bolt Thrower ended up on my left flank and was able to shoot of the peasants but had basically no other targets for the rest of the game, save for one cheeky flank shot on the Knights of Realm, but two of the three wounds were saved by the blessing of the lady.
The Swordmasters on the left flank didn’t get into combat until about turn 4 because they couldn’t catch the Pegasus Knights. I’ll elaborate in a later post, but movement in this edition of the game is quite different to what I’ve been used to in 8th. I think I prefer it, but time will tell.
The next difference I noticed is that targeting lone characters is significantly harder than the past. I think we’ll see Wizards darting around behind units a lot more because they can’t be singled out by shooting. The downside, as my opponent learnt the hard way, is that the same isn’t true for charging. He put his prophetess in behind a unit of Pegasus Knights but there was a long bomb charge available to my Great Eagle. I went for it and she was slain outright in the combat. A 60 pt unit seeing off a 180 pt unit was a bit rough.
It was my opponents first game of Warhammer with square bases too, and we both learned a lot about the Lance Formation. I say we learnt a lot, but we probably left the game with more questions than answers… He initially deployed his Knights of the Realm partially behind cover, but because they wheel sort-of-awkwardly, they got stuck. We fudged it a bit to make it work, but I think Bretonnians are a tough learning army. I suspect with Bretonnians being one of the starting factions, there will be some more examples of how lances work coming in the next FAQ which is rumoured to be arriving shortly.
Later in the game, for example, two units of Pegasus Knights, both in Lance Formation, tried to charge the front of my Noble on Griffon and it was a bit hard to work out if both charging was possible because of how the Lances work and the requirement to maximise units in contact. I’m still not sure I know the answer to that one.
As for the rest of the game, my Noble managed to cause Terror in his Knights of the Realm, which were in an awkward position after a Travel Mystical Pathway spell, and they ran off the board. Not many of my units were destroyed and I think I ended up winning by a couple of hundred VPs.