Gosh, a long time without a post. There has been games though.
This week was some Warcry. I do like several aspects of the rules - not the balance of the lists - but otherwise the dice combo's to activate moves and alternate activations are good.
Above and below are my ancient Snake cult ... the Splintered Fang. I like the concept of the cult searching the world for the enormous serpent concept.
In any case, I've won 3 games out of 20 odd warcry games. We find the scenario's are quite lop sided with one side recognising they've been 'warcryed' by Turn 2. Then you just do a whole heap of damage or try your best to hide out till its over.
I was excited this week to introduce my chaos spawn ... the many armed snake lady from the Reaper range.
The other reason I looked forward to this game was to use my eight new castle ruins terrain pieces. These took around 6 weeks to build during a heavy work time of year. There were also some design problems to solve such as the wooded platforms.
We played ... umm ... The Bastion in game 1 I think.
Coffee stirrer walkways linked the castle sections precariously and were about 4 inches from the table top. A long way to fall ... evening though falling damage is very 'pussy willow' in Warcry.
The Dwarfs got 'warcryed' as I just chose a bastion in my part of the table and they struggled to move their slower units into postion. In fact 1/4 of their army would need 4 whole turns of walking to reach the bastion ... and they arrived in Turn 2 so 4 turns of moving was out.
Despite this, furious combat occured around and in the bastion. It was finally nice to see snake cultists doing damage. We killed 4-5 dwarves and took no casualties ourselves. I do love the Splintered Fang concept and sculpts but are they outmatched by any other non-bespoke warbands we've tried ... YES!
Salty Sea is just floating the idea of competitive bespokes to keep GW onside.
(Can anyone tell me why every triple and quad in Splintered Fang is much worse than their poison weapon double? And snakes ... why the fuck would you snake at all??? What's the point of being a snake cult when the snakes are 90 points of garbage that can be easily shot off the table?)
Anyway ... I do love the snake cult ... Ah, chthonic Python, I yearn for your encoiling embrace - cursed is Apollo's name!
And just realised the images are backwards ... frenzied combat rages above ... illustrating Turns 3 and 4. The dwarves were finally outnumbered ... even though their warband is larger than my bespoke band. After battle, several gained wounds including a festering gut wound in their leader. The Exalted Snake champion (the leader guy ... whatever his name is) netted then repeatedly stabbed the dwarf leader without mercy. The underground scoundrel knows something about the Great Serpent and would not reveal it ... so he suffered under questioning then slowly died.
Here shows the dwarf deployment. They stick out in royal purple while my snake cult in green blends with the edges of the board and are just out of shot.
This is a pretty shithouse battle report ... I'm not even telling a story ... Above the Snake Caller uses his charm to guide the writing chaos spawn toward the enemy. After encountering this beast deep in the Wildwoods, the cult leadership is convinced it has been touched by the divine serpent and its writhings my be interpreted for information regarding the Great One's resting place.
Damn the little gold greedy stunted ****'s. Look what their hoarding has enabled them to buy. So far I ignore the bloody thing. It really give the slower dwarves some movement that the cult can't match. With good wounds and melee ability it just swoops down and contests objectives in a way I can't counter. It has cost me many a game ... and it shoots.
The battlefield as yet unsullied by blood and entrails ... this game used a good complication rule where each wild dice could only be used on a roll of 4+. I found this much more enjoyable than using wild dice normally.
Please note the spider webs ... cotton wool soaked in PVA/water solution then teased into shape ... on the above image. Look for the castle ruin on the upper left. The web stretches across the window. These were very fiddly but look great. Each ruins has 2-4 webs. I'm uncertain if I'm going to glue some spiders down too? I purchased 50 from Beijing's finest craftsmen for around $4. I have spiders to burn.
