As promised, reporting on my first step in AoS land.
The lists for completeness: Dragon Noble on foot, general, relic starblade en enchanted shield. As general he got the reckless skill, allowing units within 10" to re-roll charge distances. Archmage on foot 20 spearmen with banner 10 Silver helms with banner 10 archers 10 white lions 10 sword masters with banner 2 great eagles 2 bolt throwers
And the undead: Vampire on zombie dragon with ruler of the night and cursed book, so death units get up again on a 5+. Wraith Banshee 20 skeleton warriors 10 skeleton warriors 20 skeleton archers 2 Morghast Archai 2 Morghast Harbinger
The mission was 3 places of power. 3 objectives on the center line, only heroes can claim them and accumulate points for every turn they are within 3" of an objective. (1 point the first turn, 2 points the second turn they claim it, and so on)
I knew I'd be going second as I had way more units than him. I refused my left flank, having only 1 great eagle there and put everything on the right flank and the bolt throwers in the center for maximum field of fire. opposing my empty flank were 2 morghast, 20 archers, 10 skeleton warriors. His center was the banshee, wraith and 2 morghast and his right flank contained 20 warriors and the zombie dragon.
I decided right away I wanted to take down the dragon and see if I could.
T1 He elected to go first, and he cast mystical shield on his vampire, raising the save to 2+. Then he moved forward to claim the objective on my right flank and followed the dragon with the skeletons. The rest of his army moved forward.
My turn, after my mage failed to cast a spell, I moved my great eagles towards the wraith to see if I can do some damage there. I moved my SH, WL, SM and spearmen towards the dragon as far as possible. My General was deployed in the center of the board and sprinted towards the flank. I had a 50-50 shot at a double turn, and if the dragon charged he'd be away from the objective and leave the skeletons behind so that was fine too. Shooting was disappointing, both RBT's fired at the dragon, 2 single bolts missing and the 12-bolt volley unable to get through his save with only a -1 rend.
Now everything charges. The SH and WL make is, the Swordmasters fail their charge and are just outside my generals reckless range, and the spearmen make is but only a few can get in striking range. The great eagles in the center both charge the wraith, but 1 fails his charge range of 5" by rolling a double 1. (I bloody hate random charge ranges. Always have)
In combat the silver helms and WL do a total of 3 wounds on the dragon and manage to knock a wound of the skeletons I clipped, taking them to 19 models and thus negating the '+1 attack if 20 or more models' special rule. The dragon in turn only causes a single wound on the SH. And so the stalemate begins.
The lone great eagle does nothing against the wraith, suffers 2 wounds in return and uses it's special rule to leave combat and fly away.
T2: Turn roll-off: I won! So a double turn it is. But that's the last exiting thing to happen really. The following turns consist of me slowly beating up the dragon while losing half the SH and the unit of WL in return. My mage accomplishing his one good act of the battle, which is stopping the vampire-lords mystical shield in turn 3, the morghast and archers killing my eagles while my bolt throwers take down 1 of the morghast.
At the end of turn 4 I have slain the dragon but I'm 12 points behind on the mission (I wasn't going for the mission anyway, but still).
__________ A fun game, but if I'm going to give my opponent some opposition I need to start looking at some things with rend -2 or something. Shooting is supposed to be very effective (according to my opponent) but I didn't see it. Next time I'll bring Tyrion along, his -3 rend attacks should make short work of some of the harder enemies so my infantry and cavalry can take out the soft targets. I can also use an extra hero for some added fighting power.
I'm still struggling with the combat system of 'I strike - U strike'. I think the best way to use it is to engage 1 target with as many models as possible, but then those models should not be big units as they won't get into striking range. Trying to wrap a dragon in 50 HE was not a great idea.
I'll give AoS another try at least. It is nothing like WH of course, and that saddens me, but it is a fun game in itself. It is a shame that the HE are no longer a proper faction. My army consisted of ORDER alliance, because my units came from 5 suballiances (eldritch counsel, Highborn, Lion Rangers, Swifthawk agents and Order draconis) and my generals own ability could only target order draconis units. There is no synergy in the army in that regard, which is a shame.
_________________ Tyrion Reaper in a topic about murder wrote: I would therefore be very careful of ever annoying Caladaidoomblade as he has thought this out and you might go missing without a trace
Hell is other people - Sartre
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