Well got them old bones on the table for the first time on Sunday. Quite a learning experience, first time I have played warhammer for 20 odd years.
The game started with the dwarfs firing there canons at my corpse cart seemingly it is a bit of a bane. Well initially it looked like a lift off until the ward save was remembered and it trundled on. The undead rushed (shambled) to shut the range down and get into striking business. In his attempts to raise recruits the necromancer managed to destroy 4 Skeltons on his first spell and rendered himself useless on the second.
The master plan to flank his main force with my best unit was coming a cropper. The dwarfs were smashing unit after unit, I was discovering that crumble doesn't just apply to rhubarb.
Eventually my vampire Lady (Lord) made it into combat with the grave guard in tow. The dwarfs were 5 wide and 7 or 8 deep. The rune master challenged her to combat, 5 attacks, high initiative and good strength I thought it was a sure thing. It turned out quite the opposite, armour save of 2+ made it hard to wound and crap dice didn't help. In the first round of combat I thought I had lost as his extra ranks told. Crumble began shredding the ranks all looked lost.
His big bad ass dwarven unit was taking apart my last unit of skeletons, just the corpse cart, grave guard and a unit of wolves left it looked bad.
The corpse cart rolled into the back of the dwarfs fighting the grave guard and although my vampire kept whacking the dwarven hero's shield the killing blow from the grave guard began to take hold as they chewed through the remaining dwarves. A massive round for me and it was all over as the dwarves collapsed in bloody ruin.
Things were looking good unfortunately time had run out. It came down to how many units you had killed and I had lost. Abother turn or two and I think it would have been a wee bit different. But I will take a first game close lose it was interesting.
Thoughts on the rules. Warhammer is a skirmish game turned into a big battle game. The core rules a clunky but simple but constant referral to check what everything does is a faff. The magic has been reworked many times and I did not hold out much hope but I was pleasantly surprised it felt and acted like big game magic.
The added rules for everything is irritating why you need to check if he has his finger up his arse rule all the time makes the game horrifically slow. I am interested to see how warmaster plays I do like big battle rules.
