The End of a Dark Campaign

OR

The Battle of the Brownies

So this week was the end of our initial Age of Sigmar group’ three week path to glory campaign. Hosted by Tabletop Games and Hobby in Overland Park and organized by the great Andrew Hooper, it was a great time and I ended it by bringing brownies and having a great battle. More on that in a minute, I want to mention that Andrew Hooper set up a facebook for the group called MoKan Age of Sigmar League where players have been setting up games, posting hobby progress, and growing community in general. If you live in the Kansas City area and you’d like to come participate in the bloodbath, look us up on Facebook.

Like I said, this week was the last of the three week campaign. We ended it with thousand point armies and it ended for me at least with an amazing, massive, four player battle.

It began with me seeking vengeance against Walter for my last two losses against him, but Manny and Brent needed partners as well. We were about to all divide up 1 on 1, but then we decided to do a four player battle plan called Fog of War, which you can find in the General’s Handbook. I bought a General’s Handbook at this last club night and if you do not have one yet and you play AOS, you need to get one. Maybe hold off until this summer, since they’re supposed to be coming out with a new one then, but it is a super helpful tool.

So Manny, Walter, Brent and I grabbed our armies and got ready to set up on a really nicely decorated forest table. I believe 90% if not all the terrain was provided by Tabletop, so thanks guys. 20 points to house Toebias.

The battle plan Fog of War is set up like this; The battlefield is chopped up into six 2x2 foot territories. The four players roll die and the highest roll deploys their whole army first. The three losers roll again and the winner of that group deploys next, and so on until everyone is deployed. However, no armies are allowed to be deployed within 6 inches of another. Points were generated by holding the place of power in the center of the board (1pt), slaying an enemy hero (1pt), slaying the enemy general or warlord (3pts, 5pts) and killing the most enemy units in one turn (2pts).

The set up is done so that no one knows who their ally is in this four player battle plan until after you have deployed. Once all four armies are deployed then each player rolls a die and the two highest rolls make up one team, the two lowest make up the other. I set my stormcast army up as close to walter’s Ironjawz as possible, thinking if we were enemies I would take him out as soon as possible, if we were allies we would be close enough to operate with as much deadly efficiency as possible. After deployment and alignment rolls were completed, the board looked something like this:

That is Manny the Warlord in the pic. He deployed first with his stormcast in the top right corner. Walter deployed his Ironjaw boys in the center left square, covering a place of power that generated points for those who held it the longest. I deployed next to him with my stormcast and Brent deployed his lizardmen last directly opposite me. Here’s the lists, I think they are accurate…:

Lists

Army 1

Manny-Stormcast Faithful

Warlord-Celestant Prime

10 Liberators with hammer and shield

5 Liberators with dual swords

Lord Relictor

3 Prosecutors

5 Judicators with crossbows

Brent-Seraphon

General-Saurus Eternity Warden

40 Saurus warriors

10 more Suarus warriors

2 Salamanders

3 Skink Handlers

Saurus Oldblood on Carnosaur

Army 2

Walter-Ironjawz

Warlord-Megaboss on Maw-Krusha

5 Orruk brutes

Orruk Weirdnob Shaman

10 Orruk Ardboys

Me-Stormcast Heretics

General-Lord Celestant

Lord Celestant on Dracoth

Lord Relictor

10 Liberators with hammer and shield

3 Prosecutors

5 Retributors

Once the armies were deployed we all rolled to see who our enemies were, and more importantly, who were our allies? It ended up being Manny and Brent VS. Walter and I. Manny was chosen as the opposing warlord, his Celestant Prime the representative figure, while Walter was chosen to be our warlord with his Mega-Boss on Maw Krusha being the representative figure. Needless to say this was quite a twist in the plots for Walter and I, but we decided we’d kill each other on later date and turned (for the moment) against the looming alliance of Seraphon and Stormcast.

The lines were drawn and the warlords rolled off. Walter won the initiative and we charged in, his maw krusha dealing some heavy damage to Brent’s saurus. (in the future I’ll try to take more turn by turn pictures. Hailey usually does that but she was feeling sick that evening so she was not there the whole time). By turn two Brent’s saurus boys were quite diminished.

I did some damage with my stormcast, but not a heck of a lot. Several errors were made by the Josh this round, including forgetting to deal two wounds whenever my retributors got attacks off...the game would have ended much sooner if I had. I guess that will be my excuse. I wanted to drag out the fun.

*crickets*

Unfortunately for Manny and Brent, Manny was too far away to help out much in the first couple of rounds, and so Walter and I did a bit of pounding on the lizardmen, though they gave back as good as they got. Round 1 and 2 were comprised of crumping, lightning striking twice, and John Hammond’s life work wielding swords and some magic to boot. Meanwhile, Manny crept closer and closer with his storm boys until we get to round 3.

With Brent’s Jurassic Aztecs down to a manageable size, Walter left me to clean up the park with Chris Pratt while he went and dealt with the looming threat of a turn three Celestant Prime and an army of shiny, emotionless, sigmarines. Due to my silly mistake and not knowing my army (Bad general! Bad!) it took longer to clean up Brent’s army than we had suspected, and let’s be honest, Brent is a seasoned General. He did not go down without a fight, though his dice did hate him. I will be honest about that.

By the start of the final round (5) Brent was finally out and having a good chat with a neighboring gamer about 40k. Meanwhile, my dwarf-movement-range-level stormcast were slowly dragging their battered bodies up to midfield to help Walter as best I could before he lost his Maw-Krusha to Manny’s Sole Survivor navy seal-I mean Judicator. He survived, but I think the Celestant Prime nuked him right after. The battle had degraded into multiple chaotic scraps and skirmishes and I loved it. One of the highlights was when Walter got his Foot of Gork spell off. Not much better than a giant greet foot descending from the sky to stop on your enemies units, though the air was permeated with sticky feet smell for a while afterward.

Round 5 ended with the Ironjawz/Stormcast Heretics: 23, the Serphon/Stormcast Faithful: 19.

It was a great game! I loved every minute of it. Again, thanks to Walter and Brent for helping me with some rules and being patient with my noobiness. Manny had some gorgeous minis that gave me some ideas on how to paint my next batch. I’m hoping he opens a store someday called “Manny’s Minis” and if he does, I’m expecting naming royalties and discount prices.

Andrew held The End of the Dark Campaign drawing and Tabletop gave away some nice stormcast themed dice and AOS range finders in a randomized drawing. All in all it was a great time.

We’ll be continuing to meet up on wednesday nights and planning stuff on Facebook.

Thanks to Andrew Hooper for organizing and teaching me the rules. Tabletop for hosting. Walter for the good fights. Andrew for the bloody encounter with some really cool chaos dwarves (love those guys!) then Manny and Brent for the massive game. Loved every minute of it.

Again, if you’re in the Kansas City area, come on out on wednesday or saturday afternoons. I’ll always be there on wednesday (6-10pm) and saturdays are always jam packed with fellow hobbyists having a great time. Until then, keep on rollin’ baby!