Okay folks- this is actually the second time writing this, since I made a rookie batrep-writing mistake the first time and lost it all on an unexpected reboot. Add to that the fact that pictures didn't turn out well (and I didn't get very many) and I'm afraid this batrep will fall a little short of the dubious standard I strive for here at Relentless HQ.

Excuses all laid out, today's matchup was against Brandon- real nice guy who played me in my third game of 7th edition (and wrecked me with Cloying Quagmire and a Hellcannon). We hadn't played since then, and he's now prepping a Lizardman army for a local 8th edition tournament this weekend.

Here's what his list looked like (with extra items that were so popular in Relentless 8.3):

Slann, BSB, Cupped Hands, Standard of Discipline, Loremaster (Death), Ethereal(ish), Free power die, 2+ ward from shooting, devilish purple twinkle in his eye
Skink priest, level 2 (rolled thunderbolt and comet), Engine of the Gods, Cube of "Oh wait, Dwarves? Awww...."
2 x 30 Saurus, standard, musician, 5 years of 7th edition dust
6 Kroxigor, black belts in Rex Kwon Do
Baby steg, giant bow, playful disposition
4 Terradons, organ gun hunting permits
2 x 1 Salamander, irritable bowel syndrome

I took the modified version of my list, which you can see here.

We elected to run the Battleline scenario rather than roll it (though I remain a proponent of using the scenarios, if nothing else than for the depth it adds to list building).

After scanning his army, I came to the impossible-to-understand-now conclusion that I needed to get into combat quickly. Some of the problem is that I don't have much shooting, and so tend to always think I'm outgunned at range. More of it was a sort of tactical brain freeze that happens with new armies (and a lot with eighth edition, where I feel like I really am not sure where the threats are/how to deal with them). Anyhow, as you'll see, I fell into my old days of "Ahhh, Strollaz, gotta use it, send it all forward, whoops!" mindset.

On the plus side, I did manage to separate my warmachines to keep them from all getting wrecked in a single purple sun, or by one unit breaking through. I didn't see a whole lot of opportunity for the dragonslayer, so he stayed back to counter charge/delay anything (read:Terradons) that tried to come over the top. I had some other vague tricks in mind that I've wanted to try with the Dwarf lord that I won't get into here. Suffice to say, planning was in appallingly short supply on my part.

Not only did I deploy on the 12" line, but I sent it all forward with Strollaz. The terradons used their scout move to set up outside organ gun range, but ready to hop over my inexplicably advancing battle line and start acting like a bunch of hooligans.

Here's what the board looked like before we rolled for first turn:

If you can't see the tactical brilliance in this pic, don't worry. It's blurry.

Turn 1

The gods of (mis)fortune either thought I needed help or wanted to get a chuckle out of watching me get even deeper in to the headlong charge against a combat Lizard army, so I won first turn despite not having the +1. Not having lost a single model in the game yet, I decided to stick with a winning strategy and pushed everything forward again. The only shooting available was limited to my cannon and grudgethrower.

Dimly recalling a brutal death at the hands of the last Death magic caster he'd faced, my dwarf lord directed the cannon to open fire at the floating frog. My BSB helpfully pointed out that the Slann had a 2+ ward vs. shooting and it was really unlikely that the Slann would go down. "Never tell me the odds!", roared the general and he piloted his ship through an asteroid field. Errr... maybe not.

The cannon fired, and plinked the Slann right between the eyes and dropped him dead. The bounce failed to wound the skink priest and took a couple of wounds off the engine steg. I asked Brandon if he'd rather restart, but he elected to keep going, as it was bound to happen at some point. The grudgethrower sailed 10" over to just barely clip the other steg, though it only crushed one crew member.

I sheepishly handed the turn over to Brandon.

The lizards pushed forward across the line, and the terradons hopped over the slayers, killing 3 with dropped rocks. The skink priest started trying to cast, but with no Slann to worry about, I was able to shut him down fairly easily. The Engine also activated its 5+ ward shield, covering everything except for the terradons. In the shooting phase a couple warriors burned up courtesy of a salamander spray, and the organ gun took a wound from poisoned javelins.

Turn 2

The error of my ways finally dawned on me as I realized that even with the Slann gone, I wasn't liking most of the matchups left on the table. At least I knew how to deal with the Terradons. In charged the dragonslayer, who was poisoned to death on the stand and shoot. Ahem.

I otherwise shuffled to delay contact by a turn, moving my leftmost warriors into a position where they couldn't be seen by the closest stack of 30 saurus. The gyro positioned to blast some saurus off before they made it in. I pushed the runesmith's warriors up on the right (forgetting to bail the runesmith out first). My thought process was that they couldn't avoid a Kroxigor charge next turn, so I would set a position where the Krox would have to charge warriors and get slayers in the flank for their troubles.

Forgetting about the engine's active ward, I let loose with the gyro, but failed to inflict any casualties thanks to armor and wards. Annoyed at my error, I lobbed a rock into the engine and finished it off, wounding the skink priest to boot. The cannon blasted into the kroxigor but rolled a one to wound the first krox, stopping dead there. The organ gun had to resort to blasting terradons at point blank after the dragonslayer's failure. Two hits was re-rolled into 10 and all 4 dropped.

With no combat, this is what things looked like:

Who let me get this close to the lizardmen?!

In the lizard turn, the precarious position of the runemsmith's warriors was worsened when the baby steg charged in along side the kroxigor. So, that'll be what? 18 Strength 6 attacks, 2D6+1 hits and 3 more attacks at Strength 5, 3 Strength 4 hits, and some skink attacks for good measure? I'm sure that'll be fine.

Elsewhere, the two saurus blocks jockeyed for position with my hammerers, longbeards, and warriors. The salamanders failed to cause any damage on my small slayer formation, either overshooting or eating skinks. My slayers were duly confused, used to dying to shooting and magic. What was wrong here?

In combat, I got off lucky and only lost 12 warriors from a huge amount of damage. Unfortunately, I failed to drop a krox (which was kind of a statistical longshot- who knew Krox had a 4+ save?) and so wasn't steadfast. Snake eyes failed to materialize and both the steg and krox blew through with big overruns. Combined with their charge moves, this put both behind my lines and out of sight of any counter charges. My artillery crew tried to convince me that as glorified wound markers, they didn't really need to be there, and could they maybe just go home now? I ignored them.

Oh noes, my backfield!

Turn 3

My rangers, having failed to march block the cold blooded saurus decided to chase off the skink priest, who promptly fled. My slayers charged each salamander with a redirect, but they fled out of reach. I set up the middle to take a charge on my left warriors with the saurus, hopefully hold, and then send in the lord and longbeards. Hammerers set up to delay the other block until I could deal with the first. My shooting needed to come up ridiculously big to drop the steg and kroxigor. The grudgethrower could only see the krox, so crushed one. The organ gun added enough wounds to drop a second, which would force a panic check. Hoping to see that failed (it wasn't), I fired the cannon into the steg, but failed wound... The gyro continued a lackluster performance and dropped one or two saurus.

The lizards charged away- saurus into warriors, steg into cannon and krox into organ gun. The skink priest was conveniently blocking the saurus charging into my hammerers, buying them another turn of dramatic posturing. The magic phase turned ominous, as without a runesmith, a comet started rumbling to earth... right in the middle of my last combat ready blocks. The saurus rolled hot, and put the warriors on a scary 6 to hold, but I made it on the BSB re-roll. Both artillery pieces were trashed, and the lizards reformed to threaten the main line. The steg also kept an eye on the grudgethrower to keep that charge option available.

Wait, didn't I win this thing in Turn 1? What the hell?!

Turn 4

I charged the skink priest who fled through the saurus, and redirected into the big stack of saurus. I would have let them come to me (and force the skink to charge something to get out of the way) but wanted to get away from the looming comet. In went longbeards with BSB and general in tow. The rangers tramped over to head for the flank of the saurus fighting the hammerers. The grudgethrower failed to save itself and missed the steg by a fraction of an inch. Combat went well enough- hammerers took a lot of casualties, but hit very hard in return, while I broke the saurus on the left. Unfortunately, I could only pursue with the warriors, as I couldn't really afford to pull my lord's unit out of the line. I failed to catch them which was going to cause something of a problem. There was still about half the unit left. Still, the warriors would probably be ok, so long as they didn't have a massive chunk of space rock land on top of them.

For the lizardmen, the steg rumbled over and kicked over the grudgethrower, and the krox killed 9 slayers for no return losses. Oh, and the comet came down, killing half my warriors, a rank of longbeards and (luckily) just a few hammerers. The krox reformed to set up a charge in the hammerer flank.

Turn 5

Decision time... My lord could head after the steg, but it would take the longbeards out of the fight. On the other hand, I didn't really see a good way for him to get any points back otherwise, and the alternative was to get combo charged later by the krox and steg. So he led his longbeards into the backfield after the steg. On the right, my hammerers were going to need to chase off the saurus this turn to avoid krox in the flank. The rangers were coming to the rescue, but apparently were to busy patting themselves on the back for being so much better in this edition and failed to make the 8" charge into the saurus flank. On the left, with massive casualties from the combat, I didn't like the warrior/saurus matchup, so the gyro took another turn to spray them down with the gentle rain, killing one or two.

In close combat, I left the steg on a single wound, and did some more damage to the saurus, but without the rangers' help, lost combat and all but 7 hammerers.

The lizards used their turn to charge my warriors and hammerers. The hammerers were killed to a man, but the warriors managed to hold despite my lord and BSB haring off to who-knows-where, taking their leadership and re-roll with them. On the plus side, I did mange to take the steg's last wound, though the longbeards were down to about 8.

Turn 6

I took the opportunity to remember the advice I've been giving on the gyro and used it to flank charge the saurus fighting my warriors. The rangers realized they'd been too slow and tried to back up (not sure why I didn't swift reform to get further away) from the large saurus unit. The warriors and their thane rolled a ridiculous number of wounds, which was fair because I hadn't had anything but bad luck this game (hah!), and with the help of the gyro, I broke the other saurus block and ran them off the table. All that was left was to see if the lizards could pick up any last VPs...

Which they did when the rangers fled 2" from a charge and were wiped out.

Note: We actually played a 7th turn, though this didn't end up changing anything significantly...

So there it was, and after a count, I'd still hung on to a victory- for about 400 points.

Dwarf Victory (but it didn't feel like it)

Post game thoughts to follow. Thanks for reading...