This game is a rematch of my previously reported loss to a Tomb King army. 8th edition says great weapon to the face, Mr. Tomb King.

My list:

Lord - Shieldbearers, Cleaving, Might, Swiftness, Preservation, Resistance, Furnace
I thought vs TK I'd have higher Initiative and be able to do some rerolls. Might for taking on the Tomb King himself. Preservation for helping out vs Tomb Guard/Tomb King's killing blow.

Runesmith - 2x Spellbreaking, GW
Vs a more magic heavy army I might take another RS at this point level with Balance. Actually, at 2500 pts I'd probably try to fit in an anvil in a more competitive environment.

Thane - BSB, Preservation, Resistance, MRoGromril
Stuck in with Hammerers. Didn't have any attacks directed at him. Lord and champ protected him from challenges. Stubborn to keep him from running.

Dragon Slayer
I've never used one and wanted to see what it could do guarding warmachines from his bone giant and scorpion.

14 Quarrellers - GW, Musician, Champ
14 Quarrellers - GW, Musician, Champ
Posted up on the flanks for counter charges and diversion. I wasn't going to be too worried if I lost these guys as I figured they would easily kill their points back. GWs on these units are GREAT!

25 Warriors - GW, FC
25 Warriors - GW, FC
Protected from shooting from Hammerers banner MRoGrungni. Also, I heart great weapons. What a difference from 7th edition.

29 Hammerers - FC, MRoGrungni
Old faithful. Lord and BSB go here. I should have run them 6 wide for more attacks.

GT - Engineer, Accuracy, Burning
Cannon - Engineer, Forging, Burning
Cannon - Engineer, Forging
Organ Gun

So, most of my models aren't painted. Sorry. Real life and work make it hard enough to get a few games in...Here is how we deployed.

From left to right:
Quarrellers, Cannon, Warriors, GT, Hammerers, Cannon, Warriors, Organ Gun, Quarrellers...Runesmith and Dragon Slayer in the back.

His deployment looked like this-

Bone Giant, archers, screaming skull catapult, "undead" dwarf warrior "skeletons", Tomb Guard, Light Cav, Ushabti...and scorpion token about 8-10 inches to the left of my battle line.

Another guy set up the terrain on the table. We rolled for the random terrain and got a poison forest in his corner. The MONSTER forest in the middle was a blood forest. We won't be playing with forests that big from now on. (From memory) this forest does d6 str4 hits to any unit inside of it when a spell is cast on a unit inside of it, or when a model inside casts a spell. Also, it moves 2d6 in a random direction each time this happens. What a mess. We forgot the movement part of it for the first few spells. You can see in my deployment picture that I'm not that far away from it. Not realizing before the game that it moved, my plan was to park my units right in front of it and have him keep blowing up every time he cast smiting or heal spells on himself. The plan worked until we realized it should be moving...of course it kept moving right on top of the battle lines. One turn it killed 3 skeletons, 1 ushabti, 3 bowman, 2 dwarf warriors, and 3 hammerers.

Turn 1

He advances everything. The light cav used vanguard and then normal move and are a few inches in front of my quarrellers on the right. His Ushabti take one wound from the poison forest they are deployed in. During the magic phase he rolled 4 + 4 for power dice...leaving me with 4+1 dispel dice. I dispelled an attempt to magic move his Ushabti. He moves his giant and allows his SS catapult to shoot. I failed to dispel it because I forgot we get +2 to each dispel attempt. DOH! It scatters off my GT and hits nothing, so no worries there. In the shooting phase the catapult scatters off the GT again but kills 2 warriors. They FAIL the panic check! Fortunately, the BSB is close enough and they reroll and hold. That could have been bad.

I advance my infantry. I could have charged the light cav, but I didn't want the warriors out there on their own and that much closer to his Ushabti. Plus, I wasn't scared of a flank charge or them taking out my Quarrellers.

Here is where we got confused on the true line of sight. Sticking our head down on the table, my organ gun could clearly "see" his Ushabti over the hill and through the skeleton cav. I told him I didn't think it should work like that...my army would be SUPER powerful if it can almost always see it's target. He thought I should be able to see them...soooo my organ gun blew up an ushabti on 4 hits. By looking at the picture can anyone figure out how we should have played that situation?

Xbows do one wound to Ushabti. The right cannon blows up screaming skull catapult with some good artillery dicing. The other cannon smacks the giant in the face after rerolling a misfire, but fails to wound on an "anything but a...." ONE. Awesome. The GT blows up 5 tomb guard. Other xbow unit knock a wound off the giant with some decent shooting at long range.

A good round of shooting. 2 ranks from the xbows is nice. I like the unit size of 14. Maximize shooting and still have some good attacks coming back in close combat.

Turn 2
Sorry, forgot to take a pic.

Scorpion fails to pop. He moves his units up closer. In the magic phase he successfully case the move spell on the giant. I didn't try to dispel because I was saving my dice for preventing him from raising Ushabti. Unfortunately he then declared a charge on my xbows with the giant. I didn't think anything of it since he was 16" away. The giant has a move of 5, so he needed to roll an 11 on 2d6. He rolls and a 5 and 6 show up...grrrrreat! No worries, I'll just shoot him up on the charge. He was at long range, and on the charge, so I needed 6s to hit. On a stand and shoot reaction do I determine the range from where he starts, or do I wait until he is out of long range to shoot? I fail to wound and the giant comes charging in...I knew that wouldn't be pretty. Fortunately I had moved my Dragon Slayer over that way so I wasn't too worried.

I dispel a couple of attempts to raise some Ushabti. He raised 4 tomb guard. He casts a bound spell fireball at my GT but it fails to wound. The blood forest ended up killing 4-5 skeletons in the magic phase (we forgot to move it randomly though).

Archers kill 1 warrior from 20 some shots...not too bad.

The giant does 4 wounds to the xbows and takes 3! back. Great weapons and a couple supporting attacks are awesome. He gets the stomp attacks or whatever after the combat and kills 3 more xbows. I lose combat and run off the board. His giants goes off the board after them.

Dwarf 2-

I don't move anything. Shooting does a good job again. The organ gun hits the Ushabti 10 times and does 8 wounds. Xbows take another 2 wounds off them. I think it is one lone guy sitting out there now with a wound left. One cannon kills 5 tomb guard. The other cannon kills 4 archers for lack of a better target. The GT whiffs even on the reroll on the tomb guard.

After the second turn the field looks like this:

Turn 3

The Scorpion pops and the giant comes back on the table. Ushabti fails to charge the warrior unit and only goes 3 inches forward. The light cav charges the quarrellers. Tomb guard charge the hammerers. Skeletons fail a charge on the warrior unit.

He rolls 5+3 for PD giving me 6 dispel dice. Here is where we figured out the forest should have been moving after a spell is cast. This is the phase where it kills the remaining ushabti, 3 skeletons, 3 bowman and a handful of dwarfs. He casts extra shooting on the archers and the forest kills 4 more skeletons. On 16 shots he manages to put a wound on my dragon slayer. I fail to dispel his raise on the tomb guard and he brings 3 back. Unfortunately, the forest then kills 4 dwarf warriors, 2 skeletons, a tomb guard, and a hammerer.

His light cav kills 3 xbows but gets butchered by their great weapons. I should have overrun to put me in a better position to try and support something, but I forgot.

In combat he challenges with his Tomb King. I had considered accepting with my champion so my lord could kill some RnF for combat res, but he was decently tooled to fight the King and it seemed like the "fluffy" thing to do. In goes the Lord vs TK. The only thing I was worried about with the lord was the Tomb King had a weapon that does 2 auto hits at str 7. I was immune to the killing blow. My Lord takes a wound, but does two wounds back rerolling hits due to higher initiative, ASF, and hitting at strength 10 due to RoMight. The tomb guard kill 2 hammerers...which return the favor by killing 7 tomb guard. Step up, smack smack.

My hammerers win by a ton and 8 more TG crumble.

In the other combat his skeletons kill 2 dwarfs and take 6 wounds in return. Again, if you don't believe in supporting attacks + great weapons you should. I win by 4 and that many skeletons crumble.

At this point the field looks like this:

He is about to take 25 warriors into the flank of his TG unit. They will probably overrun into his skeletons which are getting massacred anyway. The only hope he has is to get his scorpion and giant into my war machines and do a bit of damager. My runesmith and dragon slayer are back there for a bit of support, and I could still get a few shots off at the monsters.

He concedes the match so we can go next door to the bar and eat wings and drink some beer.

delicious

Thoughts

I don't think I'll be taking anything with str3. Ironbreakers have always seemed worthless to me...I don't think I'll be using any. GWs on Quarrellers is going to be a standard for me I think. Sure, you might still lose combat and run, but at least now you can kill a few on your way out. Plus you'll be able to support a flank effectively.

Active combat res is a fun thing. I don't feel like we will need to worry about regular warrior units breaking so much now that they won't be losing combat every round by 4+. Getting to hit back with more attacks than just your champion is nice.

Rerolls with the BSB will be very important.

Obviously, I'm a huge fan of great weapons. I really enjoyed playing this list too. I feel like it was pretty balanced and could be used against quite a few enemies. Against magic heavy armies it would need to be adjusted though.

Forging on cannons and Accuracy + Penetration on GT will still be standard on my warmachines. I may swap out a cannon for 2 GTs sometimes though.

I don't like the random terrain. I also don't like all the scenarios...I'm a fan of pitched battles. Maybe it'll just take some time to get used to them. Who knows. To each their own, though.

I'm undecided what runic banner combos will be important. The nerf to fear was great against this army. Obviously we all need to see a lot more games to determine what will be our next set of "golden rules". Hopefully this report can give us some insight and ideas. Please feel free to point out rules or army composition errors. We kind of did this game on the fly so there might be a few.

Sorry it didn't last longer...a good win though. =)

I should be playing ogres on Sunday...maybe I can get another report posted. Thanks!