Troll Brains

I managed to escape the house on this holiday weekend for an afternoon of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar for a rematch between my greenskins and a local Skaven army at Hobbytown USA.  Having been totally unprepared for the thumping I took last week, this time around we worked out a comp system using some simple math so our forces would be more evenly matched.  I opted to drop my mob of savage orcs after their dismal performance last week, and instead brought along my savage orc boar boyz and a giant (represented by the Warhammer Forge giant troll hag).

The Skaven changed up their army comp as well, but overall looked much smaller than my force.  In part this was because they keep tunneling up behind my army or sneaking around my flanks, but the numbers just didn't seem right.  In any case, the Skaven general received +1 Wounds for his victory last week, and we pressed on with a straight up battle down the length of the table. 

The multi-colored horde of greenskins and monstrous creatures skitters, hoofs, and lumbers toward the Skaven lines, while the rock lobber and doom diver whittle down the ratmen's numers.

 The battle was fairly straight forward, with my artillery whittling down the big units of Stormvermin and my other units mopping up the leftovers.  The goblins managed to get slaughtered by Stormvermin in short order, but otherwise the battle was a one-sided affair.  The Skaven made the best of a bad situation and strove to assassinate what little they could, but once the trolls got into the mix it was lights out.

The lone Skaven survivors stare down an impenetrable wall of regenerating flesh.  Mama troll and her boys took no prisoners.

 

 

Afterward my triumph soon turned to agony as I realized I had done the math wrong on several of my units, thereby giving me a huge advantage over the Skaven.  No wonder it seemed like such a cake-walk!  Not only did I bring more trolls to this fight, but I had a severe case of "troll brains" when I made my list.  My opponent was a great sport about it, and since the AoS games play so quickly, we had enough time to adjust our lists and play another round.

So, in Game 2 (sorry no pics) I dropped all my savage orcs and the Skaven added a plague catapult.  This time we played for objectives, with the goal being to protect the objective in your deployment zone while trying to capture your opponent's objective in his deployment zone.  This was a very bloody affair, with gutter runners and plague monks infiltrating behind my lines in a brave attempt to snatch the quick win, while my giant and trolls ran as fast as they could to the other side of the table to capture the Skaven objective.  Ultimately, the forest goblins were able to hold onto my objective (just barely) and my trolls and giants were punished with artillery fire and magic until they were crushed into little pieces by the Screaming Bell.  By Turn 5 neither army had any forces left to try to capture an objective, and we had to call it a draw.  A bloody, bloody, draw! 

The only other point of interest (for me at least) was my gobbo shaman who climbed atop the Magewrath Throne and, after failing to cast ANYTHING for 4 turns, managed in the 5th to use the throne's power to kill off the gutter runners in my backfield and use an arcane bolt to kill the Skaven warlord.  I guess he just needed some time to warm up!

Bottom line: AoS plays so fast I can use almost all my models from an old 2,500 8th Ed WFB game and still finish a game in half the time.  If my troll brain math is correct, that means I can play twice as much Warhammer as before for the same amount of time!