In the last few days, it’s been very Old World-y around here. The reason of course is The Ides of Marc, an Old World event that my group of friends (including the Regular Opponents) arranged at the start of the year. You’ve seen a few updates on the journey since the start of the year but now it was time for the main event. The good news was that I was able to pack the whole week before the game day full of stuff to do, enough that I didn’t have a chance to write about any of it. So here we go, one big post full of Warhammer The Old World updates.
First up last weekend – I played a game of Old World against The Creative Regular opponent, effectively part 2 of the campaign against the Goblin Menace. Seeing as the last time I played away (requiring the drive up north), this time it was a home game, both because my opponent was aware of my long drive but also probably because he wanted to visit a certain Leeds based wargames shop. And visit he did, as during my time preparing and cooking up pizza, he proceeded to assemble a whole additional hero for his force.
Speaking of forces, this list I decided to do a few tweaks that I had previously mentioned in the last post. Chosen Knights and Warriors had lost their plate armour and the Demon Prince lost his magic items, but both groups of Warriors had full command. This gave me a solid core of infantry, with heavy cavalry, hero and dragon on the flanks for mobility.
As for the game – well it went a little better than the first attempt at the Goblins but not by much. I ended up giving up too much ground at the start, mostly due to the advancing goblins and piles of fanatics. This allowed those giant units of Goblin Bowmen to set up and secure the bulk of the board. However, there were still some good points – having the command groups in both units gave them a lot more staying power, as well as the champion being able to slap back in a fight. The Dragon and Demon Prince caused a chunk of damage (even if the Dragon then blew up) and the Chosen Knights… ended up clearing off one flanking unit before ending up out of position.
Of course, the fact that the Demon Prince was taken out by a direct Goblin Doom Diver hit should tell you that the dice were not on my side during that game. But, more importantly, I had a fun time rolling dice on my dining room table, and it gave me a good warm-up for the wargaming that was to come.
So then there was a week to get ready before the big day. My original plan was to get as much painted up to a finished standard as possible, thinking that I’d be able to clear the foot troops but leave both the characters and cavalry unpainted. However, something started gnawing at me after the last few games – the Chosen Chaos Knights have great potential (and have absolutely slammed anything they hit) but in the last few games they have found themselves stuck on the flank, dragged away by various flank units.
So, there was a bit of a list jiggle. Both sets of Warriors with Shield gained an additional hand weapon (letting me choose between protection and attacks), the Chosen Warriors were downgraded and changed to regular Warriors (as well as getting a shield for additional protection) and the Demon Prince gained a Biting Blade to up his AP (and add armour bane). The Knights were dropped entirely and replaced with Forsaken.
What, you ask, are Forsaken? Well, they are a core infantry choice with no upgrades (other than picking a special rule) that give you a rapid-moving unit with a pile of special rules – random attacks, a randomised bonus (such as additional AP or poison or killing blow) and a set of abilities that help to make them some close combat monsters. They don’t feel overpowered (as they really need to get the charge to make sure they don’t get overwhelmed) but an 11″ charge (with Forsaken by Slaanesh giving them Swiftstride adding another 3″) can make them almost cavalry levels of threat. For me though, it also allowed me to use another set of figures I already owned – the Myrmidesh Painbringers from the Hedonites range in Age of Sigmar are a beautiful set of models, giving a very different look to the regular warriors (and much closer to the Sigvald model I use as my Demon Prince). The benefit of using them for Forsaken is that there are no weapon options, letting you pull from both the sword and board for the Painbringers and the wide variety of weapons for the Twinsouls that come in the same set. I had five of them to begin with before adding two more bases from the Hedonites Underworld set (sadly the Beastman is too large for the 30mm bases). To bring them up to the 10 models I had on my list, I had to very quick run around the wargames shops of Leeds to find an additional box, finally getting them from literally the front door of the Travelling Man warehouse. I then got to have a fun evening building them up before they joined the pile of paintings.
Now, as I said above, my original plan was to get all the infantry fully painted and leaving everything else unpainted. However, part way through my painting day, I realised that I really didn’t want to spend my time doing all the chaos trim that the models have. Instead, I shifted to a different goal – every model would have the big areas painted. On the plus side, this means the force would look better overall, and much more cohesive on the tabletop even if not perfect. On the downside, this meant putting paint on the Keeper of Secrets. So, at roughly 3am, I started painting up probably the most expensive model in my collection to at least get the basic colours. I went for various purple tones but also went with black “armour” to keep the colour scheme consistent. There was also a pile of gold touches to make her stand out. I also updated the Demon Prince to continue the Black and Gold look. In the end, even though it was a rough paint scheme, I’m very happy with the vibe and now that the rush is over, I’ll be looking to finish them before the next event.
Saturday rolled around and we all met up in York for a day of gaming. We managed to get 12 of The Old World’s finest squashed into the Scout Hut, with a good spread of armies for people to play against. A big thanks has to go out to The Dastardly Regular Opponent for getting the whole thing set up (including laying out the tables and getting the Burco filled up) and The Creative Regular Opponent for coming with a pile of terrain and mats to get the tables filled up. I liked how we managed to have a good mix of tables (including a desert ghetto that we locked the poor Tomb Kings player into), including some urban areas which are unusual for Old World.
This also included my table which I set up. With Games Workshop hills, Vae Victis ruins and trees bought from eBay, I really like the fact I can set up some Warhammer Fantasy Battles-looking boards. I especially like the Age of Sigmar beacon model, such a simple piece that is perfect to add that extra touch (and now I should paint the rest of that set). However, this table has reminded me I need to make a trip to a fabric store and get some felt for the road and tree areas. The tree areas are especially useful, letting you shuffle the actual trees around to best site your units, as you see later during the Ogre game.
My first game was against one of the Manchester boys, who had morphed from running Brettonians last time to instead running his childhood Empire army. This was a pretty fun game, the two of us reminding ourselves how the rules work and then getting a proper clash of armies into play. I ended up not getting the charge and instead eating (and then being destroyed by) a double hit of Greatswords and Flagellents while my Dragon was too busy chasing stuff up and down the flanks. On the plus side, the Forsaken and Demon Prince did manage to do their thing, storming across a hole in the front ranks before chewing their way through the volley gun team, with the engineer getting sephiroth-d by the Demon Prince. In the end though, this shenanigans was nothing as all of my chaos warriors got destroyed and overrun, the Flagellants collecting a pair of banners to really drive it home.
Game 2 saw me introducing one of my Former Housemates (the Necormuinda/GM’ing one) and his brother to The Old World, helping to turn their knowledge of Total Warhammer into tabletop experience. They decided to go with the Ogre Kingdoms army that was available and I’m pretty sure it was mostly for the puns that filled the game. Going up against Ogres was an experience – each basic ogre has three wounds, a pile of attacks, impact hits and some very nasty toys. Despite an early win in the duel against the hunter in the woods, the centre became a bloodbath of Ogres ripping and tearing warriors apart. However, I did manage to drag a unit away using the Forsaken before a Demon Prince, Dragon and Warrior block managed to lock the enemy general in place and crush them, leading to them being destroyed while trying to flee.
However, man of the match has to be the enemy giant. After crossing the bridge (which wasn’t large enough for any other movement), the giant proceeded to smash into the Warriors with great weapons. After a stomp that took the central heart out of the unit, the pair of jokers across the table from decided it would be time… for the pants attack. Giants have an ability where, if the enemy model fails an initiative test, they are immediately removed as they disappear into the giant’s pants. This then continues until either the giant gets bored or the unit is destroyed. The giant in THIS game managed to absolutely destroy the warriors over two turns, before finally (as the rest of the room crowded around) the Champion ended up in the giant’s pants.
Old World is a gloriously silly game, and this single combat helps to illustrate that.
All in all, last week was a great time. The Old World continues to be one of my favourite games, and there is something incredible about finally (after almost 26 years from seeing my first Warhammer Fantasy Battle list) having my own army laid out on the tabletop that I assembled and (mostly) painted. I’m actually looking forward to getting them painted up, as well as the last pieces I already own and will add to the force. I think this force is also pretty close to being done, which has made me look at the pile of STLs and ponder what might come forth from it.
Leave a Reply