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.

The next Old World games day is fast approaching on the Ides of March. I’ve been attempting to get some figures painted up for it (and avoiding the Knights for as long as possible).

However, new events mean a chance to build my list further. After my last game in January, I expressed some concern about my lack of magical defence, although in retrospect that might be because that particular list was incredibly magical focused. The bigger problem (and one I had last year as well) was that the marauders weren’t around in big enough numbers and were not fast enough to perform their screening role. By the time they were across the board, they were so shot up they would be unusable or have fallen too early and the units behind were not taking hits.

My first thought was to swap the marauders out for Warhounds, a cheap and high-speed unit to cross the board and potentially be causing trouble in the early turns. This would be relatively simple to get sorted – print a few of the wolves from Last Sword and then good to go. There is only one problem – Warhounds are boring. Although mentally I could see how they fit the force (the hunting hounds of the lord leading the list), nothing about them excited me.

And then I remembered that I have a model I am VERY excited about putting on the table.

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you may remember me buying, constructing and converting a Keeper of Secrets model. Unfortunately, the current Old World rules don’t let you include demonic units in a Warriors of Chaos force – at this time in the setting, Chaos hasn’t quite reached the level that you see in something like the Storm of Chaos back in Warhammer Fantasy Battles. This has meant my creation has spent more than a little time on the shelf, unpainted and waiting for a chance for carnage. It is also partially because I am terrified at the idea of getting her painted up – this is a large model, with lots of exposed skin and I don’t think my skills were quite there.

Looking at her again after the goblin shennighans, I started thinking about how I could use her. In the basic list, the closest is probably a Gigantic Spawn of Chaos but things like randomised movement don’t quite tie into my mental image of how she fits in the list. Narratively, the demon prince leading this force is the formerly mortal champion for the Greater Demon, having been gifted her shield and spear early in his rise to demonhood. Having on the field, she should be a nightmarish force, matching some of the Demon Prince’s powers. Luckily for me, the Arcane Journal marked the return of Warpfire Dragons to the Chaos list, giving a flying S6 T6 W6 monster with some funky rules including both a ranged attack (unheard of for Chaos) and the ability to turn off the ward saves of those close by. After looking at the rules (and pondering about using her as the special character dragon, I ended up settling on a regular warpfire dragoon.

Getting her into the list was also part of reconfiguring the essentials. First up, the Chosen on foot found themselves downgraded to mere warriors with great weapons, saving a chunk of points. Elsewhere in Core, the Brick suffered next; for as amusing as it can be, a single chunk limits my ability to take control over the map and can be very easily flanked and outmanoeuvred. Instead, I decided to split it in half, setting up two squads of 14 warriors. I unfortunately lacked enough points to upgrade the second squad to have the command elements, leaving it lacking several multipliers for combat.

This resulted in a trio of core units (ideally deployed in a two forward, one back formation) with knights, demon prince and dragon acting as flanking units. It also provides me more options, with more pieces around to push forward and grab board areas to setup flank charges. Having one flying unit was a massive benefit to allow threat to the enemy’s rear, so having two adds an additional terror on the flank.

The planning is all good but the proof is what it does on the tabletop. Luckily the Dastardly Regular Opponent had a Saturday evening free and the desire to get some games in before the next event. I’d be facing his new Dwarf army, one that has had a few changes – including the fact he had his own Brick!

Across the table from me I had two infantry blocks (hammers and veterans) with multiple characters split between them. One flank had the Rangers forward deployed while the other had a gyrocopter ready to make a move and a team of Irondrakes hanging around waiting for a certain flying pretty boy to turn up.

The proximity of the Rangers on the left flank was just ASKING for me to charge in on them with my Chosen Knight and on turn 1 that is exactly what happened. However, the rangers did manage to take out a knight before I even charged in and then proceeded for the next three rounds of combat to hold my knights in check, dragging them up the board and whittling them down to the champion and the standard. It’s easy to see the Rangers as chaff but in reality they are an absolute pain.

On the other flank, the Demon Prince went in to destroy the gyrocopter, wrecking it in one turn before leaping away from the Irondrakes that were closing in.

In the centre, I was rather surprised to see the Dwarfs taking the initiative and moving forward in columns – highly unusual behaviour! With two separate units, I was able to intercept both of them independently, one block of warriors taking each with the great weapons moving to assist.

Oh, and the dragon came in to flank one unit of dwarves, I’m sure this will go well…

As you can see above, the unit fighting the Dwarf king and Hammerers managed to break and fall back at speed after losing almost an entire rank to the onslaught – turns out Hammerers are very good at dealing with being charged.

The unit of longbards on the other got squished between a warrior block and the dragon. Only causing two wounds and taking five casualties in the fight, an unlucky roll of double 6 on their morale test meant they ended up fleeing – a situation made worse when the dragon pursued, rolled a swiftstride dice and overran them. Not a good start for the Dwarfs.

This now meant that the Dwarf King and his accompanying unit were flanked on two sides by pretty much my entire force. However, some troublesome positioning meant and a sneaky Dwarf charge meant I wasn’t able to engage fully, letting the Hammerers engage my force piecemeal.

First on the chopping block was Chaos Warrior Unit 2 which got absolutely SMOKED on contact. Killed down to a man by the hail of blows, I think we have had the most successful combat I’ve seen to date, winning by 13 points.

However, this simply led into the rest of the force descending on the unit in my turn, leading to three separate charges in three of the four arcs. This fight would then expand as I threw in the rest of the force, with even individual stragglers playing their part.

In the end, with time running out and the King’s unit falling apart under a pile of attackers, we finished off by playing a challenge between the Dwarf King and the Demon Prince. The king landed a few good hits but in the end, the Demon Prince cut down the shield bearers before taking the king’s head off.

Into the Book of Grudges I go.

Having hit the table with an updated list and coming away with a win, I was pretty happy. The dice gods were in my favour (having the Longbeards break and get overwhelmed by a dragon while fleeing was a big help) but the rest of the units felt like they did their jobs. Multiple units of warriors were able to spread out and cover more of the battlefield, making it an area engagement rather than a mess of flanks upon flanks. The Demon Prince, for a change, actually survived this game and was able to do his job of zipping around the battlefield.

I’m having a few changes I now want to make though. The first thing is a slight toning back of the Demon Prince. The Runesword (the replacement for the suicidal Demonsword) is a nasty piece of kit, adding +1 to strength, weapon skill and initiative. However, while this may be incredibly useful on a mortal chaos champion, the demon prince already has a nasty statline with WS7 S6 I7, with the potential to raise it even higher thanks to Gaze of the Gods each turn. One item I am not giving up though is the Armour of Meteoric Iron – always having a 5+ save means I have Triple 5 Save (Armour, Ward, Regen)

This reduction in power allows for some additional spending elsewhere in the list. Splitting The Brick into two smaller units went really well, but unit two was slightly lacking. Well, good news, thanks to the windfall of points, the second warrior unit has a full command – the banner feels like a requirement for combat, the musician is handy just in case, and the champion is handy to tie down anyone attempting to use a multiple wound weapon on the troops.

There are also going to be some changes in the Special slots, something I’m not 100% but I think is worth testing. Chosen are the hammers of my list, and the Chosen Chaos Knights have been chewing their way through everything I’ve thrown them at. I’d also really prefer my Chosen Warriors to be played as Chosen rather than being down turned to regular warriors. This is both a visibility thing (my opponent can tell what they are more easily) but also the improvements that being chosen brings. However, the downside is that the points have to come from somewhere. I’m going to make the risky decision to reduce the Knights from full plate down to heavy armour – they still have the shield and barding to help out with the protection, but shooting with AP will be slightly more likely to crack through. This is something I’m not 100% sold on, but I think I’d rather drop the armour than lose the lance. Hopefully the dragon will distract most of the shooting until the cav slams home.

Speaking of testing, it seems the Creative Regular Opponent is also needing to do a final trial run on his Orcs and Goblins list, so perhaps one more game…

It’s not every day that you receive a mysterious message from the Creative Regular Opponent to come north and face him on the tabletop, with the promise of food provided. It’s also not every day that a storm is strong enough to knock Scotland into having a red weather warning and my target of the mysterious land of North Yorkshire is suddenly experiencing 65MPH+ gusts. After a little back and forth (and a slight delay due to work), we eventually decided it was safe enough and I thundered up the A1.

While partaking in a platter of cold meats, cheese and veggies (a far cry from the usual snacks of piles of sweets or pizza), we got down to playing some Old World, the game that the Creative Regular Opponent was mostly responsible for getting me into. As much as both of us have a lust for rolling dice, the main reason for me coming to the windblown north was to give the Creative Regular Opponent a chance to try out a new force that he will be bringing to the next game day. This Night Goblin heavy army is still in its early stages, so he took a chance to get some proxies and unpainted models on the table to work out how much the new shenanigans will cost him spiritually and financially.

For me, it was also a chance to re-learn my list, re-learn the game and then see how it plays against a different force. So far, it’s done okay against Dwarfs (mostly a gunline) and Bretonnians (all movement all the time) but still needed some work to learn how it’s going to function against armies that use different archetypes. There are also a few mechanics I haven’t dealt with such as magic that may appear when we play in our next event in March. So as much as I was a punching bag for the experiment, I was taking the chance to learn something about my own force.

So how did it go? Well, Orcs and Goblins are an army I haven’t faced before, with plenty of tricks up their sleeves. They somehow managed to perform the roles of both a gunline army and a manevoure army, with a giant block of goblins with bows combined with two sets of squig riders bounding down the flanks. This was then made worse by the fact that the mages with them were able to do what is best described as “Fucking Bullshit” – translated, this is a teleport move that lets them set up with 12″ allowing them to rapidly avoid charges and get into position to shoot what they would need. Combine that with two wizards hammering out buffs and nerfs left right and centre, and suddenly you have replaced goblins with a literal machine gun. In this case, my demon prince lost half his wounds on turn 1 thanks to the shooty boys.

This also showed off another flaw in my force – the distinct lack of magic defence. I was unable to stop any of the shenanigans that tore down my armour saves, affected toughness and initiative and then let those bowmen dance around. I haven’t fought much magic in the past so seeing just what it can do when left mostly unopposed was eyeopening.

The “stars” of the show had to be the Night Goblin fanatics though. These little gits caused a massive amount of damage to my force for their actual cost, leading to what is best described as utter devastation. The fact they are CONSTANTLY moving means that you can get slapped multiple times in the same turn by them. They are also pretty deadly and not even my beloved Chaos Chosen were not immune to being beaten up. The fact they are also lurking in the midst of a unit that otherwise is very tempting to get charged, effectively letting you block the potential of a charge and then deny an area. They aren’t reliable though and we had several just smash into buildings in the truly comical fashion

One startling example was the fanatic that managed to roam across three units (chosen, the warriors and then the marauders) and knocked out a figure from each. Seeing as a fanatic is 25 points, the little git more than paid for himself in this single move and this was the second big swing the guy managed to pull off.

The other thing that I got to see was someone finally breaking what has been amusingly referred to as “The Brick” by some of my opponents. Thanks to the stack of magical perks the archers got (and the sheer rate of fire) from 36 archers volley firing, they managed to wipe the block down to only a handful. The final stand-and-shoot reaction wiped out everyone except the champion and my hero character meaning that unless my demonsword-wielding champion was to go full murder mode, combat was lost. The demonsword did manage to slay a pile of goblins, but it then proceeded to slay her buddy after rolling a 1.

Seeing as it was 10pm we called it there as the goblins had managed to win. To wrap up, I think the Goblins list is going to be one he’ll be pushing forward on as he had a blast. It seems to have massive damage potential but also lots of hilarity with things like random movement and those swingy ball lunatics. We both also want to see how it does up against some of our other friend’s forces. Despite my loss, I had a really fun time playing Old World again.

So with that experience over, what is the next step for me?

First, I need to spend more time learning my list and reminding myself of the rules. The last time I played was back in September and since then my brain has been bouncing around 101 other things. I was constantly forgetting rules all the way through, which slowed down play. Before March, I need to make sure I know how each part of the list plays – it’s fine to quickly catch up on on stuff with NewRecruit but basic rules I should be more familiar with. This also covers larger chunks of rules such as magic which although I’ve not used yet, I should have at least an understanding of.

Speaking of magic, I need a method to handle it. Having someone finally break “The Brick” was just a touch eye-opening to just how much danger it can be in without some kind of magical cover, with the various enhancements allowing for even the heaviest armour to be penetrated with ease. I’m going to need something to assist with preventing the enemy spells affecting the warrior block and potentially going on the offensive. The spell Steed of Shadows would allow my infantry units to fly, marching them at high speed across the battlefield to reduce the time spent under the enemy’s guns.

Finally, there needs to be a change to the chaff. As the battle showed me, the marauder units feel like they aren’t as useful as I’d hoped, with the horsemen too expensive and the marauders on foot too slow. For this reason, I’m going to trade them out in favour of some warhound packs. These will be faster to get across the board, and at only 45pts per unit, it opens up additional options across the force.

With all this in mind, it’s time to think about getting ready for the next game day in March. Luckily for me there is nothing new I need to buy (I already have files for some big wolves) so I just need to get them printed and then get on with painting. As for learning the rules, there might need to be another game with someone to test it out…

Things are a little bit quiet on the Old World front it seems. As the New Year has rolled in, it is time to talk about the game of giant moving rectangles and frantically ranking up figures.

Before I go over our last game day, I should probably talk about the force I took out with me. We played 1500ish points and so I assembled this:

• Flying Demon Prince with Runesword and Mark of Slaanesh
• Exalted Champion with Demonsword
• 10 Chaos Marauders
• 27 Chaos Warriors with Command
• 5 Marauder Horsemen
• 5 Chosen Chaos Knights with Command
• 10 Chosen Chaos Warriors with Command

Overall, I feel that this list is in a pretty good situation. In pretty much every game, Chaos is going to be on the assault and this list provides a central push and a flanking force. The main force is three waves – Marauders to absorb enemy fire on the way in, Chaos Warriors to slam into the largest enemy unit it can find and then the Chosen Warriors to either act as flank protection or to flank whoever the Warriors have locked in place. The Horsemen and the Chosen Knights do the same thing on one of the flanks, ideally being able to push into the rear of the enemy.

When it comes to characters, the Demon Prince effectively acts as a super flanker assassin, using fly to leap the battlelines and start shredding enemy war machines – despite his power, instability is a real son of a bitch that means anything that has any form of combat resolution bonus is going to quickly eat through his 4 wounds. You may notice that he has lost the Demonsword he had during testing in favour of the much more reasonable Runesword – still a powerful boost but without the potential drawbacks of a hissing demon inside of it that cares not where the damage flows. Instead, the Demonsword ends up with the Exalted Champion who is leading the Chaos warrior block. This is, for all intents and purposes, a trap – the Chaos Warriors are able to enter into a combat that flows back and forth becoming an anvil, except for the fact that the anvil in question has a circular saw attached to the front to it, and every so often chops apart a friendly. A unit of 27 armoured warriors has enough protection to occasionally prevent a nasty accident, making it a far more useful deployment of such potential.

As I mentioned at the time, I hadn’t managed to get everything full painted before game day. As you can see in the army above, my distaste for painting horses extends to even putting partial paint jobs on them – I just hate them so much. That said, even getting a few pieces painted up did help to make the force look a little more cohesive as well as selling me further on how it’s going to look in the end. Getting paint on the Demon Prince (one of the first figures I bought for this army) definitely helped unlock the mental block around painting such a focal model. The Chaos Chosen on the other hand were set which reminded me of one of the reasons people fear painting Chaos – there is a lot of trim to deal with which meant quite a few evenings hunting down every last bit of it.

Game day rolls around, and after a little bit of a late start we finally got some games up and running. All of us are in our 30’s (ish), all met at university and all spend a lot of time chatting online in a Facebook messenger chat I am dying to move to Discord so I can reduce my hell site intake. But any chance to get together in the flesh, roll some dice and hang out is always much appreciated – I genuinely felt much happier after this weekend and will be striving to run more. This is doubly useful as thanks to the Dastardly Regular Opponent, we have access to a scout hut that comes with most of the things you need for a wargaming event – parking, tea-making facilities and tables to then cover in our piles of terrain. There was actually a good selection of mats and other pieces brought along, and I was pretty happy with all three tables that were setup – definitely helps the visuals of the game when there is a small town or focal points to fight over.

Unfortunately, the Dastardly Regular Opponent was busy with real-world stuff and could only turn up for one game, so there was a touch of swapping people in and out. I decided to skip the last game to make sure that the others who had driven from the wrong side of the Pennines and North of God’s Own County could get their third game in. It also meant I got to hover and watch some of the other armies on display do their work. We had a reasonable mixture – two Bretonnian armies, a Dwarf army from the Dastardly Regular Opponent, an Empire army, my own Warriors of Chaos and the Creative Regular Opponent’s Tomb King army.

Because of how long ago it was, I won’t provide blow-by-blow coverage of the games, just a few overall thoughts on each encounter.

Game 1 saw me up against a former housemate and his Bretonnians. The knights on horses are always interesting to play against, especially as someone more used to clashing against the static forces who like to sit back and shoot your incoming horde of armoured boys. This is doubly so when you’re dealing with someone bringing two sets of Knights on flying rats (pegasuses but shush) and a Pegasus-riding hero designed for monster slaying. I did do a little funny when the game started by rushing my Demon Prince at his Pegasus hero. This went as well as you might expect – Demon Prince caused some damage but a single wound by the Bretonian Hero was converted into some monster-slaying shenanigans and he was banished away. I found myself outmanoeuvred by the rest of the knights (as you might expect) but both the block of warriors and the Chaos Knights caused some major damage and lasted almost until the end of the game.

Game 2 saw me against the Dastardly Regular Opponent and his familiar-looking Dwarves. Familiar in the fact I printed most of them for him. This was a more familiar game – the Dwarves sat back and shot while I advanced across the board. The marauder horsemen got shredded pretty quickly by the various blackpowder weapons shoved down range but when the Chaos Warriors hit home I managed to push the usually resolute Dwarfs back. I don’t remember the end results (we had to call it due to time) but I do love how the Dastardly Regular Opponent and I are slowly starting to learn and evolve from each game. For example, he’s learning to ignore the big block of Warriors and position his troops far enough from the board edge so that they don’t immediately flee.

All in all, it was a good day, with everyone enjoying the games they fitted in. We were all ready to play some more Old World soon.

And then that didn’t happen. Plans were suggested but never made, the end of the year came around and we hadn’t managed to get together again. However, things are looking up – there has been a verbal agreement for another Old World day in March, with a discussion of moving the points total up to 2000 as all our forces have grown.

The good news for this is that I’m actually well on my way to being ready. Although there is still plenty of painting to do, I am very lucky that I don’t actually need to buy anything to get me up. I already have the additional 5 Chaos Chosen Knights I’ll need, as well as another block of Chaos Marauders. The big addition is a Chaos Sorcerer, who has a combination of spells and items that could turn my advancing Warrior block from “oh they’ll be here in a few turns” to turn 2 assault in the right setup. Going further, such as up to 2500 points, I think I’d probably end up printing another block of Chaos Warriors to turn the slow grinding advance into a two-lane threat.

It’s safe to say though that passion for the Old World isn’t dead – everyone in the group is still excited to play, I’m very much looking forward to getting some more games in!

Previously in my adventures into the Old World, we played the first game between myself and the Dastardly Regular opponent and I talked about the plans for my force. I managed to assemble a few more pieces, such as all the Chaos Warriors and the Marauder Horsemen to the point where the only thing I’m missing is the Chaos Knight command group. It’s a good state to be in, but damn do I dislike assembling the push-fit Chaos Knights. They are very frustrating to build, with parts on the spure that don’t make a huge amount of sense at first glance (a single piece may contains body parts of the knight, part of the horse and a weapon for example). The push-fit rods also often leave gaps between the parts, so I’ve been cutting them down and gluing them together. Combine this with the fact that they do not rank up on the 60×30 bases they mount on in The Old World and there was definitely some grumbly noises during assembly.

In fact, if there is one thing that building this army has taught me, it’s that frankly I’m kind of done with assembling plastic kits – they can be fun and the Games Workshop design team are wizards at making fantastic models that you wonder how the hell they fit together but for me, my end goal is figures on table. When I do my next Old World army (which will probably be Empire) I’ll be taking the route the Dastardly Regular Opponent took and heavily use 3D printing, both to save me time but also get a use out of all Highland Miniatures and Last Sword STLs I’ve bought over the years.

A big step in preparation for September’s Old World game day was getting the actual books. This meant taking a trip to the GW Leeds shop and doing a high-speed raid – go in, grab the books, do not get tempted by anything on the shelves, leave. I managed to chat with the staff behind the counter and mention how I was building a chaos force from all the latest sets (including the fun of ranking them up). And then I also got to mention a friend of mine building an army using 3D printed parts and even I could see the little “oh” in his eyes at hearing that.

In this week’s hobby update, I talked a little bit about the feel of these books but man, I want to mention it again. There is a really premium feel to these books (and there better be with the price) with nice thick paper, colour images and packed full of artwork. The lore section. It’s also obvious this is a ruleset that has been running for a long time – each of the rule sections for the turns has a section that covers oddities that can occur as if someone has been keeping track of all the moments where rules intersected in a strange way that might be unusual. It feels, strangely enough, like a ruleset that has been very well played for a very long time.

All this talk comes to a head on the field of battle! Currently, the Dwarfs are one game in the lead when it comes to victories, having managed to hold the line and send the Demon Prince off the field in the first game. For our second, we once again played 1000 points. The difference this time was that the Dastardly Regular Opponent was playing with his own army that he managed to receive and paint in the intervening time. In contrast I… assembled a few extra units and printed some movement trays. However, I did also work out some tweaks to my army.

In game 1, I went for a very infantry-heavy list, with big blocks of Maruaders, Chaos Warriors and Chaos Chosen. This was fine but it did have the problem that I couldn’t screen my force properly, leading to the enemy firepower picking me apart. This time, I went for two wings – an infantry push with a small screen of Marauders and the Warrior block and a separate Cavalry force with a screen of Marauder Horsemen to protect my mailed fist, the Chosen Chaos Knights. My general, a flying Slaanesh Demon Prince, would flit between the different wings as needed, although his main task would be getting into the back line and ripping enemy ranged positions apart.

Getting to the table on Saturday, I found myself looking at a more numerous Dwarf force than I originally expected, having grown up with the theory that dwarves were expensive and elite. Two big infantry blocks with attached characters (Warriors with a Rune Priest and Longbeards with a Thane) formed the centre around a cannon, while more specialist units protected the flanks; five thunderers backed up the Rangers on the left while on the right Thunderers took to the woods and Miners prepared for a flank strike. The terrain shows off some firing lines I was going to have to cross, but the ruins would hopefully cover my main infantry push.

Beginning on my left flank, one of the first things was the horsemen did their job and got absolutely massacred by the Thunderers. Honestly, I was expecting them to die off pretty quickly (it was their job after all) but seeing them disappear in roughly three turns was a little disconcerting. On the other hand, they basically stopped that group of Thunderers from doing much during the initial advance which was useful for my plan.

Their sacrifice did mean that the Chosen ended up having to reveal a flank to the Dwarven Rangers which, for a moment, did potentially worry me. Luckily I had the perfect unit for flank protection – a flying general. This is kind of ridiculous (he’s a full third of my points in this game) and I am now two for two for dealing with flanking Rangers by deploying a vastly higher-cost unit against them. This isn’t something I do on purpose, it’s just the best unit for the job. The Rangers decided against getting stuck in with a character filled with the powers of the gods.

However, once my general disappeared off for his next role, they sprung into action. The Chaos Knights started to prepare their final charge, leaving them within range to be interrupted by a quick spoiling attack from the Rangers. Choosing to charge in and use their Great Weapons, the Rangers managed to storm through the woods and impact on the flank of the knights. Great weapons slowed down their strike, meaning the lone knight in the fighting rank tore a single dwarf apart – this obviously knocked their performance, as they caused no wounds and were forced to give ground.

As for the Demon Prince’s next role? Well, it was to set up the turning point of the game. I’ve specced my demon prince to be a combat monster, taking advantage of Gaze of the Gods and a Chaos Runesword to slam home. Ditching the Demonsword makes him less hyper-aggressive (those extra attacks were pretty hilarious) but also makes him much more reliable by removing the whole “injury yourself on 1s”. I’d managed to roll reasonably well on the Gaze of the Gods table, with some bonuses to stat line tempered by the effects of Stupidity (a fate easily avoided by a starting Leadership of 9).

Thanks to positioning, I was able to fly over the woods and sit him on the enemy general’s flank. This forced that unit to reform to face the oncoming threat.

Which of course meant in my following turn, I got to achieve a textbook “how to deal with multiple combats” moment. The Chosen Knights, having slapped the Rangers away and charged through the edge of the woods, collided with the flank of the Longbeards, disrupting the units due to the First Charge special rule. In the following combat, the Demon Prince caused two unsaved wounds, the Knights an additional four (clearing the rank they were engaged with) and the dwarves managed to snag one wound on the Demon Prince thanks to the Hatred (characters) rule. Because of this, the Dwarves lost the combat by six points and then the shenanigans began. The Dwarves initially began to flee, but the Thane turned this into a Fall Back In Good Order, a result that was further changed to a Give Ground thanks to the Shield Wall rule. The problem was, in Give Ground you move back 2 inches away from the most threatening unit (in this case the knights due to unit strength). This actually took the unit off the board as we were fighting right on the edge, the unit’s movement carrying them and the Thane out of combat. Not the result I expected (and not very honourable for either side) but I’ll take it!

With the enemy general and his unit gone, it was time for the Demon Prince to continue his work by advancing directly into the gun crew of the cannon. Again, that is 306 points coming to murder roughly 100 points. He proceeded to mince his way through the gunners as you would hope.

Stepping back in time, let’s take a look at the other flank. The Marauders and Warriors advanced through the ruins in a column, the cheaper chaff at the front while the larger column pushed forward. They both got absolutely pummelled by the dwarf cannon, not helped by some impressive bounces that often managed to miss the screen and roll through the Warriors instead. Cannons are incredibly good at the job of removing heavily armoured warriors from the battlefield even if the initial impact and bounce rules seem to have been invented purely for hilarity.

Once the Chaos Warriors actually hit though? Well, they didn’t – instead, the marauders moved to one side to prevent those Rangers from reappearing and then the Dwarf Warriors, led by the rune priest launched their charge. Over the next few turns, the two sets of warriors formed what can best be described as a rugby scrum, knocking off a few figures from both units each round of combat. The Dwarves, helped by the rank bonus managed to keep my Warriors on the back foot, pushing them back slowly.

However, this actually worked in my favour. After the Demon Prince murdered the gun crew, I began to see the possibility for an envelopment. The Marauders did an about-turn and prepared to charge the flank of the Dwarven Warriors. The Knights would then slam into the Miners attempting to protect the rear of the main infantry block while the Demon Prince would, as a fine use of his points, hunt down the Thunderers hiding in the forest.

The final turn saw a bloody clash. The Dwarven Warriors ended up taking casualties on both the front and the flank, while the entire front rank of the Miners was lanced and stomped to death by the Chosen Chaos Knights. The Demon Prince added to the body count, ripping a bloody hole in the Dwarven hand gunners.

The final result was a resounding Chaos win. Although the Dwarves had caused casualties in most units, they hadn’t hit the required 25% to actually gain victory points from them. In contrast, a Thane fleeing off the board, the loss of a cannon and Thunderers gave me plenty of points. Even without the points, narratively the Chaos Force had ripped the Dwarf force apart, scattering them and controlling the board by the end. The Incursion continues!

So victory was mine! I think I managed to use my forces in a reasonable way against a static opponent. The Warriors, in a giant block that slowly ground its way across the board, acted exactly as I intended – distracting the enemy’s gunfire onto them rather than engaging the actual killers, the Chosen Chaos Knights. It did a pretty good job of becoming a meat grinder, chewing its way through the Dwarves slowly but surely thanks to the higher toughness and weapon skill. The marauders (both mounted and on foot) ate up plenty of gunfire, screening the advance properly and allowing the heavy hitters to contact. And speaking of them, both the Chaos Chosen Knights and the Demon Prince did exactly what I had planned for them – hit hard, take names, find a unit in its way and keep going. I definitely had a few early turns where I was worried about how many casualties I was taking on the way in, but the end result made those loses worth while.

We’re planning another game before September, moving up to 1500. I’ve already roughly planned out my changes – increasing the number of Warriors, bringing the foot Chosen in to give me some flank protection for the Warriors (those miners got very close) and adding an Exalted Champion carrying the Demonsword. My plan with this addition is to stick the Exalted Champion in the Chaos Warriors, to turn them from an anvil that the enemy finds themselves stuck upon into something more like an industrial paper shredder – each turn you’re engaged with them, there is a nutcase in the front rank going between 5 and 7 attacks, the rest of the unit acting as ablative armour for any 1s to hit. This is all theory crafting, but it does make it harder to decide what to shoot for any war machine crews.

I’m also aware that so far, I’ve only really fought Dwarves, a relatively static force. In the group that will be getting together in September, there are potentially two Bretonnian lists, as well as an Empire player with a thing for heavy cavalry. Having to deal with a more manoeuvrable army will be interesting, but I’m sure I’ll find out and add to my force as needed.

And speaking of adding to a force, the Dastardly Regular Opponent has put in an order for a few new units… This could be interesting.

Since the last post talking Old World (and the minor update in the monthly project update) things have… escalated. At this stage I’ve managed to get all the figures I need for my 2000 points list, thanks to an assault on eBay and some careful pushes. The next step was to actually assemble them all. Seeing as the Dastardly Regular Opponent needed his introduction to the Old World and the Creative Regular Opponent offered to host/provide one of the forces, I would need to get my force together. Which means I’d need to rebase and break out the glue.

First up, the Chaos Chosen. In The Old World come with all the same options as the regular Chaos Warriors (meaning you can sword and board if you wish) but for me, this unit is going to be all about advancing behind the force to rip into any troublesome enemies. The figures I went with are the latest models from the Age of Sigmar range and it was obvious from the start that these are not designed for ranking up in the old ways. On the other hand, these models are gorgeous – they are The Ideal for what Chaos Warriors should be, the massive armoured warriors that loom over regular humans and destroy them with ease while wrapped in chaotic plate armour and wielding a variety of dangerous-looking tools. Each figure feels unique, thanks to a good mix of heads, weapons and armour details

One thing to mention about the modern GW figures is that they all seem to be designed to be assembled with usually two main variants – these are mainly for the command group (banner, musician and champion) or for specific weapon variants (as we’ll see with the marauders later). By picking up two sprues to build 10 (again, thank you eBay because £40 for 5 models is a bit mad), I was able to basically strip one entire sprue of all its parts, which is a satisfying feeling. The rest may end up being re-sold for others to use or may join the bits box.

One element my force was going to need was screening elements – I may be planning a lot of big chunky bois stomping across the board but that’s going to mean a long time for ranged weapons to pick people off. Light infantry or cavalry would fit the gap, with Chaos Marauders and Marauder Horsemen cheap enough while still being pretty nasty to deal with. And lucky for me, the new Darkoath box which launched earlier this month would fill that gap nicely, including 20 marauders, 5 horsemen, a mounted champion and whatever the Wilderfiend can be.

The marauders were fun to assemble with a good mix of heads and shields to go with the dynamically posed bodies. I went for a mix of spears and hand weapons, pushing that visual of the pile of tribesmen pouring out of the woods to ambush the brightly coloured soldiers of the Empire. I really like the mix of female and male bodies among the group, again tying into the. I find it interesting how GW do the heads on this kit, leaving the neck as part of the torso while making the head (and more importantly the wild hair) fit.

However, the dynamically posed bodies do cause a problem with ranking up. The move to 25mm bases from the old 20mm definitely helps, and I didn’t have any problems with feet not fitting on the base. Less useful was how much of each figure can lean forward. the biggest offenders are the lunging spearmen, but some of the more agile marauders can have pokey parts that mean they don’t quite fit flat. However, I was still able to bodge them together to fit, mostly by pushing the problem figures to the edges. If I really needed, I could start noting which figures fit where and then write a little guide on the movement tray.

Speaking of the movement tray, I had 20 figures and a movement tray designed for 24. If only there was something that could fit on 50x50mm… such as the Wilderfiend. Although not technically part of the rules, the idea of including the tribe’s guardian creature/walking reminder of the power of the gods did strike me as cool – the main thing was to make sure my opponent knew that it was ACTUALLY part of the game, mere a marker to fill some space. Assembling the Wilderfield was a little bit of trusting the instructions and head-scratching (the wizards at GW were pulling some tricks designing that thing) but it’s going to be fun to paint up. That said, I’m not sure about how much I’ll need to fill the big movement tray (as we’ll see later on once I hit the table).

Finally, and the stage I was not looking forward to, the rebasing. As I mentioned in the first post, I played the first game with the 32mm rounds to 30mm adapters and they were Fine with a capital F. Seeing as I’m thinking of moving all fantasy to square bases, it made sense to bite the bullet, crack out the pliers and start stripping models from bases, all while trying not to damage the paintwork. Luckily for me, moving to use Tamiya Extra Thin for my plastic glue meant I was actually able to simply crack many of the models off with a bit of elbow grease, rather than having to saw my way through broken plastic. The newer models with the peg connection lost that piece, but I managed to keep the paint jobs intact.

Fitting them onto the 30mm bases was also relatively easy. For the old plastic chaos warriors in their pre-ranked poses, there were mountains of space around each warrior. The newer ones for the most part were still pretty easy to rank up, except for a few of the more aggressive folks who were mid-swipe.

As I may have mentioned in earlier posts, my plan is to build a 30-man unit of Chaos Warriors to form the core of my force. This is a frankly ridiculous notion and putting a lot of eggs into one basket. That said, there is something immensely terrifying about a slow-moving, heavily armoured block that is going to go for the centre of your force and slowly chew its way through, thanks to having multiple ranks. So far, I’ve only assembled a couple of them which were needed for my 20-person mini-block in my first list (specifically the musician and banner bearer to finish the command squad) but the rest will soon join them.

This isn’t all the figures I’ve assembled and rebased but it does show just a few of the items I’ve managed to get ready for potential lists (as well as getting them one step closer to being painted). There are some figures in there I was very happy to find among my collection, being reminded of cool things I was looking forward to working on. Or, in the case of the Keeper of Secrets, frankly terrifying to paint (even if I think she looks cool). Sadly it’s unlikely she’ll appear in a list as The Old World has split demons and mortals apart (not even allowing and I’m not exactly rushing to build a second force. However, she should be good for some narrative games, assuming I can bribe the game master with enough M&Ms.

After collecting the Dastardly Regular Opponent from York and heading north, we managed to get to Darlington on a rather nice day. So of course we immediately dashed inside to get on with the games.

The first game was between the Regular Opponents, pitting 500 points of Dwarf against 500 points of Beastmen. These small-scale clashes are a good way of learning the rules, and gave me a chance to relearn the rules. The game went well, with the beasts managing to get some good hits in (mostly from the absolute monster that is the Shaman with Viletide). It was also fun to see how the different armies play – ironically in this case the dwarves actually went on the assault rather than their usual static defence, but they still were able to stick around in combat. Meanwhile, the beasts moved fast and hit like a truck, but the lack of armour (or limited armour in the Bestigor’s case) meant when the enemy hit back, the gors were struck down. The last unit standing was a set of Ungors with bows, which we assumed after the game were beaten up by the local peasants who had spent most of the game cowering in their homes.

The second game was a chance for me to get my figures on the board and for my opponent to move up to 1000 points. This meant that the Dwarves managed to include a unit of Miners, two sets of Thunderers and even a cannon (along with the Veterans, Warriors and Rangers from the first game). On my side, I had a set of 20 marauders, a block of 20 warriors, the 10 Chaos Chosen and a Demon Prince.

Despite the Dwarves forming a gunline, my only tactic was to advance my force in waves. First, the marauders would absorb the incoming fire, then the Warriors would come in behind and slam into the biggest set of melee units it could find. Finally, the Chosen would finish off anything troublesome or push to clear the flanks of the main unit.

That was the plan but the execution could have gone better. First of all, the Dwarven Rangers appeared on the right flank, able to hammer crossbow bolts into the advancing marauders and warriors. That was before the armour-piercing rounds from the Thunderers and cannon opened up, chewing through the units even more. The marauders did their job of absorbing most of the hits before they broke, meaning the warriors were able to close in with only a few casualties. However, they then got charged in the flank by the miners, leading to a very messy multiway fight.

I also ended up using the Chaos Chosen to fight off the Rangers which was a little overkill. However, despite losing two of their number on the way in, the rest of the unit absolutely wrecked the Rangers with ease, sending them fleeing off the board edge. Maybe not the best use of points, but still was good to see them act as the lore would make you think they act – utterly devastating.

The moment that got me the most excited though was when my Demon Prince, having piled down the flank, managed to rumble the rear of the “thunderers” (totally not bretonians in disguise) and ended up getting stuck into a unit of Veterans and the attached Thane. And then in one turn cleared an entire rank of dwarves. I’d given the Demon Prince a demonsword which (along with some very good Gaze of the Gods rolls) gave a frankly nightmarish statline – D3 strength and D3 attacks had all three of us exclaiming when rolling for attacks.

Of course, the dice gods give and take – the following turn saw most of the Demon Prince’s attack roll 1 and instead hit himself. Made worse by rolling up to strength 8, a few of these wounds managed to slip through the armour save (the ward and regeneration were stopped by the Magical Attacks rules). Down to only a single wound, and only killing another pair of Dwarves, the combat resolution bonuses from a stacked command group meant I lost the combat, closely followed by the Instability rules kicking in and sending all 395 points of Demon Prince back to the warp. The Dwarves won the game, although both the Chosen and the Warriors were still on the table when the bell rang.

The Old World continues to be a game I’m really enjoying playing. When I was younger, I never had a chance to play it properly (I’d already managed to get into Lord of The Rings and a little bit of 40k, so getting my hands on all the figures needed for Fantasy Battle was never possible) so I’m coming into this as a newbie. Unlike a lot of other rank and flank games, each army FEELS like they should – having now seen four different armies play, each one feels slightly different from the others. You also have plenty of room for tweaks and different playstyles within your own armies as well – for example, my own Chaos Mortals are heavily warrior-focused, but swapping out for marauders would lead to a pretty viable horde army.

As for my army, I’m going to do a few little tweaks – the main thing is breaking up the marauders into two smaller groups, either as skirmishers or open order. This will let them perform their screening role more efficiently, opening up the angles they can cover rather than a single mass. This would have allowed me to advance on two fronts in the game or to have prevented the Rangers from getting any shots in. The other major change is refocusing the Demon Prince from being both combat and magic to purely a damage dealer – having fly and a slightly less risky weapon should make him handy for getting into the back line and shredding gun teams.

Aside from that though… next step is getting the paint on!

Listen, I am on record of disliking Combat Geometry. Combat Geometry is the feature of rank and flank games, the clashing of big blocks of troops that slowly trudge forwards, where players spend time humming and ahhing over specific degrees before rolling a mountain of dice. I prefer a little more cut and thrust, a quicker move as play goes back and forth drawing me towards skirmish games. My time in Rank and Flank is usually only from demo games at clubs or ending up in a games room in Darlington under the watchful eye of 3D printing sensei/Creative Regular Opponent.

Well unluckily for me, The Creative Regular Opponent is at it again and has gone in deep on a new rank and flank game. And once again, he managed to drag me kicking and screaming (kind of) to come up north and give a rank and flank game a go – but this time he had a secret weapon. The game in question was The Old World, the return of Games Workshop’s original fantasy game.

The Old World of Warhammer is exactly my kind of fantasy, with its basis in history but with its own twists, a world with an expansive map to give each battle a sense of place and time. I never played the original Warhammer Fantasy Battles when it was active – WFB was an investment of time and money that I couldn’t provide (hence why the more Skirmishy Lord of the Rings was what I got one year under the Christmas tree). But thanks to a variety of games and books (to the point of interrupting a family holiday in Scotland to go to the local GW and pick up the latest Gotrex and Feilx book), I kept my interest and passion for The Old World alive.

Within our gaming group (organised through a chat we refer to as Tiny Mans Chat), I was not the only one interested in the return of The Old World when it was announced. The Creative Regular Opponent went in as deep as we all expected but little by little, others within the group have been gathering armies to their banner. Whispers of a “Big Games Day” at the Scout Hut began to spread like dark influence, and so I found myself to looking through New Recruit’s list builder app for ideas.

With me put on a path to fantasy due to my enablers/friends, the big question is who to play. Now my initial reaction was Empire, diving deep into a stockpile of STLs I’ve been getting from the unbeatable Last Sword Patreon. This however was going to require a chunk of printing, a chunk of painting and with a 3D printer suffering technical faults that caused constant failure on only part of the plate, it was going to be a motivation-killing bump to get over before I could really play with my own army.

However, I then realised while assembling lists for my first 500-point encounter that actually, I had enough of another faction that could just hit the board pretty quickly. My fantasy collection includes a big chunk of Chaos Warriors, assembled from both the older plastics and the easy build from a previous Slaves to Darkness set. This set also includes 5 Chaos Knights with a Chaos character on a monstrous reptilian beast henceforth referred to as ‘horse’. A quick trip to New Recruit and its army-building revealed that I could fit in a mounted Aspiring Champion, a block of 12 Chaos Warriors and 5 Chaos Chosen Knights. All without using a single drop of resin or spending some cash. There is no better way to learn a game than using a set of figures you like, so I decided to go with these guys rather than borrowing some of the Creative Regular Opponent’s figures.

There is only one downside – all of my Chaos army is based for Age of Sigmar, a game that (due to it being more skirmish-y) uses bases of the wrong shape and usually the wrong size. Luckily, much like the community survived the original changeover from squares to circles back when AoS launched, there are plenty of people online preparing conversion parts and sabots to make the job of switching back easier. I settled on using these templates (speedily 3d printed the night before) to let me tessellate my figures together to have the correct frontage. After having played with them, I’d say it’s a great placeholder, but in the long term I’d shift to rebasing units especially if (like me) you don’t play other games with basing requirements.

Game day came, I had my templates printed, so it was time to play some wargames on the giant table previously seen playing host to large scale WW2 and Napoleonic battles.

For the first game, we went for the originally planned 500 points, pitting a small dwarven force against the Chaos Knights and Chaos Warriors. As this was a learning game and I was basically starting from scratch, we kept it simple, with single open field with the armies formed up. The Dwarves would dig in and wait for Chaos to come to them, with their Longbeards and Warriors formed up alongside a screen of Rangers.

The ranger screen got chewed apart by the advancing Chaos Warriors (although slaying one in the process) and ended up being overrun after a turn of combat. The Warriors then held position to threaten the Longbeards, keeping the flank of the Chosen Knights clear enough for them to SLAM into the warriors. The Aspiring Champion with his giant blade easily turned the unit champion into shredded meat, while the rest of the Knights cleared the front row and forced them to fall back. Rather than following the knights reformed to slam into the longbeards, forcing them into a fight that led to the death of their thane and pushing the veterans back. With most of the Dwarf force taken out of action (although not enough to award me victory points for whittling down a unit far enough for it to count).

With a successful game under my belt, and with time still available, we decided to up the ante to 1000 points. With the figures I had, I decided to double the Chaos Warriors, upgrade my Aspiring Champion on ‘horse’ to a Chaos Lord on Demonic ‘horse’ and add two aspiring champions to accompany the unit blocks. A pretty reasonable force!

On the other hand, my opponent pulled out a new force – his Bretonnians. This was going to be a very different game and one I was wholly unprepared for.

As the game began, I made my first mistake. I intended to shield the flank of my Chaos Knights against enemy cavalry action so I put my infantry on the flanks and would advance slowly into charge range. Although my intentions were good, it ended up being suboptimal, spreading my forces out and letting the Brettonaians slam home with ease.

It was only a few rounds in when I realised I really should have put the heavy cavalry on the left flank, pushing between the building and the dead trees to take that flank while the infantry formed up into a larger group. However, it’s all part of learning the game, working out the capabilities of everything and how they play.

Of course, it also didn’t help that the Bretonnians also had air cavalry in the form of both pegasus knights and their general on flying horses. This allowed them to zip around the map, getting behind my Chosen Knights when they got locked into combat or moving from one engagement to the other. Additionally, Knights of the Realm hit like a ton of bricks on the charge, smashing through even the heavily armoured Chaos Warriors. On the other hand, once locked in combat and unable to use their lances, then both the Chaos Lord on his Demonic ‘horse’ and the Chosen were able to cause some serious casualties. In the end though, my force was basically wiped to a man, the last remaining Chaos figure being the Lord who wandered off the board after falling prey to a poor roll on the Gaze of the Gods table.

Feels suitably thematic for a game-ending, especially after all of my heroes suffered visions of madness from the gods. Perhaps we shall have to return another time in greater numbers to deal with the Bretonnians.

So with all that, and after a good day of games, what does it mean going forward?

Well it’s safe to say, I’m going to be playing some more Old World with the group. Having finally got to play the ruleset that is based on all the lore I love, it was a really good time. This is definitely not the most slick written ruleset, with things like the combat resolution table definitely a process rather than something that is immediately intuitive. However, it does absolutely nail the feel, with all the factions I’ve interacted with today acting as they should – Dwarves barely give ground unless you break them entirely, the Bretonnians are with parrell on the charge and the armoured Chaos forces can be a mincing machine if they get the chance to strike. Rules like Gaze of the Gods and Blessings of the Lady is that spice on top, making you play even further into the vibe of your force. Part of me wants to go off and try some other factions just to see the options out there! I’m not usually a big list-building guy (and I think many rulesets provide you with far too many options for little benefit) but the force construction feels open ended with every army having plenty of archetypes you can go down. Definitely one to have more of a play with.

Army-wise, the Warriors of Chaos are going to be my starting point. I’ve got a pretty good force already, but with a few additional purchases and some more painting I will be up to a full 2000 point list with a few options. The main area I need to fix are with the lack of command groups in my units – I assembled them planning for skirmish gaming, so they are missing Musicians and Banner bearers that were often the tipping point in combat against those damn knights. The other major change is going to be rebasing all my units onto square bases. However, I think it’s a better solution than messing around with bracing structures. There will be a few interesting poses to deal with (most modern AoS figures are designed without the “must rank up” limitation” but I think it’s doable.

To conclude, I guess it finally happened – I found myself a Rank and Flank game I’m actually excited to play.