+1 Ward Save Rants and Raves about Warhammer tabletop game.

I've decided to changed pace a ton for this match and finally introduce JP to magic....a lot of magic. Here is the list

1 Archmage with seerstaff
1 Mage with pendant of vengance (I think he knows I'm bringing a ton of magic so I'm planning on him having an anvil of doom)
1 Dragon Mage (this part is for me, I know its not super effective against Dwarfs, but lets see)

10 Archers
10 Archers
20 Phoenix Guard
20 White Lions
Bolt Thrower
Bolt Thrower

No basic plan other than plan A....What is plan A you ask? Kill kill, blood makes the grass grow green. Wow thats bad, I cant believe people used to chant that at football games. =p

I'm gonna steer clear about saying too much about my luck on this blog, but a friend of mine told me that I should share a story with you. It has nothing to do with Warhammer, but instead it deals with Necromunda, another game that Games-Workshop makes.

The story takes place a few years ago when I was in college. I had a roommate with perhaps the best luck known to man. We were in my living room, which was part of a tiny college apartment, and we had a 4x4 table set up to play necromunda. I was playing the Spyrers, a small, elite force, and my roommate was playing House Delaque, which is just your average gang with a few living shields in it.

To make a long story short (kinda) I ran one of my spyrers through the shadows into more cover past one of my roommates rookie house members. After all of the modifiers, he needed a 6 followed by a 6 followed by a 5 just to hit me. No way its gonna happen right.....

So after he hit me he needed a 5 or better to wound me. His luck should run out sometime.....

After he wounded me I had 3 or better save. I can do this right.....

After I failed my save he had to roll to see how bad the wound was. On a 1 its a flesh wound on a 2-5 I was down and on a 6 he kills me for the game. His luck couldn't be that good could it?

statistically speaking his chances were 1 in 5832.

The best part is the the neighbors above, below, and next to us heard the final string snap on my barely sane world. In a fit of rage I ran into the kitchen and drop kicked the refrigerator door. Ran back to the room grabbed the die threw it across the room watched it ricochet off all four walls about 6 times each. Stalked back into my room grabbed my dremel, then proceeded to cut and drill into the die, before I finally calmed down.

I'm sure there is a moral to this story, and it probably has something to do with not feeding me after midnight, but I'll leave figuring it out up to you.

Well, I finally painted the table. I purchased a nice shade of green, behr's herbal garden, and used it to cover the table. In our attempts to be economical we cut a few corners...

1) We didn't prime the board. I'm only slightly worried about this because I seem to have a very faint memory of painting a board without primer before, but the guy at Home Depot about lost it when I told him I wasn't going to prime it first. That being said, I did end up putting two coats of paint on it today.
2) We didn't put the sand in the paint to add texture. We had thought about adding sand to the paint in order to add texture, but in the long run tracking down less than a 50lbs bag of sand became more trouble than it was worth. Not to mention the pain a sand textured board causes. Sure it looks great, but when you try to slide a unit of 20 metal figs on a movement try and the front row falls because you hit a grain of sand......

Some positives include, highlighting the hills that we painted the other day. We started with a Dark Angels green as the base, and I was concerned that the Herbal Garden would too light, but it worked out fairly well.

Future plans include flocking parts of the table to add texture, and painting some more details into the hills. I hope to have pictures of the table up soon.

Well, everything kinda went as planned, but I was still on the wrong side of a draw.

I more-or-less controlled the left flank and managed to ignore some rangers in the woods, which ended up costing me a table corner, but I destroyed the Gyrocopter and the two bolt throwers that were over there. One of my Phoenix guard caught one of the bolts and used it as a toothpick, so the spearmen were the target of choice from then on out, which was what I wanted in the first place.

The Organ gun was another story. JP had it entrenched this time so I was unable to shoot it down from long range. That being said, it was pretty ineffective for most of the game only doing 2 hits a turn against my spearmen. Finally, on the last turn I finished off the crew leaving only the master engineer.

The right flank was a different story, and perhaps I should have seen it coming. I got a little over confident because of my dominance on the side where he had little to nothing, and decided to charge his unit of longbeards with my white lions in the front and a unit of dragon princes in his flank, knowing that the white lions would be taking a flank charge the very next turn if I didn't break them. So two big surprises...one he has an oath stone, which gives his no flanks, and two he has a BSB, and a rune that makes him cause fear, and my dragon princes don't charge. Needless to say, not only did he not break from combat, but I actually lost combat...good thing I'm stubborn. This happened in the top of turn three. During his turn my lions got flank charged, but again we held at the end of combat. Next turn both my Lion Chariot and my dragon princes hit the flank, but they only turned the tide for 2 combats. Long story short at the top of the 6th JP slew my BSB and routed my White Lions and my chariot, and in the bottom he routed my Dragon Princes.

In conclusion, I'm inconclusive on the necessity to hero up in a high elf army. But also that I apparently play the part of a high elf general too well in real life...overconfident...One of these days I'll have to go magic heavy on him, and see how that works out for me.

2000 pts against Dwarfs

1 Prince Heavy Armor and Great Weapon

1 Noble BSB with the Battle Banner (only magic item) heavy armor

10 Archers
10 Archers
24 Spear Men

20 White Lions c/s/m
20 Phoenix Guard c/s/m
5 Dragon Princes
1 White Lion Chariot

1 Eagle
1 Bolt Thrower
1 Bolt Thrower

So, a slightly different list than normal.

Playing Dwarfs gives me the ability to not take any magic if I don't want to. I'm not a big fan of the 24 spearmen, but we got them in the hopes that they will soak up missile fire. Love the archers, phoenix guard, white lions, eagle, and bolt thrower. As much as I love the Dragon Princes and Lion Chariot I'm afraid they will be the target of a cannon ball early on in the game.

This is my attempt to prove the usefulness of the standard high elf infantry over characters and magic. Without seeing the table yet, the game plan is to Place the core of my army in the middle of the board, and use my chariot and Dragon Princes on the flanks where hopefully I can both avoid the cannon and turn the flank on my sluggish dwarven foe. Well, thats it for now I keep hearing JP say "oh" and "that's interesting" as he rounds out the rest of his army list for tonight's battle.

2,001 pts against High Elves by JP

15 Longbeards with shields and full command.
10 Thunderers
10 Warrior Rangers with a veteran, throwing axes, shields, and great weapons.
15 Hammerers with shield, a gate keeper, and standard.

2 Bolt Throwers with the Rune of Penetration and Engineers with braces of pistols.
1 Organ Gun
1 Gyrocopter

1 Thane with shield as the Army Battle Standard and Oath Stone. Master Rune of Fear on the standard and the Rune of Resistance on the armor.
2 Runesmiths with great weapons, the Master Rune of Spellbinding, and Master Rune of Gromril.
1 Master Engineer with a great weapon, brace of pistols, and Rune of Warding.
1 Lord with shield, Master Rune of Alaric the Mad, Rune of Resistance, and Master Rune of Gromril.

I had a feeling that Jason would not use magic, so I did not choose a Runelord with the Anvil of Doom. But 2 Runesmiths in case he did try something. From left to right on the board, my setup was: Rangers in the woods, gyrocopter, Runesmiths, bolt throwers on hill, Thunderers on the ground, Organ Gun dead middle, Hammerers with the Lord, and Longbeards with the Thane and Oath Stone. I knew my left side was weak. I planed moving the Hammerers over to the hill, but it did not happen.

The Thunderers was the first to go, then the bolt throwers. My dice rolls, mostly, were misses or no wounds. Very unlike myself. The gyrocopter did little damage to the Phoenix Guard, but tried up the Great Eagle. Long story short, my Oath Stone saved the day. In the last round I was able to receive victory points from the White Lions, Lion Chariot, and Dragon Princes. In the end, Jason's vp was Thunders, 2 bolt throwers, 1 Runesmith, gyrocopter, half on the longbeards, and half on the Organ Gun. When we totaled the points, I had 90 more. What I thought was a lost, turned into a draw.

I learned several things with this battle. First, never give up, no matter what. Second, also take a Master Engineer. He allows a war machine to be entrenched (hard cover penalty when shoot at). Third and lastly, the Oath Stone rocks! (Ok, cheap pun). With the Oath Stone and the always challenge rule, I was able to take out the White Lion campion and the Noble with the Battle standard.

Spearmen are perhaps the second biggest disappointment in the entire list IMO. Lets look at the positive first. You attack first no matter what and you fight in three ranks if you don't charge. Just a quick note on strategy before the math. NEVER CHARGE A MELEE UNIT WITH SPEARMEN unless worse things will happen to you if you don't. The only difference between charging spearmen and holding spearmen is that the charging spearmen lose their third rank.

So again to the math.
Charged by dwarfs. Okay, sorry that's too unrealistic. Charged by Black Orcs. Lets also say you are going with a 6 man front (which is really the way to go) you get 19 attacks (because you have a chanmpion and 3 ranks). Hitting on 4s, so 10 hits, wounding on 5s, so 3 wounds. Good news is they may have just light armor, so you probably kill 3 orcs if the dice are in your favor. Their turn, 2 guys get to swing back, but they are probably using two choppas and one guy is a champion, so 5 swings back htting on 4s, 3 wounds wounding on 2's the first turn, so probably 3 high elves die the first turn because the elves won't get a save resulting in a draw....

A draw against a charging unit of black orcs!!!! thats awesome!!!

Unfortunately, what I've found is that your spearmen aren't going to be charged by those black orcs, instead they will have to try their luck against cav. So lets use Empire knights, the to hits are the same, so 10 hits wounding on 4s so 5 wounds. 1+ save though so only one dies....their turn, 5 attacks so 3 hits, killing on 2s so three die... so if its 10 knights you are now out numbered. Score High elves 1 kill +2 ranks = 3 Empire 3kills + outnumbering = 4....but don't forget about the horses...statistically speaking they should only kill one, but lets face it the horses always do more damage than the riders. Ultimately, you should lose by 2.


To make matters worse, if you get charged in the flank or rear, you might as well just hand them the unit.

Okay, so let me put my nerd theory glasses down. Even though the numbers aren't atrociously bad, the results in practice always seem to be much worse. The reason for this is because it is very easy for opposing armies to beef up their offensive output through characters to counter the loss of regular guys. High elves have no real way of beefing up their defense, so putting a character in the unit is risky at best, and there are much better choices.

Okay, so here goes my first game related post...Elven tactics as seen by, well, me. I've been a high elf player for 15 years, and while some things have changes, a lot of things are still the same.

This is going to be a very in depth approach spread out over a few installments.

When I build my army, the last decisions I make are my hero choices. The great thing about high elves is that the average unit is great! Its only weakness is going to be its low toughness, but your hero choice will suffer from the same drawbacks.

So I'm gonna tackle Core units first.
Archers. I know a few of people will disagree with me, but this is a need to take unit. I hear people constantly talking about how ineffective shooting is in warhammer, and they are right if you misuse it. The biggest mistake I see is that people try to use their archers to cause panic checks....

Lets look at the math against a stout dwarf army. Your gonna be at long range so -1 to hit. So lets say you have 10 archers hitting on 4s, so 5 hits, wounding on 5s so 1 and a half wounds...we'll say 2. Now they get their save, heavy armor, shield, so 4+ armor save, so 1 guy dies. So if its a unit of 20 dwarfs, you would need 50 archers to cause a panic test if the numbers are average...

Okay, so maybe dwaves are a bad choice....Goblins, less points though, so bigger units. 10 archers 5 hits still, 2.5 wounds we will say 3. Light armor, shield so 5+ armor save, so 2 guys die. So if its a unit of 30 dwarfs you would need 25 archers to cause a panic test in GOBLINS! Thats 275 pts to cause a panic on one measly goblin unit.

So what are they good for??? taking out war machines especially organ guns (an elf's worst enemy). 10 archers 5 hits 3 hit the war machine (useless), 2 hit the crew, and you are likely to kill one because they typically have little to no armor. So you would need a few more than 30 archers to take out 1 war machine. BTW 1 war machine > than unit of goblins.

So the argument stands is it worth it? Strictly points wise...no. But you should look at it as the archers are paper to a war machines rock to your dragon princes scissors. To help cut back on points go strictly vanilla archers no command.

Ok so maybe I'm only gonna tackle archers in this post...=p Next post spearmen....the brutally less than mediocre spearmen...

Well, here is the start of all things Warhammer and some not. If you are not familiar with the game or Games Workshop, please check them out here.

I've just started with this thing called Warhammer, thanks to Jason. Currently, I play a dwarf army with a Orc and Goblin army in the wings.

Our goals for this humble site are:
1. Journal our battles and tactics.
2. Showcase our models and terrain.
3. Gather and share information about everything Warhammer / Games Workshop.
4. World domination!

I'm sure from time to time there will be the occasional off-topic postings. But whatever the subject, it will be entertaining.

Cheers!

Welcome to 1+ ward save. We hope you enjoy your visit!

I've been playing Warhammer for since 3rd edition (I think, whichever box set had orcs and goblins versus high elves) which I think was about 15 years ago. During that time I've worked as a games guy for a HobbyTown in TN which was perhaps one of the most entertaining jobs I had. My Saturdays consisted of running games of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. I love to play, but I am the SLOWEST painter on the planet. Like I said I've been playing for 15 years, and I still don't have a completely painted army...That's gonna change...I promise.

Soon after that I moved to this tiny little town, that has absolutely no gaming store, but I did have two armies. So that brings us to where we are now. I've managed to get someone else hooked on the game, and we managed to find a place besides my apartment to play.

More later....