Cityhammer - Post Mortem

marlwyrms on the charge.

Last weekend saw the first Cityhammer, a small event in Limerick for a few folks to get together and play some friendly warhammer at 2,500 points set up by Jay McKeown, the wargaming honcho for BroCon. Well, I say friendly, but what I mean is non-competitive. Actually, more not a strict tournament than non-competitive. Just as well as I was more forgetful than usual with the old rules.You know what it's like when the dice start rolling.

The photos here are from his Craigness, you can see some more here. You can often catch Craig weeping softly on the Blog of Grudges.

I took my fimir (warrior of chaos). I took a lvl 4 Nurgle Daemon Prince on lore of death with all the toys, a defensive Nurgle  BSB with the Crown of Command, a lvl 1 sorcerer with Dispel Scroll, and Throgg. 17 Nurgle Chaos Warriors with halberd, full command and the Standard of Discipline, 3 crushers with ensorcelled weapons and the gleaming pennant, 17 Forsaken of Khorne, 5 Chaos Warhounds, Hellcannon and 5 Chaos Trolls.

Game 1: Bruce Sutton - Orcs & Goblins
I've known Bruce for a good while now, but we've never managed to play each other. We decided to finally consummate the relationship. Bruce was playing with a large block or black orcs, boyz, arrer boyz, a stone thrower, 2 orc chariots, doom diver, a unit of six trolls and a large mob of gobbos with 2 heroes with great weapons, shaman and fanatics. An bsb and fighty lord completed the army.

Things went awry for Bruce early as he failed all three required animosity rolls and had to charge with all three units, the arrer boyz, wolf riders and gobbos. None connected bar the wolf riders, who saw off my warhounds.

The fimir mean to teach them orcs some manners.

We juggled about a bit before the battle lines met. My warped (forsaken) took a charge from two orc chariots and a unit of black orcs and were wiped out to a man. Well, fimir. Rolling double six for the chariots impact hits was painful. In return the black orcs were murdered by the fimm (chaos warriors) and meargh (daemon prince). The goblin unit turned out to be a real pain, after unloading their fanatics with great weapon wielding goblin heroes actually managing to take down a few warriors. The eventually failed their steadfast roll and fled only to be run down. On the flanks a unit of trolls and wyrm riders (skullcrushers) danced about each other for most of the game. My hellcannon performed poorly, hitting bugger all before running off an orc chariot. My unit of fianna fimm with dirach, (Trolls with Throgg) which I'd never taken before surprised me with their ungodly kill power. Throgg is a murderer.

The MVP on my side was certainly the meargh. She was toting lore of death this game, and purple sunned her way through a high tally of orcs, gobbos and various heroes. We called it at the end of turn three, slow play (we were taking it pretty easy) dictating we call it. I came out about 400 victory points on top. A great game with a high blood content.

Throgg. What a pr*ck.

Game 2: Kevin Rynne - Bretonnians
Kevin is a great player to face as he is both gracious and merciless. He knows the game extremely well which is gold for someone like me who plays less than I might like to. He played Bretonnians (Game of Thrones themed), a tough army to win consistently with. Kevin fielded four units of knights of various flavours, two trebuchets, a big unit of men at arms, some archers and three peg knights as well as a couple of paladins, a heroic killing blow lord and some damsels.

The first couple of turns elapsed with Kevin lining up the optimum charges and myself trying to best line up to receive them. I did manage to get a purple sun through two units of knights, and the lord did fail his look out sir, but then managed to escape purpley death. Darn.

Two lances of knights including the choppy lord barrelled into the warriors, who took it well and would most likely have held if the bsb hadn't been cut down by the Bret lord. They broke and fled, and were cut down.

The trolls spent a few turns trying to avoid the flaming knight unit, but it was not to be. They were cauterised in short order, but by the end of the game the lord was down to a single paladin companion. Not before he employed his heroic killing blow on my hellcannon though. I did forget it's ward too. Sigh. The daemon prince got stuck into a unit of men-at-arms with a 5+ ward, and only ran them down in the last turn, ensuring her escape.

Once again the forsaken proved their worth (to me, anyway) and ran off a lance of knights a couple of times, but were never able to catch them, and the knights held them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive. The crushers were able to hold out long enough to down a couple pegasus knights, but in the end I was taken down piecemeal. Kevin has the movement phase pretty well down and it was good to see some great examples of how to get the most out of the phase.

A cracking game, Kevin seeing me off back to the swamps. He had a little glow about him after the game.

A spooky mortis engine.

After a break for some grub we got into the evening's entertainment, board games and a four player game of Triumph & Treachery, Games Workshop's new expansion for warhammer. Two dwarf and two chaos players duked it out. The dwarf players had a bad time of it, being run over by Jay and his unstoppable monsters. I for one have to apologise for faffing about in deployment, sorry Bruce! I played much too cautiously, only barely resisting the temptation to charge a unit of dwarf warriors in the rear after convincing them I was friendly. Why did I do that?! Jay ran away with it, easily amassing a fortune in tokens. The cards didn't affect the game as much as I'd hoped, but again I think we need to give it another shake.

Not the best first outing I think, but I believe the game works well, and I'd certainly be willing to give it another go, I feel it's a good expansion.

Angry dinosaurs.

The High Elf dragon known as 'Craig's Bane'

Asur vs Lizardemen

Good fun all in all, though I was totally wrecked by the end of it, but still managed to drive back to Galway through ice and freezing fog.

I'd do it again though.

(An oldhammer mate of mine brought me a very welcome package on the day too, some new fimi... ah, I means 'marsh daemon' sculpts just out from Oakbound Games. Check them out at here the Oldhammer forum. A review of these fellows soon.)