9/05/2011

Not in the face!!!

You ever have one-of-those-games? Originally, this was going to be a simple battle report. Unfortuntely, it begins and ends just like this:





Spiders and hooves... you don't get it?

These are the last things my Warhammer Dwarf army saw before being summarily annhilated by goblins and beastmen.

Mercilessly.

Thoroughly.

Completely.

They were beaten so badly the pulp that was my Longbeards unit -- the one with the "general" in it -- smelled strongly of brown ale urine. Even the undead my dwarfs had allied with for this game had pissed themselves we were beaten so badly. I know, I know, they would never ally with each other but that was hardly the point. It was a learning experience! And by "learning" I mean "schooled".

Absolutely everything that could go wrong went wrong... but only for our side. I'm no stranger to losing games;
I've lost an entire 2000point Space Marine force in less than 3 full turns, left to play 3 more turns with a single model. Sometimes, however rarely, I've even inlficted some suffering to a lesser degree on opponents. To be fair, these things largely go 50/50. Even power-gamers used to waving their pricks around in one hand with their supercharged army lists in their other, lose as much as they win, I'll bet. It's about what you emphasize.

But the staggering wave of crap dice rolls and just plain bad luck that dogged me and my fellow general Nick, from the very first turn's opening dice roll was nothing short of awe inspiring, or tear inducing, which ever comes first.


You can talk about good sportsmanship, you can say our tactics weren't sound, you could even recommend how our set up could have been done differently,
but that would be like lecturing a pencil about how best to dive into a pencil sharpener. From the first entirely failed magic phase by my partner to my dwarf canon misfiring immediately, we were marked for doom.

My last standing unit needed to roll snake eyes to not run away like the sad sacks the rest of the army turned out to be and... After watching graveguard humiliated and made inept in the face of super-regenerative trolls, after watching these same trolls make my dwarfs disappear by puking on them -- no really -- after seeing small goblin chariots rape and destroy undead and dwarf alike, at will, after suffering a bray-shaman cast 3 times with irresistable force, neutering the runes I took to dispell magic and NOT dying, after watching blood knights murdered by a fething doom diver, after seeing my longbeards unmanned and trampled, after all our attacks were made moot by well made saves, after every hopelessly lost close-combats against outrageous odds born of a clearly skewed point cost system, after I, myself as a player, was physically done and slapping myself and moving around like an ADHD poster boy to stay coherent... this one unit...

my original dwarf unit, bought on a whim...

...rolled snake eyes and stayed in the game.

Well shit. If they're staying, I ain't going either. Write it in the book of grudges and see you on the battlefield you bastards.

4 comments:

  1. too often, I've had these games. I enjoy the hobby immensely, but these are the games that can butt-hurt for a long time. But, the lesson I'm still in the process of learning in my old age, the only way to fix it is to play again and hope the cubes of probability actually follow those laws at least a little more. Also, undead and dwarves? You cheezy bastard! :-)

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  2. MRAAAK! nice post. My thoughts are: dwarves were in front, and the undead were in the back. Dwarves (good and tough but limited quantity) should have been in back with the undead (brittle but unlimited quantity with the 'regrowth' spells from the vamps) should have been in front. Let the beasts/fanatics/chariots hit the horde of skeletons and then have the dwarves come in for the clean up. You guys had pretty soft flanks as well, especially due to the cannon being out of the fight (chariots hate cannons). With the trolls, I think the thunderers would have been the best answer (shoot them up real bad before they get close and then run away when they charge), but in close combat the only thing to answer would have been the skellington horde (which would have destroyed the trolls in one turn with combat resolution if the gobbo general wasn't around). 9 MAX skellingtons would have bit it with perfect rolls from the trolls vs 25+ attacks from the bone horde + standard + 3 ranks + BSB. The trolls would have had to kill 5 skellingtons without taking any wounds just to be at parity.

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  3. @Blactaculus: You're not wrong. We did actually send the undead ahead of the dwarves for the reasons you mentioned, but mistakingly held the skeletal horde itself back. The thunderers never had a clean shot because of terrain and my dubious placement. Still like agemmanjw said, play again, hope the dice are little more friendly.

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  4. WFB is all about placement and positioning-- this ain't the mob combat of 40K! I looked up the rule and it turns out the Beastmen unit that hit your cannons COULD NOT have come on the board because in that scenario, the sides of the board are considered totally impassable, making the beastmen ambush even more useless than it already is. So you can say you were pildriven by rules misinterpretation as well as getting the shaft on the dice (well when you needed them, you did roll snakeeyes for a morale test).

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