"Quantity has a quality all of it's own" Warlord Gravetail of Clan Kythos

I was recently a little bit naughty and bought myself, as a present, an Exaulted Vermin Lord to leaf my Skaven army! This is an AMAZING Forgeworld model. Which I have given an awesome paint job and is shown below...

Yeah right... How many of you believed me? None..? Oh...
Mine is currently unpainted, but is waiting to be so and I truly hope I can do it justice.
Me owning this awesome model did mean that I couldn't wait for it to hit the table. So, I went along to the Wargames sunday with GameSoc, after bugging EVERYONE to make 3000 point lists to play me with my rat demon lord.

Fortunately I had a taker, an army of Orcs massed at the other side of the table, not outnumbering the Skaven, but enough to make me worried... My Skaven stood, cowering in fear from their new master.

Just a quick note: I forgot my camera SD card, so these pics are from my phone. I also decided that I would stop taking pictures halfway through. So A LOT of it will just be story.

I'll speak about the Battle at the end, which is more of a Story of what happened than anything else...


In the meantime I have 2 GameSocs to comment on. I'm sure I've mentioned GameSoc a lot and thus don't need to explain how awesome it is, but it is awesome, damn, I just mentioned it didn't I?

Firstly, I got to play Warmachine finally! Played an intro battle with my Cryx starter army and I do still love this game. I like the skirmish feel. I don't think I would want to play anything too long with it, since I already have Warhammer for that, but at the moment nothing else can fill the small skirmish 30 min game for me. Need to get that stuff painted up!

I also got to play 7 wonders with the leaders expansion that I got just after christmas.

We jumped straight into a game with newbies, which might not have been the best idea since I am TERRIBLE at explaining games. People probably understand the game better before I explain it than after. Thankfully Lucy took over explaining all the confusing things which I had said, so we could play.
I really liked leaders, having something to plan for longterm, even if it was just small was a good thing for me, and they don't seem to be overpowered. Sure Lucy kicked us all, with the 7 vp for every full set card, completing it twice, but she had 2 newbies passing her nice cards...
I really enjoyed it, and am looking forward to many more games, and future expansions. I'm also definitely going to keep playing it with this expansion in the game all the time. 


Although I didn't get to play it too recently I also feel I should quickly mention one of Soph's Xmas presents, seeing as it seems to be hitting the table regularly. That would be, Dude, where's my Fish? Otherwise known as that to the right------->>>>> This is a lovely little game by ffg, with fantastic production, where you have to collect as many fish as possible. It scales so brilliantly with number of players, and strategic level of players and only takes about 10 mins to play. Brilliant game. Well done ffg, looking at getting the wiiware game soon!



Then we move on to GameSoc number two:

We got started with a further game of 7 wonders with leaders. Despite the fact that people to the sides of me didn't let me get sets of 3 science, I got enough to just win by it! Still enjoying leaders, though I had some awful leaders this time! Also, that is definitely Inara!


This followed with me sitting out of a game of Quarriors. Quarriors was the big hotness at GenCon this year, which is dice-building. Basically you play just like a deck building game, but WITH DICE. It's a great quick game, that people always seem to want to play again. I have the expansion at home now, so am looking forward to screwing other people with corrupted quiddity!


We finished the evening with Neuroshima Hex, 4 player hex grid battle mayhem. I love this game, it's brilliant fun with 4 players and uber-strategic with 2. Always great fun and really tough. Blue started by kicking red's ass in, then moving on to kill yellow. We (Elle & I) just stayed away from that, doing bits to them both and finally took down blue with a massive ranged assault for the glorious victory.



Ah, GameSoc, how I missed thee, let me count the ways.

6, I think it's 6.  Anyway...

 Stuff for the future
 At the moment the future seems to hold a magic draft tournament, storm of magic session and the possibility of a dual 40K / fantasy battle, if we can make the rules. So watch this space in 4 weeks time for updates on all of the coolness which just flows out of me. Hmmm... maybe I'll reword that...

Nah.


And now... the moment you've all been waiting for...

This... is... Warhammer Fantasy Battles...

My 219 models were amassed, the Clanrats poking the slaves in front of them with whatever they could find or hurling rocks at them. Chieftans of Clan Kythos attempting to keep each of their designated hordes in check, while Warlock Engineers each polished their individual contraptions. The Orcs on the other side of the plane grunted, snorted and with a great WAZZZARG! from their leader the battle began... 

The Orcs were massing forward before the Ratmen could get their slave-fodder forward. Great storms wracked the sky as lightning flew upward from the banner at the center of the Ratmen horde.

A unit of maddened spider-riding goblins appeared out of nowhere, attempting to take down one of the Warplightning cannons, set up to the sides of the main army. Fortunately, one Warpfire thrower team was ready, and let off a stream of green fire, killing the entire unit in a single burst of the hideous flame.

Then it was time for the Skaven to move, starting with the Doomwheel, which pondered ahead of the army, letting off bolts of additional charge into a mass of slaves, killing 3 instantly. This got the slaves moving, and the Clanrats followed. The Exalted Vermin Lord moved into the center of the battle, howling and challenging the Orcs to, in effect "Bring it on, Bitches." At least that's what I think I got, my skaven isn't too good. He let out magic from his fingertips, a great, dreaded spell, but it was silenced by a scroll from an orc wizard... All fell silent for a moment and the Orcs continued their assault...

 A second unit, attempting to take down the cannon on the side appeared, riding boars. They failed to organize themselves for the charge, allowing Clanrats to turn and face what would be left of the war-machine. The main body of Orcs slowly advanced, in a circle formation, towards the skaven mass and waited for combat to ensue.





 The Vermin lord took none of this bait, moved to right next to a unit of trolls, after one of them recklessly charged forwards and was instantly caught in between the pincers of the Dire Glaive of the Vermin Lord. From his forward position, the Vermin Lord let off a cloud of putrid disease, killing off Orcs in all nearby units. Following this, he waited for the Orcs to DARE charge him. The Doomwheel to his left managed to get just far enough to crash into a large unit of Greenskins, just about aimed by the engineer in charge of the unit. This took down several, impaled upon spears or lightning crackling from the contraption. The rats used to run the wheels began biting at the orcs, taking down a couple more. But, the orc leaders bashed some heads in and the grunts got their act together and attacked the wheel, peeling away parts of it, making the engineer flee - flee for his life, a sensible choice...


(This is where I'm out of pictures...)  So imagine people, use those brains of yours!

The Orcs plucked up their courage against the mighty vermin lord, as the clouds above began to clear from their darkened state. A unit of boars on the left flank also charged the slave unit covering a unit of Clanrats, revealing the secret to the slaves! Each slave had an explosive in their stomachs, wired to the engineer in the unit behind, making them explode when they looked as if they will lose combat, hopefully taking out some more of the enemies with them! This tactic took out a grand total of 5 boar riders, in exchange for all the slaves. A good trade, thought Warlock Sqeek. Meanwhile, as Gork stomped his massive foot through some Stormvermin, the Exalted Vermin Lord was trading blows with Orcs. He decided to go after the three remaining trolls, killing all of them with lightning sweeps of his glaive, however, forgetting about the orcs; which hurt, as their stabbas cut into his side, causing a couple of serious wounds. After this, the grunts took one look at the massacred trolls and decided to run, the Vermin Lord looked to his right, smirked and bounded after them, killing each one as they fell over each other, attempting to flee, or not be the next one killed!

In the meantime a unit of boars had run down the Warplightning cannon crew on the right flank, now looking to run through into the back of the Skaven army. It was at this point that the 3 Warlock engineers unleashed their secret weapons.

The engineer on the left flank took out his death globe, aiming square at the Orc Warboss and sorcerer that remained in front of them, mixed in some further warpstone for good measure and let it fly, hitting both perfectly,  slaying the sorcerer instantly and wounding the Warboss in a small explosion. The engineer in the center lit the fuse on his doomrocket and aimed in somewhere towards the newly teleported Orcs which had suddenly appeared right in front of his unit. The rocket flew right through that unit, through a unit of clanrats and into a further unit of Orc savages, hitting one square in the chest, exploding in green flame upon impact, taking down many in the explosion. The engineer on the right flank threw his brass orb as far as possible, toward the boar riders coming from the right flank, but it hit a rock and rebounded nearly into a unit of slaves, oh well, can't win everything!


With the units of Orcs looking depleted, the Skaven looked to the boar riders heading down the rear of their army. They overran a unit of Clanrats and proceeded toward a further unit, after an accidental Doomwheel malfunction took it into a unit of savage Orcs, killing most of them but being finally destroyed in the process. The Vermin Lord set his sights on the boar riders, knowing he was the only thing fast enough to reach them before they took out a further unit of Clanrats, which were simply standing and watching in awe as their Chieftain took blow after blow from an Orc warlord. The Vermin Lord, Bolt Throwa bolts hitting him in the sides, bounded towards them, releasing several spells to take down 4 of the boar riders, but wasn't quick enough to prevent the charge. Dozens of Clanrats died, but not enough to make them flee, and thus the Vermin Lord laughed. He charged the remaining boar riders, releasing cracks in the very ground and a horde of rats around him, killing all but the Orc warlord, who barely got to look around to see then deathly wounded Vermin Lord take his Glaive and chop him in twain.


And so that's how the Battle went. It was an awesome battle, couple of things went my way very nicely, lots of things exploded badly, but that's what skaven are designed for!