Age of Sigmar Learning League: Seraphon vs. Khorne Bloodbound

We’ve got another battle report for you Age of Sigmar fans: Mariana’s Seraphon vs. Raw Dogger’s Khorne army! Check the Tactics Corner for more battle reports!

Raw Dogger’s poor Khorne army has been struggling in our league, but can he reverse his fate vs. Mariana’s Seraphon? She’s never played a miniatures war game before and chose her models based on how cute they are, but turns out, the cute lizards are pretty damn good!

Also, this game was played on the Swamp F.A.T. Mat for those of you interested. Great for Seraphon, Nurgle, and Undead themed games!

Mariana’s Seraphon:

• Sking Starseer
• Bastiladon
• 5 Chameleon Skinks
• Salamander, 3 Skink Handlers

Raw Dogger’s Khorne Bloodbound:

• Mighty Lord of Khorne
• Khorgorath
• 5 Blood Warriors

Mission: As it was Mariana’s first game, we played a simple mission to avoid over complicating things. It was Kill Points and the two objectives were worth 2 Kill Points if held at game’s end.

Mariana’s Lizardmen have NASTY shooting. The Khorne army would have to haul ass up the field to have any hope of getting into melee to win the game. Raw Dogger won the roll to go first and took it. Mariana deployed her Skink Starseer in between the Salanader and Bastiladon. The Chameleon Skins were deploying using their special deployment, allowing them to appear anywhere on the board in Mariana’s movement phase.

Turn 1:

Jason went tearing up the field hoping to close the distance between he and the Seraphon gunline, running all his forces up field.

The Seraphon beefed up with magic and command ability buffs and advanced into firing range. Let me say, HOLY CRAP! That Skink Starseer is an amazingly good force multiplier. His command ability gives you the potential for up to 6 rerolls during your turn (SOOO good!) and his spell allows you to add or subtract one from one dice roll per phase for the next turn. Again SOOOO GOOD! These two combined means a unit becomes hyper, ultra efficient. It’s incredibly powerful. The Skink Starseer himself is a wimp, but you just hide him to keep him alive and any units nearby are mega buffed.

In her shooting phase, the Bastiladon, Chameleon Skinks (who came into play behind the Khorne forces) and the Salamander pummeled the Chaos war band. The Salamander itself dang near killed the Khorgorath in a single shot due to the buffs from the Starseer. It’s breathe attack does D6 wounds and then if you survive, can do D3 Mortal Wounds on top of that…wow! The Bastilidon’s shooting in turn smashed all but 2 of the Blood Warriors, and the Chameleon Skinks dropped the Mighty Lord of Khorne to two wounds…ouch! The Bastiladon is absolutely brutal, it ignores Rend, has a 3+ and fires out a volley of 2d6 shots. Ballin out of control.

Turn 2

Both players rolled for initiative and the Seraphon won…damn. That meant the game was effectively over as the forces of Khorne would not survive another volley like that. And, they didn’t. The Seraphon unloaded again before Chaos could move and obliterated them. All that was left was the Mighty Lord of Khorne who with some miracle saves, manged to survive the onslaught. He then charged into the Salamander out of spite, but only killed a single Skink Handler, lol. He was then subsequently destroyed. GG, and wow, what an ass whipping.

The Khorne Bloodbound army gets nuked, Seraphon lose a single Skink, lol. Winning initiative on turn 2 for the Seraphon and getting to shoot two turns in a row without Chaos getting to move was absolutely devastating. I am not seeing how this rule helps game play at all, that was the most lopsided game we’ve played so far and it really sucked the fun out of it. With powerful shooting armies, the ability to shoot twice is just devastating. However, here are some counter points:

1. Raw Dogger’s army is pretty weak. It must get into melee to win but its slow. With some movement tricks, it would be so much better. Also, with some of the terrain rules in AoS, it would help to make them more mobile and be able to stay out of range. His next 25 wounds are going to be very important in turning his losing streak around.
2. Line of sight blocking terrain is a must! Just like with 40k, you have to be able to hide or the game is mega lopsided in favor of shooting armies.
3. You need the ability to reach out and smack those vulnerable force multiplication characters like the Starseer. That guy was so incredibly good!
4. Raw Dogger would have been better off going second and taking away a Seraphon shooting phase. Playing strategically, he could have waited until turn 5 to advance, then Mariana would have had only 1 turn of shooting (turn 6) before he went in to melee where he could have hopefully killed more units than he lost in the final melee.

Lastly, Mariana is off to a hot start and with the crazy synergy her army has, her cute lizards are going to be a force to fear!

Thanks for reading and as always, Frontline Gaming sells Age of Sigmar product at up to 25% off, every day!