Hey there Age of Sigmar friends, Reecius here with another learning league battle report! This time: Brandon’s Death army vs. my Wood Elves! Check the Tactics Corner for more great Age of Sigmar battle reports!
Here’s my force:
- Wayfinder Lord
- 11 Glade Guard
- 5 Wardancers
- 1 Warhawk Rider
And Brandon’s army:
- 11 Zombies
- Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon
Mission: modified ITC Scenario 6
We deployed across from one another and got ready for battle! Brandon took first turn and summoned 10 additional Zombies on to the table, then advanced up field.
In return, I moved my Wardancers towards the Zombie Dragon and my archers moved to the edge of their effective range and unleashed everything they had! Hail of Doom Arrow, the Glade Guard’s once per game -3 rend arrows, the works, and put 6 wounds on the Vampire Lord. The Wardancers charged in and put another 3 Wounds on the Vampire, who then killed them, regaining a wound. Got him down to 4 when all was said and done.
I won the initiative and so got to go again! I then let loose with another volley or arrows into that damn Vampire and assaulted with the Warhawk, desperately trying to finish the him off. Between all of them I got it down to just 3 wounds but that simply was not enough. I had to kill the beast to stand any chance. In dying, the Warhawk gave the Vampire another wound back =(
Bottom of turn 2, the Vampire uses his Blood Chalice to regain 4 wounds which was very bad for the Wood Elves! Brandon also summoned in another 10 Zombies and both they and the Vampire made a 9 inch charge into my two remaining units and wiped me.
Wow! Haha, holy crap. Brandon could have only put the Vampire on the table against my entire army and I would have lost. I simply could not kill it, even with the double turn, and summoning in additional Zombies was more than I could handle. Had I not gotten the double turn, it wouldn’t have even been close. His ability to regenerate meant that even had he failed those last two charges and I got another round to shoot him, it would not have mattered. That thing is incredibly powerful, no one has managed to kill it yet in any of our games and it has singlehandedly murdered almost everyone’s armies, solo! lol.
Summoning is extraordinarily powerful. You really must impose some sort of limit on it to make the games at all enjoyable. At these lower points limits the impact is felt more, but there must be some limitation on it for any semblance of game balance.
That said, with my next 25 wounds I plan on bringing Durthu who if played well, can really kick the snot out of big baddies like the Vampire. Also, a unit like the Wildwood Rangers would be good for this purpose as well, as they are 3+ to hit and wound, -1 rend and do D3 wounds to Monsters. As is, at this low wound count, that dang Vampire is just brutally overpowering, like bringing a Wraithknight in a 500pt game or something similar.
As we play, we see wounds simply do not work for balancing the game as not all wounds in AoS are created equally! That was obvious prior to playing, but with practice it is painfully apparent. We’ve been looking at the SCGT format and really like what they’ve done with it as even with a simple read through, the pool points are infinitely more balanced than using wounds. We’ll wait to see what GW does in the General’s handbook, but may adopt the SCGT format as the league progresses.
All that said, I am very much enjoying the game. It is a lot of fun if you work through some of the giant rules mechanics holes, and, the models are brilliant. I definitely encourage folks to give it a try!
Thanks for reading and as always, Frontline Gaming sells Age of Sigmar product at up to 25% off of retail, every day!
Also, be sure to check out the Second Hand Shop to get some used models on the cheap!
“Wood Elves or Death?”
“Uh, Wood Elves please.”
“Well, we’re out of Wood Elves! We only had four Warscrolls and we didn’t expect such a rush. So what do you want?”
Lol, nice Eddie Izzard reference!
Cool – Durthu can bring some pain and is an awesome looking model! What I really appreciate with the SCGT is that there is a consistent metric based on the stats of models/units – something GW has been unable to do with 40K.
Yeah, I really want to try it out but the gang wants to stay the course with wounds through the next round of play and wait to see what GW does with the General’s Handbook.
Frankie and I could try it out in a bat rep, though. It looks pretty awesome to me.
If you ever get a spare five minutes, it’s worth having a look at how your armies measure up in points terms. Without summoning, according to SCGT (this is approximate), Brandon’s Death dudes are worth 23 points compared to your Wood Elves’ 18.5 with Glade Guard. With Waywatchers instead, your Wood Elves shoot up to 26.5. According to PPC, however, depending on whatever wargear the Vampire Lord’s packing, the Death dudes are somewhere between 528 and 613 points (without summoning), whereas the Wood Elves, depending on whether they include Glade Guard or Waywatchers, are from 370 to 435 points.
I know it’s way too early to comment, but from what’s just popped up on Dakka Dakka, it seems like the forthcoming General’s Handbook has much in common with SCGT.
Yeah, the pool points aren’t perfect, but they’re 100x better than playing out of the book. The GW points values sound like they may be quite fair, I am looking forward to seeing what they do with it!
“What is dead, may never die!”
Apparently not, lol
Monsters who heal are incredibly powerful. I myself am guilty to frequently showing up with the Glottkin and some beasts of nurgle, then being generally evil with him. Although he has fallen once to 10 chosen models who went first and murdered him from full to nothing!!!
By the way if you want to beat those zombies with their own cheese just bring 1 branchwraith. She has summon dryads as part of her warscroll and if you turtle in a forest the summons can charge the turn they come in if I recall.
Yeah, summoning Dryads is an option but it is casting value 7, and you get 2d6 vs. the 10 or 20 for Brandon, with casting value of like 4 or something for Brandon, lol. Zombies in big groups are actually better than Dryads, too, haha.
My army isn’t really a summoning army, honestly. It’s more of an army about extreme mobility. With the next wounds, I will be able to show some of that off.
Death to the living!
If the rumors are true, it looks like a point thing maybe arriving officially along with summoning changes. It is good to see that 4 dragon riding vampires will be viable and fun for all!
Yeah, no kidding. If the rumors we’ve seen are correct though, that build wouldn’t be possible?
I imagine not as the that piece would be in the 400 to 500 range minimum. interesting to see where it goes as it needs to go somewhere. The game as you played above will be just too common otherwise
Yeah, good points. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to play vs. 4 of those vampires on zombie dragons, sheesh.
Gw is just about to release the generals play book leaks are already coming up