A second game of Age of Sigmar

Turn 1

Not one to give in at the first setback (game report here), I invited a gaming buddy round for another try at Age of Sigmar. I stuck with the elves and chaos armies, though this time Chaos Warriors as opposed to Beastmen. They were costed according to a simple scheme which I had found on BOLS (link here). Using this Saga like system I came up with two hopefully roughly balanced forces from my own collection.

The chaos force gained the initiative and rushed on from the left, the newly painted ogres charging into elf spearmen on turn 1. Four wounds on both sides and no battleshock suffered, a nice steady start. Note that the elves are fairly tightly grouped while the chaos forces are a little bit dispersed. This allowed the elves in their first turn to charge the engaged ogres with both the Elven Prince and the Swordmasters, which are absolutely lethal in combat. Suffice to say that troops with 2 attacks each, that hit on 3's, rerolling 1's and then wound on 3's with a -1 rend are potent stuff! Turn 1 death to the newly-painted overweight brutes.

Turn 2

In the chaos turn 2 the marauders surged forward, the horsemen charged the out of position Prince, and managed to wound him, the horses comically far better than the riders. In the centre the large block of marauders moved into contact with the Maiden Guard (which were playing using Seaguard stats). This brought them into range of the Swordmasters who piled in with predictable results - see the half empty movement tray! The marauders at the bottom of the picture made short work of an eagle. Neither side suffered much from battleshock or magic.

In the elf turn, the central unit of marauders were wiped out by the Swordmasters as their reign of death continued. The bolt thrower inflicted casualties on the nearer unit of marauders while on the far side, the Prince retreated to be replaced by the spearmen, who easily defeated the marauder horsemen (I noticed today that the horsemen have two wounds each - we had played just one each - with their two attack steeds this makes them quite overpowered in my mind). The chaos force was looking under pressure, their best unit still to get into combat.

Turn 3

The initiative swung to the elves. They poured fire into the chaos warriors and stripped away a handful with bolt and arrow, then charged in with Maiden Guard and Prince, removing another couple of warriors. In return the chaos forces inflicted just three casualties on the elven fighting ladies. The Swordmasters slaughtered the lone chaos sorceror, though in a flurry of poor dice it took them two combats. By now it was clear that the battle was effectively over. The elves gallantly offered surrender terms to the remaining six chaos troops, then proceeded to mock them as they trudged off the battlefield. Capricious behaviour befitting the haughty ones!

It was probably a better game than the first effort, though the Chaos general was new to the game and made some beginner errors, leaving his units isolated to be systematically outnumbered and slaughtered. It still seems strange that there is no psychology, no real manouevre. I am not sure it's suited to a classic mass battle but is obviously more intended for skirmish gaming, playing like 40k a lot of the time. Maybe we should try it with minimum sized units of 10 or 5, see if it gives better results. A couple more games I think before I throw in the towel, but it's failing to convince me at the moment. Shame really, I quite like the flavour added by the warscrolls, it's the basic mechanics that are the problem.