Thanks guys. Here are some more of them and I've finished all of the Furies too. So two more angry chickens to go and the whole starter box is done.
A flock of the angry chickens goes squawking through the ruins of the Varanspire. The Eight Points is lousy with these things and the worst part about them isn't the droppings.
And that isn't the only flock that threatens the denizens of Archaon's Realm.
I'm not sure why I couldn't get the flash to not go on these guys when it took the pictures of the poultry gang just fine. They would probably look better without the flash. I'll try to get some pictures of them in natural light at some point.
We also had a player that can't make our campaign kick off this Saturday so he and I got a few games in ahead of time at my place.
He is going to use Iron Jaws in the campaign. I decided to use Untamed Beasts. I had not seen the cards for the Iron Jaws before today. They are tough as old boots! I was wondering how I was going to tackle them given how destructive and difficult to hurt they were.
I need not have worried. The scenario for the first game was something that played to the Beasts strong suit and really was not suited to the Orcs particular abilities. The objective was to claim table quarters with each player getting 1 VP for each table quarter where they had more models than their opponents.
The orcs may be tough, but they sure aren't fast and they are pretty few in number too. With 9 Untamed Beasts to only 6 Orcs the Beasts jumped to a lead on the first turn and it was impossible for the Orcs to catch up. Combats were few but the Orcs still managed to knock down the Beast's leader. At the end of the first game it was 6 Glory Points for the Beasts to 2 Glory points for the Iron Jaws.
The second scenario involved one side having a model carrying a treasure and the other side having to get to that model and kill him by the end of the 3rd turn. You are supposed to roll off to see who gets to be the defender. We realized that if the Beasts were the defender the Iron Jaws wouldn't stand a chance. There is no way they could catch a single model of the defenders choice.
So we decided to forego the roll off and just made the Iron Jaws the defenders. This gave them an advantage because of how tough some of their models are. To continue in our sporting vein the Iron Jaw player picked his second toughest model to be the treasure bearer.
This was a much closer game. The horned lion thing really let the Beasts down with his massive charge using his quad ability. He had +2 to his S and A and still only managed to do 8 points of damage to an Orc with two rounds of attacks. Which would have been bad enough but then the leader charged into that Orc and managed no damage despite getting an extra attack and only needing 4+ to wound him.
The Beastmistress almost saved the day with her whip but it left the orc with two wounds left, enough to guard the passage and tie up three models.
The fighting took place all over the board as some members of the Beasts tried to draw off the Orc reinforcements.
Ultimately though it was the toughness of the Iron Jaws that won through. The loot carrier only suffered 13 of his 25 wounds and was in good health when the 3rd turn ended.
It really was one of the 'Ard Boyz that saved the day though. If his stand at the opening had not been so stalwart in the face of overwhelming Untamed Beast attacks it would have let the Beasts through almost unopposed against the loot bearer and, tough as he was, he would not have survived attacks from nearly half the enemy models.
The Orcs ended the game with a victory, garnering themselves 6 Glory points to the Untamed Beast's 2. So for the campaign it is tied with 8 Glory Points each.
The games were a lot of fun. The second one was full of tension and tough decisions, while the first one was not as much. The cards are a really neat mechanism for making each game very different and of the 10 or so games I've played so far no two have been alike. With four different things going on, and three of those things (terrain, deployment and mission) being huge factors in how the games play, it is great to not know what you are facing every time you bring your troops to the table.
The fourth card type, the twist cards, do add something. And the results can be absolutely game changing to bordering on completely insignificant. In one game we played before there was much everywhere and all models subtracted one from their movement. Had we pulled that card the Orcs would have been absolutely stuck in either of the games we played tonight.
This was the first time I've played against models not from the starter set. It is a very different game playing against Iron Jaws vs. playing against the Iron Golems. I'm going to try to get and paint the Unmade before the campaign and demo game we are doing on Saturday so that someone can have a go with them if they want.