The Bridge of Constant Sorrows: An AoS Battle report

[Pictors Studio]

He had watched his wife die in agony and with weeping sores that filled the bed with a constant stream of yellow, stinking puss.

It had driven him insane.

So he went for a walk, and when a dwarf lord walks, his men walk with him. He had heard that the father of all diseases lay somewhere far to the North and so he walked North.

Because he was a dwarf and he would have his revenge.

Through horror he marched and his men became fewer in number. Through death he marched and men dropped as they went. Through terror he marched and terror was enough for him. He saw the folly of his ways.

And so he marched South, his rage spent, his spleen vented.



(Khorne's minions catch the Dwarfs before they can cross the river Charybdis)

But one does not escape the clutches of Chaos so easily.

Where Papa Nurgle had pulled back a bruised and hacked tentacle the Lord of Skulls was willing to send forth a hand to scoop up the dwarfs and drown them in blood.

So the hunt was on.



(Looking at the Dwarf line from the North)

Eventually there was only one more bridge to cross, the whole way South the power of Chaos waned. Across this one more river, there power wouldn't dare attack him and his determined band.



(Chaos surges forward)

He did have to make it across and his army would not all make it, they were caught halfway across and so they made a stand, and, as a hundred other times on this walk, they would give battle.

The skull white daemons came on. Their massive leader leaped ahead of the masses, its wings taking it into the perfect sky overhead before landing, the heat from its frame melting and cracking the ground around it.



(The dwarfs scramble back across)

The dwarfs moved to come back across the river to support their lord. They would not make it.


(The Bloodthirster advances)

The massive daemon landed among the cross bow armed dwarfs and bellowing its rage it tore through them leaving only blood soaked rags and shattered bodies.



(There has been much killing . . .)



(. . . there will be much more)


It mounted the bridge and leaped towards the rest of the force but he stood tall and met it in combat.

The rest of the daemons flowed into the stolid dwarven ranks and shattered against the shield walls of the short warriors.



(There had been two units of bloodletters here a second ago?)

A few dwarfs fell, but not many.

A new wave of daemons appeared on the horizon, the dwarfs new that they must clear the bridge. Their handguns thundered but the daemons were there. They would not have time to destroy them before they were beset by the new foes.



(The dwarfs fall on their attackers)

So they slaughtered the daemons in front of them and reformed their shieldwalls to take the next wave of attackers. As the wave hit their leader was still standing against the monstrous Bloodthirster.



(A dwarf screams his defiance into the teeth of the howling solidified death that stalks him)

Battered, with massive wounds pouring forth blood, the Dwarf lord held his ground until the bone coloured tide swept over his entire line.

[Pictors Studio]

This was my first game of AoS. 

This is definitely not a big battle game.  There are no flanks, there are no charge reactions.  There is something in the rules called retreating but I'm not sure when units do that exactly.

It was a pretty hard slog getting through it with all the sheets with the units on them, but that is going to be true the first time you play any game.

Overall it did what it says on the tin, it was a decent, fast-paced, large scale skirmish fantasy game.

Things I learned:

More units are better than fewer elite units in the fighting if they are backed up by a few elite units.

So 6 elite units will lose to 8 regular units with 2 elite units, I would guess.

Attack in pulses, a massive charge across the front line of the enemy will often cost you. 

In this game in particular the Chaos dice were cold.  In two rounds of combat against the dwarf lord the Bloodthirster only inflicted 6 wounds, not enough to kill him.  On average he should inflict about 16 wounds in two rounds against that model.

The blood letters never made a single save. 

Khorne did pretty horribly, especially given that it was mostly a close combat game.

Two units of bloodletters were wiped out and one unit of flesh hounds was reduced to 1 model.  The other unit of Bloodletters lost 3 models.

The Bloodthirster only gave as good as he got against the dwarf lord taking 6 hits for the 6 he gave back.

The herald, wisely, managed to stay out of the combats.

The Khorne army managed to kill or remove 14 enemy models, 11 of those were by the Blood thirster.

The dwarfs were able to kill 27 enemy models, 17 of those were killed by Hammerers. 

I'm not sure that I can take any real lessons from this single game.  Chaos still won because of the sudden death rules,  the bridge was held by the bloodletters at the end of the 4th turn. 

It wasn't a bad game, a bit clunky because we didn't know how stuff worked.  I'll try it again. 

It does seem like it is missing stuff.  I hope the rules in the boxed set are more complete than the four pages published online. 

[Nord]

There are no rules in the boxed set, just what you get online. The 96 page booklet is fluff, painting, warscrolls, etc. If there is a more complete set of rules to be published, it has not yet been announced (not officially at any rate, there are dozens of claims and counter-claims on the rumour/ranting forums).