Sunday, June 28, 2009

Warhammer RPG: Smuggler -> Shieldbreaker

Friday was our weekly meet for the round-robin Warhammer Roleplay campaign. Having finally acquired enough skills and talents from Smuggler (and having purchased all of the required gear) my character progressed to Shieldbreaker. Finally, a career that is competent at fighting! To be fair, lingering in low classes has the benefit of providing useful skills such as Secret Signs (Thief) and Gossip ~ but it's nice to move onto a 'combat career' now that I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

Honouring our sportspersons agreement to avoid increasing our Attack attribute for as long as possible I instead chose Strike Mighty Blow and Dodge Blow to buy with saved experience points. During my character's downtime I will be working for the local Dwarf as a "soldiery type" (to justify the career of Shieldbreaker) and meeting up with the other player-characters on weekends for our adventures.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Saturday Gamesday

Yesterday was Games Day at my place with both Uncharted Seas and AT-43 on the menu.

Uncharted Seas #1
We started with a replay of an Uncharted Seas match from a previous meeting; Three Frigates and Two Cruisers per side. As Marc has yet to buy (or scratchbuild) a fleet we shared my Iron Dwarves again. Much fun was had and the rules came back to us quickly despite not having played Uncharted Seas for a while.

The game ended with both fleets being whittled down to only one cruiser each - Marc managed to put just enough damage on mine to take a close (and exciting) victory.

Uncharted Seas Game One: A mess of Iron Dwarves!
Click on image for larger version


Uncharted Seas #2
For our second game we decided to see how three cruisers (150 points) would go against one Battleship (120 points). Marc insisted that I take the Battleship as the models belong to me. I wasn't sure how it would go up against the linked fire from the cruisers - as it turned out it did very well (much to Marc's dismay).

The Battleship is painfully slow but has the advantage of armour, firepower and range (!!!) so the opposing dwarf cruisers have to come into it's deadly 13 AD Band 2 (or worse: 16AD Band 1) to have a realistic chance at penetrating it's thick armour and to avoid being pinged to death from a distance.

Victory for my side of the table, although in hindsight an unfair fight (despite being at a 30 point disadvantage).

Uncharted Seas Game Two: Three Cruisers attempt to bring down one Battleship
Click on image for larger version


AT-43
Our last game of the day was AT-43. Marc played Karmans and I played Therians (no surprise for anyone that has followed this blog... not that anyone has!). After building 1000 point armies we rolled a Seek and Destroy mission - victory is determined by destroying as many of the enemy as possible before the 6 turn time limit is up.

I managed to get off a Creation routine on turn one to spawn a Succubus Golgoth (this would have gone on for turn after turn but I only own one correct model for spawning and the rules explicitly state no proxies for this routine!). Marc made a blunder early in the game placing his unit activation cards in an undesirable order - then promptly followed this up by forgetting to put an Overwatch drill on one of his units. This put him on the backfoot for the rest of the match (in my defence I asked him a few times if he was sure that he had done everything that he wanted to do before ending his turn - so no takebacks for him!).

Marc spent a turn or two playing defensively (seeking cover and putting everyone on Overwatch) giving him a chance to catch his breath and refocus on the battle. In the meantime I maneuvered my Therians to set up an overwatch firezone and pinged one of his K-Warriors (finishing off the unit two turns later). Having recovered his spirit Marc pushed his trike forward and destroyed an Incubus Golgoth (proxied by my Babylon Zero model).

The remaining AFVs plugged away at each other doing a little damage but scoring no further kills. By turn 6 it wasn't quite enough for the Karmans - being beaten by only one victory point.

Marc: 2 VPs - Kills: Incubus Golgoth (Overseer Alpha)
Troy: 3 VPs - Kills: K-Warriors with Mentor
Result: Therian Victory

AT-43 Afternoon Game: Karmans move into the Therian killzone!
Click on image for larger version


Conclusion:
We had a fun day of gaming!

I need to continue to work on my terrain (as the last photo clearly shows). We're remembering the rules for both games now and we're still excited by both games so more matches will be had (and the battles will be resolved faster as our experience with the rules continues to improve).