4th of July

Today was the 4th of July, so my wife and I did some pretty patriotic things. I played a game of Warhammer, she took the dogs to the dog park, and we cleaned up the living room a little. With the two of us basically living the nerdy bachelor lifestyle, stuff piles up very quickly on any flat surface in our home. We're trying to get it to the point where people can come over and visit, but it's slow going.

I played my second-ever game of Warhammer today. I had posted on the forum that I was going to be at the store with my army today, to either watch the game that was going on or play any challenger that came along. A guy from the group showed up with a Hordes of Chaos Tzeentch army and some free time, so we cleared off a table and got our armies out. I do not have any familiarity with Chaos armies, so everything was new to me. He had a lot of magic, so it was quite a change from playing against Dwarves.

I don't remember things very well in chronological order, so I'll just hit main points of the battle as I think of them. Two of his level 2 spellcasters miscast their spells and each ended up losing a caster level and a spell from their list. For an army that relies so much on magic, that was a big blow.

He had one spell that would make one of my units fight amongst themselves. Luckily, I rolled well during those combats and my rats didn't kill very many of themselves.

His army general had a flying mount with a long movement range, so a couple of my units spent key turns of the game chasing him. Then he would fly off in another direction, leaving my unit in the middle of nowhere facing away from the battle.

My Warp-Lightning Cannon was strong again, accounting for several of his soldiers and only one of my rats. If I'd been a little more courageous about shooting my own guys, I probably could have killed some more of his army.

My Rat Ogres were worthless again, getting killed as soon as they got into combat. Once again, I think my units of Slaves outlasted the big brutes. I guess it's true that the units you spend the most time painting are the ones that spend the least time on the table.

At the end of Turn 6, my opponent was in line for a pretty solid victory, but two of my units passed their rally tests and he was denied those points, so we ended in a draw. I also had several units on the table that were one or two models over half of their starting strength, so that was another couple hundred points he could have had.

Apart from the two miscasts, he outplayed me the whole way, but I had some lucky dice today and I was able to pull a draw out of my hat. I had a pretty good time because I was able to get most of my units into combat and maneuver a bit more than in the game against the Dwarves on Monday. Hopefully with some practice I'll be able to start winning some games.