In the Hills of Sylvania...

I had a double header of big games last weekend, first of which was my third fantasy game in a couple of weeks; for those who enjoy the variety of this blog I can assure you the next game was very different and (largely) free of fantasy elements.

Nevertheless, this particular epic was a 5000 point game of Warhammer, with my Dogs of War facing Jason's Vampire Counts at his place.  The battlefield featured many typical lowland Sylvanian sights including  dead forests, impassable rocky crags and Gothic architecture:

I was actually surprised to find that not only did I have over 5000 points of Dogs of War troops, but could easily have upped the game to more than 6000 points.  Amongst my battle line was Asarnil the Dragon Lord, The Cursed Company, Golfag's Ogres, two cannon, three units of Pike, a lot of cavalry and four mages - including Lucrezzia Belladonna.

By contrast Jason went with Lots of Ghouls, lots of Skeletons and lots of Etherals.  Some largely redundant Zombies, a pair of Varghulfs and various other units I can't retend to recall also appeared.

I won the first turn, and after Vanguard moves I was already outflanking Jason's undead.

I was quickly able to threaten the very centre of Jason's army with a seriously buffed Asarnil; Belladonna having added greatly to his stats, and other magic doing what it could to make his dragon a killing machine too.

Elsewhere dismal magic was to be the undoing of my army for the game.  I may simply be I was relying on it too much, but in reality, I only managed to successfully cast two or three spells all game; with one of those being dispelled and at least one wizard not casting a single spell all game!  Not good enough.  At least on the first turn my wizard of beast lore managed to cast irresistably the transformation of Kadon.  Now you see him:

Now you see something rather different:

For our purposes he'd become a mountain chimera; though obviously here we find they look a lot like some sort of Tyranid Carnifex with wings.

On my next turn, it charged with Golfags Ogres, and...

...Was summarily dismissed, leading to the steady destruction of the Ogres.  Of course he wouldn't have been dismissed if ANY of my other wizards could've cast a spell and forced Jason to use some dispell dice for something else.  But the useless b******'s couldn't have organised a piss-up in a Dwarven brewery!

A nice picture of Jason's new undead Mortis Engine, thing; shortly before I shot it to ribbons...

By this stage of the game the problem for the Dogs of war was the grinding match.  Every fight I engaged in led to a slow battle, which I could never get a significant upper hand in.  Dogs of War in general do not have the numbers or hitting power to inflict the necessary brutal impact on large blocks of undead.

This meant that when my limited killer units were worn down - My own undead, my Knights and Asarnil - I had to fall back on weak units which couldn't stem the tide.

And so in the last turns the battle inevitably turned to Jason; and in the end his victory was complete.

It was nonetheless interesting, as it was my first chance to see how some of the new units in the Vampire Counts list act.  I think next time I'll go for a more hitty list, Orcs and Goblins can throw out more attacks.  Though then of course Jason will use his own Dogs of War and probably whip my behind!

Ah well, it was a good entertaining game, even if staggeringly one sided.