Devizes 2007
A Warhamster Odyssey
With Devizes as a regular date in the calendar, but with my DBM interest waning and the extreme unlikeness of my erstwhile doubles partner Mr Mick Owens ever appearing across a wargaming table again I decided this years Attack was an opportunity to try something different.
Several people down the club had been trying out Warhamster - and I had been drawn into their evil cabal due initially to a 6mm army from the late Mike Charters which I felt duty-bound to finish off and play with, and then with a rather nattily painted 10mm set of Pendraken Greeks, which evolved into a Carthaginian army after a game or so told me the Greeks were not actually that good
This also meant I now own Carthaginians in 6mm, 10mm and 15mm. Guess what I should be buying next time eh?
Bizarrely, the weather forecast was rather patchy - Devizes always ends up as a roasting hot weekend in my experience - but it was a clear evening as I managed to extricate myself from work by around 6pm and head off down the M3, before making a right turn at Stonehenge and rocking up in the town centre to meet up with Grant and Clive and plan my assault on the Warhamster world.
So, with maybe 5 or 6 games under my belt I prepared for combat.
From my learning/practice games I had come to the conclusion that shooting skirmishers were pretty tasty, and that elephants and shock cavalry were definitely the future of rock and roll (most units are based on 4cm wide bases, but these guys are based on 2cm wide bases - so basically (ho ho ho) you get twice as many (and twice as many attack dice) in contact as normal troops).
I also had seen that the victory conditions meant that your army broke when half its non-skirmish units were killed - but skirmishers deaths were irrelevant unless they made up more than half your units. So with the Carthaginians being able to have some very cheap non skirmishing warband types, and some very expensive shock cavalry and elephants I could afford to keep 5 or 6 cheap non-skirmish units at the back, and fight with my 2 cavalry + 1 elephant unit, plus 6 units of skirmishing infantry and cavalry for support, and maybe lob in a unit of spearmen too... all of whom could die without breaking my army.
This in turn led me to a 2-generals list (you can have 2, 3 or sometimes 4), as I wouldn’t actually need that much command and control given I was only really playing with 3 hard-as-nails units - the skirmishers can to a degree look after themselves - and generals are really pricy (125 for the CinC, 80 for the sub generals - in a 1000 point army).
My list was therefore
- 1 CinC,
- 1 Sub General
- 2 units of shock cavalry (3 attacks, save on a 5+, narrow based)
- 1 unit of elephants (3 attacks, save on a 5, narrow based, elephant rules!)
- 2 units of spearmen (3 attacks, save on a 6)
- 3 units of warband (3 attacks, no save, warband rules)
- 2 units of foot skirmishers (1 attack, no save)
- 2 units of mounted skirmishers (1 attack, no save)
- 2 units of Groovy Mounted Skirmishers (2 attacks, save on a 6)
Within the rules there is a campaign system, which gives you extra units rolled for on a random table - the way this was played at the competition meant you were pretty sure to end up with 3 extra foot units, so as I was lucky with my rolls this added to my army:
- 2 units of elite spearmen (3 attacks, save on a 5)
- 1 unit of warband (3 attacks, no save, warband rules)
This meant I could sit at the back with my 4 warband and 2 normal spearmen, and play safely with the shock cavalry, elephants and 2 elite spear units without fear of breaking my army.
All so far so good - but onto the games!
Click here for a report on game 1
or here for my bookshop of Warmaster Ancients Armies
