[WM BR] 2k Dwarves v. Deamons, Greenskins and Dress Wearing Pansies

[Haranin]

Hello,
On January 14, my wife and I meandered up to snowy New England for some warmaster, and scoping out some different areas of Maine. We are moving up to Maine this summer… so it was a good dual purpose trip.

Ed, and Elite Hobbies of Dover were kind enough to host the first warmaster tournament on the East Coast in a very long time. I think it might be 9-10 years since the last one…

Elite Hobbies has four tables down in the basement, a store above and a bathroom. Pretty typical for a small game store. Many food options in a walkable distance.  I had pizza with the guys, about a half block uphill from the store.
It was the kind of gaming experience you want to have- people were reminding each other of different rules, possible moves, and discussing things without passion. The emphasis was on fun, not surprising your opponent.

Format was 2,000 points, three rounds.

My list was:
General with orb (new rules)
2x Runesmiths (dispel scroll and 5 pt sword)
10x warriors
3x rangers
2x cannons.

BP 8

I generally don’t take cannons with my dwarves, relying on 4 wounds and 4+ saves to be tough to kill and not giving up any units as cheap or easy kills.  Ed had posted prior to the tournament that a high portion of monster heavy lists were coming. With visions of giants, dragons and greater demons, I opted for the cannons over the troll slayers. I hate the idea that to use the trollslayers effectively, you have to half break your own army.

Turns out not that many monsters. Just one giant, and I think the dry undead player had only two monsters. (not counting flyers).

Game 1: Dwarves v. Demons. (tournament list)

Objective was to pound the snot out of each other 
I had never fought against demons, but had noted the internet chatter about how good they are, and arguably one of the best armies out there right now. I was NOT looking forward to this fight.

I don’t recall who got to pick sides, but I was happy with my side.  My plan was to move up my cannons (flanked with rangers) up onto the hill, put two three warrior brigades on either side and move up my four warrior brigade around one flank into a front position.
The plan was to use my cannons to force the demons to close, and hope through typical failed orders Ed would get spread out in such a fashion I could hammer him.

Black line shows intended position.
Ed had three brigades of two infantry with swarms in front,  two units of flyers, two demon knight units, two chariots, three hounds and five characters- all of which were casters. Glad I brought two runesmiths!

Dwarf deployment

First turn

Hard to see, but the two ranger units escorting the cannon both have one standing facing to the rear. I was expecting flyers to hound my rear, and since you can charge at full pace even when in irregular formation, it’s a good tactic. The laminated cards are for my magic items. Helps me to remember.

Ed failed to move either flyer (failed orders) and generally moved up with everything.
Second turn, neither Ed or I could do anything. I got one order off, repositioning my left flank a little better, and Ed did 200% of my orders… moving two units. Yawn.
Turn three, I didn’t do much, but Ed moved up one unit of flyers behind my cannon; two units of hounds into some warriors frontally, and one into the flank of some defended rangers. The Rangers managed to wipe out the hounds handily, and repositioned so that they cut off the retreat of the hounds charging the front of the warriors. Warriors won the combat, and one went into brigade with the rangers, one screened one flank of the cannons while the other moved to help the rangers with the flyers.

The rangers are facing backwards. Ed did have a 50-50 shot of forcing multiple rounds of combat on the warriors, and I was positioning myself for an initiative charge. In hindsight, it was a mistake…. The rangers didn’t need the help, and the screen up front should have been deployed on the hill for defended status.  The rear facing ranger brigade failed to move on orders, while the demon knights were waiting to charge down…

Four Demon units dead, no dwarf losses. I think his break point was ten.
The demon knights and chariots charge in to gain vengeance for the hounds… wiping the floor with the rangers.


However, Ed fails to break my flank decisively, and his infantry is out of support range. The dwarven warriors and rangers swarm over the regrouping demons taking Ed very close to the break point.

Needing to kill two more units, my right flank advances, hoping to break the swarms and advance into the green demons.

Swarms die to fast, and the greenies are to far for a good charge. Rather than bite off more then I could chew, I set up for the next turn.
Ed manages several orders with heavy minuses, and attempts to swarm under the dwarven warriors.

And fails.

My counter attack finishes off another unit, and breaks Ed’s army.
I had two more fights to go in the last round, which were unnecessary.


Ed’s army was fantastically painted. He failed alot of command rolls, and his magic did absolutely nothing. On the flip side, the instability rolls neither helped nor hurt him. In a later game, I watch Ed have three troops kill themselves off due to instability…
Game 2
Orcs! Never have fought against Orcs and gobos… so it was a rare treat.
Objective was to end the game with the most stands near the central hill. With the army size differences, I had to break him or he would win by default.


Charlie picked his table side and deployed his infantry in columns. Against cannon. Against two cannon. My gunners didn’t do much in the first game, but striped off their shirts and brought up the gunpowder wagons for this game – it would hot work servicing the guns in this fight.

I deployed such that two infantry brigades were on one flank, and one with the cannons on the other. Hold one flank, rip up his infantry with my cannons and mop up the survivors. Each flank anchored on woods. 

The odd placing of the trolls is from the giant going wild.

My first turn was spent with the infantry moving up a bit, and the cannons getting extra ammo into supply. As in not moving.

Surprisingly, Charlie opted for multiple lines of gobos to screen one flank and sent all his cav on a long flank march…

My cannons moved up to open fire on the orges. In column. 16 cannon dice are a wonderful thing… if you are tossing them down range rather than receiving them.
I blew away one unit of orges in one go, and moved up a small mixed brigade to annoy the cav. My assumption is that the minus one would slow him down enough that he could not flank me…

Which they did. I sent in the mixed brigade on a flank/rear charge to cripple or kill the fast moving chariots and boar riders.

And got stomped. I did however kill two stands of boar riders in one unit, and one in another. Losing a warrior unit for crippling his strike force was a good trade. Cannons opened up on the black orcs, killing the unit outright.
Charlie spent every turn since the orges died trying to get his infantry shook out into line formation… and failed every turn. He moved up his wolf riders, without the crippled boar riders (-2 command penalty and -1 respectively)… but only made one command roll.

Cannons shifted fire to a normal orc unit since nothing else better was in sight. Rangers initiative charged the boar riders, and a runesmith attached for a bit more combat power. After a protracted fight and advance, the rangers killed two units while dying themselves. Hard to lose a character, but it took out two pricy units.
Meanwhile, I moved up a warrior brigade to screen the cannon from the chariots, and failed to charge in.
I also intiative charged two units of warriors into the goblin screen and broke off after one round of combat. I realized his multiple goblin lines prevented his trolls and giant from hitting me. Putting some hurt on the goblins meant he had even more problems getting them out of the way. Warriors fell back into formation.

In the orc turn, the chariots go in for a frontal charge off initiative. General debates it, and decides to not join one of the chariot units.
]
In hindsight, probably a bad call. While the general would be hideously exposed to a counterattack (would be unlikely that two chariots could wipe out four units of dwarves), with only being  ~4 units from break point, and having 4 units of goblins in initiative charge range on my left flank, it was do or die time. His only real hop would be to wipe out those four dwarf units, and somehow advance into the cannons and crush them in one turn. Insanely unlikely, and the downside of losing the game the next turn as the warriors would probably be in a position to rape whatever unit the general was in… but if you are going to lose anyways, a low probability chance to win is better than no chance at all.
The VP spread on this one was only ~250 in my favor. So picking off one more unit might have been enough for a draw. Odd to think that you can kill 3-4x your enemy and still draw because of the VP spread… Must be the former Empire player in me. I’m used to trading 45 point crap infantry for 110 points rather than the flip side.
Don’t recall the precise way the fight ended. I think he pounded through the warriors, but ended up being pushed back… counter charge off initiative wiped out the chariots, and initiative charge into the goblins killed enough to break the greenskins.
Random pictures of other people’s game 2s

[Haranin]

Game 3

Very odd mission. Essentially a meeting engagement, with bonus VPs for seizing the enemy’s objectives. In hindsight, I badly misplaced my objectives. I assumed that once you picked table sides for objective placement, you got that side. Dave recognized that was not the case, and choose my side. Essentially meant I was facing a 300 point VP deficit from the start of the game.

Important point – never lose sight of the objective(s) of the game. My prior two games led me into overconfidence that I could break the enemy’s army well under the 2.5 hour time limit. This game timed out… while I was slaughtering elves and had him very close to his break point (80-90% chance of breaking his army if there was one more turn), Dave kept his eyes on the objectives.

Dwarf deployment

The metal circular stand in the back, on my right flank is an objective. Dice mark the border of deployment.

Elf deployment. Dave painted his army in bright silver armor… didn’t he? I admit it was a bit annoying in the middle of fights to not be able to tell the difference between units. Particularly in a game decided by less than 50 points, unit delineation is very important for assigning attacks.

The objective with a white hat is a dwarf field kitchen and brewery. Its loss enraged the dwarven troops….  More than the loss of the ancestor statute on the hill.

In my first turn I move up one unit to pick up one objective, and two brigades up to get near another objective. Critically, I went for maintaining a battle line rather than risk being spread out. I got that backwards over the course of the game. With 300 points at stake, I should have risked blowing the command roll (-3 I think for a 7) in order to get the objective, and be more conservative later. This failure forced me to be much more aggressive later, to my determent.  On a more general note, one thing I have noticed about warmaster is that being hyper aggressive is a worse sin then being defensive. The sheer difficulty of maneuvering means significant movement tends to fragment the cohesion of the entire army, creating gaps, and enabling a defender to defeat the aggressive player in detail. 

I got cocky. My troops won some tough fights that were low probability for me, and I internalized that I could substitute good dice for tactics.  Dave punished me for that!

Back of the picture you can see one warrior unit taking an objective. 50% of my army cooling its heels in the foreground. The cannon and this brigade barely moved the entire game- despite multiple attempts of the GENERAL to get them moving.

Dave managed to fight with his entire army against half of mine- and my cannon barely got a shot off all game… and never against a worthwhile target.

Turn 2/3 My left-center brigade moves up to seize the hill and prevent Dave from seizing control of the forest. One runesmith orders the objective carrying warriors off the table, the other fails to move the cannons and left flank brigade. I was relying on my general to get off two orders, one to get the above brigade into defensive positions, and one to reorient the right flank in expectation of a charge.
Dave would have to make three orders off a hero to get the charge into my flank. I wasn’t too worried about. I had leadership 10, an orb and he had an insanely low roll to capitalize on it right?

Sigh. Wrong. In hindsight, I should have done the defensive move first, and the aggressive move second. I was really concerned about Dave’s massive numbers of elf infantry getting defensive positions on the hill, and anchoring a flank on the woods. Also, if the command rolls were reversed, the cannons would have targets due to Dave moving up.


The chariots do some damage, but the dwarves see them off. Ominously, the cannons and left flank brigade discover their beer rations cut and conduct a sit in strike… while the elven steeds, drinking stolen dwarven beer rather than perfumed water spur forward. The chariots might be gone, but the next two waves are approaching….




Poor rangers. One unit, which got an objective off the table, moves up and crushes the sole chariot stand remaining. Some warriors move up to help as well.


In a series of hit and run engagements, the dwarves swarm out of the forest and down the hill, killing a few elf units here and there. Avoiding heavy losses, they regroup after killing their initial victims. In hindsight, if I was paying attention to the time, I would have pressed on. Better to give up some stands and risk a defeat then guarantee a defeat by not being aggressive enough. I don’t think I could have killed enough to break him… but I would have reduced his win to a tie and tie for first.

At this point, the elf player was 4 away from breaking. The spearelf unit and archer unit were within initiative charge range of the warriors in the woods... hit the front units, and use the advances to charge up the hill into the bolt throwers… with five possible units to attack and advance into, good chance to win via breaking the elves. Granted, due to LOS issues, the rightmost unit would need two orders (-2, -3). In the elf turn, the spearelves on his right flank moved up and wiped out the dwarves on the hill, and his silverhelms made two orders off a hero to get into the front and flank of a warrior brigade. In retrospect, the warriors on the hill and in brigade died too hard. While in tough fight and putting up good resistance pruning stands from the elves, they didn’t pick up any VP while burning far too much time.

On a side note, Dave got two spells off, one of which was scrolled. The light of battle did prove critical to killing several units in the last turn. But for the light of battle, one or both of the fights would have bounced fast… giving me a chance to get the last turn in.
Game ended on a time out. VP spread was ~ 350; for this mission it was 300 spread to win. 50 from a tie.
Brutal game. Very easily could have gone either way- if my cannon and left brigade could have got into action… 
But Dave’s focus on the objectives swung it to a well deserved victory. Enjoy my beer dirty rotten dress wearing pointy eared pansy.

Overall tactical notes. I thought being at 2000 points, my general opinion that magic and shooting would do anything would change. Many of the armies had the option of getting  4-5 casters- I expected to see much more of an effect from magic then my prior experience (almost all at 1500-1750 points). Surprisingly, magic was barely noticeable. Granted, dwarves are antimagic… but I would have expected to see a spell breakthrough at least every other turn with large number of casters, not one spell a game in two games, and none in anther. Charlie did only take half the casters he could have however (2 rather than 4).

Shooting was also surprisingly still ineffective. Yes, Ed didn’t have any, and yes my cannon decimated Charlie’s greenskins. But the effectiveness of the cannons in that one game was a fluke- depending on infantry in a column rather than any great skill or luck. They killed one or two stands of demons, and perhaps one or two stands of elf infantry. Hardly worth bringing. They ended up fouling my own lines more than helping in the third game. Jury is still out on two cannons at 2000.
Very surprised at how few large monsters present, and in particular the sheer lack of horses in Dave’s army. Most HE armies I have seen have 9-12 horse units, not 6. Worked out well for him, that is a lot of 5+ save infantry to kill before getting to the breakpoint!

Overall one general and two runesmiths worked well. I generally had three brigades of infantry and one of cannon with escorts. Troops moved well with these command arrangements, with the exception of the last game. Several units just refused to move much all game, and as they had the farthest to move to get into the fight, I fought with 66% of my army against 100% of Dave’s.
Reflecting on my tactics, I think I played the first two games pretty well. Made a few mistakes against Ed, but with really heavy knights (4 attacks base!) infantry in the open is going to have issues anyways! Charlie in game 2 had my experience of game 3- his troops spent more time failing command rolls and fouling their own lines rather than engaging the enemy.  When your feet are nailed to the floor, it doesn’t take much for your enemy to rip you apart piecemeal.

Third game brings home the essentials of any wargame.

1.   Objectives- Always play to the objectives, not a barroom brawl. This means both playing a mission with objectives, and remembering what they are in the middle of the fight. You can lose units then your enemy, and be close to your break point, but if the mission objectives have nothing to do with units lost, or have a high VP attached to them, the objectives will win you the game. Dave did that in Game 3 and won because of it.
2.   Concentration of Force- Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. Even with leadership 10, its amazing how fast a complicated plan can fall apart. In the heat of the game, it can often appear rational to split up brigades and scatter troops hither and yon.  Toss in some failed command rolls, and you had handed your army to the enemy piecemeal,  or end up fighting with a fraction of your force against the entire enemy force.
3.   Time Constraints- Real fights in the ancient world, medieval world and renaissance world were not fought at night (guaranteeing that five you will post citations to night fights in the premodern world…). Time constraints or turn constraints make sense- I prefer time to turn as knowing it’s the last turn can make for some really weird tactical decisions that make no sense if the enemy can hit back in the next turn. Don’t lose track of time.

And of course the major piece of tactical advice for a dwarf player- protect the beer! Lose your beer supply, and your troops will riot.

[jchaos79]

So great reports, thanks for sharing. The games looks like terrible fun.

You did not picked up any thunderers by the way nice dwarf army

[marell le fou]

Wonderfull reports !

I'm amazed of the quality of the daemon army's paint level.

[Haranin]

Yeah, Ed's Deamon army is amazing. I was blown away by the quality of the conversions and painting.

No thunders. Useful in a siege, but not a good enough save to worthwhile in my army. I rely on moving large blocks of warriors into the enemy, and grinding the enemy into paste. Thunders are only a weak link making it easier to break me. Heck, the only reason I took cannons was the ability to field two units at 2k, and a fear of monsters.

BP 8, and the weakest link being rangers, which were generally shielded behind warrior blocks of 3... meant my opponents had a tough time breaking me. While defeated in one game, no one broke my army.

[jchaos79]

Yep this list seems "hard as a dwarf"

[MiniPatton]

Excellent report with lots of pictures - thank you for sharing.  I am working towards my first game, so it is inspiration for me!

Where did you get those movement trays, those are very cool!

[Haranin]

Gale Force 9. A bit pricey, but I had a few from warhammer fantasy. Quite handy with big brigades... makes game play faster.

You need to be willing to move the units out of them for precision on occasion.

[azrael71]

Great reports and pictures.
Not sure about the movement trays though, a lot of games we play have loads of scenery to soften the cavalry aspect of the game so I fear they may be more of a hinderance than a help, shame really as I can see how they would speed up movement.