Wednesday 20 February 2013

Battle 1 - The General's Preparation

Prior to the first game the Wise Chimp had requested that I explain myself, or at least the army I ended up choosing! Our first battle will be a skirmish with only a thousand points on each side. Given my lack of familiarity with the latest edition we've agreed a few omissions to keep things simple:

i) No magic - Obviously experienced Warhammer players know how important magic is in Warhammer battles but we decided that as I'm a bit out of touch with how the magic system works then we'll let me off having to learn a new magic system just yet. My cheeky little nephew was quite happy to agree to this, but then I think he prefers Khorne so it's probably beneficial for him!

ii) No special characters - Just as Wayne Rooney is rarely seen in my local park running rings about the local pub team, so I don't expect mighty heroes to be clipping on their armour eagerly in anticipation of a scuffle in a small village. Well maybe Khorne heroes, but anyway we agreed no special characters. I'm not a big fan of these fancy dan characters, we didn't have their sort in my day...

So it's time to put an army together. For the time being I'm reduced to borrowing a cousin's copy of the Empire Army Book and skip through it. An initial impression is that it's a lot simpler than the old version I'm used to and has a bit more variety of special troops, although not having foot knights is disappointing. I suppose the Greatswords Regiment goes some way to making up for that and I've ordered some although they're not in any condition to take part in this first skirmish!

I'd pretty much decided that I'd have to base my little force around my current collection, the bulk of which is from the old Battle Masters game, so in many ways the army picks itself. I'm intending to field as many units as possible and swamp the more expensive Chaos army. I chose a block of 20 spearmen (modified halberdiers) and 20 swordsmen to do the bulk of the nitty gritty fighting. I like a couple of reasonably sized blocks like this as they'll have to do the bulk of the fighting in most games, and these have the ability to take a bit of damage and still have a few chaps standing. The halberdiers miss out, despite their better strength, due to the spears being able to attack in 2 ranks, and the swordsmen having a much better save. To help out these units I picked 10 crossbowmen and a cannon (great!) to soften up the inevitable blocks of infantry I'll be facing. I prefer the crossbow over the bow because of its longer range and greater strength. The lack of mobility isn't really an issue as I want these units to sit in the middle of my battle line and pepper the opposition as the come over the table. I'll take a Flagellants unit to cover one flank while a small unit of Imperial Knights will shore up the other. I love fielding large units of Knights despite their large cost for the Empire, and there's nothing that stirs the blood in an old soldier than a charge into the enemy with lances down! A small unit such as this is only really useful for protecting the bigger units from flanking and for charging into the flank itself, very disappointing, but I still can't resist them! I'll also take a unit of Pistoliers (or at least I'm borrowing them!) as I like a unit of fast cavalry to outflank the enemy and deal with any war machines/missile troops (obviously not an issue in this case!). I'll beef up the big units with heroes and take a third hero for the Knights. It's a very defensive army and I'm hopefully that it gives me sufficient firepower and infantry grunt, we'll see...

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