A very simple game of Warhammer 8th edition.

Today I had my 4th game of WHFB 8th edition, which happened to be my 3rd solo game. Turned out that it was also my first victory in this edition.

As I told Lawrence, it was a very simple game. On my left, my quarrellers were shooting Elmer's arrear boyz. His boyz eventually charge me which I fled and easily rallied and continue shooting in the subsequent turns. Elmer charged me a second time and my stand and shoot reaction cause them to panic and flee in the last turn. There is also a big block of orc boyz but they did not achieve much other than running down a unit of dwarven thunderers, followed by a turn 6 charge that I will talk about later.

In my right, Elmer had 2 chariots, a horde of NG archers and 2 bolth throwers. The NG archers will eventually join the fight in the center so I will talk about them later. The chariots advanced cautiously but were eventually found within range of the dwarf warriors (skullpass unit). I charged and elmer choose to flee as a reaction, I then re direct to the second unit, broke it, overrun and finally charge a bolt thrower in the final turn.

As for the center, elmer basically had his warmachines, trolls (beautiful models), and 2x50 NG with Orc characters. It was an intimidating wall of greenskin flesh. Facing it are my Hammerers, 30 men dwarven block, LB rangers and my warmachines. i was lucky and destroyed the doom diver in turn 1. I then threw a couple of stones onto the NG and the trolls. The NG more or less recovered their losses by drinking from a Wyrding Well and also gain stupidity and unbreakable abilities. The trolls got diminished but are still sufficient to make it into my bolt thrower and grudge thrower, destroying them before finally dying to my retaliatory warmachine fire. Elmer's block basically clash into my blocks. His NG block led by the BSB fought my hammerers and lasted for quite a few turns even though my 30 men block joined into the fight later. Later Elmer also brought his NG archer horde into the fray. Elmer's general led NG block got rid of my LB rangers but could not arrive in time to save his BSB led NG block from being eliminated. In the 6th turn, the general and his NG unit charged my hammerers where I won. Elmer's orc block charged my 30 men dwarven block (which was down to abt slightly more than 20 men and were still fighting the NG archers), I lost combat but held.

So that's it. A simple fantasy game. Basically both armies just shoot and fight, shoot and fight. Elmer's shooting were mostly magic while mine were warmachine death. The game was quite light-hearted and enjoyable especially when both players were rushing for the healing energies of the wyrding well (it is quite wrong when T4 dwarven warriors got resurrected). Elmer forgot quite a couple of his magic items so I dunno if the outcome of the game could have been different. My opinion of the 8th edition? My verdict is still unchanged actually. I find that today's game is a lot more enjoyable due to the lack of mass template doom (lack of uber magic spells, not too many pieplate weapons). Although the random charge distance and strike in I rules are BEARABLE, I would still prefer the older version. I actually did not bother to charge Elmer coz he strike first anyway and was unbreakable(or at least steadfast if the wyrding well was absent) which led me to purposely delay close combat action and preserve dwarven bodies while trying to do more ranged damage. If it were the 6th or 7th ed system, I will have chose to charge and punch through the night goblins instead. I feel that the new charging rules encourage list-hammer rather than the skill in manuveuring but as mentioned earlier it is still very much bearable compared to the other more pressing issues of 8th edition. If you let me choose, I will still play the 7th edition (maybe with 8th ed terrain rules) because I feel that picking the right list is already winning more than half the battle in this edition (which is not what I want). To me it is never about whether a player is being able to adapt to the new gaming mechanics or not, but whether this set of rules would lead to a better game.

WHFB now shares the same status as 40k in my interest. I play it only because my friends are playing it and it will not be my main game. My main interest will still be WAB. Even though my WAB experience is suffering from the lack of opponents and time(coz I have to competed my fantasy and 40k commitments first), I am still very keen on it and is still spending most of my hobby energies on it. I may not be playing real games with it for now but I have been enjoying myself in reading battle reports and other gaming materials on it.