Just in case an Age of Sigmar player joined the forum after the End Times. I am a moderator, I compiled the 8th edition Tactica and I wrote about half of the Tacticas. I have memorized almost every statline of Lizardmen in 8th edition, but it would be accurate to say I was dragged kicking and screaming into Age of Sigmar. In the Age of Sigmar, I am a newb. I apologize for the relative crudity of this battle report. This was my first Age of Sigmar game and both me and my friend forgot or misapplied a lot of rules (notice turn order never changed because we didn’t randomize it like you are supposed to until turn 3, and I “won” those rolls). It’s beyond the scope of what I willing to write to document each mistake and omission, but we got gradually better turn by turn. I’m hoping by our third game to have a solid grasp of the rules. Saurus Sunblood, hoarfrost, general Engine of the Gods, Pheonix Amulet 10 Skinks javelin and shield 10 Skinks javelin and shield 20 Saurus Warriors with Clubs Sunclaw Starhost 20 Saurus Warriors with Clubs Sunclaw Starhost 30 Saurus Warriors with Spears Sunclaw Starhost 9 Skink Handlers Thunderquake Starhost Stegadon Thunderquake Starhost 3 Salamanders Thunderquake Starhost Thunderquake Starhost Sunclaw Starhost 1980 points I need to bug my friend to send me a copy of his exact list. Every unit was a Khorne unit or a generic Chaos unit marked for Khorne. I don’t remember precisely which characters he chose but every character was intended to buff. Two Bloodsecretor, I think that’s the character with the banner in the sarter set. Two other characters. Two units of Juggernauts, two units of blood Warriors, two units of Bloodreavers. A Chaos Warshrine. 1960 points. We played a Border War. My opponent used his triumph to give his general an extra wound. Terrain was pretty much a non-factor, though we dutifully rolled out terrain for every table segment like the rules say. Mostly differentiated pillars. There were a lot of “Inspiring” pillars in areas we were fighting. It saved both sides a model or two on battleshock tests, but nothing big. Admittedly I was kind of winging deployment. I put my Sunblood and spears in my center lines, flanked on the left with blue hw Saurus, Skinks took my my far wings (blue on the left, green on the right). EOTG right of Spear block. Plan was to place Salamanders towards the end, once I realized Carl was just making a U around his shrine, I figured any wing position could move in and burn stuff. Then he abandoned his expanding U to put down Juggarnauts so I deployed my Green Sauri to keep the Juggernauts from running over the Salamanders I am also a bit OCD about categorization. My right wing was made up of green Sauri and green Skinks. My left wing blue Sauri and blue Skinks. I don’t have any painted spear Sauri, so my center was unpainted Sauri padded with blue and green HW Sauri counts-as spearmen. Since my friend’s strategy was based on buff effects, he deployed his forces very tight. The Chaos Shrine hug his back edge. The characters fanned out around it. Then he deployed his Blood Reavers and whatever his third small unit that was that was neither Blood Warriors nor Blood Reavers. In front of the reavers was his blood warriors and Juggernauts. The idea was he’d put his defensive units up front to absorb my shooting (I sort of stumped him by taking a melee list but they still served their purpose as a crumple zone) and then butcher me with the Reavers loading them up with huge stacking bonuses. Seraphon 1 I did a bunch of stuff in my leadership phase, but none of it amounted to anything (ie Inspiring Presence and Mystic Shield on a unit that was never attacked this round) Movement, My centerline moved an inch. The center flanks moved about two inches, then about four inches. My troops on the edges (Skinks and a Steggy) ran forward. I was trying to surrounded the Chaos formation. Shooting was minor, I plinked a Blood Warrior with the giant bow. It’s weird that the Steggy’s giant bow is actually almost effective now. Khorne 1 Hero phase, He used a whipping buff and inspiration on Juggernauts on the edge he was planning to charge my green Skinks. The whole formation surged towards me. Most of the army chose to run but my friend only rolled ones or twos for his d6 rolls on most things, so it wasn’t much more than a regular move. Juggernauts charged my Green Skinks. With three inches bonus from the whipping buff, they needed a 9 on the charge roll and got a nine. Most of our terrain features were some kind of differentiated pillar. A well placed pillar meant that only two of the three Juggernauts could reach my Skinks. The Juggernauts only killed two Skinks. I was stunned not realizing that Juggernauts of Khorne are drastically different from the combat monsters they used to be in 8th ed. My Skinks benefited from the pillar which was inspiring, giving them a Bravery 11, I passed the battle shock test easily. Seraphon 2 Hero phase, I Inspired the Green Sauri (needlessly), and plinked the engaged Juggeranauts with an arcane bolt from the EOTG. Green Sauri positioned to charge the Juggernauts engaged with the green skinks. Salamanders advanced to get in range, rest of the army lined up with them. I maximized positioning for shooting with my blue Skinks two would have been in javelin range, so I opted to run for a better position. Steggy followed them. Green Skinks plinked a Juggeranaut. Salamanders took 3 wounds on the unenagaged Juggernauts. Steggy whiffs shooting. I killed one and a half juggernauts in close combat, I lost three Skinks. He didn’t bother allocating attacks to Sauri. Khorne 2 Leadership: Inspiring Presence unengaged Juggeranauts. Whipped the center Blood Warriors Big formation surged forward Unengaged Juggernauts charged Sallies I lost a sally and a handler, killed a few Blood Warriors. Almost negligible damage on the juggernauts. Seraphon I used Inspiring Presence on my Sallies and advanced where I could. I healed a Sally with Cohort power. Then I healed a sally and handler (not sure if the Thunderquake Host power can healing resurrect dead handlers, is that legal?) with ETOG power Shooting inflicted some wounds here and there My Saurus beat a unit of Blood warriors to death with the help of battle shock. Skinks/Saurus green team kill a juggernaut but the Juggernauts wiped out the green Skinks thanks to a poor battle shock roll on my part. Steggy and blue Warriors and Sunblock chew down quite a few blood warriors. Steggy targeted mostly reavers figuring they are the glass cannons of this army setup I got a few stomped flat or shot to death. A voice in my head was telling me I should put more focus on hitting his characters hiding in the back then clawing at his front, but I was winning. I had a higher model count, a higher average movement rate, and I wasn’t deploying in a tight formation. I was wielding a lot more combat frontage than the enemy. I was inflicting almost twice the damage I was absorbing up to this point, so I figured I didn’t need to change my tactics. I thought I was winning. Next turn reversed this dramatically. Khorne 3 Banner guys planted flags, Lots of buffs were tossed around. Chaos shrine used a special power to force my blue skirmishers to move forward over dangerous terrain piece, but I passed all my dangerous terrain tests. Most of the center units are in a mass melee. Crazy boosted reavers take down all but two of my Spear Sauri who of course battle shocked themselves to extinction., Sally kills a Juggernaut. EOTG kills a few reavers, blue Saurus kill a few reavers and blood warriors Reavers piled into Skink handlers. Skinks and Reavers trade wounds. Skinks did pretty good, you know for Skinks, but they got slaughtered none the less. Turn 4 Battery on laptop gave out. Did not have time to take detailed notes. Here’s the gist. My Stegadon swung around and did what I should have done much earlier, attacked the buff characters. My Sunblood went in to try to take characters out too, but he was nickeled and dimed to so few wounds he didn’t long. Everything I had but the green Sauri was wiped out. By the end of this turn, I took out one of his characters, almost all of his blood warriors, most of his juggernauts and about half of the Reavers. But I had taken out about half of the Chaos army and he took out almost 90% of mine. He was also sitting on three out of four of the objectives. It was getting late and my Sauri were hopeless outnumbered, so I conceded. To those who have been playing Age of Sigmar a lot the stuff I’m about to write probably sounds painfully obvious. I was too used to the 8th edition paradigm. It didn’t make much difference what order you did what battles. In Age of Sigmar it makes a huge difference and requires tactical consideration. I usually just went clockwise out of habit because that’s what I did in 8th edition and that cost me. I read through the Seraphon book, but I barely skimmed the other armies. Most of the Seraphon units fill the same general niches of their Lizardmen counterparts. This is not the case with Warriors of Chaos. I did not target the Chaos characters until it is too late. This should have been obvious. I am well aware that if you take out the enemy buffs the ensuing battles get easier, but I am so used to Warrior of Chaos characters in 8th edition being nigh-invulnerable. The Chaos characters actually died relatively easily, but it was too little too late. The Juggeranauts of Khorne are not intended to smash through the enemy lines. I assumed this and when the Juggernauts rushed forward I took the bait and tried to surround and destroy them. They are not offensive units like they used to be. Now, they are essentially fast moving Anvils now intended to tie up enemy units to let the rest of the army kill things. I picked a sub-optimal army list. I deliberately picked units with relatively few special rules. This was to simplify things for my first Age of Sigmar game. I also basically built the army around the two shiniest Cohorts. Saurus Warriors were simple so I took the Saurus-based Starhost. Dinosaurs are why I collected Lizardmen in the firstplace so I took the Thunderquake Starhost. I just used Skinks to fill up my leftover points. 20 Skinks is not sufficient for a 2000 point game. If I had more mobile units, I could taken better advantage of the clunky enemy formation and swung around or flew over the edges of the front line to attack the characters hiding in the back. I also didn’t focus on synergy beyond the synergy that comes with taking a Starhost. Again I focused too much effort on the Juggernauts. I figured they had good saves and Salamanders are good at beating tough units so that’s what my Salamanders focused on. If I was smarter, I would have let the Sauri take on the Juggernauts alone, and run the Salamanders around the front lines to engage the support characters or snipe at the Blood Reavers. If there is one thing I think I did relatively well on, it was formations. I was able to get my men into combat quickly, and did not have a lot of unused attacks in the back rank. My theory that hand weapons are best for smallish units and spears are better for larger units seems to be holding up to battlefield conditions. I’m sure I have lots of room for improvement on deployment and formations and movement, but I feel like I’m starting from a better place than I for army building.
It's great to get the learning games in. I think that no matter what, there is always room for improvement, but you were able to pick out key targets in the first few turns. Always a good sign. Your army build is perfect for learning, simplicity building to complexity. The attacking order is super important, I made a similar mistake in my first game, learned my lesson quick. At least you got a game in and made some progress. So what are your thoughts for your next army build?
Main thing is, did you enjoy it? Win or Lose if your having a good time it can only get better, last Wednesday I watched a game where 2 new players fought tooth and nail and it went down to the last dice roll of the last turn, Chaos had a giant left 180 points, Seraphon a Basilidon 300 points, the giant needed +4 to kill and win and he rolled a 5 and the Basildon failed it's save!, it was brilliant to watch, but we all learnt a lot from the game especially when your removing dead models to stop further attacks.
Mistakes made aside that was an extraordinary battle report. I loved how you shared your thoughts after the battle and consider this to be one of the best ways of improving myself - by listening to other peoples thoughts about what went right and what didn't !
I did have a thought that I didn't write down yet. There was a Damned terrain feature near the center area we contested. Normally when someone reads "D3 mortal wounds" one is inclined to say "no thank you" to the offsetting bonus. I should have used that on the Stegadon and/or EOTG Steggy. I had minor healing for available for both (especially the EOTG which had the Phoenix Amulet) and the +1 to hit rolls would have helped a lot given how many attacks Steggys get in AoS
I love the Thunderquake starhost. Healing and options in combat? With the ability to change swit and savge in Every combat phase? It looks like you jumped right in and had a successful blooding, as did your opponent. Good on yah.