Ultramates - Game 1

Game 1: Battle for the Pass - Shyish

Up first was Battle for the Pass! The realm rules were in effect (though promptly forgotten) and our first round opponents were a team called 'the Friendly Geordies' made up of two young guys by the name of Geordie and Che. From memory their lists were:

Geordie: Beasts of Chaos

Doombull (General)

Great Bray Shaman

6 Gorebulls

3 Gorebulls

Ghorgon

Wildfire Taurus

Che: Daughters of Khaine (Hag Narr)

Slaughter-queen on Foot

Bloodwrack Medusa

10 Sisters of Slaughter

10 Sisters of Slaughter

10 Blood Sisters

5 Khinerai Heartrenders

5 Doomfire Warlocks

Unfortunately I don't have copies of their lists so I'm not sure what their artefact selections were, but they didn't come into play during the game.

Deployment

We rolled off and our team won sides and deployed first. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from the Skaven side of our list, so we deployed the plaguebearers in a long line along the back and sides of the board to prevent summoning or Khinerai dropping into our backfield. We set up the furnace and rats with woe staves on the left flank, the rats with swords and the Verminlord Corruptor on the right flank, and the Great Unclean One centrally to maximise his movement buff. The free Feculent Gnarlmaw had gone on the centreline on the left hand side of the board.

Geordie and Che each took a flank each and the herdstone was set up in the middle. They each set up the majority of their forces on the line and were looking for a fight. In particular, Geordie set up 9 Gorebulls in a line. We finished deploying first and gave them the first turn.

Game

In a recurring them for the day, Geordie and Che made a big mistake straight off the bat and didn't give enough thought to the danger the Plague Monks posed. Geordie pushed his Gorebulls straight forward while Che shuffled a little bit and had Geordie send his Doombull to the other central objective.. Very little else happened in their turn, but from our perspective (as Nathan from the Honest Wargamer so sagely noted) the objectives were bait and they had taken that bait. In our turn 1, the monks with woe staves received the +1 attack buff from the Furnace and ran 17' at the Gorebulls, leaving them 3' away and within range of the Feculent Gnarlmaw. They then proceeded to charge the two units of Gorebull, removed the unit of 6 and left the unit of 3 with one wound remaining. This charge had clipped the Ghorgon but the Ghorgon whiffed with all of its attacks.

This initial charge took a large chunk out of our opponents forces, and when we then won the double turn the rest of the game fell into our favour. Highlights were:

• The unit of sword monks went into the DoK army and held most of it up for a couple of turns. It took out 7 of the snakes and after that did sporadic wounds here and there.
• The Lord of Afflictions took on the Doombull. Unfortunately the Doombull was as effective as the Ghorgon and did no wounds over two rounds of combat before the Lord put it into the ground.
• The Verminlord Corruptor charged in to the Ghorgon and did 22 mortal wounds with its Sword of Judgment.
• After the stave monks charged, the Plague Furnace was left on its own and could no longer move as there were not enough monks within 6'. This happened a fair bit over the weekend.

At the end of turn three the score was 13 to 9 and time had run out. The Friendly Geordies had a couple of characters left on the board and some heavily depleted units. We had lost a unit of Plague Monks and the Lord of Afflictions.

Thoughts

Geordie and Chu were great to play against. It seemed that Geordie had a bit more knowledge than Chu but both were fairly new to Age of Sigmar 2.0. That lack of knowledge resulted in us getting a turn 1 charge and eviscerating the heart of Geordie's army on turn 1. 

I haven't had much experience playing Hagg Nar but the re-rollable ward save is incredible - it hurts me slightly that scantily clad murder women are more resilient than lesser deamons of a Choas god known for resilience, but these are the rules that we play in.

The Plague Monks showed that they were the blender that I thought they could be, however there is a lot of dice to roll and it meant that Sam and I needed to be as clear and efficient as possible. This issue is exacerbated by the monk warscroll that has different effects on 6's to hit and 6's to wound - you end up having four sets of dice with some having rend, some having +1 damage, some having both and some having neither.

At the end of the game, the Verminlord Corruptor was in a position to take the rest of their heroes off with the sword of Judgment. Having 10 attacks and a Command Ability to re-roll all hit rolls made it a very reliable way to do mortal wounds to heroes. The Lord of Afflictions also did an excellent job with his -3 rend - he reduced the Doombull to 1 wound in the first round of combat and it could just as easily have taken him off in one. The fact the Rustfang helps the mount's attacks is very significant.

Overall it was a very enjoyable game and it would be interesting to see how they would do things differently next time.