Two weeks ago my cousin Sven came over to Berlin for my birthday. I'm 44 now which means I have been into tabletop and role-playing games for 30 years.
My original plan was to organise a HOTT mini-campaign for the weekend, but we played one game of Warhammer, 40K and HOTT instead.
The first game was Warhammer Fantasy on Friday night. Krüger came over and teamed up with Sven against me for a 1500 point battle. They played orcs & goblins, I played wood elves.
My list still is a bit fragile because I started to collect wood elves not so long ago. Their list included a giant, 4 trolls, a large unit of orcs, a unit of orc boar boys, 2 units of night goblins with fanatics and some goblins on spiders. A nice looking army.
The game felt a bit like the horrible German boardgame "Mensch ärger dich nicht". The dice and our lists determined what happened, strategic thinking didn't matter much. The worst moment was when I managed to cast "The call of the hunt" on my eternal guard, an augment spell, giving each model an extra attack, and still lost the unit in close combat that turn. The game played itself. It was a waste of time.
I'm not saying that this was anybody's fault. Actually balanced, exciting games are difficult to organise if one player brings a fragile list and the other players have a lot more models to choose from. The game was over after turn 3. (I guess I have to put some effort into making my list less fragile.)
Saturday afternoon, my cousin and I played 40K. We played the 5th edition, including some rules from the 6th edition like overwatch and rolling the charge range. Because of peer pressure half a year ago I thought I had to switch to the 6th edition, although I like the 5th edition much better. (It's a pity that Alessio Cavatore left Games Workshop.) After endless discussions my friends and I compromised on using the 5th edition as our main ruleset and including our favourite rules from other editions as house rules. This way everybody has to think what rules he really likes and why. Games are much more fun this way, I think.
So on Saturday we played a 1000 point battle. The scenario was capture + control and spearhead. Sven had brought his Tau from Munich, I played Plague Marines. Sven's Tau are one of the coolest armies I have played against. They are really well painted, with lots of stuff on the field. The game was quite exciting. It lasted for 7 turns and ended in a tie.
On Sunday morning, which was my birthday, I played HOTT against my cousin. I think HOTT is my favourite game at the moment.
I played wood elves: hero (general), 4 spears, 3 shooters, 1 behemoth, 1 flyer.
Sven played goblins: warband (general), 3 warbands, 2 riders, 2 beasts, 1 behemoth, 1 hero.
I was the defender. I put a temple in the centre which led to both of us dividing our armies into two parts. The 4 warbands on Sven's right side, including his general, stayed in the woods and didn't make it into close combat.
At the start of the game, his hero killed my flyer.Then my hero general killed one of his beasts.
His hero killed two of my shooters.
My remaining shooter killed his hero. (Wow!)
Two of my spears killed his other beast.
My hero general killed his behemoth.
I won the game and we went to a Greek restaurant in Kreuzberg to get drunk. Thanks to everybody involved this was a great gaming weekend.
