I was slowly working on painting up a Nippon army for Warmaster last year. I still have a way to go, before the army is finished, but I needed a break and set it aside for a bit. I have painted up more than I need to field an army, so I figured that would be OK and I would get back to it once I got to play the army on the tabletop.
Well, due to a number of reasons, I never did get the army on the tabletop. I had a buddy of mine visiting from out of town last week and he brought his Orc army with him. Sooo, the chance presented itself. As it happened, another one of my buddies had been working on his Chaos army for a while, so we decided it would be nice to get together and try the game out.
My buddy brought his terrain set up with him, as it was space lite. He has been playing off and on for a while, so it was good to get someone who actually played the game! He set up his terrain and put together a two thousand point force of Orcs.
My buddy with the Chaos army, did not have a legal army. SO, we decided I would use my Nippon troops to fill out his army as proxies. That would get my figures on the table and we would be able to field a unified army.
We used all his minis and filled the gaps and points with mine. He had painted up some units of Chaos warriors, harpies and commanders. I added in my Samurai as marauders, my One as Ogres and my Komani as hounds. I also pulled out a character on a dragon to command my force. We ended up with one general and two mages to command the army.
Quickly into the game, it became clear that we needed at least one more character. Due to the mage’s limited command range, we had a challenge in stretching command and had to make some compromises. The general could fill in, but the extended ranges made the rolls quite low. So, first lesson learned!
My Orc buddy had a force much larger than ours full of orcs, with some orc archers. There were also some orcs, to go with the wolf riders. Finally, there were some orcs to go with the catapult and Giant. Did I mention that he had some orcs? It was a lot of guys, giving him a twenty four unit army!
We spent a bit too much time double checking the rules, but got into the game quite quickly. ur command deficit showed early, as we ended up leaving units behind. Having units stretched, also limited the use of the dragon early on, as we needed the command rolls.
This allowed the orcs to move aggressively into the center and take the center. The scenario we played had the center as the objective, giving each player points for occupying it from turn two. We had to get our units into the fray to stop the orcs fro getting an early lead. We were able to do this.
Unfortunately, due to the desire to limit the orcs archery, we put our marauders in front of our blocks and our Warriors in the back. This meant that we did not have the advantage in melee against the orcs. So, the early fights had us getting ground down a bit.
Fortunately, we were able to get the dragon into the fight and use our magic to boost our troops. This allowed us to get the upper hand and start to take out orc units, while keeping ours in play (weakened, but still on the table).
Everything ended up focusing o the center, as that was where the points were and we had to concentrate out outnumbered troops around our few commanders. In the mid game, we thought we set up a decisive fight against two blocks or orcs. We were getting our better troops into the fight finally and managed to get off all our spells.
Unfortunately, disaster struck and our dice failed us. We lost all the fights, even though we had two to one hit dice advantages… We ended up having our flyers hung out to dry on top of it! The tide had swung!
The orcs decided to take advantage of the swing in fortune and push forward into our depleted ranks. They drove our flyers back with fire, but only caused limited casualties on them.
It seems the fates of the chaos gods were not done…. We managed to get some hot dice and pummel the over confident orcs in the fights. Our flyers that had fallen back from fire, ended up landing in the perfect place and caused a couple of orc units that had to fall back to get destroyed, as they were in the way!
Some back a fourth and neither side could get the advantage on objective points. Both sides were still in the fight, but we ran out of time, playing four turns (we had a dinner date to make!). The forces of chaos had lost no units, but had three down to one base. The orcs had lost six units and had two more on the brink. We decided to call it a draw at this point and headed out for some nourishment!
It was fun to finally get my troops on the table and I look forward to another game. The next time, they will be as god intended. The army of Nippon!
- Manteuffel