We hope this to be the first of many battle reports focused on Warhammer Underworlds where we will be playing through and experimenting with the various sets, warbands and formats available.
In this first encounter Stuart’s Farstriders, reforged warriors of the Stormcast Etrernals deadly in both ranged and melee combat confront David’s exiled dead. A horde of conductive minions led by a vile and corrupt wizard.
These two warbands are significantly different in their gameplay and stratagems. The Farstriders only contain 3 models with a decent level of wounds (4 each) and both ranged and melee attacks whilst the Exiled dead play as a more “swarm” based tactic with 7 models and the ability to resurrect after the become out of action to keep the pressure on the opponent.
With our boards chosen from the direchasm and latest starter sets, we placed our objective tokens (3 in the farstriders territory and the remaining 2 on the exiled dead starting board)
We drew cards, place our models and were ready to start our first round.
The farstriders started with their first activation and being a fairly aggressive warband chose to infiltrate enemy territory and charge straight in to do some damage. this early tactic was effective scoring some valuable glory and ensuring Elias Swiftblade met the inspired condition by utilising both the ranged and melee attack in a single activation.
The exiled promptly responded by swarming the nearest enemy and preparing to deal damage. The first round continued with the Farstriders doing damage and gaining glory only to find the dead were resurrected once more. The exiled dead wizard remained largely ineffective in the first half of the game and the Farstriders took a convincing lead. After a few early upgrades the stage looked set for a convincing Farstriders victory.
However….. anything involving dice is a game of chance and this quickly turned into a game of two halves! Some careful and well planned movement saw one of the Farstriders completely surrounded by 5 enemies and with attack chances increased through multiple support, he was quickly despatched. This allowed the exiled dead to gain objectives and glory and start to upgrade. The beauty of their mechanic is you can really chain cards together with devastating results. Moving in to the final round it was relatively close and the contest could swing either way. Sanson Farstrider made a dash for an objective in enemy territory, but was confronted by Marcov who had remained out of the fray for the earlier rounds. This final exchange would in fact be the decider in an incredibly close game.
Sanson failed his attack roll, failing to kill Marcov losing further glory that could have turned the tide. A final activation from the exiled dead and we were in the end phase.
After the end phase objectives were claimed and the glory points counted only one side could be victorious. In a battle that had swung in both sides favour, the exiled dead had come out on top scoring 9 glory points, whilst the Farstriders had managed only 8.
A hard fought and competitive game.
The second game told a very different story. A similar board setup and starting location once more. The Farstriders started aggressive early, plowing into enemy territory, but some poor luck with the dice meant no glory, no inspiration and no objectives. This spelled the start of trouble. Trapped after their aggressive charge moves they were once again swarmed and gradually wounds were whittled down. The Farstriders retreated to their own territory trying to use ranged attacks to deal some damage but to no avail. The level 2 wizard Deintalos played a bigger part this round successfully casting spells and doing damage. The Farstriders fought bravely but it wasn’t enough and a convincing victory in the second game went to the exiled dead 8 glory points to 6.
This took the tally to 2-0 in favour of the exiled dead and they claimed the victory overall. A combination of superior tactics and some good rolls had sealed the victory.
There was some valuable lessons learnt on general gameplay and more specific warband tactics.
Our next battle report will feature the Farstriders returning to take on Myari’s Purifiers
