After my crushing defeat last week I was super eager to get back at it and swing some axes with my nords! Just kidding.. we actually had an odd number of people and I desperately didn’t want to play but my buddy made me. Nothing against this game, but feel like Last Argument of Kings is the actual game here and Parabellum just kind of tacked on First Blood to get people to buy in at lower cost with hopes they’d graduate to the bigger system soon after. Anyway I digress.
So, the player base ended up consisting of four new players and one vet. None of us new players have printed any scenarios yet and the vet forgot his scenario stuff so one game ended up just playing the scenario from the rulebook, we ended up playing Shieldwall because the vet knew it by heart, and the extra guy watched his son play and helped him out a bit. Looking at it now we did set up Shieldwall correctly but I had flank units in my list and my opponent couldn’t remember where the reinforcement zone was on this scenario so he gave me a 12 inch reinforcement zone. I know him and both knew it was probably at the back line which it is but he was like “eh we’ll let you have some fun with it.”
The only real goal for this list was to run the Mountain Jotnar I had painted. I anted to try out a different leadership in the Jarl and one of his abilities kind of forced me to run raiders but that was good because I wanted a massive pack of something so I could finally test out the army rule. My opponent ran Dweghom which is his main faction, again apologies I don’t know enough to pick out his troops yet.
Thinking here was that the Huskarls would head to the left where they could hopefully handle the small group of guys there and could benefit from the supremacy ability at range. The Jotnar probably should have gone straight ahead but Ive seen 100k halberds just tear through things so I decided to play it safer and take the Jotnar to the right along with the Jarl so I wasn’t just offering him up.
Like I said, Jotnar and Jarl went right, ceding the center, Huskarls went left for that showdown. Jotnar took three wounds from the ranged unit in back.
Going into round two, I won the roll-off, and actually won it every single round. Huskarls went into the left-hand dwarves and wiffed on the attack. The dwarves retaliated and left one Huskarl on one wound remaining. The Jotnar just handed out plus one defense to the Huskarls but not in time to be useful. The Fenr was able to get a charge in because of the generous 12 inch reinforcement zone my opponent gave me. His impact hits either didn’t do anything though, or he didn’t get any, I’m not sure which. The raiders also came in off flank given by the jarl. With a double march they just barely got the leader on the objective who counts as 2 for objectives thanks to the Jarl. Charge from the Jotnar who didn’t get hi impacts but was able to take out maybe three dwarves with his hit. Then just a menacing turn but the gross posse of dwarves in the center.
I don’t quite remember the order at which these things unfolded but the dwarves on the left murdered my last Huskarl and the Fenr. I got all 8 raiders in on an 11 inch charge and did next to no damage. Jotnar still wasting time killing the ranged units, and the shield dwarves charged my Jarl but had to march first so couldn’t attack him.
Left side got a little spicey this round. I FINALLY USED MY ARMY ABILITY. I took two auto deaths at the end of the raider’s activation in order to have all four remaining raiders gets 2 attacks each instead of the usual 1. I believe this got it so there was only one remaining dwarf on that left side but left me on two remaining raiders. At the beginning of the round the Jarl killed the one dwarf he as engaged with and then ran away to try and prevent the extra two points from killing him. The Jotnar charged in and did some massive damage against the initiates on the right. You can’t see the Jarl because he’s hiding behind his Jotnar buddy. At this point though, the Jotnar had taken 11 wounds.
Nothing much new here, his commander stayed out of my reach in the center, still having the two nords one dwarf showdown on the left and on the right the Jotnar is taking down a surprising amount of initiates.
One Initiate remained on the right, his commander of course just chilling in the center giving him the last two he needed to win, and one lone dawf reigns victorious on the left.
In general just mixed feelings about this one. Got some highs from swinging dice with the Jotnar and getting to use the army ability with the raiders. That being said those wardens were gross. They killed, four Huskarls, one Fenr, and eight Raiders. This was my opponent’s nice list too. It sounded like he had much scarier things he could have brought. I think I need to work on my threat assessment which just comes in time. I also want to start putting officers in my lists but none stood out to me as crazy good when I was list building at home after the game. In the end, though, I may just wait for the other new players to build enough models to be able to play Last Argument of Kings because First Blood just isn’t giving me the warm-fuzzies.
~Kole