3rd ed HE vs. Dwarf

vonkortez

Member
Hi there!

Just got confirmation from a friend of mine that we will to play some 3ed WFB for the first time in about 20 years. The date will be sunday 28th feb and I´m really looking forward to this. As we want to keep it simple and and not too time consuming we agreed on 1200pt limit with no mages or flyers. One can have a lvl15 hero for genaral and lesser champions as one pleases. We are using WFB: Armies as a guideline but the dwarves don´t have to rigidly follow troop minimas. We want to have WYSIWYG painted minis on board.

The high elf army will be a expeditionary force leb by Janarion, the youngest son of a wealty elven merchant prince. The young nobleman (noble-elf?) has sailed with his private merchant company and a company of his fathers finest swordmen (swordself?). A bit annoyed by the ´babysitters´ as he cals his fathers warriors Janarion has hired some sea elf wardancers (so might call them pirates...) and a mercenary giant to make sure he wouldn´t be so reliant on the proud warriors led by his cousin Darcassan

Upon arriving to the coast of Tilea the elves have claimed a spot of land and founded a trading outpost. Thabioh The giant - being a local to the area has been given task of patrolling the surroundings while other troops are building the outpost and it´s defences. The civilian craftsmen of the outpost have made Thabioh a blue uniform from spare sails and he has been given intructions not to hit anyone who is as tall as his knee and is wearing blue as Janarions colours are blue and white. This has made the swordmen company feel a bit uneasy as they are clad in the red and green uniforms of Darcassan´s family.

Even though the elves make sure that there is plenty of wine available Thabioh hasn´t been able stay away from his old habits. Knowing the location of a small dwarf brewery he has looted it on one of his trips causing casualties among the beer brewers. This has understandable angered the local dwarf community that has raised a warparty to hunt down the beer stealing and dwarf killing criminal. Thabioh, with the revengeful dwarves on his heels heads back to the elves to ´warn´ them of the approaching enemy. Leaving out the brewery incident part Thabioh tell a story of evil dwarves wanting to push the expedition back to the sea. Eager to prove himself on the battlefield Janarion mobilises his forces and prepares to meet the stunties...

My forces will include:

Janarion, lvl 15 high elf general leading
Mechant company (7 spearmen, 7 archers, light armor, shields, standard, led by Janarion)

Darcassan, lvl 10 high elf lord, 2H magic weapon of strenght (+1S), leading
Warriors (17 swordsmen inc. standard and musician, 2H weapons, heavy armor)

5 Wardancer, 2H weapons

Marine bolt battery

Thabioh, Mercenary giant


We will not have a GM but my giant will be controlled by my 10 years old son. Depending on his mood I may or may not be able to influence what he does with Thabioh.
The composition of dwarf forces is unknown to elves but Thabioh told Janarion that he saw some fire throwing devices among troops...

Pics of my force will follow... and a battle report later on....

-VK
 

vonkortez

Member
A couple of shots of my high elf force for the upcoming battle vs. dorfs

Armeija2.JPG

Bolt battery, merchant company, wardancers, giant and warriors.
Merchant company is missing it´s standard but I hope to get it done before the match.

Armeija3.JPG

A closer look at wardancers, giant and warriors. Warriors whom I originally painted more than 20 years ago are children of red era (they even had red swords...). They were given a slight face lift to make them a little less red :grin:
 

Subedai

Member
Nice force and fun background, looking forward to reading about the giant's escapades in the battle!
 

weazil

Moderator
Wow.

Can't believe I nearly missed this! Loving seeing 3rd ed high elves (army, not figures, mind) out and about - we only ever hear about wood elves.

I think its a great backstory and I can only imagine it will be a thoroughly fun-filled game!

Please post as soon as possible!
 

vonkortez

Member
Happy to inform you that we got this played today. I will try to get the pics from my camera to computer and write the report this evening.

Not to give away too much yet I can only say that it was one very bloody game with some spectacular pyrotechnics...

Full report should be here tomorrow.
 

Galadrin

Member
Great report, thank you for writing it up! It was quite a blood bath—do you attribute this to the stubbornly high leadership of both armies, or is this pretty typical for 3e in your experience? How long did the game take to play?
 

vonkortez

Member
Galadrin":ecb9fh0d said:
Great report, thank you for writing it up! It was quite a blood bath—do you attribute this to the stubbornly high leadership of both armies, or is this pretty typical for 3e in your experience? How long did the game take to play?

The game took just little over 3 hours to play.

IMO it´s a combination of high leadership (and cool) of both armies and the nature of the 3rd ed rules. We will start using the ´combat result affects rout check´ rule introduced in 4th edition to make the melee less grinding in our future games.

edit. some typos
 

Galadrin

Member
Cool, I am always caught between 3rd and 4th on that issue. On the one hand, I love how blow-for-blow gritty 3e combat is, where you can be sure every model will have its chance to roll an attack die before the game is over. The games end up being a LOT closer because of it. The downside, of course, is that 3e games can go to 15 rounds or more sometimes and take a LONG time to play.

On the other hand, 4e games play much more quickly and feel tremendously dynamic. Each turn, the battlefield changes tremendously, with blocks of infantry fleeing, other forces moving through the gaps or rolling up the flanks, and massive spells and battles between tricked out heroes riding monsters making the whole game feel explosive and dynamic. The downside, however, is that there have been many a time when my painstakingly-handpainted regiment of expensive, metal models is charged on turn one, loses its entire front rank in the first round of combat, routs and is taken entirely off the table, having done nothing and having not even rolled a single die. That feels frustrating. You can avoid it in 4e with certain combos (absolute necessities like magic banners and Crown of Command), but part of you always wishes that you didn't have to find work-arounds.

The other downside is that, because a regiment can completely disappear in a single turn, the games are a LOT less even. If you can chase off two enemy regiments early in the game, that is an enormous force multiplier, so much that many, many 4e games look like a foregone conclusion by turn 4. That can be off-putting in its own way, especially if you can't take losing (or winning!) gracefully.
 
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