No pictures for this post, unfortunately, as we still have not found the wires to the digital camera, but I wanted to make a post anyway to say hello and to keep the discussion going, as it seems to have slowed down a bit. Since coming to Long Beach, I have had a number of conversations with folks, both in person and online, trying to sort out the wargaming scene and find some groups to play with. At this point all looks to be going well: Some really nice local hobbyists who do a monthly gaming event with a mi of games, and some nice and smart WFB folks at the local Battle Bunker. I have also just recently gotten hooked up with some Warhammer Ancients folks who also seem very nice and a guy a bit to the north who organizes Field of Glory events. I have finished rebasing some of my 15s to go with FoG, and will play with them at their next event, but at the moment I am most excited about the WAB game, which will meet this coming Sunday. They seem to have large games (on a 6'x16' table!!), and so I am excited to be part of it.
My first game here was Mordheim with a very nice guy from the St. Crispin's Irregulars (the group with the monthly mixed event. It was well-played and a lot of fun, and boiled down to my Marienberger's trying to drag the treasure chest off the table while his vampirtes and Ghouls chased me down -- both of us trying to make route tests every round! Eventually I failed the route and he won (and got oodles of cash), but none of our fellers died, and so we are ready for another game when tie permits.
The second game was with another very nice guy and his club of 7-8 players (it seems). This game was part of a new move in Warhammer Fantasy to have epic-scaled games, and this one was truly epic. The biggest game I had played in before this was me, Bubblewrap, Granta, Southpaw, and those four guys from the Sciences at A&M - each of us with 2K. This game was like that -- a big-assed table with eight players, but in this one we each had 5k! So the total points on the table was 40K! As expected from a game of this size and the first like this, we only made it to the second round, but it was fun nevertheless, and round two allowed my Vampires to fly screaming from the advancing ranks of undead, shrieking as they tore into the Empire Handgunners who opposed them (Granta will attest to the beardiness of the new Vampire characters).
On my side were two Daemon armies advancing on the center while the Skaven had our right flank and I took the left. Opposed were Empire across from me mostly, Ogres and more Empire in their center, and Dwarves on their flank. Even in just the two turns we had some interesting things happened (or threatened to). For example, the Vampire spell "Winds of Undeath" makes every enemy unit on the table test, and on a 4+ it suffers one wound. Then you take those wounds and create a new Spirit Host with them. In a 2k game when the enemy had maybe 10 units on the table this is a powerful spell, but with 50 units on the table it became very important for the other side to prevent me from catsing that spell! In a similar way, the Skaven Bell required every enemy unit to make a Panic test in the first round, and that was a lot of units testing! My opponent had great setup with the Imperial Standard and his general shoring up all Psych tests, but the effect of the "all enemy units..." wording was really impressive.
OK, that's it for now - I will try to get some pics pf the game this Sunday, and I hope you guys get some gaming in as well!
IMS
