Intro
My brother was coming over for a rare opportunity to play some wargames and boardgames, and my contribution was putting on a game of Warhammer Fantasy. He plumped for the Chaos Dwarfs, up against my choice of Tzeentch-marked Chaos.
My game of choice is the current flavour du jour ‘Warhammer Fantasy Battle: 4th Edition’ – in retrospect 6th Edition (for which I have the rulebook also) may have been a more sensible choice given the crunchy nature of 4th.
Armies
My army consists of the usual Daemon contingent of Pink Horrors and Flamers, though I have dropped the Spawn for this match and replaced them with a trio of Dragon Ogres. The mortal allies consist of a block of warriors and two chariots, a lord and a sorcerer – no magic items, but a level 3 wizard and lots of fear causing units:
Facing off against the immortals are the rather angry Chaos Dwarfs consisting of a large slave contingent of wolfriders, 2 archer units and Black Orcs, with a mainstay of two warrior units, a blunderbuss unit and a large unit of Bull Centaurs. Led by a Lord and with a Level 3 and Level 1 sorcerer, taking the Shrieking Blade (causing Fear) and Dread Banner (likewise) for my opponent to distribute as appropriate.
Magic
We are playing with the Warhammer 4th Edition rules with the Battle Magic supplement throughout. The Chaos Dwarfs don’t have magic included in Battle Magic, so I printed off their magic cards from a PDF of the Chaos Dwarf Army Book:
The Battle
Mid-way through the battle I took a photograph – the flamers on the flanks as usual, but this time (now I know I have to roll-to-hit for their flame attacks) they were nowhere near as effective.
My brother’s not played WHFB before and I’d had a few games under my belt, so it wasn’t a very equal match – the Chaos Dwarf General and his unit of Black Orcs were stuck behind some squabbling Hobgoblins for most of the game, as were the units of Warriors.
The battle truly highlighted the relative lack of mobility of the Chaos Dwarfs.
The magic phase was really fun – almost a complete game in itself – the above photograph may not be rules-as-written but it was definitely the rule-of-cool – my Sorcerer managed to survive it, but this happened TWICE and the second time he got turned to slime.
Winner
Due to the way VP are scored in WHFB 4th (in whole or parts-of 100pts) my Chaos forces lost significantly – two chariots at 108pts yielded four VP and the Warriors and Sorcerer another six VP – so although the Chaos Daemons were in prime position to win they couldn’t offset those losses within the game’s time limit.
Final Thoughts
Though I have found WHFB 4e very fun solo, it was a bit of a tough game to play against an opponent who is unfamiliary because there’s just so many assumptions and baggage. Knowing that BS is subtracted from 7 for a ‘to hit’ roll, while WS is an opposed role and the delta adds or subtracts 1 from a standard 4+ to hit – or that Leadership is tested on two dice while Initiative is tested on 1.
I wouldn’t hesitate to have another game of it if it came up again, but I’m also quite happy to nurse my WHFB addiction solo – particularly when there are games which are much easier to grasp while still having an interesting game (such as OHW, Dragon Rampant, etc.)
Recommendations
For those looking to dip their toe into Herohammer, 4th Edition + Battle Magic is a really fun game to play, but it does require a degree of investment on the part of both players to construct an army list and familiarise themselves with the rules ahead of time, as there’s a degree of mental heavy lifting just by the sheer number of internal systems involved in a typical game.
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