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Warhammer Old World: High Elves vs Dwarves

Last Wednesday, Cliff and I reconvened at Leighton Buzzard Wargames Club to have another bash at Warhammer: Old World. This time, I was using my High Elves/Melnibonians. This is my old army of choice, which hasn't seen daylight since 1999/2000, and is made up of units that date back to the 80s (apart from The Shadow Warriors, which are 1990s vintage) and are the type of High Elves that give Dark Eles a bad name.

I had lots of option sto choose from (especially as I found I had waaaaaay more foot and cavalry than I remembered, so I went with 15 x archers, 9 x Shadow Warriors, 20 x Swordmasters of Hoeth, 9 x Silver Helms, 10 x reavers, an eagle, an eagle claw bolt thrower, Prince (Elric) Army standard bearer on horseback (with Silver Helms) and Riotla Snow (with Shadow Warriors) and a lvl 2 mage, all with lots of magical equipment. It was a lot of shooty power, just to try it out I guess.

I was up against Cliff's dwarfs, unchanged apart from he dropped the miners, and took a warrior unit.

Cliff deployed first, but had substantially more units than I, so also deployed last! He massed on the right, crossbows and Thunderers on the hill, with a cannon at it's foot, plus a gyrocopter. Then a ballista and Anvil of Doom to the left of the hill, Hammerers, warriors and his Slayers on the left, tucked away behind the wood.

My ballista was out right, next to my Swordmasters, which had Elric in the front. My archers were left of the wood, next to the eagle, then came the Silver Helms. My reavers and shadow warriors both count as scouts, so can deploy anywhere out of 12" of the opponent. The reavers deployed in the Dwarf backfield, just to distract, while the Shadow Warriors parked in front of the hill to draw a bead on all Cliff's shooty types.


View from the dwarven lines, Cliff realised that my Reavers were going to shoot at his Slayers with impunity, as Slayers don't have armour, if I could wound, I would kill.

Combined weight of shooting targets the dwarf crossbows on the hill, who promptly fail their first panic test!!!
Cliff's dice deserted him rather.
We also took a few out of the Thunderers. My Swordmasters advance as quickly as they can.


The fearless slayers realise what that strange coldness down their back is, and it's not rain but a cold sweat as they start taking hits from cavalry bows. They decide the only safe option was to hide in the woods. Unfortunately, they lost a lot of slayers trying this as a few stuck out oer the edge.


My Shadow Warriors caught a blast of cannister fire from the artillery, but thinned the dwarf Thunderers further. Prince Uther rushes his troops to aid the Thunderers, charging my Shadow Warriors who fire and retire with glee at avoiding a fight. The crossbows come back from the edge of the table, slightly shame faced, and try to make amends by shooting at Elric's unit.


My Silver Helms spend the rest of the game getting chewed up by the Dwarf Hammerers after Dwarven runes stops them claiming any charge bonus from their lances (it's like Cliff knew they were coming) and the Dwarf Low King, who challenged Elwing to a duel. The pair spend a lot of turns failing to wound each other! Armour bouncing all hits between the two mighty warriors. The Hammerers, however, work their way through my heavily armoured elves, but never enough to break them.


At this point, I was enjoying the game so much I forgot to take more photos, Sorry. The game ended, (it was a variable length scenario). my Silver Helms are pushed away, but still do not break. The Dwarf Low King and his Hammerers, who only lost two wounds from melee (from the King), their other casualty was from my shooting after my cavalry broke away. Typical! The Slayers emerge from the woods, a lot less strong than when they went in. My Reavers are untouched, and are now damaging the warrior unit behind the wood instead. My archers have taken a fair few ballista hits, but along with the remains of the Shadow Warriors and my bolt thrower, have enjoyed freedom to shoot who they liked. The eagle died turn 1, but I shot down the gyrocopter in return. In the far distance, on the hill, Elric and the Swordmasters took awful damage before contact from closing fire, but sliced and diced the Thunderers in a turn, capturing their standard. Then they crashed into the crossbows, who were down to 25% strength, but that pinned my troops in place long enough for Uther's troops to charge me in the back! One more turn, and they were toast as they were also below 25%.
A great game, and I squeaked a win! By about 30 points out of 2000+, mostly because I killed the Thunderers. I was hemorrhaging points due to most of my units being below 25%, but my only unit loss was the eagle! One more turn, this would have been very different.

Cliff is now threatening the return of his Skaven, I can't wait!

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