Age of Sigmar - battle report

Since I now have Warhammer lizardmen, and the starter box conveniently included the rules for those units to be used in Age of Sigmar, and the main rules are free online, I said lets give it a whirl.

I gathered all those Seraphon (lizardmen), all of which have some paint on them (better than none), and decided to try a solo match.  The only other miniatures I have that could remotely come close to the amount needed to challenge the lizardmen were undead.  So looking through the Vampire Counts list, I used my undead to proxy.  

Off to the table we went.

Simple set-up rules.  I decided not to try the mysterious landscapes.  But did roll for terrain features for each 2 foot square area.  Nothing fancy.

Lizardmen to the left, undead to the right.

Saurus Cavalry, Jungle Swarm, Skink Priest on the southern edge.

Saurus Warriors hold the center, while a Saurus Oldblood is in the woods and the Saurus Oldblood on Carnosaur lurks behind.

Bunch of skeletons and a necromancer are on the southern edge.

Mob of zombies in the center.

Mortis Engine (Skeleton on Throne), Crypt Horrors (green ghoul things), and Vargheists (harpies) guard the northern side of the table.

Since the lizardmen were outnumbered, I chose the Sudden Death to be Seize Ground, choosing the terrain feature which the Mortis Engine and Crypt Horrors were behind.  The lizardmen general was the Saurus Oldblood on Carnosaur and the undead general was the Mortis Engine.  And the undead got the first turn.

All the undead ran up.  Not much else their turn.

The Saurus cavalry and jungle swarm were able to move and then charge the skeletons.

The Saurus warriors moved and then charged, keeping a long line to tie up most of the undead.  The plan was to hold the line until the Oldbloods could get involved.  Since I had no clue on this game or what units could do, it was a fatal mistake.

Saurus Cavalry are quite deadly in combat.

The Crypt Horrors and Mortis Engine are beasts, nearly wiping out all the Saurus Warriors their first melee.

Next round wasn't too much better, even though Lizardmen went first.  The Carnosaur stomped the Vargheists, the Oldblood got stuck in with the Crypt Horrors.  The Saurus Warriors were doomed by the Mortis Engine.

Saurus Cavalry were handling the skeleton warriors until the zombie mob piled in.

In the end the mighty Carnosaur was being attacked by the crypt horrors and Mortis Engine as the Saurus Cavalry was surrounded.  The game was looking grim for the lizardmen.

I stopped the match at this point.  The match was taking longer than I expected but I could see the outcome.  The crypt horrors were nasty, dealing loads of damage and even healing themselves each round.  The mortis engine had loads of attacks and lots of health.  The Carnosaur wasn't a slouch either, but he was being wounded faster than he could kill the undead.  The Saurus Cavalry were doing alright, but with all those zombies it was only a matter of time.  

The rules are fairly straight forward, nothing too difficult about how to play.  My concerns occurred when trying to remember all the different unit special abilities, and which spell or command ability is affecting who.  Playing solo is probably the main reason I had these issues and with so many models to start with, especially for my first time playing.  I'm sure if I was playing a live opponent and I only had one army to keep track of then things might have been smoother and quicker.

Overall, the game is decent.  Its easy and free, so no reason to at least read over it.  Not sure how often I'll try it out as I am limited on miniatures and it gets annoying to proxy models for specific type units.  

The plastic mountain grows....

The wife and I went out of town today on a brief excursion up state; Columbia, SC.  She wanted to go check something out and I didn't have anything else planned.  Unfortunately what she wanted to see turned out to be a big disappointment.  So she asked if I wanted to see anything else since we drove up all that way (2 hour trip one way).  I pulled out the handy smart phone, typed in game stores, and lo and behold, a Games Workshop was right down the street.  I have not been in a Games Workshop store since 1998, nor have I bought any Games Workshop miniatures in years.  A hop, skip, and a jump away we went.

The store wasn't very big, but they had all the latest and greatest in GW products.  As well, the manager/owner of the store was the friendliest, most knowledgeable, and enthusiastic fan of the hobby I've met yet.  You could tell he was passionate about the hobby as well as the products he was selling.  You'll say that's his job, like a used car salesman he wants to sell his products and as many as he can.  But I say, he was just being very helpful and wanted to encourage more people to enjoy the hobby, whether that is collecting and painting miniatures or in playing the game.

Anyways, I was immediately drawn to GW's new starter sets.  They were for fantasy (Age of Sigmar) and 40k, and each was $85.  They generally each contained a heavy unit, maybe a hero unit, some specialist types, and some troops.  In most cases the price of the individual heavy or hero unit by itself is the same cost as the starter set.  I was drawn to one particular box, mostly for the heavy unit.  As you can guess, that box would be mine....

I chose the Lizardmen (Seraphon?  I've been out of the loop).  But look at that carnosaur!  Besides, I have ZERO lizardmen in my entire collection.  This fills it out nicely.

Respectable amount of contents.  The carnosaur by itself is the same cost as this starter set.

Once I made it home, operation assembly began.  A few hours later, and now approaching 1 am, I have completed my mission.  

This is everything.

Carnosaur was first to be assembled, naturally.

Rawr!

A leader, musician, standard bearer, and five regular saurus knights.

A leader, musician, standard bearer, and nine regular saurus warriors.

There were quite a few spare bits remaining on the sprues.  And I LOVE doing conversions and making stuff up.  As I tend to play games that allow a more free-form approach to character customization (like Song of Blades & Heroes), I have no problem just slapping bits together to make something out of nothing essentially.

There were these sea snake accessories which I could have added to any of the lizardmen bases.  But it didn't seem right to me.  So on to a base they went.  Now I have a sea snake swarm.

Well, I think they are sea snakes.  Serpent swarm....viper swarm....whatever.

This guy was actually a replacement for the rider on the carnosaur.  Apparently there are three variants of the carnosaur you could choose from.  I opted for the one on the cover of the box.  So this guy would have wound up in a bag of random bits.

But here he is, assembled just as if he were on the carnosaur.  The only thing different is the thing in his left hand.  It was supposed to be holding the reins of the carnosaur, so I added some skull accessories to it and now it could be some sort of shaman's tool.

This is a Frankenstein's monster.  All of the bits you see on this guy were haphazardly placed to make some sort of semblance of a lizardman-type character.  All the bits were from this box set.

The majority of the bits were from the sprue for the carnosaur variants.  This guy almost has a Tyranid look to him.  I will consider him to be a saurus champion/hero type, a lizardman ogre.