metalhead me

I have become a cyborg of late; I don’t know if it’s a virus I picked up from someone else’s disc drive or whatnot, but I’ve played five games in a row with soulbergs as my only force. Classic scape too, without customization. What’s happened to me? I have to admit I love the Deathreavers. Not only are they cute but scatter is a beautiful thing.

A very kind person (choo choo!) gave me an extra Zettan squad- I know they’re unique, but bang bang bang! They look awfully nice all standing around DW9000, enjoying some range enhancement nookie!

Last night my children and I played 500 points vs. 500 points. It was a medium size map with heights, and two fortifications; also about one fifth of the map was ice and snow. Haha! Bring it on! Deathwalker 9000 doesn’t care about snow!

There were 10 glyphs on the map: 1 wound, 1 pit trap, 1 heal, 1 revive, four Brandars and two Thorians. The Brandars were nothing- just false alarms. It was the Thorians that counted, but we weren’t using them as Thorians. You had to take a Thorian and transport it to the centre mountain, put it on the little altar way up top, and then stand on it for one full turn to win the game.

My metal army was Deathwalker 9000, Zettians, and Reavers for a total of 250 points. My daughter was on my side and she took her usual elf army of Ashrans and some custom archers and a mist creating elven hero.

Our opponents, my two sons, took custom armies of Skaven (ratmen) and Goblins.

We were heavily out-numbered. I had seven figures and my daughter eight- compared to the boys’ total of more than 50. However I had confidence in the Soulbergs- great range great defense, and good looking too!

Starting zones were random, and as my usual bad luck would have it my 9 year old son received the best spot. I received the furthest away spot (not so great since the Zettians move is only four), my daughter in the ice and snow (soggy elves ugh!) and my 12 year old son opposite his brother in perfect position to cut us off and divide the map, excluding us from the central mound and the altar. Not a good start...

My 9 year old is blessed with the most amazing dice shaking you have ever seen. He’s so good, I could probably sell him. He does pick good armies, but even if he picked bad ones, he’d win because he can shake skulls and shields on demand. He even brags about it. No surprise, he won the shake for initiative and his goblins immediately advanced and turned over three glyphs. One was a Thorian. He sent the rest of his troops over to engage us and stop us from intercepting him.

My daughter began to struggle through the snow and she took down five goblins with her eleven archers. Elves have a reputation – and you know how arrogant they can be - and they didn’t fail her. It was nice to see dead goblins on the field in the first turn. The Elven archers are not that much more powerful than my soulberg force, and I was looking forward to my turn like a hungry dog before dinner. Droolin’ for battlin’.

I was too far away for the Deathreavers to engage, but Deathwalker used his explosion special attack and the adjacent Zettians fired using range enhancement. And guess what? I took down nothing. Zero. My shakes weren’t all that bad, but my 9 year old laughed and blocked each one with blue.

My 12 year old was eager for the fray and his skittering Skaven started towards us. The boys strategy was simple- engage us so we couldn’t stop them from getting the glyph to the altar.

My daughter and I tried to blast our way through. Most of the goblins and skaven have low defense and attack. Somehow they decimated my daughter’s forces and she was down to just two elves. I had a deathreaver carrying a Brandar (nobody could see what it was) and I was trying to get him through to the altar as a feint, but my sons were too wary of attacking him or his brethren. In fact, they barely attacked me at all. They just tied us up and completed the scenario.

Fighting is a lot of fun but we have been playing a series of games with very specific objectives. The boys learned well from those games because their actions were focused and preventative- stopping us from advancing, while their minions carried the Thorian up the heights. They even held back one turn just to see if we could do anything to stop them.



engaged, blocked, stuck, trapped, lost

But it was all for naught. I took no casualties, but lost the game. My daughter’s forces were almost destroyed. (the boys hate her elves, so there was some vengeful malice behind it). The boys lost a lot of figures but they didn’t care. They’d both selected hoards and had expected to lose heavy. And they won the game.

I’m still stuck on Soulbergs this month- but I think maybe they need some kind of air transport to move them around faster.... I need a spaceship!