Game 1 of WOOD ELVES vs. LIZARDMEN series ongoing. 1500 points.

My gaming buddy and I have played a good slew of 40k together at our friendly local gaming store at a number of events, ranging from kill team, to City Fighting, and last night was the first time that I forayed with him into the land of fantasy.

Rolling for magic: His Slann rolled on Lore of High Magic list, yielding Tempest, Hand of Glory, Apotheosis and item destroyer one.

I rolled on Beast Lore and ended up with Amber Spear, Wildform, and Savage Beast and Pann's Impenetrable Pelt.

Deployment: we had, at first a very dense table, with tons of buildings in the way, which we thinned into a moderately covered board, including several sinister structures along the way. Deployment was largely uninteresting back and forth, him evenly spreading his 2 Saurus Warrior squads to each side, with Cold One Riders to his left (my right) flank, with the 2 skink skirmishers taking the middle and his right (my left( flank) I made the mistake of leaving my treekin and Treemen on the table before his salamanders, so he ended up with a good line of sight to both unit, but more on that later. Each of my flanks were guarded (lol) by glade guard, on the left babysat by Wardancers, on the right, by Treemen, Scouts and my Spellweaver General. To the middle I set Dryads, a Treeman and more war dancers along with my compulsory wood. What I did well was to put down my Great Eagle at the end, in response to his Salamanders, to guarantee taking one of them out turn 1.

Lizard Turn 1: After I took my 12 in vanguard move towards his salamander, along the far left table edge, he moved his left squad of skinks and the salamander accompanying them around the sinister building (weirding well) towards my Eagle. The Cold ones on the right got into position to charge my poorly placed scouts on the right flank. Skinks marched up the middle and the Saurus Warrioss fought to position themselves better around the terrain. Slann hovered. With the magic phase, he Ice Sharded the scouts, wiffed on tempesting my Eagle and what ever else he did, I dispelled or it was inneffectual. Shooting proved dangerous with the skinks taking a wound off of the Eagle with their poisoned shooting and the Salamanders failing to connect, or wound. I love the Eagle's 5+ ward. With no charges declared, it was my turn.

Wood Elves 1: Declared a charge on his Salamander with the Eagle. He opted to flee and with swiftstride, I cut them down with good dice. Great. Job well done, but now the eagle was in easy range from the skinks. Dryads, Treeman, and Wardancers entered the woods to my center board and the scouts inched up into good range of the other salamander in the middle, just beggin to get charged by the cold one riders. Dumb choice, elves. Magic saw one skink handler die to Amber Spear, but not much more. Shooting took out the rest of the skink handlers on the salamander ad took him down to 1 wound, where he rolled a Grrrr and sat angrily, blocking the Saurus Warriors behind him from advancing. No other charges.

Lizard 2: Cold ones declare a charge on my Scouts who (OH NO!!!) have my general in the back ranks of. I try to flee to get him to land in my treekin, but (OH NO!!!) I roll 11 on leadership and sit there dumbfounded and receive his charge. All seems lost. His skinks reposition down the middle to take aim at my units lying in wait in the trees and the Saurus Warriors are stuck behind the skinks to the left and the sitting salamander to the right. Magic sees me dispel his hand of glory and a failed attempt to tempest. Shooting with the blowguns takes out the Great Eagle with one squad and 3 dryads with the other. The combat phase is not kind to me, though, with the Cold ones not losing a model to my 7 wounds (5 scouts and 2 on the spellweaver) who falls back through the treemen and the Glade guard. The cold ones advance into a new combat with the Treekin (just as planned) and after a round where I forget to stomp, I take out 2 cold ones and lose 2 wounds on one.

Elves 2: Wardancers fail a charge on the Cold ones flank, but advance 2 inches. General does not rally and falls back another 4 inches, definitely within 12 of the board edge now (cue family guy "oh no") and the dryad declare a charge on the skink skirmishers. NBD, right? Wrong. Poison attacks whittle them down to 1 dryad. I'm not feeling confident. No magic to speak of because my General is fleeing (right choice, though) lots of Saurus closing in, what am I to do? Shooting phase sees the nothing of interest happen and in combat the treemen and the Cold ones draw again with the treemen losing slightly.

Lizard 3: Saurus Warriors shuffle around the salamander trying to get into any sort of position, while the other squad prepares in the middle to charge what ever has the audacity to get into range. The skinks on the left move forward to get some new groups in range. Magic sees the Cold One Riders get the hand of glory and boost their initiative by one, but shooting was boring as only the skinks shot and took out 2 glade guard on the right, while the Grrr-ing salamander overshot his fire breath. Combat was also boring, with the skinks losing by 1 to the dryad, but holding and the treemen and cold one riders failing to do any damage to one another. A bit of a boring round, but I am feeling very little confidence.

Elves 3: Tides turn. My General rallies. Wardancers on the left flank smash hard into the skinks after sustaining 2 wounds to Stand and Shoot and Wardancers in the middle smash even harder into the Cold One Riders' left flank. Magic was cool. Amber spear went off at super strength and should have beaten up 4 ranks of old ones sitting in the backfield, but sadly I rolled a one to wound on the second rank and I got Wildform off on the wardancers coming into combat with the Cold One Riders. Shooting sees the glade guard on my right flank finally took out the last wound on the Salamander. Combat was great! Wardancers on the left took 2 wounds but wiped out the skinks, leaving one dancer out in the open, just asking to be charged and the Wildformed Wardancers massacred the flank of the Cold ones taking out 4 and the Treekin took out another one, which lead the Cold One left to flee, and promptly get caught. The dryad stayed put.

Lizard 4: Saurus Warriors that had been sitting in the middle charged the Treeman and the ones that had been pinned behind the Salamander wheeled about to get to the Wardancers. Treeman ate 5 Warriors and they fled and got cut down, putting the treeman into charge range of the Slann general that had crept up.

Elves 4: Game. Treeman charges and eats the Slann.

Nice write up, thanks for sharing.

How did you both find the mechanics and what would you have done differently if you'd played the same scenario again?

EP - assume you'd have put your saurus front and center, and left the salamanders a little safer?

Sounds like a fun game!

I'm going to chime in on a few things though to correct a few rules misinterpretations. These aren't meant to slam you guys, just to point out where things would have played out differently if the rules were followed so that you learn from mistakes and NEXT time you can focus on learning new stuff. If you've house-ruled any of these items, then please ignore the comment.

1. The scouts didn't have to check leadership to flee. If you choose Flee! as a charge reaction you simply spin the unit around, roll your flee dice, and move the unit. Then, in your compulsory movement phase you would roll to rally them just like any other fleeing unit.

2. Remember that units you flee through must take a panic check unless they are unbreakable or immune to psychology (or have some other rule that states they don't panic). You didn't state whether you did or didn't do this so I'm just throwing this one out there.

3. I'm shocked that the Saurus actually fled from the combat against the treeman. I can't see the table obviously so I might have missed something that happened previously. Did the Saurus take any shooting casualties? If not they should have had the following combat resolution, 3 for ranks + 1 for standard +1 for charging which would result in a draw (meaning that the Saurus would actually win since they have a musician). Even if they lost by 1 it's uncommon to see a lizardman unit break without getting absolutely stomped or bogged down in the static combat resolution. Again, I might have missed some Saurus casualties above but I'd check to make sure that combat resolution is being calculated to include the standard bonuses (ranks, charging, flanks, higher ground, etc). It is quite possible that the Saurus were simply unlucky... in which case... good job Wood Elves.

Now for a little advice

Lizardmen - Set up at least one unit of Saurus warriors in the middle of your line. These are your go-to damage dealers at this point level and the game turned against you largely because these units were too slow to get into combat. Keep a unit of skink skirmishers in front of the salamanders to avoid early charges by vanguard units or flyers. That's why you buy them and skinks are actually pretty good at this job due to their poison weapons and relatively low cost. Use your High magic Lore attribute to swap out spells for others that might benefit you. I would have swapped out one for a lore of fire spell (defaulting to fireball) to take on the treemen/treekin/dryads more directly or shadow for the debuff spells like miasma.

Wood Elves - Given that you won with Wood Elves I'm not sure how much more I can tackle here. You did a good job of dancing around his units while trying to tackle some of Lizard units that would cause you the most problems. Hey, at least you lealrned to fear the mighty skink. For T2 models they are a pain in the rear with their poison weapons. At least they don't have them in close combat anymore like the previous book.

Given the same scenario and Army Lists, I would have kept my deployment largely the same, save for putting the trees further forward and holding the dryads back off of the skinks. The only way to deal with their poisoned shooting is to make sure they either cannot hit you (woods, skirmisher and stand and shoot, plus range should take them out of being able to hit) unless I take their flank. Straight up assault was a silly idea. I could have potentially taken the Great Eagle more strategically against the Slann or the other Salamander, but the one on the left flank was the most exposed, so I thought that was the best bet.

In terms of misplayed rules, thank you so much. We both need as much support on this as possible.

1) This is good to know. I like being able to flee without having to roll for it.

2) I did in fact check the Glade Guard for Panic. The Treekin did not check.

3) The Saurus squad had lost 1 rank to shooting over the course of the game and lost another to the Treeman, so at most they were down to a +3, to my 5 and I dont remember if they had a full command squad or not. We need to remember to do combat res properly next time though.

Thanks so much for the feedback and also just for creating a space for us newbies (or at least me, the newbie) to bounce ideas around and have cool conversations about the game.