9th Age Practice - Battle 1

So our exploration into The 9th Age began with 3 practice battles between Sylvan Elves and Undying Dynasties.  The reason these two armies were chosen was purely based on them having full army books at the time.  The remaining 14 armies of The 9th Age don't have full books yet and as I was the one picking all of the lists (and I like reading the fluff) I went with these armies.

Battle 1
Lucky-Sixes rolled a D6 between the six 2,000 point armies that I'd made.  He rolled up the 'Forest' list which contained:

Treefather Ancient (Oaken Crown, Impaling Roots, Level 2, Path of Nature)
Avatar Of Nature (Tree Singing, Impaling Roots)
Dryad Matriarch (Scarred Bark, Level 1, Path of Wilderness)
Thicket Shepherd (BSB, Entwined Roots)
30x Dryads w. Full Command
10x Dryads w. Standard Bearer (Skirmishers)
5x Thicket Beasts w. Full Command (Entwined Roots)
Treefather

I then D3'd between the 3 Undying Dynasties lists and rolled up the 'Barrow Legion' list which contained:

Pharoah (Vanquisher Eternal, Armour Of Eternities, Obsidian Pebble, Heavy Armour, Lord Of The Barrow Legion)
Death Cult Acolyte (Level 2, Path of Sand)
Tomb Harbinger (BSB, Sandstorm Cloak, Heavy Armour, Halberd)
59x Skeletons w. Full Command (Heavy Armour, Halberds, Banner Of Speed)
4x Scarab Swarms (Ethereal)
3x Great Vultures
3x Great Vultures
35x Necropolis Guard w. Full Command (Heavy Armour, Halberds)
Casket Of Phatep

Because we didn't take any pictures of this battle (non-proxy rating 0/10) and it occurred about 3 weeks ago I don't intend on going into great detail of the battle itself but I'll give a brief rundown at least.  Also, there's a few Battle Chronicler pictures spaced throughout just to give a better idea of where things were.

We had diagonal deployment and Lucky-Sixes deployed his army pretty much straight away.  We'd already established by this point that the Sylvan Elves had little to fear from either the Ethereal Scarabs (being Otherworldly) or the Great Vultures and so it was pretty much his entire army against my two infantry blocks.  I would desperately need the Casket Of Phatep to be on form because there wasn't much I could do about the 3 monsters in his army if it didn't.

This is roughly how it looked.  Getting the measurements right with diagonal deployment is not the easiest thing in the world but you get the idea!

Lucky-Sixes advanced rapidly (the secondary objective was to get into your opponent's deployment zone) and in my turn in response I decided to charge one of my units of Great Vultures into the only unit of his that I thought they could handle; the Skirmishing Dryads.  I also moved up the other Vultures to just behind this combat thinking that they could help out later (and forgetting Immune To Psychology rules entirely).  As it turned out, the Vultures were awful and evaporated rapidly leaving Lucky-Sixes an easy way of destroying both units of Vultures after he'd combat reformed and charged the other unit in his turn 2.  In my defence this was my first battle using Undead and so not being able to flee a charge was not something I'd thought about.  Rookie error!

Whilst this had been going on my Casket Of Phatep had eliminated the Treefather in one attempt!  Lucky-Sixes rolled very high on his 3-dice leadership test, failed some ward saves and that was one monster gone!  2 to go!

Sorry Vultures, my bad!  But at least one of those monsters is down!

Turns 2-4 were a bit of a tactical jostle as his Dryads and Thicket Shepherds advanced whilst my Skeletons and Necropolis Guards tried to decide what to do about it.  On the opposite flank to where my Vultures were wasted my pointlessly Ethereal Scarabs waved at the Avatar Of Nature in the hope that he would pack up and go home but instead the monster used them as a buffer between himself and the Necropolis Guard who decided to fail a re-roll-able swift reform leaving them a bit stranded.

I can't recall whether it was an act of desperation or another tactical genius (read idiotic) moment that led me to charge my Skeletons into his Dryads horde.  I believe that I was going to attempt to put all my magic into the Skeletons to buff them thinking they would stand a chance but it all went horribly wrong when I used half my dice on a casting of Cursed Blades.  Lucky-Sixes analysed the situation perfectly and realised that as his Dryads had neither armour nor Regeneration saves he would happily let my Skeletons have Lethal Strike.  I quickly checked the rules and indeed the spell was a complete waste of effort.  That of course was followed up by Lucky-Sixes dispelling the other spell: Ancient Glory.

A short time later the Skeletons were gone and so was my Hierophant with them (I did say the charge was idiotic).  The Necropolis Guard kicked into action by telling the Scarab Swarm to deal with the Avatar Of Nature whilst they went solo on pretty much the entire Sylvan Elves army.

This isn't going so well!

In a bizarre twist, however, as the Dryads, Thicket Beasts and Treefather Ancient had a turn or two of combat killing off the Necropolis Guard the Scarab Swarms did their job admirably and took down the Avatar Of Nature.  Hurray for Poisoned Attacks and lots of failed ward saves!

With only 2 of the monsters gone though it literally was a couple of remaining Scarab Swarms (who were crumbling) against the rest of the Sylvan Elves and so a drubbing had been dealt.

Over to you Scarabs!

We both agreed that it wasn't the best match up for Undying Dynasties but that the 'Forest' list for Sylvan Elves looked like it was pretty darn good again.  It was an enjoyable start to our 9th Age exploration.

Lucky-Sixes says...'

I was quite excited to start our exploration into 9th Age after watching quite a few battle reports online in the preceding months (insert shameless plug for "Oncebitten" & "Chihammer"). Despite work getting in the way of me actually looking at the army lists / books prior to the battle it ended up not being too complicated and actually fairly similar to the 8th edition mechanics - with the exception of the magic phase, which I have been impressed with in our early battles.

The main difference that I have found with the crossover has been with the army books. Slightly different stat lines (and some changes in base-sizes which was interesting) and quite contrasting army-wide rules meant that most of our time was spent in the pre-deployment phase where we went through the army lists Hyper-G had picked.

I quite liked the change to the deployment phase and decided to gamble on deploying everything to gain the first turn. I found it allowed me to move and have a bit more control in the movement phase - although we were both combat armies so I don't think it really gave me a huge advantage and it was really all about seeing what the units had to offer, so I just looked at trying to set up as favourable combats as possible. I can see this being quite a cool thing in the future and adding an extra tactical element to the games. Also it might allow people to tailor lists so that they can just plonk down their armies and ensure they get the first turn. Anyway, there I go waffling again - back to the battle...

Overall I thought, it went quite well for the Elves and as Hyper-G mentioned, it was quite a favourable match up for a combat heavy forest list. The skirmishers were able to deal with his chaff quite quickly, and fortunately I was able to surround the Undying Dynasties list quite well, meaning I was able to gang up on his units one by one. I didn't notice magic as being too much of an influence on this game but that may well have been because we only had Level 1 / 2's to play with. Also, forest spirit had changed back to being a 5+ ward save throughout which is awesome! Having that army-wide is not something to be sniffed at, and really helps turn things in your favour.

I had played with this type of list before in 8th, whereas Hyper-G hadn't used Undead before so I think that did play a factor in this battle, but despite how one sided the battle went in the end, there were quite a few moments where it could have gone either way, so I think we were both pleased with the adaptations 9th Age has brought to the table. A lot of fun was had, and it left us both eagerly anticipating round 2 of this mini series!