Vaul Presents: The Gift of Morrslieb

[Vaul]

Dear Friends,

I'm putting on an event for Warhammer Fantasy on the 23rd of January 2011, which will be held at FTW games in west auckland for one day only, starting early and going all day.

The event will consist of only one single game of Warhammer, in which two teams of roughly three people each side will control a pooled army of just under 15,000 points per side, with those two sides being Skaven and Warriors of Chaos.

The event should be open to the public and spectating is welcome, but please refrain from slowing down what could potentially be a very challenging and tedious affair with tactical advice for the players or with comments about the warhammer rules.  I will be the sole umpire unless players drop out and I have to lend a hand with playing the game by controlling some of the forces.  There will be full batrep coverage, so don't feel you need to be there to watch if you don't think you can resist making your own live commentary!

The teams will be provisionally as follows unless there are dropouts:

Skaven:

- Jorin D
- Aaron P
- Paul D

Warriors of Chaos:

- Nikola J
- Josh W
- Glenn T

Now that the first couple of phases of planning have been completed, I am now hoping to hear from any warhammer player who might like to participate in the event as a player or to lend models.  I need:

- Any person that can make themselves available IF one of the listed players drops out and can't come along, and will be able to help the team move models, roll dice, and contribute to tactical decisions.  You'll need to be available all sunday (the 23rd) and have some dice, transportation etc.

- A few extra miniatures, painted - hellpit abomination or plagueclaw catapult, giants/shaggoths/chaos trolls/ogres to help make up some lacking points.  We should have just about everything else.

    - Luke 'Vaul' Brimblecombe

[juiced]

That sounds AWESOME

[Big D]

Need to organise this sort of thing for 40k at somepoint down the track. A truely epic Black Crusade game of Apoc

[richardbarby]

will it be an vaul tv ? something that size and epicness needs to be on line

[Vaul]

Is anyone buying the new abomination model from gw before the 23rd?  If so could we please borrow it...

[Aa7]

Thanks for organising this epic one-dayer Luke, was great fun indeed and would love to do it again if you are going to do another one

[Vaul]

The event is over and it was a tremendous success.  Everyone showed up on time, 99% of the models were remembered and brought, the event was run in an orderly fashion, and the entire game was played properly and completed in 6 turns.  This should go down as urban legend and be remembered as "that event where we thought it wasn't going to get past turn 2, but the organiser was really onto it and totally got everything sorted".

Based on today's result i'm sure there will be more similar events to come!  Please take the time to view the big batrep when I post it tomorrow, it's going to be epic.  For now, check out the highlights!  Please don't post the winner/results here if you were present at the event!

Below:  The guys show up at 8am at FTW games, to find that i've prepared four tables 6x4 stacked next to each other with their longer sides touching.  Big polyfoam boards are put up in the middle line between the large table edges, so that the players can get on with deploying their troops in secret (and much more quickly than alternating deployment would allow).  This table size turned out to be perfect - both deployment zones are basically carpeted in models.  Anticipation is in the air, big time.



Below: The vision-blocking boards are removed, terrain is stacked back into place, and the 15,000 points per side game is poised to begin.  None of the players have participated in anything this epic before... ever!



Below: In Paul's corner, the skaven have massed a huge unit of poison wind globadiers, and an even larger unit of jezzails, all packed behind a screen of rat swams, and even a river.  But it turns out that the forces of chaos have sent an array of monstrous, fast moving, combat troops.  Dragon, manticore, knights, ogres, dragon-ogres....



Below: 'Team Skaven' have decided to completely blitz one of the three objectives on their left flank with just about everything.  This ensures that they easily hold one objective and can sweep around towards the middle, potentially capturing it as well for a secure victory.  The chaos army simply doesn't have any resources to stop THREE hellpit abominations, a plague furnace, and a horde of 18 rat ogres all piled on one flank. Bruuutal.



Below: As the day went on, we could all see that since both sides had stacked their power on different flanks, the tide of battle would swirl around the central objective - a tower containing the remaining warpstone meteorite (also causing any garrison to suffer -1 toughness while in the building).  The lone grey seer towers above the field on his bell, while he screams orders to the scores of rats swarming as far as the eye can see.



Below: Surprise! Normally a horde unit of 40 slaves would not be expected to defeat even 18 chaos marauders of khorne, armed with great weapons.  But when most of their front rank turned out to be skaven assassins, the entire enemy unit was deleted without even a single strikeback.  What? huh?

[richardbarby]

very epic well done guys

[Josh]

Best. Game. Ever.

The Chaos gods were well satisfied with their offering of a thousand rat corpses. Looking forward to seeing the VaulTube report!

[Frosty]

Big thanks to Luke for all the work he did to make this event happen. I had an absolutely fantastic time and it was truly amazing to see so many models battling across the table. I can't wait for the next one! 

[juiced]

again AWSOME

[SKELATOR]

thanks again Luke ,had a great time.

[warpmaster]

This is what Warhammer is all about

Very cool

[nik_]

Wow, looks epic!
Loving the 18 Rat Ogres, and the Slave bunker harboring the Assassins. What other zany units were there?

[Vaul]

There wasn't a lot of time to plan and talk about the army lists themselves, and in fact there were two units of 18 rat ogres for horde formations, although at one point I asked the teams if they wanted to go with a single unit of 36.  All in all, the event worked better without the unit sizes getting too silly, I don't think we really wanted to see one unit of 200 marauders fight one unit of 500 slaves, although we probably had the models for such craziness.

I think the unit that impressed me the most was the solid block of 50 chaos warriors with hand weapons/shields, mark of khorne, rapturous standard, lead by an exalted BSB with the banner of the gods.  I'm just glad they didn't get into the building... even the horde of 65 storm vermin with hatred (from skavenbrew) couldn't dent them.  They even rolled up +1 Toughness from the warshrine late in the day.

The large units of jezzails, censer bearers and globadiers were a nice gimmick but I think as paul will tell you, they couldn't really get the job done against large units of solid infantry and cavalry.

Prior to the event the talk of the town was that Chaos would sweep the objectives with a unit of 40 chosen and two supporting warshrines, and a horde of 40 chaos knights with several mounted characters... on the day, team chaos sportingly decided to go for a fair fight by splitting these models up into smaller units (this worked better visually as the models were painted and themed in normal sized groups from different collections).  Indeed this went a long way towards cultivating a tactically interesting game that went right down to the wire.

[Vaul]

The official, full batrep is finished and uploaded.  You'll need an hour and a half, and a lot of popcorn.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=69581DA299790813

[NeckFace]

geebus.

well, its not like i have anything to do at work anyway

[Simon]

it is awesome! I wish I did something like that when I still had my FULL Woc army.

[richardbarby]

The Gift of Morrslieb 2 ?

what armies will you take for the next one if theres a next one i would be keen to pile in for a day of gaming ( if the wife lets me) 

[Fujin]

Making my way through the videos now.

I reckon if you do this again, give the Skaven a real game and make Empire the other army. Let's see them bring their firepower and dirty tricks to bear against 10+ Mortars and 10+ Great Cannons.

[juiced]

i didn't have any popcorn but it did take me two cups of coffee and a packet of tim tams ....well done guys and to you Vaul, it almost makes me want to start fantasy.....he hehehe almost

[Vaul]

Making my way through the videos now.

I reckon if you do this again, give the Skaven a real game and make Empire the other army. Let's see them bring their firepower and dirty tricks to bear against 10+ Mortars and 10+ Great Cannons.

Dave one of my ideas for round two was actually to go with o&g vs empire instead, possibly with help from dogs of war and brets.  Are you saying you'd be down as a participant or willing to lend us your figs for the event?

[richardbarby]

Making my way through the videos now.

I reckon if you do this again, give the Skaven a real game and make Empire the other army. Let's see them bring their firepower and dirty tricks to bear against 10+ Mortars and 10+ Great Cannons.

Dave one of my ideas for round two was actually to go with o&g vs empire instead, possibly with help from dogs of war and brets.  Are you saying you'd be down as a participant or willing to lend us your figs for the event?

i recon the o & g could do with some choas dwarfs pointing them in the right direction

[Antony]

I finally ploughed my way through the show. Excellent work Luke and the Guys. Very fun.

There will be a few Old School gamers who will remember something similar hosted by Crusty that coincided with the Storm of Chaos campaign. Anyone remember that?

[Fujin]

Dave one of my ideas for round two was actually to go with o&g vs empire instead, possibly with help from dogs of war and brets.  Are you saying you'd be down as a participant or willing to lend us your figs for the event?

I'd be very tempted to participate. How about Empire and Dwarfs vs OGs? Then I'd have HEAPS of models to contribute.

Lol, imagine the number of warmachines, Giants, Trolls (!), Fantatics (!!!)


Hmm... Daryl, Simon, Mr Kitson, Luke, Josh... there's a lot of Empire/Dwarf/OG players out there!

[Vaul]

Well simon's human armies are converted as goblins, i'm not sure which side i'd put him on.  Could be part of a 'special scenario' though.

[richardbarby]

bit of a stupid question but best guess was it skaven or woc who had the most points left over at the end

[Vaul]

Bit of a tough one considering skaven started the field with a thousand point lead on the opposition, but some of the characters weren't even deployed, and nobody was 100% sure what was actually in the army lists before deployment.

[richardbarby]

hard thing to keep track of i guess

[omegakai]

so, luke did you offer nick pizza or somthing? he was under the impression of food for coming down early on sunday and opening up.