Game 2 of 8th Edition

Played my second game of 8th edition today. It was a battle of 7th edition top tier armies, with my Dark Elves facing off against Fr. Jason's Vampire Counts. sorry this report isn't more detailed but I have my brother's wedding and small invitational tournament to run this weekend, so needless to say, I'm crunched for time. This was his first game of 8th, and would prove to be my first full game of 8th, as RPA and I had to end early on Tuesday.

I went with a different list than what I ran in 7th. I decided to go for an infantry based army, and back it up with a little more shooting than normal. My list was

Dreadlord: on foot with Regen armor and +3 Str Ogre Blade
Sorceress: level 2 with sac dagger
Sorceress: Level 2 with Feedback scroll - one use only, wizard must roll number of dice used to cast spell, is wounded on any rolls of 5 or 6
Cauldron: BSB, and some Khanite stuff, no big deal
20 spears with shields with armor pierce banner and both casters in it
10 Dark Riders w/ crossbows, yes one unit
5 harpies
10 crossbowmen
10 crossbowmen
20 black guard had general in it
14 witch elves
hydra
2 reaper bolt throwers

Fr. Jason went with a surprisingly fast VC army

Vamp Lord - level 3
Vamp BSB - Regen Banner
Necromancer on foot
30 unit of zombies
30 unit of ghouls
20 unit of skellys
10 strong unit of black knights
10 or 15 strong unit of dire wolves - classic bus with general and BSB with regen
5 man blood knights
Black Coach

I plopped my 3 main battle units in the middle: my Black Guard, Cauldron, and Spears from left to right. Outside the BG was a bolt thrower, and then a unit of archers deployed in the woods and the Witches on the extreme left flank. To the right of the spears was the hydra, crossbowmen, and the 10 man Dark riders. He had, from his right to left, hoarde of zombies, black knights, skellys with necro, ghouls, black coach, dire wolf bus, and blood knights. I won first turn and started trying to blast him. The game was pretty fun, with him doing quite well easy. In the end, I pulled off the victory. I think the keys were using my shooting to force him to come at me, using my harpies to pull his blood knights into an infilade shot by my bolt thrower, and the hydra. The key moment of the game was when my spear elves, who got charged by his dire wolf bus, rolled insane courage and held. this allowed my hyrda to counter charge and use his breath weapon. This negated the regen for the REST OF THE COMBAT ROUND, and I tore him to shreds, and then smoked his characters with melting wounds. It was awesome, and he had no way to recover after that. I found the combats a ton of fun. My witch elves were rolling (with the cauldron blessing) 36 hated, poisen attacks. It was sweet. They seemed like all-stars, but I think this is b/c they took on zombies and skellies. Magic was also a lot of fun for both of us I think, and didn't seem overpowered at all. he did miscast, but got off easy on the roll of 8, which failed to wound any of his casters. I did have quite a few failed charges, but the swiftstrider rule makes Cav fine, and striking on initative and stepo up made those missed charges survivable, where as in 7th ed, It would have been game over.

I am basically 1 and half games in, but I am very happy so far with the rules. The early forecast is that 8th edition has saved warhammer for me, and I am very excited about it. In fact, I registered for the Northstar this week.