[TOW] 1500pts vs O&G's

Had a lovely relaxed game this afternoon with a buddy of mine, where we’ve promised to play each other so many times and it finally happened.

I brought my chorfs - new things on the table was a gaggle of bull centaurs, a tau’ruk, and for the first time I fielded my sorcerer prophet on a flying carpet, which was fun.

The chorf slaver expedition enters the swamplands from the south, their target a sizeable mob of black orcs led by a vicious warboss and backed up by a number of goblins, including a lvl 4 shaman, and an opportunistic orc warboss and his faithful boar boy companions.


Top of turn 2 for the orcs. From the left: Spider riders had moved up through the forest and was subsequently under fire from hobgoblins and ultimately rounded up to the last greenskin by a vicious magic missile.

The doom diver had managed to score a crushing hit on the deathshrieker rocket, but would misifire and self-destroy next time it tried to shoot.

Tau’ruk moves up to face the river trolls, but soon has a fanatic blocking his path. He chooses to charge the boar riders in the forest instead.


The Tau’ruk eats it in a challenge against the orc boss who proves too powerful, sporting the trollhide trousers and the choppiest choppa. He is pushed back and subsequently taken out.

The bull centaurs charge the trolls and beat them soundly, but the last remaining troll flees only 2" and the bullies fail to reform after their overrun, leaving them open to a flank charge from the orc warboss and his crew. Yikes. They are eventually defeated and run down.

The night goblins unleash a fanatic into the chorf-aligned black orcs and take out half, ouch, but the goblins themselves are no match for the retribution that follows. They break and flee. Eventually these goblins - and luckily for the flying sorcerer - end up standing in the way of the boar boys.

The feral black orcs end up in a massed combat, with chorf infernal guard holding the center, black orcs on the flank, and eventually a gang of hobgoblins in the other flank. The black orc warboss absolutely obliterates in one challenge after the other, but the chorfs stand resolute. In the final moments of the battle, the sorcerer casts a spell of gathering darkness on the black orcs, the seneschal tanks the warboss in the final challenge (surprisingly!), and the renegade black orcs are subjugated, ironically by their own kind.


And that was it. Some heavy losses on the chorf side, but with the enemy mostly routed or destroyed, it ended up in a win for yours truly.

By the way: The goblin shaman cast a spell earlier, vindictive glare, and took off two wounds from the sorcerer prophet. In retaliation, the enraged, semi-petrified dark overlord descended on the hapless shaman and beat him repeatedly over the head with his scepter of Hashut until he expired.

Apologies for the somewhat messy battle report, I didn’t take pictures at the right times, so it was a bit difficult to keep a flow to it. In any case:

This was my opponent’s first game, he borked his list building a bit, and didn’t have any additional equipment on his black orcs except for the big red banner - so they had only hand weapons, which severely hampered their killiness. The rest sort of worked - I was really worried about the fanatics, but they luckily both killed themselves before too much damage was done. Still took out half my black orc unit in 1 turn though. 25pts.

I liked the bull centaurs, but 4 is too many imo, they lack the required manoeuvrability. The Tau’ruk was cool, but not tooled up enough to deal with the challenge I threw him into (both my darkforged weapons rolled a 1, too, so ugh…)

Flying wizard is the bees knees, and I’m looking forward to having him on a lamassu where he will be a much more difficult target for magic missiles, what with the magic res 3.

Thanks for letting me share. All the best to you out there :smiley:

Praise Hashut! :cow:

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Awesome! More bodies to fill your ranks.

Would you say that your infernal guard were the anvil of your army in this case?

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Don’t apologize a bit. You have been giving all our battle brothers good information on what it takes to dominate the old world.
Every bit helps.
This was a great report.
But HMMMM if only you had some cheap wolf ridders to try and trick him to release fanatics, it does work sometimes.
Thanks

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I don’t know how they’d fare against fully kitted out and maybe a wider deployed blorc unit, but they did benefit from stubborn and their sword’n’board loadout, definitely.

The Blorc Warboss was seriously tearing butt with the ogre blade, I was lucky to get to feed him two champions and my big boss ^^

As a matter of fact, I have a pile of about 9 black orcs waiting for paint - now I know where they canonically came from ^^

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Thanks for the encouragement :angel:

Hehe, again with the wolf riders ^^ I don’t have the models, so that’s one thing. Besides, I’m using the cutthroats as chaff, I think they work ok for their points.

I’m not as afraid of fanatics anymore - I thought the controlling player could choose the direction of attack all the time, but it’s only the first time, so it makes them way less reliable. Also thought they could be released “at any time”, but it turns out it’s only in the start of turn sub-phase (makes them a bit more predictable). Any doubles on their movement dice is an instant self-destruct, and the chance of that is apparently rather high (17%, as it turns out). They’re good, but only reliable in great numbers, is my take.

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Thanks for the battle report, really cool! Good ups and downs it seems.

Flying carpet sorcerer is really cool, it’s just so versatile and fast. I love how the Lammasu adds a lot to his survivability (and doesn’t take 40pts out of your magic items allowance), but then you’re bound by his front arc for casting spells, important to remember.

It’s important to remember that fanatics don’t have to be released anymore when an enemy comes within 8“, making bating them a bit harder. Also, you cannot sacrifice a unit by just contacting them anymore. They stay alive until the roll a double.

Nothing is ever reliable with Night Goblins :sweat_smile: but be careful, they are really good. The META currently is:

  • when an enemy is about to charge the Night Goblins, release the fanatics at the start of his turn.
  • enemy has to chose: don’t charge or charge through the fanatics. If he charges, he gets the hits.
  • end of enemy movement phase, the night goblin player moves the fanatics. As this is their first movement, he moves them through the same enemy unit they already hit, as you can move through a unit engaged in close combat. With 3 fanatics that’s 6D6 S5 hits.
  • Delete enemy unit.
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Yes, Vacationist just filled me in on that change also.
Why they make it so wicked hod. North East speak.
I thought we could do a fire and flee as a charge reaction, but i see they could still choose not to send in the clowns, so to speak.
Looks like dropping a hit from an earthshaker is looking better.
Thanks man

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Or a nice vortex, I suppose :thinking: Dangerous terrain and all.

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Was it THAT bad?? What could we do protect?

Yeah, so he had Waaagh! active for 2 turns (cause my guys fell back in good order and he followed up), so he was re-rolling 1’s to hit for the majority of the fight. He also had furious charge active for the first two turns of combat, which meant he had a total of 5 ws8 (the unit had raggedy red banner) s7 ap2 ab1 multiple wounds D3 hits that was re-rolling 1’s :smiling_face_with_tear: My IG champion and black orc champion obviously got mulched by that setup (with plenty of overkill), and after that, he pummeled my big boss. Miraculously in the end, my Seneschal only let 1 wound through, which multiplied to 1 wound, so he survived against all odds.

The ogre blade is good, but I think decent saves, armor or otherwise, is a good counter, with it being “only” ap2 ab1. Adding to that, it’s a 65pt magic weapon, so anything wielding it will have sub-par saves of their own (if you get to strike back). I elected to not try and take the warboss out, as I was hoping to break the unit in its entirety, and that fortuitously worked out. It was a close battle, which is something I really like about ToW - it’s the rule rather than the exception that the game is decided in round 5 or 6. Love that.

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All good to know.
Our mini campaign has been pushed back a few weeks.
Looks like we will be fighting in the East in the Mountains of Mourn.
Armies now will be Orc & Goblins, Skaven, Chaos and Ogres.
Should be a good test.
Thanks again for all the help.

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I’ve faced O&G once myself and got owned, the new fanatic rules were a shock.
No triggered release for baiting, 3" placement and 2D6 move in chosen direction is brutal. Cant even be shot
How do we beat them?

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That’s the neat part - you don’t!

Kill (as in: with ranged attacks) the concealing unit of Night Goblins before they can be released. Make it flee. Use Vortices or other magic to deploy difficult/dangerous terrain.

And keep in mind Fanatics are now 1 per 10 Night Goblins.

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Good point, well made.
Im guessing the O&G player has to declare where they are hiding during deployment? so you know where to land a mortar shell…

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That’s up to how you guys are playing. I usually don’t declare stuff like this, but in this particular case it’s straight forward: all my units harbour Fanatics :sweat_smile: And I play a pure Night Goblin Waaagh where I indeed have multiple units so it wouldn’t be guaranteed, if you’re facing a mixed O&G army with just 1-2 units of Night Goblins you can be sure that they include Fanatics.

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