Age of Sigmar Skirmish : Chaos vs Death, 07.11.2018

Introduction

After our Path to Glory game, we had time for something short, so we threw down a Skirmish game. We used the models we had on hand: Poxbringer, 2 Nurglings, 10 Plaguebearers vs Wight King, 10 Skeleton Warriors.

Mission

Assassination from the Skirmish book. Death won the deployment roll-off, and decided to be the assasination target due to the Skeletons having low movement values. It's not like Nurgle is blazing fast... anyway. The black dice determine the 'base camp' which the target cannot leave. I could deploy all around, but decided to concentrate my forces in one spot. Major victory condition for me is to kill the enemy general; there were several conditions for minor victory for each side.

Game

For the first two turns, the undead moved back and built a wall of Skeletons around the Wight King. I advanced with my forces until I reached a reasonable charge distance, then charged everything in.

What followed were 2 turns of painful grind. Neither the Skeletons nor the Plaguebearers are very killy, but they are very survivable. So we stood there, trying to keep track of who attacked and who didn't. So much useless dice rolling. For example: every single Plaguebearer attacks separately. First roll for 6+ allegiance ability (have to use the Chaos one), then roll 4+ to hit (rerolling 1's for my Skirmish command ability), then 3+ to wound.

Finally, in my turn 4, I saw an opening. I cast the Poxbringer's spell (which was not denied that turn), doing 2 MW to the Wight King, then piled in directly to him, and with a lucky streak, took off the remaining wounds in one swing.

Aftermath

The game went by fairly quickly (around an hour, maybe 50 minutes), but it sure did not feel like it. Moving everything separately and rolling for everything separately, and with most rolls ending up doing nothing, felt useless and boring. I guess I could improve by bringing a Plague Drone instead of a couple of Plaguebearers. 

Not that the concept of Skirmish has any issues. I liked the idea of a fast game. But the Chaos allegiance ability is a major pain to do.