Game Night: Eshin vs. Empire

To celebrate the completion of my Eshin army, I took the all-skirmishing force to Game Night to give them one last run. I ended up playing Tom and his Empire.

I was quite worried about his two units of Knights (one unit of 10 Inner Circle with Warrior Priest Lord, one unit of 5 vanilla with full command) when the game started, but my Jezzails absolutely destroyed them. Each unit of Jezzails was averaging 3 dead Knights per shooting phase. By the time the knights got into the midst of my army, they small enough to tolerate. One of my favorite moments came when his Inner Circle Knights trounced a speed bump unit of Night Runners, over-ran, and ended up right between my Globadiers and a unit of Jezzails. Next turn--seven dead knights! (This had to have been the first game that any of my Globadiers or Jezzails failed to kill themselves. )

My Master Assassin was Skitterleaped into combat (courtesy of Irresistible Force) on the 1st turn, and he was supposed to take out the unit of Pistoliers that were going after my Triad. Sadly, as is becoming a habit, he only killed managed to kill one member of the unit, thus getting stuck in combat. He was then charged in the rear by a unit of Flagellants. I thought that for sure he'd be struck down, but the crazed zealots only managed one wound. A unit of Night Runners then charged into the Flagellants' flank, and a nearby Eshin Sorcerer Skitterleaped the Master Assassin out of the combat and into the flank of a 30-man swordsman unit--more specifically, into the flank of his BSB. He only managed one wounding hit on the BSB, but that became five wound (thanks, Fellblade!). The combat was lost, but the Master Assassin stuck around. He held up this unit for two more turns before the combined might of Gutter Runners and his Fellblade broke the unit, and the fleet footed ninja rats ran them down. Of course, the brave Master Assassin succumbed to the poisonous Fellblade on turn 5, right before he was going to kill the enemy Warrior Priest who had hid behind his Champion the previous turn. Such is the Skaven way of life...

I really enjoyed the game. I lost two units to a cannon ball the first turn (only two models were killed, but the unit panicked and then scared off another unit directly behind them). This was problematic, because I had overloaded my left side with a plan of overrunning his right side and then moving on down the flank of the army. For the first time ever--I think--I stuck to this plan and actually saw it through. Having so many placements allowed me to wait out my opponent before tipping my hand. With deployment being something that I have wanted to work on, I was pretty proud of myself.

Tom was a great opponent, and I'd love to get a game in against him in the future.

The best part about the game was that both of us had fully painted armies. I had never experienced that before, and it really increased my level of enjoyment.

Time to get crackin' on the next army!