Black Storm in the City of Death

The title has a good ring to it, doesn't it?

Grudge match versus Bill's Black Storm Chaos army (Bill... you can write the fluff part, ok?). This was my first full-on game of Cities of Death. Let me tell you: If you haven't tried it yet, I encourage you to do so. I thought it was going to be a really difficult thing with lots of special rules to memorize, but it was nothing of the sort. Pick a mission, pick some strategems, go kill something. It's really very quick to start (which, to me, seems like an indicator of how well-designed it is). Bill took "Power Generator" for his Defiler (which I killed on turn 2 anyhow) and "Deep Strike" for his Obliterators. I took "Fortification" for a building with Dark Reapers in it, and "Preliminary Bombardment", which did a wound on his Demon Prince.

It was something of a game of ring-around the rosey. 1500 points of the "Domination" mission, and a big piece of area terrain in the middle of the table. Bill always likes putting a big area terrain "no go" zone there because he doesn't like getting his head blown off by Dark Reapers.

This was also the first time in my life (at least that I can remember) trying out a Court of the Young King. It's flufffy, it looks great, the statline of that unit is absolutely staggering and... once it hits the table it's almost totally useless. See, here's the thing: The enemy will (not "might"... will) blast it to bits before you get it to do anything significant. First of all, it's slow moving and can't deep strike or get in a vehicle... so you're going to walk it everywhere, 6" per turn. Second, its shooting powers will be modest at best. Third, if it gets into hand to hand with *anything*, that thing will probably die instantly. Most enemies know this. Worst of all, they also know that it's a crapload of victory points on feet. Not only will they blow it to kingdom come before it touches anything, they'd be stupid not to. People tell me different things, like "Oh, it works well in big games" or "If you surrounded it by Guardians, it'll work", or "Best to escort it with some Wraithlords", but you know what? I love the Court on paper and as a modeling unit and blah blah blah but I will never, ever field it again. Bill Autocannoned the unit (Avatar and 3 Fire Dragon Exarchs, which was all I had painted) into confetti and I watched about 270 points turn into fertilizer... without it killing a single thing. Nosir. That's not for me.

In the end, it was a draw. Very tight game. He held 3 buildings. I did the same. He needed to kill just one more Dark Reaper to bring it down to a non-scoring unit and... nearly, but not quite. His last shot of the game... hit, wounded and I made my 4+ save with a roll of 4+.

Magic.