Dwarf v Lizardmen

I had a friendly match at Paradox last Sunday afternoon.  I can't say the battle went particularly well for me, even so it was still quite a bit of fun. We both played with 2500 point armies. He had his Lizardmen while I, of course, brought my Dwarfs.

Normally I bring a considerable amount of artillery and counter magic power. I've scaled both of these back quite a bit. At 2500 points I would often bring 3 or 4 war machines: a cannon, 2 grudge throwers and an organ or gyro-copter. As well as a Runelord and a Runesmith with the Master Rune of Balance, a Spell Eater Rune or two, and some Spell Breaking runes.

Once people realized I could shut down all of their magic they started scaling back considerably on it or just not taking it all. This meant the points I was spending to stop magic were way out of proportion to the points my opponents were spending on casting magic. In many cases they wouldn't spend any points on magic, which left me a bit in the lurch.

This being the situation and realizing the Lizardmen are pretty big on magic I scaled back considerably but still left a little bit of defense against magic. I only took one Runesmith, giving him the Master Rune of Balance and calling it good.

As for war machines I took only two: a cannon and a grudge thrower. The cannon is meant to take down any big monsters or other single model nastiness. On the other hand the grudge thrower can trim down the size of any large infantry blocks it can manage to drop a grudge on.

Nearly out of the starting gate the battle went badly. My cannon and grudge thrower each had little effect, mostly due to some bad rolls. Even with the Rune of Accuracy on the grudge-thrower I didn't hit anything, wait, I did get one hit but managed to biff the rolls to wound horribly.

My opponents luck with his ranged attacks was much better. His Salamanders took devastated my Rangers and took a big chunk out of my Ironbreakers. His Razordons weren't nearly as bad but they still caused some pain to my Hammerers.

For the most part I kept his magic to a minimum, other than a Dwellers Below that killed 20 of my Dwarf Warriors. I nearly dispelled it but nearly is quite good enough.

Once our troops finally meet my remaining dudes put up a valiant fight and held until the last turn but there wasn't much left at that point. Cleary, giving up my artillery is going to take some more thinking. Until I get it figured out though I think there are going to be more ugly games like this one.

- David