Trial by Fire

When me nephew asked me if he could try a game of 'Warhammer', I resisted the urge to launch into a tirade about how 'Warhammer' is a brand name and not the hobby and went about setting up a game for him to try.

I settled on having a go at 10th edition 40k, which I'm no expert at, for several reasons:

• I'm slowly turning my attention back towards the newest version of the game thanks to taking part in the Tale of Four Gamers Badab War campaign run by Arbitor Ian's YouTube channel and there's a possibility I might even play in an event,
• I had two fully painted armies in easy reach along with reference cards taken from the free pdfs released at the launch of the new edition,
• He has some Age of Sigmar models and so the mechanics would be similar to what he might play with friends.

I picked two vaguely even (in theory) forces of Astral Claws and Tzeentch Daemons and set a very rudimentary battlefield using the mat I got with an issue of Mortal Realms magazine I'd picked up at some point.

My nephew took control of a Astral Claws patrol which included:

• Librarian (not the right model, but what I had a card for)
• Tactical Squad (with Flamer and Missile Launcher)
• Dreadnought (with Assault Cannon)

Meanwhile, I unleashed a swarm of Tzeentchian Daemons in the form of:

• Changecaster
• Exalted Flamer
• Pink Horrors
• Flamers

I got the initiative (which was useful for teaching him the sequence of events) and took the first turn, advancing my whole force and unleashing a veritable conflagration of magical flames to engulf the stalwart defenders of the Imperium.

It was at this point I remembered just how much more resilient a Librarian makes a Tactical Squad against pretty much everything in Tzeentch's arsenal.

However, the Librarian couldn't be everywhere, and so the Flamers were able to kill a Marine in the other combat squad.

An interesting element of this part of the game was recognising all the terms and concepts used around dice-rolling that needed explaining to someone who had zero experience of wargaming.

In my nephew's first turn he chose to advance and open fire. Sadly, both the Missile Launcher and the Dreadnought's Assault Cannon were ineffectual.

However, the Librarian's squad made up for this by blasting a chunk out of the Pink Horrors, and my nephew was somewhat shocked to see them turn into even more Blue Horrors.

On my second turn, I opted to charge in to hand to hand combat for three reasons:

1. I wanted him to see how that area of the game mechanics worked.
2. We were running out of time before we had to go out for dinner and this seemed a good way to speed things up.
3. I had forgotten just how rubbish Pink Horrors are in hand-to-hand combat.

The fight went about as well as you'd expect and by the end of it there was only a single Pink Horrors left standing, and quite a few more Blue Horrors.

Once again, the other flank was much more successful for the Daemons, with the Flamers killing another two Marines, although the ominous shape of the Dreadnought was lumbering in to view.

The fights continued, and despite the MN stones not rolling particularly well, the Horrors kept dying in droves.

And despite the Flamers finishing off the other combat squad, the Dreadnought charged into combat and began to chew his way through the Daemons.

At that point we had to leave it, but it was clear that the Marines had the edge as not only was the Librarian's squad pretty much immune to my army, there was very little chance of the Flamers hurting the Dreadnought.

My nephew had a fun game and asked if he could play again next time he visits, which is a success, and he is now looking up YouTube videos to learn the rules for himself. I'm tempted to give Age of Sigmar a try to get him to open up the models he acquired a couple of years ago.

Mission accomplished!