Battle Report: Warcry Iron Golems vs Untamed Beasts

Little break from the norm on Tale of Painters, here’s a battle report from my first game of Warcry versus my good wife Jo. Jo isn’t a hobbyist or a wargamer. I told her the Warcry Initiative step is like Yahtzee, she likes Yahtzee, so it was game on! Find out who wins after the jump. 

The first picture above is set up. Jo won priority and we split our warbands into battle groups. We didn’t put much thought into is just split them up. Top Tip, use Underworld’s dice to mark the Shield, Dagger and Hammer groups. Then we drew the cards: No Quarter (VPs for having more models in a quarter than the enemy), Encircle (one battle group in the middle being surrounded) and Insidious Malignants (move within 1″ of terrain and on a roll of one take three damage) and a battleground card.

Jo’s first attack roll of Warcry

First turn started with an Iron Legionnaire jumping down to where the enemy was. Jo answered this threat by rolling three sixes with her Prey Taker and dishing out a whopping 12 damage killing the poor Iron Golem outright. 

 First casualty, Iron Legionnaire 

My first attack roll of the game

With just two Iron Legionnaire’s on the board facing off against most of Jo’s warband I decided to go down fighting and charged in with another Legionnaire who proceeded to roll snake eyes. 

Jo finished turn one by moving her Rocktusk Prowler into another quarter. 

End of turn one, 2 – 0 to Jo. 

Iron Golem Dominar enters the fray and is quickly mobbed

Having rolled for initiative, I had more singles, so I started turn two. I brought on my RND2 reserves who were pretty far away from the action. The leader of the Iron Golems used two move actions to get into the mix and then proceeded to take damage from two Prey Takers and Beast Talker. The plucky Iron Golem managed to put three wounds on a Plains Walker but got pummelled into the ground for his trouble. Whilst all this is going on Jo is carefully manoeuvring her Rocktusk Growler and Plains Walkers into other quarters picking up valuable victory points.

End of turn two, 5 – 1 to Jo and the Untamed Beasts.

Turn three sees the Iron Golems win the Initiative and bring on the Ogor Breacher and the Armator reserves. . The Dominor unleashes his full strength and takes down a Prey Taker. The Untamed Beasts bring on their final Battle Group made up of Heart Eater, First Fang and a Plains Walker. 

The remaining Prey Taker and Beast Talker kill the Dominor. The Beast Talker rolling double crits and doing big damage!

The Ogor Breacher moves in to attack the First Fang, raising his heavy iron weapons high into the air and bring them down to smash his target only to roll a one and a two. 

The First Fang shouts “Get over here” and harpoon snags the Armator and deals enough damage to take him out of action. 

With so few models left that can do anything the Iron Golems were resigned to watching the Ogor get battered losing 13 of his 30 wounds. Jo held all three of her quarters she previously held and I retained my single quarter. 

Final score, Jo’s Untamed Beasts trounce my Iron Golems 8 -2. 

Conclusion. That was a lot of fun and it was so fast. The game took an hour to play and saw lots of dramatic moments especially with Jo’s ability to roll crits. We were using abilities here and there to get an extra attack or movement bonus but not really using them to maximum effect. It was more reactionary. Having played a game now and understating the abilities a bit better I feel like I might be able to orchestrate a more devastating attack with a heavy hitter and saving some wild dice up for a turn three quad rampage.  The biggest thing for me to get right is the battle groups. Having only set up my three weakest fighters on the board on turn one left me at a serious disadvantage. I was so eager to get stuck in and fight I forgot the victory conditions. I could have moved my three fighters into three quarters and hid behind walls on turn 1 scoring three victory points! Whilst I could have done that, it would have been a very boring game. What did Jo think of her first Warcry game? Over to you Jo. 

“It’s easy to follow and generally a quicker game so it’s better if you want to play it as a campaign/tournament or just beat your husband once your child is in bed. The quick at a glance cards are easier than having to keep flicking through a book”.