"Most fun you've ever had playing WAB?" Topic

What's the most exciting, or most fun, or most interesting moment you've ever had playing WAB?

We did a game of the battle of Cunaxa. We used the civil war rules we developed for picking forces.

Both sides had a core of 4 units and then bid on and diced for the rest of the troops. My opponent won most of them. Her line stretched out about 6 feet. I forget how many units there were, but I had about half as many.

The game was very exciting as her cavalry tried to flank me and get into my rear as my guard troops took it to her guard troops in the center.

My left flank fought a desperate delaying action and two units fought on both flanks of my guards as my hoplites overran her left. The combat in the center see-sawed back and forth for four combats and my left was overrun. The Hoplites were trying to turn to hit her force in the flank (not easy with a 40 man Phalanx.)

Finally my guards really put the boots to her guard troops in the center and managed to kill the enemy general, breaking almost the entire enemy army. My troops fled behind the turning hoplites and the enemy decline to fight on.

It was a great game.

Man! I've had so many good games. The Seige of Troy game that Pictor ran at Cold wars about a year back was great fun. As was the Byzantine game he ran this past Cold Wars. But here are a list of my most exciting, most fun, and most interesting in that order;

As part of an ongoing Roman Civil War campaign my opponent and I had decided on a final showdown with 3000 points a side starting from the opposite short table sides with troops feeding into the melee based upon a dice roll. We also used a number of allied or mercenary units with myself having a Parthian Catapracht unit and some Greek mercenaries. My opponent had several Gaullic and Numidian troops added to the core of his Roman forces. The battle was as expected strongly contested but in the end I broke his main line with a unit of Raw Recruits who just would not say die. The resulting panic tests caused a cascade of fleeing units and the day was mine.

Most fun has to be the 15mm 4000 points of my Parthians VS Nazrats Successor Macedonians battle we fought. Played on a 5X8 table with lots of manouver and counter move. For the first 5 turns I frustrated the Macedonians with horse and infantry archery and was well set to out flank his lines when his pikes finally made contact with my main units of Cataprhacts along with those damnable War Elephants. The Parthians folded like a newspaper and were soon swept from the field.

As to most interesting that would be every game between one of my gaming buddies and I that pits my Vikings against his Early Empire Romans. Yes it is non historical but is always fun and always a close fight. We just tend to think of my Vikings as realy well equipped and lead Goths.

Kim

Lead Goths? Well of course, they're lead Goths. They're not *real* Goths…

Sheesh. ;^)

Allen

It's been so long, I've forgotten…

Allen

Viking beach landing scenario (from Dark ages book), very good and lots of fun.

Ancient Romans winning up to turn 6 then they all failed morale and lost, it proved the Romans were not unstoppable.

The poor soul who rolled about 14 no 1's when he rolled his bucket of dice………….

Tony

A game where a unit of 24 Spartan Hoplites, after routing 24 Persain Levy Spears, were charged in the flank by 32 Persian Levy Archers.

It took 3 rounds of combat but the Spartans finally broke and ran.

Anytime my el;ephant stampedes into my general. That always makes me laugh

Too many to count;
the time i fired a chinese rocket which hit the opponenets cataphtracts including general and ASB in turn 1 was rather exciting.

The time I managed to beat an enemy who had me outflanked with a 1300 point unit in a 2000 point game.

The occasion a rock killed my General who was in the middle of a unit in the shooting phase of the first turn and my whole army left the table.

Many many others where I or my opponent have snatched victory from the jaws of certain defeat. The only games I can remember having no fun are where my opponent has been robbed by atrocious and undeserved bad luck.

I am pleased to note a lack of the nasty comments that have blighted the same question about DBM.. While I have never had a laugh 'till my sides hurt moment playing DBX games, they are fun in a different and equally rewarding way.

Pat

Ancient British slingers decimating the legions as they try to cross the Medway. Slings are vicious in WAB!

I have had a lot of fun games and seen a lot played at the club.

Like the time in the WOTR ampaign, someone set up his forces to face the enemy without realising that there was another enemy force at his back.

Or the game in which if it had ended on Turn 5 all the Arthurians were routing and I would have won a major victory. Then they all rallied and I lost…

Mike

Our club's finest WAB moment:

link

Ahhhh 30k a side. Thats proper WAB that is.

Pat

Some folks in my gaming group ran a house rule modified WAB for a 15mm 1st Punic War campaign. Lots of fun.

It's been so long, I've forgotten…

Allen

Now that is shocking, Allen Curtis has ACTUALLY played a game.

"What's the most exciting, or most fun, or most interesting moment you've ever had playing WAB?"

The day I decided it was a load of crap and I packed it in for ever :-)

Frank

looks like the nasty comments begin.

It was only a matter of time before somebody trolled in here and made a snide post. Thanks for nothing, Mongrel.

Well done Mongrel, you have restored my faith in the Nature of Humanity.

Pat

Check out the campaign map on Tank Rider's club page (about 7 posts up). Very cool. Definitely above and beyond most campaign games.

link

Gaijin79- Thanks for the link. Looks like someone has been putting campaign cartographer to good use. I wish I had more time to use it myself since it is such a nifty tool.

Thanks for the campaign comments, guys.

The cartogrophy map program worked pretty well for the basics. Like a madman, though, I saved it to .bmp and used PAINT to do all of the sector lines and numbers as well as the colored army flags and ownership lines.. was a little bit of a chore but really came out looking good!

Like most campaigns, this one died off before we ever got it finished but it sure did generate some fun games along the way.

Clay

Like most here (who actually bothered to learn and play the game, trolls aside), I'm truly spoilt for choice. There have been many times against many sporting opponents.

I'll have to settle for the latest, last Saturday at the Fenstanton event. General panics, rolling a 10 when he needed a 9. He flees towards a cliff 9" away. Guess what I roll? A 10! It was like something out of Wile E Coyote! It left me with one unit on the table which I assured my opponet would win the game for me. It didn't!

Win, lose or draw, it's a fun game!

Guy

George, you know that I play. I just have to play with myself…

Allen

All units were engaged or already out of the battle, and the way to the objective was clear, to save the kidnapped son of the king, his only heir, from the hands of the rebels, and only one figure left unattended to rush through the enemy lines and grab the hostage and return him safely to the King, only one figure to reap the gratitude and rewards a loving and generous King would heap upon the brave, strong and chivalrous person who would do such a dangerous deed…yep, it was the Buffoon, who rode up, stayed long enough to grab the hostage and ride back to safety, satisfying the game's major victory objective…who would have thought it! We all laughed at this implausible turn of events that needed a chain of implausible events to even make this ridiculous endgame possible

Allen, I'm curuis how do you solo game a game like WAB, its not as if you can conceal your cunning plan from yourself.

See , I managed to avoid a smutty response to Allen admission that he plays with himself.

WAB is a fun game. You just have to remember that what you are playing is just supposed to be an entertaining game played with model soldiers. It is to historical miniatures what Braveheart is to historical movies. :-)

WAB Solo. I cant keep my cunning plans secret,, so I will continue to buy all the WAB books , I have rebased ober 5000 figs to WMA,, that is secret,, who know when I will pass a command test

Mike Munich

I wandered about the hobby store one day … and saw the WAB rule book. It looked cool, but god forbid, it was Warhammer stuff so I passed it by hoping that none of the real gamers around saw me peek.

Maybe a month later, with the store empty, I pick the book up and looked through it. It even looked better inside. Of course I wore gloves to avoid leaving any fingerprints and quickly moved on to the real wargaming stuff.

But Chaos had gotten hold of me. I dreamt of the Warp, strange single mounted miniatures, dice, lots of dice, oh god the dice! Until one day I could no longer resist the power of Warhammer. I was weak and ashamed as I staggered into the hobby shop. I grabbed the rule book and hurried to the counter, bought it and then hid it in a paperbag … Then skulled out to my car. There it sat on my passenger seat as I drove towords home. At each stop, at each red light, the bag moved. I could hear the voice, "read me" … "look at my pictures" … "Yes, you are weak." I made it home, snuck into the house and down into the basement. And there I opened the bag and beheld Warhammer Ancient Battles. "What was wrong with me?" "How could I have come to this?"

5 Years, 11 (counting ECW) armies, 230,990 dice and a boat load of suppliments latter I am still hooked. But most of all through WAB I have made great friendships from literally around the world. "My most interesting WAB moment? They day I bought the rules, I changed my gaming life forever." Can you honestly say that about your favorite rules?

Mike B

Great post Mike.

I'd have to agree. I've had the pleasure of meeting and gaming with more great people through WAB than I have had in any of my previous forays into different game systems.

Its definitely been a treat and it has yet to grow stale.

Had a cracking game just the other night which featured a 2nd Punic in Spain Carthaginians vs Numidian.

Cathaginian's were fairly 'normal' with spearmen and spanish with two elephants mixed in a unit of 12 Numidians and 6 or 8 HC. The Numidian's were a slightly out of period army with 3x10 LC; 4 elephants; 3x16 Imitation legionarries; 2x32 crappy warriors and assorted LI.

So 6 elephants on a 8x4 table!

It was a terrible night for the Carthaginians where pretty well everything that could go wrong went wrong – one of the charms of WAB eh?

2nd turn the Carthaginians got a wound on one of the Numidian elephants who stampeded into a screen of LI and surprisingly (we were doing the 6 to hit skirmishers) beat them up and hit and drove back some African's behind. In the Numidian turn, two Numidian elephants directed their archers on one of the Carthaginian elephants which also duly stampeded, right into the right flank of a firendly spanish block. The Spanish FBIGO but were hit again by the elephant and both disappeared off the table by turn 4.

With a gaping hole in their centre caused by two missiles – er sorry elephants – the Carthaginian player didn't learn his lesson and fired on another Numidian elephant who also stampeded (3 failed morale checks for elephants between us in 3 attempts at 7) smashing through some javelinmen and then hitting another block of Africans. You guessed it drove them back.

So in a couple of turns we had half the elephants on the table running wild and all heading right through the centre of the poor Carthaginian's line!

We called it a night when the Balearic slingers on his right wing were cut down by a 32 man warrior unit, causing 12 Numidians (Carthaginian side) on the right facing off 3 Numidian (Numidian) cavalry units failed its morale, leaving a lone unit of Spanish HC looking very lost and isolated.

The slingers had failed to shoot away two of the Numidian cavalry and then just when they were needed had lost control and attempted to charge some Numidian javelinmen, putting them in charge range of the warriors…

The only unit which he had left on his right centre apart from the spanish cavalry was a unit of 20 Spanish warriors who had 32 Warriors to their front and had just been hit in the flank by some imitation legionaries who had gone through the very inviting hole in the centre of the Carthaginian line….

Amazing how WAB can do that to you sometimes, no more than 4 turns and the Carthaginia player only had his left wing left. He hadn't done a lot wrong, beyond leaving one of his elephants slightly behind the flank of his own Spanish. The look on his face was priceless as the elephants were rampaging across the table hitting everything of his… and the Numidian's still had two more elephants under control coming his way.

"WAB is a fun game. You just have to remember that what you are playing is just supposed to be an entertaining game played with model soldiers. It is to historical miniatures what Braveheart is to historical movies. :-)"

I agree with the fun game but what set of rules replicates history? I haven't met a successful simulation in nearly 40 years gaming- or not one that was also any pleasure to play.

currently playing a small wab campaign for wotr, just excellent!

We have played over 1000 WAB battles, but one was the bigest that we played. With five palyers per side and STRICK rules against talking about the game, while in progress, we finished a 20K (2K per player) game in 3 1/2 hours. The game was total confusion, nobody, including the General kept to the plan, the General didnt even make his fist ´move as agreed, others wanted to wait to see how it turns out, others charged forward,,, it was good fun, the confusion, I feel, made it like a real historical battle.

A tournament game played to army breakpoint – my Island vikings against Greeks. Slaughterous combat throughout, with me losing because I hit the break point first by 2 figures!

[Allen, I'm curuis how do you solo game a game like WAB, its not as if you can conceal your cunning plan from yourself.]

Didn't Allen tell you? He's schizophrenic! :)

Actually, I had a blast doing a dark ages campaign during a Warhammer weekend at Nottingham. The finale looked like it came right out the Shieldwall book. (As well as it should since the Gripping Beast boys used the same board as their Clontarf scenario!)

Wow –

A two year old post resurfaces, and I'm glad it did.

I think Mike's post – aside of being eloquent – sums up the whole thing for me. I have made great friends through WAB. It's been a privilege.

Of course, there was the amazing time my stone throwers both landed squarely on my opponents elephants and they stampeded into each other…

…and I still lost that one.