First Game of Warlords of Erehwon

I recently tried Warlord Games' Warlords of Erehwon by Rick Priestly.  Bodvoc suggested it as an alternative for the size of games we normally use Dragon Rampant for.
The game is based on Bolt Action, a squad level WWII game, and Gates of Antares, a SciFi skirmish game, both from Warlord Games.  I'll admit, I was also looking for a rules system for Orc's Drift.

As an introduction, Bodvoc set up terrain for the first scenario in the book, essentially a straight forward clash.  To add a little extra interest he placed a dwarven statue in the middle of the table, with the intention that my orcs would try and deface it.

We both had just short of 700 points; my orcs vs Bodvoc's lovely Old School dwarves (many of them gifts from myself).

700 points of orcs 

700 points of dwarves 

The field of battle 

The orcs advance 

As do the dwarves

"What are those filthy orcs doing to our statue?"

The high point of the game for the orcs, their leader reaches the statue

The dwarves take back their hill 

This isn't intended to be a full battle report, but essentially, after reaching the hill at the end of the first turn, it all went wrong for my orcs.  I struggled to get through the tough dwarven armour, lacking much in the way of armour piercing weapons, and I never managed to bring superiority of numbers to bear.  

The dwarves, armed with Big Axes or Bloomin' Big Axes cut through the orc light armour like butter.  This was at least partly due to my absolutely appalling dice throwing. 

I eventually conceded after losing nearly three quarters of my army. Bodvoc had lost just five dwarves.  His account can be found here.

Whilst I had a lot of fun playing a game with Bodvoc for the first time in many may months, and it was great to get my orcs on the battlefield at last, I can't honestly say I actually enjoyed the game itself.

There were, of course, issues of not fully understanding the game or the tactics required.  Orcs seem to need a quite different way of handling in Warlords of Erewhon, the dwarves maybe less so?

I'm sure that it was my bad luck that was the reason behind my lack of enjoyment, and I'll certainly play at least one more game to see if it's the game for me.

I really hope it is; there are some great ideas in Warlords of Erehwon.  The book is a good read (something you can't say about a lot of rules books).  Concepts are well explained, and there are photographs of many different manufacturers'' miniatures.  The order dice, used to both determine sequence of play and indicate what actions a unit may perform, are an excellent idea (though we did find a couple of occasions where extra counters were required).  The army lists are comprehensive and army building is straight forward.  There are no super powerful troops, though at the time I thought the combination of well armoured dwarves with bloomin' big axes (its genuinely a term from the rule book, a bit much for my poor orcs.  I shall have to look hard at the lists and choose more wisely.

The armies cover most of the normal fantasy wargaming tropes.  There does seem to have been an effort to avoid some of the more egregiously OP units that may have cropped up in certain well known fantasy wargames, which is all to the good.  

Rick Priestley's website, This Gaming Life has a lot of supplementary material, including extra lists and a points calculator for those wanting to build their own troops from scratch.  The Facebook group also has additional resources and even more lists.

In conclusion, I really want to love this ruleset. At the moment I can't, and I don't know if that's simply because the first game went so much against me that I felt completely powerless, or because I'm noticing things that don't quite gel with what I'm looking for.

If you've any experience of Warlords of Erehwon, please leave a comment.

Only time (and more games) will tell.