Summer in the City--Final Thoughts on the Campaign  by Patrick Eibel 
This may have been the most complex campaign we’ve ever done. Both armies had goofy rules and, combined with the weirdness of city fighting, there was a lot to consider and work out. In general, I think the revised city rules make for an interesting change of pace from a regular game. The stratagems add a nice bit of flavor that was lacking in the previous Codex: Cityfight, and having more scenarios to choose from means you won’t always be playing the same game. 

I enjoyed using the Daemonhunters, which I view as one of my “backburner armies.” While I think they are interesting and the models I have assembled are pretty neat, it is not an army I will ever call my favorite. Careful observers may note that during the campaign, I fielded the army three different ways. In Battle #1, there were Witch Hunter allies; in Battle #2, it was Daemonhunters straight-up; and in Battle #3, they were allied with Imperial Guard. I did this deliberately to show how versatile a Daemonhunter army can truly be, although I still stand by my assessment that Imperial Guard allies make a lot of sense.  

While I think it is appropriate that the campaign ended in a tie, I wish I had come up with a better way of scoring. Using the Battle Point system was fine for the first two battles, but didn’t really fit into the theme of the last game, as Kenton was trying to get his army off the board and not really interested in holding board quarters. The problem with scoring for a campaign is always how to make it competitive in the event that one player gets behind early. I will have to see if I can come up with something better for the next campaign.

Summer in the City--Final Thoughts on the Campaign  by Kenton Kilgore
With its sloppy play and bad calls, this campaign reminded me of Super Bowl XL, between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks. That’s not to say I didn’t like it: I always enjoy playing against Pat’s Daemonhunters (because they’re sooo damn cool), I was excited to take my brand-new Chaos army out for a test drive, and it was very challenging to use the Cities of Death rules. Nor is that to say that I think Pat came up with a bad campaign: on the contrary, he just gets better and better at coming up with interesting competitions.

It’s just that I wish I had made fewer mistakes (some of them quite stupid). This was a campaign with a complicated environment (Codex: Cities of Death) and two complicated armies. Trying to play a game, take notes, take photos, and remember all the myriad rules for cityfighting, daemon summoning, and dealing with daemonkillers was mentally taxing, and it shows in the battle reports. It’s just inexcusable, for example, that Shamshir Talatra never did squat throughout the campaign. If it wasn’t for the Sustained Attack rule for daemons fighting Grey Knights, this campaign would have been over a long time ago. And so on.  

Just when I started to get a handle on it (Game 3), the campaign was over, and I had eked out a tie. And, just when I started to get a handle on my army, a revised Chaos Codex is coming out shortly, which will force me to re-structure this army (the latest rumors suggest that the infiltrating daemon-bomb is at an end, so I’ll need to adjust). Ah, well. Hope you enjoyed seeing the Fearful Symmetry in their debut, because the next time you see them, they’ll be quite different. 

Thanks again to Pat for putting together a great campaign. Whattya’ll have for next time, dude?  
 

Posted: August 2007
 

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