It’s time for the third part of this series. And now it is the time for high adventure! In the manner of first battle report. Or at least my thoughts about the first game of deep sea skirmish.

Since most of my usual gaming group is still on the fence about getting back to wargaming I deemed it easier to build and paint suitable teams to lure them to me. This has proved a bit difficult since building the scenery has taken a lot of my hobby time. When I suddenly had free time for a game and my brother visited me we just kind of went with what we had. Trying out the game was much more important than the actual balance or game play.

Since the Sylvaneth are my main army I had a good force for them. They included Branchwych and five Tree-Revenants (one being the unit champion). My brother played these.

My own force was a rag-tag band of five Namarti Reavers I had managed to paint lead by a proxy Soulscryer.

We rolled artifacts and abilities for the leaders as instructed in the White Dwarf but forgot to use them during the game. As the scenario we rolled the Treasure Hunt from the same issue. As a flavorful treasures I had sea shells that could cover a plastic pearl. It was a nice touch.

As most of those who have played skirmish could foresee the Sylvaneth annihilated my Deepkin without a problem. The Branchwych is insanely powerful in this format and the Tree-Revenants’ ability for re-rolls is bumped to the max with each model being their own unit. At least this is how we interpreted it. This game made me value these Tree-Revenants more for while in the flavor they are the core of Sylvaneth armies in the Age of Sigmar games I have often found them to be too squishy.

I tried very hard to navigate around my brother’s force with my quick and accurate archer. Namarti Reavers were fun to play but the odds were just against me. My champion didn’t have any value in this game and being against the Branchwych was just too hard match. I think I managed to kill one or two to the revenants but by then my brother was controlling the majority of the objectives and just camped in the middle with the ‘wych.

The game lasted about one hour and even though it was unbalanced and short it was really fun. As I had anticipated the flavor of the models and the battlefield did marvels for the game.

I might have had better chances if we would have used the scenery rules for the Gloomtide Shipwreck. But since I haven’t gotten around to make a coral forest for the Sylvaneth yet we decided against the shipwreck rules. We did however use the deadly rule for the Barbed Venomgorse and Shardwrack Spines and they ended up almost killing the Branchwych.

One of the things I wanted to find out was how the size of the gaming area affected the game. In the end I was very happy about it since smaller gaming area meant more conflict and required better planing (when compared to the 48”x48” area recommended by the original AOS Skirmish).

All in all we had a good game and spent some time after it discussing strategies and the game itself. This kind of debrief is always a signal to me that the game was an interesting one and that it will have a future. Which, given the amount of time I have spent building these, is an awesome outcome.