Warhammer Armies: Norse

I've been playing my Lizardmen army exclusively for a long time.  I like the idea of starting another army, but none of the other armies currently offered by Games Workshop interest me much.  I stumbled across a fan produced rulebook for a Norse army, and that interested me quite a bit.  It is available at Warhammer Armies Project - click the Norse link on the top bar.  I've decided to embark on a journey to assemble an army of Norse that I can use at relaxed events and casual games.  Last Saturday, I got a game in using the Norse book and other models to proxy the Norse units.

I played against Iraf, who brought a formidable 2800 point Vampire Counts force.  Here's what I brought in my army:

• King on foot - The venerable lord general.
• Jarl on Fenrir Wolf - The hero with a frost breathing mount.
• Vitki - The lord level wizard, I chose shadow magic.
• Skald #1 - Hero that counts as a musician and can give an ability to his unit for a turn, ran in the Reavers unit.
• Skald #2 - Another one for the Huscarl unit.
• 24x Huscarl - This is the main elite infantry unit for the Norse.
• 24x Reavers - Basic humans with weapon skill of 4.
• 36x Marauders - Great weapons!
• 30x Bondsmen - Basic human troops
• 6x Snow Trolls - Armor Peircing and stupid.
• Ice Drake - Mini dragon you don't want to stand next to.
• 3x Valkyries - Flying ethereal awesome chicks.

Iraf had a couple of huge units of skeletons, a horde of ghouls, a big unit of Grave Guard, a Terrorgheist, a couple of Wight kings and Vampire lords, and one Necromancer.   I think Vampires are a pretty good match up for the Norse army, and I didn't feel like I was totally unprepared to deal with anything, but the unit of Grave Guard was very well equipped.  Everything I threw at it just got smacked around, as expected.  It was a good test to get a feel for my units though.

The Norse army has a lot of special rules to keep track of.  On top of the two special rules for the army in general; Counter-charge and Bezerkergang, the wizards and musicians have special effects they can temporarily bestow on friendly units which you have to remember to use and track.  I'm guessing these things will become second nature after a few more games though.

Lessons learned:

1. Jarl with Trolls - I set up my mounted Jarl with some melee bonuses including an item that forces the opponent to accept his challenges and placed him in the unit of trolls.  I figured this will give the Trolls some leadership and put the huge wolf base in a similar sized unit.  On second thought, there were a couple problems with my plan, the character is not the same troop type even though he is the same size, and will not get look out sir.  Also, the breath weapon ability of the Fenrir wolf mount isn't best utilized in a challenge, so I didn't really do his build well.  In the future, I think I will remove the troll unit, and run the mounted Jarl with a regular infantry unit and a different build, making him not challenge focused.
2. Proper use of units - The Norse has many different types of infantry.  I am not used to this, Lizardmen only have three types of basic infantry, only two of which is viable in melee.  I need to think more about how I deploy and use each unit.  I did not get enough use out of the Huscarl.  The Norse don't have a lot of tricks like war machines or special unit types, so getting the most out of the varied infantry types will be important.
3. Basic Marauders are great - I ran my 36 marauders in a horde formation, and they did great, this choice will stick around.
4. Valkyries are useful - The idea of this unit is awesome to me, but I was unsure how useful they would be considering how expensive they are and I only took 3.  I don't have much experience at using units to hold up the enemy as Lizardmen don't have much for that.  The Valkyries ended up holding up the Terrorgheist for the entire game with only one of the 3 dying to a scream.  I think that turned out to be a huge help for me.
5. Skalds are as cool as I thought - I liked the idea of these hero musicians enough to sacrifice enough points to fit a couple in, and they were well worth it.  The abilities they give are very helpful, and can't be stopped like spells.

Time to revise my army list and give it another go!