Cinquecento Round 4: Bretonnians vs Skaven – when the dice just say no
Last weekend’s Round 4 of Cinquecento gave us one of those games that is very Warhammer in the purest sense: dramatic on paper, brutal on the table, and powered almost entirely by absurd dice. Brave Bretonnians ran headlong into a pack of bloodthirsty Skaven, and what followed was a battle report that swung from exciting opening moves to a very fast collapse after one key combat.
This was very much one of those matches where everyone could see exactly where the game turned.
Right from the start, the Skaven put pressure on the middle of the board. In the first round, Giant Rats moved onto the central objective, which looked like a bold but risky play.
The Bretonnian response was immediate: 24 Men-at-Arms with a Damsel and the general went straight in. On paper, that looked like the kind of countercharge that should stabilize the centre and push the rats off the objective.
Instead, the combat went badly for the Bretonnians. They lost by 2 combat resolution, and that tiny margin ended up deciding an enormous chunk of the game. As Michał pointed out, taking down just one more rat would likely have flipped the result, thanks to the musician and reduced rank bonus on the Skaven side.
But that one extra casualty never happened.
And then came the real disaster: the Bretonnians’ Fall Back in Good Order carried them off the table. Just like that, nearly 40% of the army disappeared, including the level 2 general and his randomly generated Fireball, which never got cast even once. That was the moment when, as it was described afterwards, both the Bretonnian general’s morale and the Skaven general’s fun with the game took a hit.
From there, the Skaven kept pressing the advantage. In the next round, the first unit of Bretonnian knights went down in close combat with Clanrats. Another knight unit was broken in the following turn, though at least that one managed to escape pursuit.
The Bretonnians did have a brief bright spot in turn 4, when their archers shot down more than 25% of the Globadiers. As was quickly and correctly clarified afterwards, it was actually 37.5% of the unit from losing two models, which was enough to send them fleeing off the board.
Unfortunately, the momentum didn’t last. In turn 5, the archers themselves fled after losing combat to a Doom-Flayer and then rolling an 11 on their Leadership test. Very Warhammer.
There was still one last heroic little moment: a lone knight carrying the banner charged into the Globadiers and managed to keep the standard safe. Not enough to change the result, but exactly the kind of tiny act of stubbornness we remember after the game.
The final score was 5–1 for the Skaven, with 677:120 in battle points.
What really defined this game, though, was the Bretonnian dice. Paweł apparently spent most of the battle rolling 1s and 2s, and when Leadership mattered, the dice suddenly discovered 5s and 6s. At one point he even failed a hit roll on 3+, and Marta jokingly took the die to prove that couldn’t possibly keep happening… and immediately rolled a 2 as well. That really says it all.
So this was not exactly a pleasant game in the classic “tight, back-and-forth battle” sense. But it was played fair, it was played quickly, and it got the round done. Sometimes that is the hobby life: not every battle is glorious, but every battle becomes a story.
There was also some proper weekend grinder energy around this one. For Paweł, this was already his third Warhammer game of the day. For Michał, it was his second, after playing his own Coliseum match the day before. That is a lot of toy soldiers for one weekend, and honestly, we respect it.
In the end, the mood after the game was basically: unlucky, rough, but fair play throughout. And with Round 4 now closed, attention turns to the remaining league matches—and the increasingly spicy standings at the top.
Battle reports like this are a good reminder why we keep coming back to Warhammer: The Old World. You can plan the charge, line up the counterplay, and do the math… and then one bad combat plus one terrible fallback roll sends half your army into oblivion.
That’s the game. Sometimes glorious. Sometimes cruel. Always memorable.