Elvish Retaliation

After the slaughter of the elves, the elvish king summoned Telor the Hippogriff rider to his court and begged him to take command of the counter-offensive. Telor was a controversial choice with a very mixed record of victory, defeat and running away, but the king knew that Lomsec, his trusty wizard would be there to take over if things went wrong. The elvish army set out and met the invading beastmen. The elvish army is Telor on his mighty Hippogriff, Caradryan the the hero and Lomsec the level 20 wizard. They command 5 silver helms and 16 warrior kindred armed with spears.

Telor, warrior kindred, silver helms, Lomsec in the background.

The beastly army is led by Zorn the chaos knight, Bazor the Beast Hero and Malagor the beastly shaman. They lead 4 mounted chaos warriors and 15 beastmen. Both armies are 1500pts.

Beastmen, then chaos warriors.

Elves on the left, beasts on the right. A magical tape
measure sits in the foreground.

Turn 1: The elves all advance. Lomsec casts a lightning bolt that kills three hideous beastmen. Malagor the beast shaman casts a fireball that slays 1 silver helm. Magic missiles are mighty indeed when they disallow armour saves!

Turn 2: Lomsec really earns his keep with a mighty lightning bolt that destroys 4 chaos warriors and wounds Zorn. Zorn charges into the elf warriors and challenges Caradryan to a duel. Zorns mighty frostblade easily sucks the life out of Caradryans soul, but the press of warriors is enough to force Zorn into a rout.

Caradryan lies still, a frozen husk.

Turn 3: Telor swoops after Zorn on his hippogriff, chasing him right off the battlefield. The Silverhelms fight the beastmen, pushing back and forth with no one able to get an advantage. Lomsec casts Cause Stupidity on the beasts, but they shrug off the effects.

Turn 4: The warrior kindreds and Telor charge into the beastmen as they fight with the silverhelms. The beasts fail their panic test and are all quickly slain or fled.

End game.

In all, a decent fun game, although it took as long to set up as it did to play! Lomsec was the most important warrior, single handedly destroying the beasts best unit.

The Lightning Raid of the Beasts of Chaos

After several years of quiet, trouble is brewing on the northern borders of the elf kingdom. A terrible storm of multi-coloured lightning and thunder that sounded like the bellowing of mad giants tore a hole in reality, allowing the beastman Malagor, Zorn the Slayer, and their fiends of chaos to launch a raid of the peaceful elves. Lomsec the magician and Duranbar the Hero set forth to defend their green valley.

Malagor, center, commands his minions to cross the bridge of joy.
Mounted chaos warriors on the right, a herd of beastmen on the left.

The elvish defenders do not arrive in time to block the bridge. Archers
on the left, warrior kindred in the center, silver helms with Duranbar on the
right. Duranbar has a mighty Hell-Honed Blade that can cut armour like wood, wood like it
was cheese, and cheese like it was some icky smelly gooey specialty cheese.

A 1000pt battle. The chaos army was not terribly chaotic with only a few minor mutations, none of which affected the battle at all.

Turn 1: Zorn leads his chaos warriors in an uncontested crossing of the bridge. The silver helms attempt to charge them, but fail and end up disordered for their effort. This was not good. The arrows of the archers bounce harmlessly off the chaos warriors heavy armour. Lomsec rushes forth to attempt a steal mind spell on zorn but it fails.

Turn 2: The chaos warriors charge the disordered silver helms, easily routing them in their disordered state. They flee, but all the other elves keep their cool. Zorn gleefully pursues the elves, slaying every silver helm himself. The beastmen crossed the bridge in an orderly fashion, much to the disgust of Malagor who prefers chaos to order. The archers continued to rain accurate archery on the chaos warriors, but failed in every case to penetrate their armour. Getting desperate, Lomsec casts steal mind on Zorn with all his remaining power - and succeeds! Zorn stares stupidly, his companions lead his horse by the reins.

Turn 3: The beastmen charge the warrior kindred spearmen, and fight them to a draw. The archers, undaunted, continued to shoot the warriors, and finally killed one! The foolish warrior had raised his visor to scratch the wart on his nose.

Turn 4: The chaos warriors charged the warrior kindred in the rear, causing the elves to fail their panic test and flee. At the this point the gods took pity and ended the game to prevent the wholesale slaughter of the remaining elves. Total victory for chaos.

The end, right before the elves fled in panic.

A fun, short game. I haven't played warhammer in over 2 months, so I spent my day off re-reading the basics of the rules and had a go.

The Raid to Rescue Caradryan

Caradryan the Silent has been captured by the hideous beastmen for use in one of their foul sacrifices. Caradryan is a great elven hero and must be rescued at all costs. Lomsec the mage has assembled a force to attack the tower and save Caradryan's soul from being condemned forever to the Realm of Chaos. Meanwhile, Yohan the necromancer has received word from his ally Malagor the Dark Omen, beastman shaman, that the beastmen are outnumbered and need reinforcements. Yohan summons a small unit of skeletons and marches quickly to aid his evil ally and punish the hated elves. Will they arrive in time?

The forces:
Beastmen: Malagor the Beastman shaman - Level 15, poison fangs, poison claws.
Bazor the beastman champion: Level 15, Frostblade, Magically Inscribed Armour and Protective runes. Various mutations, including obesity, extra toughness (T7!) and, crucially, stupidity!
14 beastmen with razor sharp claws, and hideous mutations giving them an especially fearsome appearance.

The elves: Lomsec the level 15 mage, 5 silverhelms, two groups of 16 spear-armed warrior kindred (the green and blue) and 12 archers.

The undead relief force: Yohan the level 5 necromancer and 20 skeletons.

The beastmen defend the tower to the left, the elves approach from the right.
The skeletons are expected to march up from the bottom along the road.
Malagor is atop the tower.

Bazor the Beast leads his unit aimlessly, tempting the silver helms
to charge - and they did!

The skeleton reinforcements advance.

Bazor started off the battle by going stupid. He led his unit forward, drooling and scratching his behind. Malagor summoned 8 lesser demons. The silver helms tried to charge the mutant beastmen, but couldn't summon the nerve. Soon after the beastmen, still being led by stupid Bazor, wandered of to their right, completely exposing their flank. The silverhelms duly charged in and a bloody melee developed. Lomsec cast a fireball at the demons, killing 3. The silverhelms fought several rounds of combat against the beasts before they routed and all died to the victorious elves free hacks - except for Bazor, who managed to escape howling into the wilderness, not sure what had happened but very angry about it. The silver helms overran into the demons and started another melee, the blue warrior kindred quickly joined in as well. Under the combined assault the demons quickly evaporated. At this point, the skeletons on the road from the south arrived, led by Yohan. Were they in time?  Yohan quickly summoned a skeleton champion, then charged his unit into the spearmen. Yohan quickly went down, but the skeletons persevered under the leadership of their new champion.

The elves attack Malagor, Caradryan lies bound in the
foreground.

At the tower, the blue elf kindred burst open the door and four interpid elves charged into the tower. More elves kept piling in every turn, and untied Caradryan. He borrowed a weapon and shield from a trooper, and fought a heroic one on one duel with Malagor. They fought several rounds until Caradryan struck a nasty wound to his erstwhile captor. Malagor snarled his rage and cast a spell. He disappeared in a puff of noxious smelling smoke and was nowhere to be found. The skeletons had meanwhile lost their champion, then faded in a bout of instability. The elves had rescued their comrade, defeated the beasts and slaughtered the relief troops as well. A major victory for the high elves.

Thoughts: The crucial part of this battle was when I rolled the stupidity mutation for Bazor. Otherwise with his magic items and helpful mutations, he was the most bad-arsed killing machine on the table. But once he was stupid, he never managed to get into combat personally and his unit was routed while he tried to figure out what was going on. The whims of Chaos! A fun scenario game, I enjoyed it.

The Battle of Nurfalor Village

Ignatius the Necromancer summoned his horde to fight Goroth the Chaos Lord for control of Nurfalor village, and its vast treasures of bouncy balls and plaid ribbons.

The Undead: Ignatius Level 3 necromancer, 15 Skeleton Minor Heroes, 30 Skeletons and 20 Ghouls. Versus:

Chaos: Major Chaos Hero Goroth, Azgul the level 2 wizard, 12 goblins led by no less then three minor goblin heroes (forced to take part by the threat of a mighty Wedgy of Khorne), and ten chaos warriors, who in second edition have 2 attacks and two wounds. Nasty! 1000 points a side.

Ghouls, skeletons, skeleton heroes.

Goblins with 3 heroes, chaos warriors with major hero and wizard.

The yellow pawns mark faded units - no attacks!

Chaos warriors fleeing ghouls.

Azgul the chaos wizard casts cause frenzy on his unit of chaos warriors. Frenzy makes you charge heedlessly, and get double attacks, but even if you want frenzy you still have to fail a Cool test, not likely with a Cool of 10! Ignatius then cast Hand of death on himself. Should he enter melee, any hits would become wounds automatically. Azgul cast a lightning bolt killing 3 skeletons. Ignatius raised a unit of 16 skeletons. The goblins manage to pass their fear test and charge the summoned skeletons, a minor miracle. Must have been worried about the Khorne wedgy, or worse, the Spicy Chili of Nurgle. The goblins even pushed the skeletons back. Then a game changing disaster struck: Instability! Every undead unit had to roll for a random and probably bad result: The unit of skeleton heroes AND the unit of skeletons faded from reality, leaving only their images behind. No attacks allowed, effectively useless for the rest of the game.  But the luck wasn't all one sided as the ghouls charged the chaos warriors who failed a fear test on a roll of 12 (only needed a 10) and ran. Ignatius summoned a unit of 27 skeletons that fought and routed the goblins. His next spell raised 27 zombies. The chaos warriors rallied, then failed their cool test and became frenzied! They charged the zombies and caused 20 wounds, and made the rest of the zombies flee. They then lost frenzy, and the ghouls and remaining skeletons charged them. A hard fight followed, but the ghouls ran at the first sign of trouble and the skeletons were slowly ground to dust. Victory to the forces of Chaos. The unhappy village of Nurfalor becomes a dreaded Chaos stronghold. The end.

P.S. It was fun to play a one off battle with different forces after my campaign ended.

The Assault on Castle Neuswaschtein

Nozalor the Elf Wizard seeks an orb of life so that he can rescue Telion from his undead curse. He and Caradryan head north into the chaos lands, following rumours that the chaos warlord Goroth has an orb of life in his Castle Neuswaschtein.

The Dragon Princes and Nozalor will assault the main gate.

The spearelfs will attack from the west.

The sword masters will attack from the east.

Nozalor cast Ghostly Appearance on himself, making himself appear as a lordly vampire.  
Azgul the Chaos Wizard casts Cause Stupidity on the elf spearmen, making them drop their scaling ladders and wander about aimlessly for the rest of the battle.

Yup, those elves are some stupid.

The swordmasters charged at the walls, ladders in hand, and two were shot dead by chaos crossbowmen. The dragon princes and Nozalor assaulted the main gate.

"Is that Chaos Warlord pointing at ME?" 

Nozalor cast his Smash spell, heavily damaging the castle gate and leaving it with a single wound remaining.  Elsewhere the swordmasters were thrown off the walls and fled for the hills.

"I think I left the water running."

Azgul the chaos wizard cast several fireballs at the dragon princes, slaying several. At this point, with the gate still mostly intact and most of the elf army dead, fled, or stupid, Nozalor sounded the retreat. A dark day for the elves.