Hi all,
Here's a battle report from a recent game myself and Martin took part in - report by my good friend Dave, with pictures by him and my friend Ian.
Note that not all the figures in use are Games Workshop.
Sides were:
Good - Empire, Wood Elfs, High Elfs (6000 points total)
Evil - Vampire counts, Beastmen (6000 points total)
Over to Dave....
The battle was fought along the table (north-south) instead of across. The board is edged by forest. Two thirds of the way up the board in the northern half is a two storey chapel containing the Good army leaders & body guard deep in Parley. The good army is three 2,000pt Empire (Steve), High Elves (HE) (Martin)& Wood Elves (WE)(Mark) armies. Three gaps in the forest in the north led to the Good leaders camps who come on as reserves.
The Evil army, intent on sabotaging the parley by wiping out the negotiators (or at least knocking off some leaders), consists of two 3,000pt armies of Vampire Counts (VC)(Dave) & Chaos Beastmen (Ian)deploying in the south.
Setup
As the ambushing army came in from the south, the Empire White wolf general was at the head of his Order of knights and the WE lord sat astride his dragon. The HE lord viewed the battlefield from the second storey of the chapel with his bodyguard of Swordmasters. The beast man horde gathered in the South west while the VC horde rose in the south east.
Turn 1
The VC gave a indication of what would happen if they were unconstrained, with over 30 zombies, skels and bats swarms rising to the counts banner as a solid line of the un-living slowly advanced.
Only a few units of Emp & HE arrived to re-enforce in the north and north west, but most of the WE forces arrived in the north east. Some energy spells were thrown, but mostly the HE wizard Teclis’ casting was to interfere with the necromancy spells in the next phase.
Turn2
The VC Necromancy was hampered by the drain of magic(spells now need 3 more to cast, so needed 7+ to raises troops, not 4+), but the undead horde continued to advance on the Eastern flank. The core troops had nearly doubled in size.
The beastmen advanced, but it was the dragon charging the beastman giant in the centre that gave the first melee, both sides causing severe wounds. The Order of the White wolf charged into a zombie horde and other units started to clash. A WE lord on an eagle peppered the beast lord with arrows , but still he stood.
Turn 3
Battle was royally joined this round as more units piled into the melee in the centre. Order of the Wolf, wild riders & entlings were now facing off 2 hordes of zombies, skeletons with a vampire and 2 tusker chariots, about 130 inf and 20 cav in all. Sneaky Careful tactics to focus on the weaker zombies meant the final resolution was 20-12, the loss by 8 seeing off the last beastmen, the necromancers struggling to repair the losses on the undead side. The undead line was thinner from losing 8 each unit, but still there. The numbers told in the next clash, the final remnants of the undead being pushed aside, though not without cost on the wild riders (resolution 21-4, each undead unit lost 17 more wounds (a bit tough on those units that had taken no combat hits and beaten off their opponents).
I estimate evil side lost about 100 infantry (inc a vamp) and 2 chariots for about 5 heavy knights, 3 wild riders inc a champion and 6 entlings inc a champion. Probably not as big a difference in pts though.
