The mission type was Scenario 4 - The Breaking Point mission. The Beastmen had a Fortitude of 7, Empire 6 and the goal was to get the other army down to 2 Fortitude points to break the army.
I'll enclose some images of the battle then use the Battle Chronicler software to give you a full run of the battle. The game went fairly quick due to us being embroiled in combat turn 1.
Deployment (please do not note that neither army is painted - we just assembled them!)
Deployment looked like this:
The deployment zone was 9" on each side and 15" up - creating a large box. I deployed in a stacked manner in order to support charge - which I must say I'm glad I did.
Turn 1 Beastmen- Beastmen move up and form a battle line ready to meet out the charges incoming. The Great Bray Shaman casts Miasma on the Center KoT unit reducing their Movement, Init, BS and WS by 3.
Turn 1 Empire - several charges are unleashed as the Knights charge headlong into the Beastman line. The Bestigors lose 1/4 of their number and deal out some fairly decent wounds themselves. All units end up holding with the exception of the Arch Lector being slain by the Beastlord.
Turn 2 Knights - Gor units continue to lay into the Armor save 2 up knights while the Minotaurs take another loss reducing their number. The Minotaurs and Gors lose combat by 2 and end up having to make a break test. Both pass - oddly enough but Minotaurs lose their Frenzy.
Turn 3 - Beastmen - Melee ensues yet again more killing and Bestigors move to better get in range to attack.
Turn 3 Empire - Minotaurs finally kill the center unit and the Gors overrun into the other Knight unit. The 5 unit combat results in - Pistoleers die, Beastmen lose combat by 1 and the Great Bray Shaman unit flees the battle.
Turn 4 Beastmen - Great Bray Shaman unit rallies and turns around. Minotaurs march to get into better position to charge next turn.
Turn 4 Empire - Pistoleers move and shoot up Great Bray Shaman's unit but not enough to cause a panic test.
Knights in combat continue to slug it out against the two units.
Turn 5 Beastmen - Great Bray Shaman unit charges Pistoleers. Pistoleers stand and shoot and get locked into combat with the Gors. Minotaurs charge the Knights in combat.
Turn 5 Empire - This is the final round for the game. Pistoleers get overrun by the Gors and defeated. The battle standard bearer unit enmeshed in combat finally dies and yields the Beastmen a victory.
Game Reflections:
The Beastmen are not a bad army, they have some decent Special choices and their Gors are not that bad. The main thing that makes the Beastmen in my opinion workable is the Primal Fury. Hatred is huge when it can persist every turn. It make not look like it but every single unit at the end of the game was down to at least 25% capacity. Even though the Knights were striking last and were toughness 3 - they had a really brutal 2+ armor save that the Str 3 onslaught of the Gor's attacks just couldn't dent. At one point Erik had a unit flanked on 3 sides and still won combat because I could not get a wound to stick due to the 2+ armor. I think some alternate deployment strategies will help me more in the future.
Had Erik done 1 more wound in the first round of combat on my Great Bray Shaman melee and caused me to break the entire army would have been probably overrun - so the dice favored me that game.
Overall I'm enjoying the Beastmen, they are a nice little break from my Wood Elves and a completely different army in every regard.
Congratulations on the victory, thanks very much for sharing it.
ReplyDeleteWow, those are huge blocks of Knights. I love the idea of the White Wolves, they were part of the Empire army when I was playing this the first time around.
The Harpies didn't seem to achieve too much in this game. Were you tempted to throw them in for a rear charge on a ongoing combat for the +3 combat resolution, or were you concerned that they'd give up more than that with wounds suffered?
It might just be the way my computer views this, but it looks like the Battle Chronicler pictures are truncated on the right hand side. So I can't see any of the action with the Pistoliers etc.
Hrm, I'm not sure why it is truncated on the right side on your screen. The images show up fine in my browser. If you have to just click on the image and it should blow up to the appropriate size if you can't see it normally.
ReplyDeleteHeh, the Harpies I originally flew behind the nights to provide march blocking and after the first round of combat I decided that they would probably grant +5 combat resolution to my opponent rather than provide me with a strong +3 to mine. Also, to be honest after turn 2 I kind of forgot about them. =)
I'll need to start painting them soon because I'm about to obtain almost 100 points of Retribution of Scryah and buy about 60 points of Circle of Orboros and I don't want to have to get the motivation to paint 3 armies at the same time.