Thirteenth Battle: Dragons and Vampires and Guns, Oh My!
[Game situation: 6-turn pitched battle. Alex Knutrud’s vampiric Followers of Eternal Night challenged the Grinding Grumblers to a 2000 point fracas for the dwarves’ spot on tier 2 of the ladder. This would be the largest battle, with the largest dwarf army, that the Grumblers had yet fought. The dwarves brought two big units of Warriors, with 19 and 16 dwarves; 15 Ironbreakers; 12 Miners; 10 Thunderers; 2 Bolt Throwers; 1 Cannon; 1 Goblin Hewer; and 4 leaders: a Thane General, a Runesmith, an Engineer (Malakai Makaisson with the Hewer), and a Runelord with the Anvil of Doom — an item that actually allows the dwarves to cast spells!]

Log entry:
“Dragons! Big, evil, killing machines, with scales and really bad breath. Curse them all!

Word had reached Robinson’s Rock that two of these colossal brutes were rampaging about in territory not far from our mountain hold. Knowing that if the dwarves didn’t deal with the problem, then no one would [grumble, grumble, snort] our fearless leader Buford Bugman ordered a very large army be levied. Joining us would be several artillery pieces enhanced with many a well-crafted Rune, plus our Runelord with his precious Anvil of Doom. ‘Why take chances when huntin’ such monsters?’ argued Buford.

When our army reached the last reported trouble spot, a small human settlement well west of our gates, all we found were ruined buildings and mangled bodies — not a pretty sight. Buford marched us a little farther into the countryside and set up camp for the night in some fields by a small hill, on which he stationed our Runelord with his runic anvil and some of the artillery; the rest of the army set up in a defensive line off to the left of the hill, with the Ironbreakers and Buford himself anchoring the far end. Buford set a careful watch, for he suspected there might be trouble that night, and he was not mistaken. As darkness began to fall we heard great crashing noises across the field in front of us, as well as the unexpected sound of dry bones scraping and clicking in tortured motion — undead! The moonlight soon revealed our old vampire foes advancing toward our lines. The two dragons – working in unison with the evil Counts, it seemed – were on the left of his line, mingling with three smallish units of skeleton warriors. In the center a group of five heavily armored Wights mounted on Nightmare horses, together with a fell leader, waited patiently, while on the right 6 giant bats flapped our way. Other leader-types skulked in the dark behind their undead thralls.

We opened fire immediately with everything we could. This resulted in the novel experience (for me, anyway) of seeing a shower of magic missiles emerging from our side, as fiery bolts leapt forth from our Runelord’s heavily enchanted anvil in time with each of his thunderous hammer blows. The first batch of missiles landed among the huge flying bats, setting a number afire and killing two of the six. It was quite a sight, and the lads up and down our lines gave a loud cheer. Unfortunately, the enemy was now alerted to the danger from the Anvil of Doom, and for the rest of the battle his Necromancers concentrated their defensive efforts against it in a highly efficient manner. Despite our Runelord’s continuing labors, very few of his rune-made spells found targets again.

But our regular artillery had no such problems. The Thunderer musketeers kept up the fire on the bats and soon sent them flitting away looking for cover. Malakai’s axe-lobbing Goblin Hewer proved quite effective at hewing skeletons too, and did a fine job of winnowing down their numbers. Our cannon and bolt throwers concentrated their shots on one of the dragons, managing to wound it moderately, and deflected the path of advance of both the reptilians farther to the left. Still, as we had seen before with the cursed undead, no amount of damage we dished out would cause panic in the rest of the army: morale meant nothing to these evil automatons, and on they came.

The first to close with our forces were, not surprisingly, the monstrous winged dragons. Flying in close to our Ironbreakers the first one let out a pestilential breath, but our boys toughed it out with little harm done. At this moment our Miners suddenly appeared out of their tunnels — right in front of the dragon! However, one look up close at the terrifying monster sent them scurrying right back to the holes they came from, where they hid for the rest of the battle! A shameful performance, to be sure. But it should be said in their defense that they were closer to the foul beast that any other dwarf had yet come, and noticed a terrible fact about it. It was already dead! Its wings were tatters of rotted skin, its eyes hollow wells of inky darkness, and a horde of flies buzzed around it as they would a corpse. It made for a heinous sight. Even worse, our boys noticed that the wounds previously inflicted on it had miraculously healed! (This was probably the enemy’s sorcerers at work: our Runelord and Runesmith were able to shut down most of the vampiric spell-casting, but inevitably the occasional enchantment slipped through.) Seeing the dragon suddenly healed was hard to take, as wounding it at all is a difficult task. Our artillery kept up its fire on the beasts and did cause more wounds, but it seemed that such shooting would never be enough to kill either one.

After sending the Miners back to their holes to hide in terror, the first dragon charged one of our bolt throwers and quickly put the crew to flight. It then chased them down and bit their heads off (!) but this pursuit left the beast vulnerable to a charge into its side from one of our regiments of Warriors. A fierce melee ensued, as our doughty fighters hacked and hewed away, occasionally getting a good strike in and hurting the beast, but at a terrible cost, for it was killing dwarves and slinging their bodies around all the while.

While this combat raged, the other dragon swooped in from the flank – flying right over the Ironbreakers – and engaged Malakai Makaisson and the crew of the Goblin Hewer. If the monster expected to chase these dwarves off like the bolt thrower crew, it was sorely mistaken. Slayers all, having sworn terrible oaths to fight to the death against any and all foes, Malakai and his boys stepped up eagerly to the fight with their great weapons and gave as hard as they took. One crewman went down under a dragon claw, but the others struck back with ferocity. Meanwhile, a third major melee broke out, as the enemy’s Wight armored cavalry, somewhat damaged by accurate Thunderer fire, nevertheless charged right into our largest dwarf Warrior formation, the one commanded by our Runesmith.

These three close combats in the middle of the field would determine victory in the battle, and for a long time they raged inconclusively, even as more units charged in from both sides trying to tip the balance one way or the other. If the enemy had been alive rather than (un)dead our sturdy dwarves surely would have broken their morale at one point or another and set them running, but against these malevolent zombies such was not possible. We would have to wipe them out utterly, at a terrible cost to us, and even that could only happen if our own discipline remained firm. Fortunately, dwarven courage is legendary. The dragon that charged Malakai and the Goblin Hewer had its claws full of trouble as it was, but when the entire regiment of Ironbreakers crashed into its flank, its doom was nigh. Under a hail of hammer and axe blows it collapsed into a dusty pile of bone and rotted scales, never to rise again. The other dragon fared better, however. It too was having a difficult time at first, for the Warriors it faced wounded it steadily even as their own casualties mounted. When a vampire leader swooped in to the fight he drew the attention of the dwarves. Though the brave Warriors succeeded in slaying the evil leader, the dragon had gotten the chance it needed and began to rampage among the survivors, pummeling them mercilessly. The few remaining fighters despaired and tried to run, but were trampled to death by the raging beast. The dragon continued its charge right into the crew of our cannon on the hill — and managed to kill them as well.

Our hopes now rested on the last struggle in the middle of the field that pitted the mounted Wights against the other unit of Warriors and our Runesmith. Generally our troops were getting the better of the struggle, greatly outnumbering the enemy as they did, but they got a scare when the two remaining giant bats joined the fray and the enemy vampire among the Wights managed to hunt down our Runesmith. Though more a scholar than a fighter, the smith acquitted himself well when forced to combat, and succeeded in killing the vampire leader, though he suffered a wound in doing so. The rest of our boys then overwhelmed the few remaining Wights and bats.

The field was now ours, as the surviving skeletons and leaders of the enemy backed off. The last dragon, itself wounded, went with them. I fervently hope never to see its like again.”

PS Eventually, the Miners sheepishly resurfaced, and had to endure the insults and catcalls of the rest of the army. No beer for them that night!

-Snori Whitebeard

[Game result: a Draw. The dwarves narrowly outpointed the vampires by a score of roughly 970 to 750 — but at the 2000 point army level you need to prevail by fully 300 points to get a “Minor Victory”; 220 won’t do it. Thus the dwarves only won because of the paintedness tiebreaker in our challenge league. The dwarves got big points from killing one of the dragons, two of his leaders, and the units of Wights and Bats; Alex got most of his from artillery destruction and killing two units of infantry.]

[Tactical analysis: This was an engrossing battle, and an extremely close one — neither of us knew who would prevail until the points were toted up at the very end!

I was lucky to get the board side of my choice and also to go first, which allowed me a round of shooting before he could advance. The flipside, however, is that he got to move last on Turn 6, and Alex made good use of this with a move to seize control of a board quadrant (for 100 points), as well as a last-minute successful charge of my cannon with his dragon (netting 135 points).
I wonder if earlier on he wasn’t a bit too protective of his fast units, especially his dragons: breaking off an advance to take cover because they took some wounds or casualties just played into my hands, delaying his advance into close combat and letting my shooters fire away at others. (On the other hand, it is true that my gunners on the right side of the field had nothing worthwhile to shoot at by the end of game, in part thanks to his redirection of the flyers to the other side of the field).

All the magical defenses I brought (at the cost of not being able to field my Gyrocopter) were well worth it, as I had more dispel dice than he had power dice all game long! This all but shut down his spell-casting. The Anvil of Doom, while great fun to deploy, is not very effective against a magically prepared opponent. It would probably only prove devastating against a foe who, not wanting to bang his head against all those dwarven dispel dice, brings little or no magic to the battle.

Alex was very clever in his positioning of banners and his general to cut down combat resolution losses to his units in close combat (following special vampire army rules). Still, it’s too bad his skeleton units were too small (and chewed up – thanks, Goblin Hewer!) to ever risk close combat.

Fourteenth Battle: The Dead Don't Stay Dead

[Game situation: 6-turn pitched battle. The Grinding Grumblers challenged Lenny DeMauro’s Cult of Nod vampire count army for their place on the next highest tier of the ladder. We agreed on 900 point armies. The dwarves brought 15 Warriors with a Runesmith general to fight among them, 12 Ironbreakers, 10 Miners, 10 Thunderers, one cannon and one bolt thrower.]

Log entry:
“Returning from the zombie dragon hunt (see previous log entry) our army separated into two groups. Our thane Rory and some of the boys hurried forward at a quicker pace while the rest of us, dragging that blasted heavy cannon, fell well behind. Viggo the Runesmith took charge of our group and made sure that we stayed alert. “Those wretched undead have a way of getting up again after you smash ‘em. We may not have seen the last of those boneheads.” Right he was.

Camping the first night, our rest was interrupted by eerie moans and beastly snarls coming from some wooded hills off to the left. Viggo quickly got us up and deployed us along the road, Thunderers and Warriors on the right, artillery (guarded by the Ironbreakers) on the left as far away from the enemy as possible to maximize the distance he’d have to cover to attack the guns. The Miners, I noticed, were nowhere to be found — I hoped they had found some tunnels in which to maneuver.

Across the field in the center were a pack of evil wolves accompanied by a mounted vampire and one of those horrible screechy banshees. To the right of them gathered a bunch of ghostly warriors all writhing together in a mass, and next to them a large regiment of walking skeletons. A couple of vampire necromancers lurked in the shadows behind them.

Viggo had told the artillery boys to aim at the banshee or the ghosts if they could, since our rune-enchanted big guns offered our best hope of killing these ethereal beasties. The cannon and bolt thrower concentrated on the ghosts and managed to score some good hits as the creepy critters floated across the field towards our lines, moving at a surprisingly fast clip. Even quicker were the wolves, which bore down on our bolt thrower with great speed. Our Thunderers took aim at them and killed a few, but they kept coming.

Just then our Miners made an unexpected appearance behind the enemy lines, emerging from some tunnels just at the back of the skeletons on the far right. It was a bold move, separated so far from the rest of our forces as they were, but I figure they were trying to make up for their shameful cowardice in the face of the zombie dragon in the last battle. The skeletons, under the direction of the enemy necromancers, turned around to face them. Viggo says that the necromancers tried a spell that would have meant extra trouble for the Miners, but that he foiled it. (In fact, he spent much of the battle chanting protective runes and cackling whenever an enemy spell fizzled against our natural dwarven resistance — which happened rather often, thank Grimnir!). So the Miners charged into the large mass of skeletons fearlessly, swinging their great picks to and fro and killing some of the bone men. However, after a time they noticed that their efforts were having zero effect on the mindless enemy, who kept coming at them and in greater numbers than they had first realized. The sheer weight of the deeply ranked foe pressed hard against the Miners, who found themselves being pushed slowly backward despite their every effort. Dwarves began to trip and fall, and soon their battle line was broken and chaos broke out. An orderly retreat became a panicked rout, driving them off the field for good.

The destruction of the Miner contingent was a depressing blow, but their attack did at least prevent the large skeleton regiment from making it to the main battle in time. The undead wolves were badly shot up by our various gunners as they came on – only one survived in the end, but he and the vampire leader used their speed to avoid our Ironbreakers and charge our bolt thrower, eventually killing its crew — but not before the cannon had shot the nightmarish horse right out from under the vampire! About the same time the banshee began her horrific wailing, first victimizing a couple of the Ironbreakers, and then turning toward our cannon. This was her undoing. With the crew ignoring her lethal screams, she soon received a blast of rune-enchanted grapeshot in the face, which succeeded nicely in silencing her.

Meanwhile, the vampiric necromancers had magically summoned up a new horde of skeletons right in front of our Thunderers, who barely managed to get off a round of defensive fire before being charged. Fierce hand-to-hand combat followed, in which the Thunderers first held at bay, and then wiped out, their outnumbered attackers. But before they could gain any rest, they were assaulted by the remaining ghosts, who loomed before them slashing and ripping at their very souls. Bravely the Thunderers held out until the regiment of Warriors, led by Viggo, arrived to crash into the flank of the ghostly soldiers and disperse them once and for all.

This victory decided the battle for our side, but only just. Unfortunately for our cannon crew, they could not swing their gun over to hit the vampire leader before being charged by him and the lone remaining wolf. The crew put up a stubborn fight, but in the end fell beneath the champion’s blows. Our Ironbreakers, who had been moving at the double toward the remaining group of skeletons and the two necromancers, never managed to engage them, though they were well-positioned to head them off should they have chosen to move against our other units. The remaining vampire forces retreated in good order, and the battle was at an end.”

-Snori Whitebeard

[Game result: a Minor Victory for the dwarves, 514 points to 305. No standards captured or board quadrants controlled by either army so it came down to casualties caused, and the dwarves drew slightly more blood. The Grumblers will now have to withstand a challenge from below before being able to take a shot at the top spot — our rightful place!]

[Tactical analysis: This was another close one. The dwarves were well served by putting their artillery far off to the left, allowing lots of shots before getting run down toward the end of the battle. Not so slick was my decision to attack with the Miners all alone out there — I knew it was a risk, and it did hold up the skeletons’ advance toward the main battle nicely, but I should have realized that with only 10 guys and no standard the Miners had little chance of surviving against a larger, fear-causing formation. In the end, their charge didn’t produce enough skeleton casualties to overcome the rank, number, and standard disadvantage and had to flee (off the board), no break test permitted.]

Fifteenth Battle: The Grand Battle of Four Armies
[Game situation: Capture scenario, variable length. Just for the fun of it, with no ladder standing implications, the Grinding Grumblers challenged three other players with large armies to a massive, 12,000 point scrum. Each player brought a 3000 point army. Jon Walsh’s Empire forces teamed up with the Grumblers, while Alex Knutrud’s Vampires joined Steve Femia’s Beasts of Chaos. A Capture scenario is won when one team controls a terrain feature in the middle of the board at the game’s end, which is randomly determined — after 4 turns, a die is rolled at the end of each turn to see if it was the last. The Dwarves brought three regiments of Warriors (16-20 dwarves each), 15 Ironbreakers (with a Runesmith), 15 Hammerers (with a Lord general), 12 Miners, 10 Thunderers, 10 Crossbowmen, a Gyrocopter, 2 Bolt Throwers (with an Engineer to help aim/crew them), 1 Cannon, 1 Stone Thrower, and a Runelord with the Anvil of Doom.]

Log entry:
“The Battle of Four Armies will go down in the annals of Robinson’s Rock as both one of the greatest and most terrible days for our people.

The seeds of what transpired were planted many years ago. The dwarven people and the humans of the Empire have long worked together against the forces of evil, of course, and we of Robinson’s Rock have been on (mostly) friendly terms with the men of nearby Altendorf for generations. On a diplomatic and trade mission to the young Lord Altendorf some 25 years ago our fearless leader Buford Bugman was charmed by the sight of the most beautiful human child he had ever laid eyes on, the infant daughter of Lord Altendorf himself. Seeing how his dwarven guest was smitten, Altendorf asked if Buford would do him the honor of serving as his daughter’s godfather. Buford, with tears in his eyes (and too much fortified wine in his belly, the cynic might say) accepted the office and swore an oath to watch over the child thenceforth.

Skip forward a quarter century to the present occasion. Word arrived at Robinson’s Rock of a great disturbance in the Chaos Lands not far from our borders, and an urgent request for help from the ruling family of Altendorf. It seems that the lord’s only daughter, now a priestess of Sigmar and something of an adventuress to boot, had defied her father’s wishes and led a small, over-bold group of crusaders deep into Chaos lands to purify and thereby forever destroy a powerful shrine to the evil Chaos demon-god Slaanesh. When his father discovered that she had gone he knew at once that she would be in terrible danger. Mustering all the forces he could from his lands, he also enlisted the help of the human hero Valten to command his army and bring back his beloved daughter. Furthermore, he sent an urgent message to Buford’s mountain fastness, hoping the old dwarf would honor his oath and lend some aid, either coming himself with some bodyguards or sending a few dwarf mercenaries.

You can imagine Altendorf’s shock, therefore, when, as he was about to send his troops forth into the Chaos lands, there appeared on the road from Robinson’s Rock the largest dwarf army he had ever seen, commanded by Buford himself. The tramp of iron-shod dwarven boots echoed in the hills like thunder. The human lord actually bent on his knee to thank Buford when the dwarf approached his tent. Buford grinned through his capacious beard and shook the man’s hand with an iron grip, saying with a wink: ‘A dwarf honors his oaths.’

The combined armies marched off the next morning. Buford knew of the hero Valten’s many magnificent deeds in the wars against Chaos, and, in deference to him and to the nature of the mission, agreed to serve under the Imperial banner. Valten graciously accepted the honor, but was wise enough not to interfere with Buford’s own wishes when it came to deploying the dwarf forces, the pride of the dwarves being almost as notorious as their axes and hammers. Valten and Buford set a fast pace, for they knew time was running out. The lord’s daughter would not have long to infiltrate and cleanse the shrine before the Beasts of Slaanesh would converge on it to retake it with overwhelming force. Even worse, while on the road word reached the generals that Manfred von Carsten, an infamous vampire count, had joined with the beasts and was bringing an army of his own to try to seize the beautiful young priestess. Rumor had it that the undead lord wished to make a vampire queen out of her to punish the people of Altendorf, mock their ruler, and satisfy his own dark hungers. Buford exploded in fury when he heard this report, and swore that his axe would chop off the foul undead creature’s head if he got half a chance

Two days later the dwarves and humans approached the site of the shrine. From a distance they could see it was a sinister-looking building shaped like a giant human head. Scouts had found that Altendorf’s daughter was indeed inside with her companions, temporarily in control of the premises, but that she refused to leave without finishing her lustration ceremonies. Valten and Buford agreed to immediately advance their forces to shield the shrine, the dwarves coming from the left with their elite Hammerers and Iron breakers in front, and the humans coming from the right with their best cavalry in the lead.

But time had run out.

On the far side of the shrine to the left, there emerged from the shadows legions of undead warriors. Heavily armored wights mounted on nightmares, huge bats, dire wolves, necromancers, a dragon, and seemingly endless ranks of skeleton and zombie warriors came marching forward toward the dwarves. Ahead and to the right of the shrine came a horde of screaming beasts of chaos, everything from wardogs to gors and ungors to bray shamans to minotaurs to an enormous giant, two chaos spawn and assorted flying demonlings, all aiming toward the humans. Buford rapidly deployed the bulk of his forces on and in front of hill to the left: their task was to hold off the vampiric soldiers as long as possible while the Hammerers (with whom Buford himself would fight) and the Ironbreakers moved up to guard the shrine. Valten issued similar orders to his men on the right, reserving the task of advancing on the shrine to himself and a large body of Inner Circle mounted knights.

Guns blasted and crossbows twanged as friendly shooters let fly from the hills behind the dwarf and human battlelines, and the dwarven Runelord added some magic missiles from the Anvil of Doom to the barrage. The Imperials had brought one of their Hellblasters — an impressive killing machine, but prone to break down (non-dwarven workmanship, you know). The device succeeded in causing havoc among targeted beast units. As expected, however, the shooting did not stop the advance of the evil ones, as both the undead forces and the Slaanesh-tainted beasts were mindlessly immune to battlefield panic.

On the dwarf side of the field our infantry moved up to meet the enemy. The instructions given to the three units of Warriors on the far left was to buy enough time for the Hammerers, Ironbreakers, and human knights to reach the shrine and rescue the priestess. This they endeavored to do, but soon ran into serious trouble. One unit was hit hard in the flank by both the zombie dragon and multiple fell bats. They withstood the initial charge, but the terror of the raging undead lizard soon proved to be too much for them, as they broke and fled, to be pursued and destroyed by the fell bats. The raging dragon caused panic among some other dwarf units, I’m ashamed to say, dwarves who should have known better, like our crossbowmen who fled the field of battle. We got our revenge on the dragon and the bats soon enough, however: the Thunderers and two bolt-throwers let loose on the huge beast at close range, blasting its massive bones to pieces and badly wounding its necromancer rider. The bats while pursuing made the mistake of flying right in front of Buford and his Hammerer bodyguard advancing near the shrine. These grim dwarves charged the bats and wiped them out, and carried their offensive momentum right into a large regiment of zombies.

The humans were faring better against the enemy on their side of the field. One story they tell (and I’m not sure as I entirely believe it) claims that a horse – not the knight riding him, but his mount – single-hoofedly killed a rampant chaos spawn. Also, the human gunners managed to shoot down the enemy giant. However, soon a horde of beastmen arose in ambush on and around the hills our gunners were using. On the human side, the ambushing beasts (together with some marauding flying demonlings) caused much mayhem among the artillery, destroying the Hellblaster and one of the cannons and chasing human wizards here and there. The disruptions were less on the dwarf hill, as the ambushers and a few fell bats only managed to take out our stone thrower.

By this time the key units had arrived at the shrine in the center of the battlefield. On the dwarf side the Hammerers and Ironbreakers engaged endless ranks skeletons and zombies to keep them away from the entrance to the unholy structure; even after a pack of dire wolves joined the fray, charging into Hammerers, Buford and the boys would not budge an inch and indeed added many a wolf to the pile of destroyed zombies they were accumulating as they fought. On the human side, Valten’s grand regiment of mounted knights had easily swept away light enemy resistance as they approached the shrine from the right, and parked themselves by the entrance. Valten ordered a knight into the building to hurry the priestess out, but Lord Altendorf’s daughter would not be hurried! She was in the final stages of her charms of purification and refused to depart until the task for which she had come was complete. In this she showed a resolute spirit and true wisdom — the removal of Slaanesh’s unholy power from the area would be a great victory for the forces of Right and Good.

And yet it came at a dreadful cost in dwarven lives.

For while the priestess finished her noble undertaking, our two remaining regiments of warriors on the left flank were being crushed under the weight of superior numbers of undead. Also, on the far right flank the dwarven Miners had emerged from some tunnels right next to a large unit of minotaurs. They knew they had little chance against the immense beasts, but charged them anyway to keep them from threatening the central shrine. The melee was furious, and the flashing picks of the Miners succeeded in felling one of the eight monsters, but the crushing strength of the rest broke through the dwarven ranks and scattered them, driving them from the field. The pursuit took more time, but eventually the creatures got themselves pointed back in the right direction.

Too late. The delay of the minotaurs and indeed most of the other major units of the enemy proved fatal for the vile alliance of vampire and beast. The daughter of Altendorf emerged from the now-harmless shrine into the protection of Valten’s cavalry, which wheeled around to depart. The rest of the humans and dwarves also began an orderly withdrawal. For their part the beasts and vampires rushed to their recovered shrine — only to recoil in horror when they discovered how it had been changed by the power of Sigmar’s priestess. Swearing to take revenge on the Empire for this incursion into Chaos lands, the beast slunk off into the wilderness, and the vampires left as well.

It was a sad march back to friendly territory for the dwarves (and many humans too), for even though our mission had been accomplished and honor served, the cost had been high indeed. When the young lady Altendorf learned of the actions of her dwarven godfather on her behalf, she was shocked and somewhat perplexed. After all, she barely knew who he was, and had little experience with dwarven kind. But she put aside her mixed feelings and went to Buford to thank him personally. She even placed a chaste kiss upon his ruddy old cheek. Our fearless leader had been in a grim mood, and had planned to rebuke the brave young lass for a recklessness that had cost many dwarven lives. But after that kiss, and seeing the fair countenance of the beautiful maiden, he could only blush, and mutter something about the honor of the dwarves before trudging back to his camp. ‘What a strange little fellow,’ she said as our great leader lurched away. ‘And you who scribbles at all times of the day and night — what is your name?’ But those words were said to my back as I scurried off after my lord.”

-Snori Whitebeard

[Game result: Victory for the Dwarves and Empire! Fortune smiled upon us at the end when store-owner Chris Walsh rolled a “1” which ended the game at the earliest possible point, after only four turns. Valten’s huge cavalry regiment was guarding the central shrine at the time and no very large enemy unit was nearby to contest it, giving the victory to the dwarves & humans.]

[Tactical analysis: If casualties inflicted had determined victory (as in most Warhammer games) the evil alliance of vampires and beasts might have prevailed, as they did a wonderful job of wiping out our units. Alex’s vampires took out regiment after regiment of regular dwarven infantry on the left, and Steve’s ambushing beasts were great artillery killers on the back end of the board. But the dwarf/human strategy revolved around putting our highest value units near the terrain objective in the board middle and using the rest of our army merely to shoot or delay the bulk of the enemy armies – casualties among our guys away from the objective were not deemed especially important. Thus at the end of turn four the two best dwarven infantry units were holding their own (if only just) against a swarm of weaker undead forces just to the left of the objective, and Valten’s huge heavy cavalry unit was practically unchallenged next to the monument on the right side. If the game had gone one more turn, the result would have been the same – victory for us. Two or three more turns, however, and we good guys might have been in trouble, as by that time strong enemy units would likely have reached the board center from the flanks to finish off the dwarves and to hit Valten’s cavalry from all sides. But the bad guys ran out of time. Their strategy seems to have been to put their best units on the flanks (i.e., the Minotaurs, the Chaos Giant and Chaos Spawn, the Wight heavy cavalry, and the Zombie Dragon) and hope to sweep through our forces and then head toward the middle. It worked in terms of winning close combats (esp. vs the dwarven infantry), but ended up being ill- suited to the victory conditions of the scenario (control the center of the board from turn 4 on).

Smaller issues: for the first time I played a vampire opponent who used very large skeleton formations, and the effect was devastating for my forces: three of the four destroyed dwarf infantry regiments fell to autobreak due to being defeated & outnumbered by a fear-causing foe, and the Ironbreakers almost perished for the same reason. A Goblin Hewer would have been a very wise selection for me in this game to chew through some of those ranks. This game marked the debut of the Hammerers for me, and they performed very well, though their special talent of being Stubborn during close combat was never tested (if I had ever lost a round of close combat with them, they would autobroke like any other outnumbered unit against fear-causers). The Anvil of Doom performed decently in the face of heavily sorcerous opponents: it got off a couple good magic missiles on units, and otherwise took some pressure off the Empire’s wizards. But on the whole (as expected) our magic phases were not impressive. Fortunately, theirs were only slightly better, thanks to lots of dispel dice and dispel scrolls/runes on our side.

Luck favored our side a bit in the beginning, as we were able to move/fire first and also rolled well with a Spelleater Rune and some artillery shots. But by mid-game the dwarf luck had turned sour, as I kept missing crucial leadership tests (despite needing merely to roll 9s or even 10s and under on 2 dice!) and blew some key close combat rolls and 2+ armor saves. Happily, the die roll to end the game as early as it did gave us the victory on a silver platter.

The game was hugely fun. I recommend 12,000 point battles to everyone — provided you have 9 or more hours to play through one!]