8th Ed. Scalenex's Map Campaign Blog, Rumble in the Chaos Wastes

Introduction

The Chaos Wastes have receded and many have moved in each with their own agenda. Here is mine. Fluff is in blue, me talking is in white. I’m using the same characters from my fluff pieces but this is an “alternate universe” setting where Kaitar and Teyish survived and Merestar did not lose his marbles. Kaitar is also a Scar Veteran now.


When the world was young, and the Lizardmen were unquestionably the dominant power in the world, the Slann sent out legions of Saurus warriors in numbers never seen in the modern age. Their mission was to eradicate all beings not in accordance with the Old Ones wishes. While they took a huge toll on the Chaos spawned aberrations infesting the world, their mission failed. Many old creatures like the Fimir are still around and beings like the Orcs and Goblins are around in greater numbers than ever. Some creatures such as the Skaven and Beastmen first arose after the purge.


The Sauri carried out their orders with little sophistication relying on brute force, hacking and stabbing whatever they found that was deemed anathema to the Old Ones. They had little magical support from the Slann except from Phyra of the first Generation Slann. Phyra understood the nature of space and distance more than any Slann before or since. She constructed an arcane pylon to bend space in order to allow the Sauri to cross great distances to go when and where they were needed.


After Phyra died (along with all the Slann of the First Generation), the younger Slann left the Pylon of Phyra alone until just before the rise of the First Phoenix King in Ulthuan. A Slann of the second generation attempted to activate the Pylon in order to reinforce the beleaguered elves fighting the massive demon hordes there. Unfortunately whether due to an error or the interference of demons, the Pylon broke apart killing the Slann and innumerable warriors he meant to teleport in to help. Since the Pylon warped space and distance they missing pieces could be literally anywhere and a practical search for them was impossible.


The base was intact and enterprising Slann were able to work the Pylon again after a fashion allowing short teleportation of small units of their servants. Where once the Pylon could reach the ends of the world, now the range was measured in miles. The teleportation usually worked but when they failed the results were catastrophic so the ruined Pylon of Phyra was only used in extreme emergencies and it was largely forgotten by all but the Slann until Merestar discovered the missing remains of the Pylon of Phyra by accident. While he was scrying events across the World Pond (where he sensed yet another major incursion of Chaos coming), he found that the fragments power was partially awakened and were now in the Chaos Wastes.


Enough of the base of the Pylon is intact to allow Merestar to teleport a small army across the ocean to the greatest collection of Pylon fragments. Humans had unknowingly used them to build a fortress. The fortress was since partially in ruins and occupied by a small tribe of Goblins which the Lizardmen easily overtook.


The Skink Priest Teyish was sent to reclaim the fortress for Lustria and then charged with locating as many fragments of the Pylon of Phyra as possible (which can help Merestar teleport reinforcements in). Teyish is skilled enough to aid an army in properly identifying fragments and aid workers in properly securing them. Teyish is expendable enough that the Lizardmen will not be irreparably set back if he never. Currently teleportation between Lustria and the Chaos Wastes are one-way and Merestar does not want any Slann to cross over until the safety of the jump can be assured and a return trip can be arranged. This will require a lot more fragments to be collected.


Fortunately the fragments of the Pylon appear as ordinary stones to anyone but the Slann and Skink Priests (and any Lizardmen who are enchanted to see the stones). This would suggest that the fragments are easy to obtain since few races of the Old World will contest rocks. Unfortunately stones not secured by magic move (when no one is looking) and seek out places populated sentient beings. That means that despite the vast empty space of the Chaos Wastes, the vast majority of fragments of the Pylon of Phyra are to be found in or near the encampments of the few races there. While few races are worried about Lizardmen coming to still their rocks, few races are trusting enough to tolerate Skinks and Saurus rummaging about their settlements.


Unfortunately Merestar miscalculated. The fortress his advanced force took over was the second largest concentration of fragments of the Pylon of Phyra. The largest is found in the fortress now occupied by soldiers of the Empire. They do not realize what they are sitting on.


I just started a map campaign. I wrote about a previous one that sadly dried up as multiple players quit without warning. The old campaign blog could be found here.

http://www.lustria-online.com/threads/a-map-campaign-log-updated-cancelled-5-27-12.9061/

The new campaign has the same GM as the old, the campaign rules are much simpler than the last time, but they are still pretty complicated. Rather than go over everything, here is the link to the rules and the campaign map. I’m the blue green territory in the southwest corner.

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=7ef2ba1d0772cee9&id=7EF2BA1D0772CEE9!228&authkey=!AJOMu9jjc7JZu7Y

The game is over when someone takes out their arch enemy, that player gets a lot of bonus points (so the person who beats their arch enemy will PROBABLY win but it’s theoretically possible to not win, but highly unlikely. Think of catching the Snitch in Quidditch. Then we count up our Fame Points (FP) to see who is the winner. FP come from winning battles, holding territory, holding high quality territory, killing enemy champions/characters, and certain racial bonuses.


Arch Enemies are nonreciprocal. The guy I get the 25 bonus points for conquering the base of would not get 25 points for taking my base. Arch enemies are also secret so my opponent doesn’t know he’s my target (unless he frequents Lustria online). I don’t know who is out to take my base, but due to the guideline that we all have to be roughly equidistant from our arch enemies I can make the educated guess that it is one of the three armies in the northeast corner.


Each campaign turn is split into weeks. Though a typical game “week” takes about two weeks in the real world (week four is usually accelerated because by that point all of our armies are exhausted in numbers and waiting for the next reinforcement phase. Every campaign “month” (four weeks naturally) starts with spending our FPs. Each FP can build up our army 100 points or five points can built a fort or ten points can build a fortress. Every month, each player can try casting a ritual spell. Every month starts with a few events determined by the GM.


Each side starts out with five territories and a fortress. We each have a 3000 point army that can’t leave our starting base and a 1000 point roving force. Both armies must be legal (sort of, more on that below) and cannot take special characters. Our armies are very divisible. Any unit champion or character can take a contingent of troops called a Flag and go off by themselves. We can have duplicate magical items and BSBs in our total army but our Flags cannot double up on those things.


Flags in theory can be highly specialized. I could field a Flag entirely of four units of Terradons for instance. I don’t see a lot of incentive for me (or anyone else) to go that extreme. Currently most of the map is empty right now, so I’m going to gamble on spreading my forces into several different flags to grab as much territory as I can.


No plan survives contact with your allies


I’ll cover the other players moving counter clockwise from my starting position. Here are my thoughts on what I should be doing in fluff terms. Even though Teyish and Kaitar both figments of my imagination, they disagree a lot seeing as I’m schizophrenic. Officially Teyish is in charge, but if I find myself getting my butt handed to me repeatedly, Kaitar will replace him as my supreme commander.

To the immediate north of my starting position is the Vampire Counts. I have never beaten this guy or any Vampire Count army in a 2500 point game. His win record is quite good overall.

Teyish’s Take: The vampires here are not of Renliss’ ilk. They could even be rivals of Renliss for all we know. Fighting them would be a distraction from our ultimate mission and potentially create a hostile force at our borders. If we leave them alone they will pursue their own business and leave us alone.

Kaitar’s Take: I remember how much damage Renliss did to our forces back in the day! If we leave the vampires alone they will reanimate the corpses of every defeated foe and grow in power and then choke the region. We should attack them immediately before they can marshal their powers in full and drive them behind the walls of their fortress. Once stymied, they won’t be a major threat to us and we can go on with our true mission.

In the northwest corner is a newbie dwarf player. I played a practice game against him last weekend. It was like his second or third Warhammer game ever. He learns fast though, he’s played other tabletop games and is a very good painter considering how little time he’s had. I feel kind of sorry that he is learning the game subject to a gazillion house rules. He’s also next to one of best players (those he’s also a good sportsman so isn’t likely to bully the newbie).

Teyish’s Take: The uncorrupted dwarves may yet fulfill the Old Ones plans for them. We should help them as possible. They are hemmed in on two sides by enemies of the Old Ones.

Kaitar’s Take: Kind of difficult to help them if the vampires are in between us…I wish them no ill will but marching our troops that far out of the way for any reason endangers our mission.

To the east of the Dwarfs are two WoC players with a Skaven player in between them. Both the WoC are very skilled, but they are adjusting to a new army book. The more distant WoC player might be gunning for my base to get the 25 bonus points.

Teyish’s Take: The Chaos Wastes are receding and some of the Fallen humans are fighting back. I hope they fail, but we can’t afford to aid the others in the Fallen one’s downfall. They are too far to affect us directly though.

Kaitar’s Take: All incursions into Lustria by foreign invaders have eventually failed. Now WE are the invaders and these tainted humans are defending their own land against intruders. They should not be underestimated no matter how far away they are.

The Skaven player is largely unknown to me. There is a slim chance that he’s gunning for my base.

Teyish’s Take: It pains me to say so, but we barely have the resources to fight the Skaven around Klodorex. We can’t afford to get into a war with them this far from home.

Kaitar’s Take: There is more empty space around the Skaven base than the other invaders here. I fear how numerous they will get if they are allowed to spread unchecked.

Further east there are two Chaos Dwarf players. I played the closer player once in the last game in a match that was highly tilted in my favor. He is a skilled player in even matchups. He seems to favor using his shooting to eliminate things that can hurt his K’daii and Iron Daemon and uses his heavies to do most of the fighting. I do not know the other CD player. It’s highly possible one of them is gunning for my base to get 25 bonus points.

Teyish’s Take: The Fallen dwarfs do not leave their homelands without a purpose. They move slowly, if that purpose involves us in any way we will know in advanced.

Kaitar’s Take: If the both Fallen dwarfs armies and the corrupted humans make common cause with each other. The Old Ones help us, since seeing them coming in advance will not help us.

Continuing clockwise past the WoC, is an Ogre player jutting forward next to a lake. He made a public declaration that he wants to play like an Ogre and will fight for the highest bidder (we have an option to sell other players FPs though we have to designate a Flag as a caravan and send it across the map). He is nearby my arch enemy so this is tempting. He might also be gunning for my base.

Teyish’s Take: The ones who eat were created by the Old Ones for a purpose so we must let them be when able. They fight for gold, and we have no value for the gold we find from defeated foes (unless they have our sacred artifacts which is unlikely). Perhaps they will fight for our gold.

Kaitar’s Take: The Ogres hunger for gold and meat is insatiable. Offering them either of those things will merely direct their hunger towards us.

We’ll skip the next player for now. Moving further along is my arch enemy! I get 25 bonus points if I take out his fortress and would probably be able to seal a campaign win. If I don’t get his fortress plan B is to use the LM’s teleportation ability to get to the choice real estate in the center of the map first and stock up on conventional points.

Teyish’s Take: We were ordered by Merestar to collect all the fragments of the Pylon of Phyra that we can find. These humans are uncorrupted and I bear them no malice, but if they continue dwelling amongst the fragments, the power may call them to Fall as power often does with humans.

Kaitar’s Take: We were ordered by Merestar to collect all the fragments of the Pylon of Phyra that we can find. These humans are uncorrupted and I bear them no malice, but we need the fragments. We are not saving them from corruption. I will make no excuses for doing my duty.

Near my arch enemy is another Empire player (the one I skipped).

Teyish’s Take: We must aid the humans if we can since they were created by the Old Ones and we share the goal of turning back the forces of Chaos.

Kaitar’s Take: I am not naïve enough to expect this group to stand idly by while we attack their spawning brothers nearby them.

Further along is another undead player, I played him as Tomb Kings once and he beat me by a fair margin despite losing his hierophant. He keeps see-sawing between playing Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings. He is currently listed as Vampire Counts. I cannot rule out him switching back to Tomb Kings before Sunday.

Teyish’s Take: Hopefully these undead will not trouble us being as they are surrounded by uncorrupted forces.

Kaitar’s Take: I’d like to say Teyish is being unreasonably optimistic, but it’s wasteful to rail about EVERYONE being a threat. Our forces are finite.

Closing up towards my original position is a Wood Elf player. I don’t know much about him.

Teyish’s Take: These elves are not corrupted but they are not the elves of the island they call Ulthuan. They seem to have kinship with the forests. Like us, they are far from home. Perhaps we can reach out to them as kindred spirits.

Kaitar’s Take: Just because they’d probably rather be somewhere else than here does not make us kindred spirits. I’m guessing most of the armies here would rather be someplace else. Let the other Temple City’s army deal with these elves, if at all.

Finally there is another Lizardmen player. I was hoping for some scaly solidarity but he hasn’t answered my e-mails yet.

Teyish’s Take: Klodorex is fairly isolated so we have little contact with the First of other Temple Cities. Hopefully they are here for the same reason as us and we can work together to rebuild the Pylon and aid our race. I trust they will prove good allies.

Kaitar’s Take: I don’t even fully trust the other First from Klodorex.

 

Henry Kissinger eat your heart out.


My attempt to negotiate with another player failed, but don’t take MY word for it.


Kaitar the Saurus approached the Skink Priest Teyish.

“Where is the speaking stone, did you send out an emissary?”
“I did, to the vampires.”
“Are you mad! Perhaps the Skaven would like to negotiate too?”
“These are not the vampires that attacked us in Lustria. For all we know these could be rivals to them.”
“They are still creatures of darkness, they cannot be trusted”
“There are not enough of us to fight every one of the Fallen and Anathema here. Here comes our emissary now, they didn’t kill the messenger.”
“That proves nothing.”

The Terradon rider landed.

“What did the vampire lord of the castle say,” Teyish asked.
“He offered to recognized our borders…in exchange for tribute.” Replied the messenger.
“Tribute!?! Your plan is forfeit, we move on the vampires for this outrage!” Kaitar shouted indignantly.
“I am inclined to agree with your outrage but not your response. I am more than willing to let the undead dwell in the north in peace, but we will not bow down before them in submission. They know where we consider our borders to be. We will not be the aggressor, but if the vampires violate our territory they will regret it.” Teyish replied.


The other LM player has not gotten back to me yet. If both he and the Vampire decide they want a piece of me, I’m in big trouble and will have to turtle up in my fortress like a big weeny.


The bad news is the VCs are probably going to be coming after me now. The good news is based on the saber rattling with the Vampire player he let slip that his “Terrogheist is hungry”. I’m extracting from this that he is aiming to field his favorite 2500 point army list as soon as possible. That’s good news because the 1000 point version of that army list is not that great (in Theoryhammer).


My plan to dig my own grave with Theoryhammer!


His favorite list is a blendy vampire lord, some a Master Necromancer and a whole crap load of ethereal characters (deployed in a massive zombie block), two Terrorgheists, and some Monstrous Infantry and some wolves.


At 1000 points he CAN’T take a blender vampire. He CAN’T load up on ethereal characters. He will have at most two level two casters. I get my ass handed to me by Terrorgheists in our normally games but I always manage to kill one. I think if I can kill his one Terrogheist I’ll pretty much have free reign to whittle apart his army bit by bit by shooting. Teyish is a level two wizard with the Plaque of Tepok and Ruby Ring of Ruin. If the Vampires come at me this turn, I’m hoping the Heavens lore attribute will help me knock the Terrorgheist out of the sky.


Note there are two major differences in campaign battles. First, no turn limit so I can run around being a cowardly Skink sniper for quite a while. Second, units can use their normal moves to flee off the board to save the units from death (I can do this to save wear and tear on my forces if it turns out I’m outmatched).


Here is my starting army

Kaitar, Scar Veteran with Light Armor, Charmed Shield, Venom of the Firefly Frog (Flag B)
Teyish, Skink Priest, Level Two, Plaque of Tepok, Ruby Ring of Ruin (Flag A)

19 Saurus Warriors, SB and Champion (Flag B)
12 Skink Skirmishers and Brave (Flag A)
12 Cohort Skinks and Brave (Flag E)
12 Cohort Skinks and Brave (Flag F)
12 Cohort Skinks and Brave (Flag G)

9 Chameleon Skinks and Stalker (Flag C)
9 Chameleon Skinks and Stalker (Flag D)

I can theoretically split my army into 9 Flags (I plan to split into 7 Flags). Cohorts E and F, I plan to send east and then use my map teleport ability to fling them into big empty zone in the middle hopefully to demolish some of the unoccupied Chaos Shrines for some easy FPs. If you read the rule set you can see that I risk losing the units (and that’s not counting random events). The payoff for me getting to the center tiles first is great and the cost of the units are relatively small so I’m taking the risk.
Flag G is going to claim some tiles in the south, but I plan to let the other LM players keep the juicier territories to stay on his good side. Once I’ve run out of stuff to take in the south, I can move the G cohort will leave the area with a teleport to join the other two in the center.

Flags A through D are going to claim empty tiles along my northern border. They are going to stick in a tight bunch so I can bring them together into one big Flag if my vampire neighbor decides to make good on his threats. A weakness of this campaign design is that the undead have to have a spell caster in each flag so he’s likely to keep his force in one big Flag. I’m confident that my 800ish points will be able to handle his 1000 point force since he is leaning very heavily on his solitary Terrorgheist and I have three Heavens spells and a fireball to take it down. If I can take the Terrorgheist down quickly I can whittle down the rest of his forces with ranged attacks at my leisure.

If this is confusing, the campaign rules are reposted right here:

https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=7ef2...772CEE9!227&app=Word&authkey=!AJOMu9jjc7JZu7Y


Starting Map

 

Just before our first meeting, diplomacy went well via e-mail.



Teyish and Kaitar were meeting over their map of the area having a circular argument.

“You are being reckless. What’s worse you are being reckless with OTHER First’s lives. We need every available fighter to repel the vampire that is almost certainly coming for us. Even if he wasn’t, you shouldn’t be trying so much teleportation without the guidance of a Slann.”
“It’s a necessary risk, we need to get to the central plains before the other armies do to search for pieces of the Pylon and the Skinks I am sending are—”
“Expendable?”
“I was going to see worker caste members. Their fighting skills are so weak they would contribute little in a fight versus undead. If we used them to fight the undead then we’d truly be treating them as expendable. Better send them out searching for Pylon fragments or demolishing those damnable Chaos shrines where they can do some good. I believe I have calculated where the vampires are going to be and what they are bringing. The forces we have arranged should be able to handle them.”


In a sense we are all here because we are the only ones capable of finding the Pylon fragments that Klodorex could afford to lose. If Merestar was truly confident in his ability to teleport people from Lustria, he would have sent an Oldblood and a Slann, not the youngest Scar Veteran and a middling Skink Priest.


“If your attempt to teleport them doesn’t rip them into pieces, they will probably find themselves over their head out there alone. You might as well launch them eastwards from a giant bow.”


Another Skink entered and bowed respectively.


“Good our emissary has arrived. What news have you?” Teyish asked
“Who did you send this one to? The orcs?” Kaitar asked (Kaitar is almost unique among Sauri for his extensive use of sarcasm).
“No, he went to the other contingent of the First.”


Teyish paused and waited for the emissary to speak.


“The First of the contingent are from the Itza. They have pledged not to interfere with us and they have agreed to our proposed borders. In fact they have offered us MORE land than we asked for.”
“What brings them this far, the Pylon?” Teyish asked.
“No, the Skaven have stolen Kroak’s mask. They have pursued them here”
“What?! We cannot stand for this outrage!” Kaitar interrupted again.
“That is distressing. If the army of Itza requests our help, we shall try to aid them, but only if they ask. What is a small contingent for Itza is the bulk of Klodorex’s forces, it would be presumptuous to assume they need OUR help.”


Besides Merestar and Mazdamundi disagree entirely on how to handle the younger races and I’d prefer to stay out of that disagreement.


“At least we have one border we don’t need to worry about.”


I did not get in a fight with anyone (only two players did), but the stakes in the campaign got very high.


Two GM based random events took affect. The first one was heavy rainfall. Fortresses near rivers or coastlines had to roll to avoid taking flood damage. A handful of fortresses including the other LM player now count as being breached until the player spends a FP to fix the problem. The vampire player near me lost some Zombies from a Flag and the other LM player lost some Sauri from flooding. The only tile I had that was affected was all Skinks they were immune since they were aquatic).


The second event was a new Chaos Shrine to Khorne appearing in the middle of the map.


Then the movement began and I suffered three setbacks.


The Cohort I sent south staked out the empty tiles that the other LM player said he didn’t mind me claiming. One week four of the campaign month they went about demolishing the shrine. On a 2-5 on a d6 the shrine would be destroyed and I get 5 FPs. On a 1 bad things happen. I rolled a 1, so my 12 Skinks turned into 12 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch. They are going to move about randomly attacking territories each turn. Most of the tiles nearby are empty tiles staked out by me or the other LM player. That means they can easily be flipped back to neutral (robbing us of the points). Neither of us have any Flags nearby so we can’t deal with the rogue demons at this time. To make matters worse we have to plan four weeks of moves in advance so if we want to kill the demons we have to GUESS where the demons are going to be.


The two Cohorts I sent east rolled poorly on their teleportation rolls. I didn’t have a mishap so none of them died, but they rolled poor distance so they ended up only claiming about half the tiles I hoped to.


The biggest problem is that I misread the intentions of the VC to my north. I thought he was going to push south because I refused to pay him 1 FP/month in tribute, so I maneuvered my Chameleon Skinks, Saurus Warriors, characters, and Skirmishers to make a circle of territory and then end up on the magic font. Since magic fonts are worth lots of points to both Vampire Counts and Lizardmen, I thought he’d attack there.


I was wrong about the player’s plan. His plan was to just reach the border I asked them to limit themselves to, then with all their combat units facing my border reiterate their demand for tribute. Note, I was so sure the undead were going to attack that my forces loop carried them past the border lightly to claim some tiles.


I thought he would concentrate his forces in one flag so I could safely loop around the areas outside his logical path. I was wrong again, he changed his list form what he normally takes to really load up on vampric things to be able to field three flags. I was so confident that he was going to attack me, I didn’t bother to adhere to my own border so I crossed it briefly. I wasn’t able to hold onto the territory at the end of the month because the Saurus left just before the VC arrived but it still technically counts as me violating the Vampire Counts border so I don’t even have the moral high ground. He was also kidding about having a Terrorgheist so my grand strategy of crippling his attack force by using Heaven spells to down his heavy hitter will not work. His forces are made up of Blood Knights, zombies, low level necromancers with vampires, a Master Necromancer with Death and some Vargheists (unless he’s lying about his army, but as far as I can tell there aren’t a lot of army builds for 1000 that can be split into three flags without what he described).





A lone zombie approached the Lizardmen camp.


“Hold your fire!” Teyish addressed the advanced forces.


The zombie walked up to Teyish and spoke, magically endowed with the ability speak the Lizardmen language (though not particularly eloquently).


“You did not pay tribute. You crossed the border you said you would not cross. You now pay double the tribute” it rasped.


“We aren’t giving your foul master anything” Teyish spoke to the zombie holding the speaking stone so he could be understood.”
“Then leave the font for us and we leave you alone”
“No, it’s ours”
“Then we take the font and everything else and you serve us in death”


The zombie hissed and then splintered apart. The magic allowing it to talk expended its weak frame.


A third of the roving Skinks were dead and now there were demons on their southern border. Kaitar was right, his plan was too risky and the vampires could not be trusted. Teyish’s gambits had mostly failed.


“Kaitar, I am relinquishing full command to you”


So a showdown with me and the Vampire Counts is imminent. I decided I can’t help myself versus a player better than I am by feeding him victory points, so I will not yield anything willingly. I have a wide variety of options available for me to defy the Vampires.


The Vampires expanded well south, I’m sure you’d like to know what the other players have done…


The other LM player kept his entire army concentrated in one Flag. He lost some Sauri to the aforementioned flooding, and he picked up few territories, but they include a magic font and a mine, so his territories are very productive.


The Wood Elf player also chose not to field more than one Flag. He claimed three territories and demolished a Nurgle Shrine for some bonus FPs.


The other vampire player also kept his forces concentrated, he grabbed four territories moving eastward.


The two Empire players expanded slightly (one of the players could not make it so he e-mailed his movement plan to the GM who moved his pieces for him). The Ogre player moved into a tile the absentee player just took. This is a stroke of good fortune for me since I eventually want to take out that players fortress for 25 FPs so this is probably a good thing that’s happening. I’m pretty sure someone promised to pay him FP for attacking that player. I don’t know why. It will probably help my long-term plans to find out.


The Dwarf player and Skaven player had only one Flag each and took three and four tiles respectively. Once Chaos Dwarf player took four tiles, the other one six. The more distant WoC did not show up, did not e-mail his moves, and did not produce an excuse so his soldiers didn’t expand at all though he still allowed to keep playing if he shows up next week.


The Warrior of Chaos in the center north made a huge number of Flags by taking lots of minimum sized Marauders. He also took several cheap characters so he could benefit from any of the five types of Chaos shrines, he took three of them. He has the largest realm in terms of both tiles and productivity. I think with huge point lead he’s got, he’s all but assured to win the campaign unless several armies gang up on him. I can’t help, I’m am too far away and I have to deal with threats on both my northern and southern borders.



This was not a total debacle. I expanded my territory a lot and I got a proportionally high number of high value tiles. If you overlooked my bad strategic position I’m technically in second place in terms of FP.

Warriors of Chaos 43
Lizardmen (me) 31
Vampire Counts (grudge enemy) 26
Chaos Dwarfs 26
Lizardmen (ally) 21
Skaven 19
Empire 17
Vampire Counts 15
Chaos Dwarfs 14
Dwarfs 11
Wood Elves 11
Ogres 10+ (depending on the outcome of the battle)
Empire (game objective enemy) 10+ (depending on the outcome of the battle)
Warriors of Chaos 8


The next meeting is in two weeks. I’ll post another update when the battle between the Ogres and Empire is decided and when I figure out a plan. I have to plan all four of my map moves in sequence without knowing what any of the other player’s map moves will be.


My existing units defending the font are everything in my army except the Skink Cohorts.


There are a lot of variations in how I would implement these strategies but it really comes down to the following (since knuckling under is not an option).


Strategy A: Reinforce what I have present. I can boost my Chamo Skinks to 10 each, Skirmishers to 20 (and give them javelins and shields), and boost my Saurus block to n+1 where n is an unreasonable number. The pro of this is that it is relatively cheap and easy. The con is that it has the lowest chance of success.


Strategy B: I build a 3000 point army in my main fortress and march them up the magic font. The existing force either does a fighting retreat, pushes sideways north as a distraction or does a cowardly but practical loop to retreat and then rejoin the 3000 point force when it arrives. The pro here I can beat the crap out of the undead forces they face. The con is that after the vampires take the magic font they are going to keep pushing south and probably split up so doing this would likely save the font but cost me much of the rest of my territory.


Strategy C: I spend 5 FC (500 points) build a guard tower on the magic font to let me make any defensive battle there a watchtower scenario (only I get to put all my troops there in or near the tower). This would also let me bring up to 2600 directly into the tile rather than moving them from my main base. The downside of this strategy is that if I build a fort here and lose the tile anyway, then the undead get a free fort which will let them reinforce the position next campaign turn and pretty much take me out of the game.


There are two options I could do concurrently with my main strategies.


Option 1: Whatever defensive strategy I use, I could sneak a small flag north into vampire territory to steal some of his FPs for next turn (since this grudge match like continue for several campaign months). Doing so helps me long term but dilutes my defenses short-term.


Option 2: I could build a flag in my Fortress and go hunting after the loose Pink Horrors and/or level the annoying Shrine. I kind of owe it to the other LM player to take out this threat because I brought it on him. Once the demon problem is taken care of, they can join my explorers in the center of the map. On the other hand, anything I send after the Tzeentch annoyance is something I’m not sending against the vampires, and is a chance the horrors will veer off and not directly threaten me or my LM friend.

 

Haha, uh oh. Seems as though your diplomacy tactics are becoming your own enemy. Maybe it's because you don't have a Slann to lead them.

Good read as usual! Looking forward to the rest.





Also, it looks like a spy has been dispatched to report on your troop movements...

 

I was going to wait till after the map moves to make an update but I can’t resist the urge to refute Qupakoco.

One again Kaitar looked apprehensively as the emissary’s Terradon landed again, not sure who he was sent to this time. The emissary looked very pleased.


“Did the Dwarfs accept our proposal to attack the vampire’s northern holdings in exchange for the gold we’ve recovered?”
“Nope” the emissary replied.
“Then why are you so happy about it.” Kaitar asked.
“The undead are holding a mine that the Dwarfs want. They plan to attack for nothing.”

Nope, angrypearl is the GM, not another player. If he was reporting on my movements to the other players he’s got better sources of information than this blog. Not that he’d ever favoritism to any player like that. He is as wise and unbiased as he is handsome.


I have a charity event this weekend so I have to sit out of the next session and the GM is going to make my map moves for me that I’ve written down for him, so he might as well read my fluff too and reasoning too.


Working Towards a Grand Strategy


Nearly every available member of the Klodorex expedition was furiously working on the foundation of the new tower. Kaitar and his spawning brothers were warriors born, but they had spent most of their lives working on construction projects, so manual labor was not a big stretch for them. The bulk of the Skinks preferred labor over fighting and had no issues with their rush construction assignment. The worker caste Skinks were helped somewhat reluctantly by the Sotek caste Skinks and even more unusually the Chameleon Skinks (Kaitar gives them less leeway than most First leaders). Teyish aligned the recently collected fragments of the Pylon of Phyra and concentrated on providing an anchor for the mighty Slann Desserex to find his way to their location.


Once Desserex was safely across, he took over the task of managing the Pylon fragments over from Teyish and quickly summoned more workers and soldiers before the lunar alignment ended and the opportunity to send in more troops from Lustria was closed off for another month. With the increased manpower (and the fact that Sauri and Skinks alike work faster when a Slann is nearby), the tower was finished shortly thereafter. The First of Klodorex are ready for whatever the undead were planning to throw at them.


Army at the End of Campaign Month One 932 points
Kaitar, Scar Vet, Light Armor, Charmed Shield, Venom of the Firefly Frog
Teyish, Skink Priest, L2, Ruby Ring or Ruin, Plaque of Tepok
19 Saurus Warriors, SB and Champion
12 Skink Skirmishers with Brave
12 Cohort Skinks with Brave
12 Cohort Skinks with Brave
9 Chameleon Skinks with Stalker
9 Chameleon Skinks with Stalker


The Vampire Counts player wants my magic font. The tile is worth 8 FPs to whichever of us controls it at the end of the campaign month. That’s eight times an ordinary tile. My strategy is to fortify the crap out of it. Basic reinforcements can only improve the existing size of units. To build brand new units, you need a Fort or Fortress. I decided to build a Fort on my magic font.

5 FP goes towards a Fort, 26 FP goes to buy 2600 points reinforcements

932 points + (26 FP * 100 points/FP) = 3532 points

Army at the Start of Month 2 3532 points
Desserex, Slann Mage Priest, Cupped Hands of the Old Ones, Obsidian Lodestone, 4 Disciplines: Focused Rumination, Focus of Mystery, Becalming Cognition, Transcendent Healing (house ruled to not be worthless), BSB, Standard of Discipline

Kaitar, Scar Veteran, Light Armor, Armor of Fortune, Great Weapon, Venom of the Firefly Frog, Cold On
Teyish, Skink Priest, Level 2, Ruby Ring or Ruin, Plaque of Tepok
Jirtallis, Skink Chief, Charmed Shield (transferred from Kaitar), Venom of the Firefly Frog (I can have multiple copies of a single magical item as long as they aren’t used on the same tile), light armor, blowpipe, BSB (ditto for BSBs)
Yarshen, Skink Priest, Ancient Stegadon with Engine of the Gods, Talisman of Preservation
Kaitar’s Spawning, 33 Saurus Warriors, FC
Jade Spawning, 30 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer
20 Skink Skirmishers with javelins and shields and Brave
15 Skink Skirmishers with javelins and shields
15 Skinks Skirmishers with javelins and shields
56 Cohort Skinks with Musician
15 Cohort Skinks with Brave
15 Cohort Skinks with Brave

10 Chameleon Skinks with Stalker
10 Chameleon Skinks with Stalker

2 Salamander Hunting Packs 2 extra handlers
2 Salamander Hunting Packs 2 extra handlers

Desserex’s Army 1905 points
Desserex
Yarshen and the EOTG
Jade Spawning, 30 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer
56 Cohort Skinks with Musician
10 Chameleon Skinks and Stalker
2 Salamander Hunting Packs 2 extra handlers

Kaitar’s Army 1020 points
Kaitar
Teyish
Jade Spawning, 33 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer
20 Skink Skirmishers with javelins and shields and Brave
10 Chameleon Skinks and Stalker
2 Salamander Hunting Packs 2 extra handlers

Jirtallis Task Force 345 points
Jirtallis
2 x 15 Skink Skirmishers with javelins and shields

Civilian Teams 1 & 2 162 points
2 x 15 Cohort Skinks with Champion


Desserex’s Garrison is going to guard my precious magic font all four turns. Since I built a fort I get a modified Watchtower scenario. There is no restriction on what units I can put in the tower and I get a fenced in area around the tower to put the rest of my army. Because it’s a magic font, the tile has a magical mystery on it. I have to decide where to put the magical mystery BEFORE finding out what it is. I’m thinking six inches from the tower, three inches from the fence will let me benefit from the nicer magical mysteries and force the enemy to charge through the bad parts of magical mystery and hurt them slightly more than it hurts me. (the latter assumption is a gamble but that’s the Chaos Wastes).


Kaitar’s strike force is going to move east then north (hopefully) stealing a swath of territory from the undead.


Jirtallis’ little force is going to move to the shrine I failed to destroy last turn and hopefully destroy it ideally catching up with the loose Pink Horrors on the way and removing the minor (but sporadic and randomly moving threat) from my southern border.


After the mishap last campaign month, I’m not going to use lone units to try to demolish Chaos Shrines. My two civilian teams are just going to go on a naked land grab as long as they are in the center of the board and have no enemies near them.


Each player knows where the other players are now but we each have to assign four moves ahead of time which our Flags can’t deviate from. That means in order to make the most of our moves we have to make an educated guess on what the other players are going to do.


I’m thinking the most likely thing the vampire player will do is converge all three of his forces along my border against my magic font on the first move with a forced march. If that’s the case he will find nearly my entire army waiting for him. With a solid points advantage, superior positioning, a defensive building my main concern is that the undead will flee before I can finish killing them.


I’m thinking the second most likely thing he is going to do is send his armies around my border to hit the Fort from three sides. If that’s the case Kaitar’s strike force will end up engaging one of three flags and the other two thirds of the undead will attack Desserex’s garrison (after Kaitar and Jirtallis have left). His main anti-Slann protocol is a Level 4 Death Necromancer. My three tiered defense is Becalming Cognition, Concurrent Regeneration and Ward Saves (house rule), and a MR bestowing amulet. I’m giving my Slann Metal for now to counter his Blood Knights. If the Blood Knights end up fighting Kaitar’s force, it will be a hard fight, but I’m counting on static CR plus Teyish’s lightning spells to swing it my favor. It will hurt me emotionally if Kaitar gets beaten, but it won’t break my campaign (the odds of losing a character for good when a hero is “slain” is quite low).


If he was bluffing about the magic font and goes around it seeking quantity over quality, he will take several of my tiles, but Kaitar’s force will probably take nearly as many tiles with his own offensive. Worst case scenario, Kaitar’s force accidentally ends up fighting all the undead and has to flee. Best case scenario, Kaitar takes out part of his force moving around the Fort and still manages to steal territory on his offensive.


If he throws me a curve ball and does something unexpected, I don’t know what will happen but I will still have my magic font and thus have an edge in FP against him. I’m confident that a Slann in a very large unit of Skinks in a tower backed by an Engine of the Gods will take the undead to school. It would take an army of double the garrison’s point value to get me concerned though if I lose the magic font, I not only swing 900 points to the VC army next turn, but I’ve given him a staging point to put reinforcements within walking distance of my main fortress.


I also have an ace in the hole. I was going to bribe the Dwarf player up north to move south against the Vampires. He told me that was unnecessary because he was already planning to take the Vampire’s relatively unguarded mine (mines are naturally worth lots of bonus points for Dwarfs). He was naturally delighted to know I was attacking from the other side making it harder for the undead to retaliate against him. That’s a pincer from both sides. Unless the undead somehow capture my new fort, they will be really hurting for FPs next month 3 and I should be able to chase him behind his fortress walls in Month 3. Is two against one a little unfair? Maybe, but he dared to demand me to pay him tribute. He was also foolish enough to dangle a juicy mine in front of the newbie Dwarf player who now has nowhere else to go thanks to the massive expansion of the WoC player.


Once the vampires are contained or beaten into submission, I can turn my attention to the Warriors of Chaos who are steadily enveloping the center of the board. If I’m lucky his strong position will attract enemies (like when someone takes Asia during Risk) and he will have his own problems. If I’m not lucky, I at least pledged solidarity with the Dwarf player. Working together we should be able to keep Chaos from encroaching west into our territories. If we got a third alliance member, I think we could push them back.


My game objective enemy is still on the other side of the board. I’ll worry about that when the Forces of Destruction aren’t encroaching on me.


Will the Forces of Destruction encroach?

Will Kaitar’s bold stratagem succeed?

Will Scalenex get future opportunities to refute Qupakoco?

Will there ever be an actual battle report on this thread?

Find out next time: Same Lizard Time, Same Lizard Channel!

 

Holy outdated cultural references Lizardman! An update with an actual battle report!


Campaign Month Two, Weeks 1 and 2



Desserex sensed a disturbance up north. The dwarves were dying quickly. It seemed they were fighting more than an expeditionary force. They did not dserve their fates but there was nothing Desserex could do from here.


If the main undead force is north, what are the undead movements I sense near the tower?


It looks like we aren’t going to do a full campaign month every meeting any more (but we probably have to plan our marching orders by the month because most of the players have found themselves engaged with someone else (or are about to). Here’s the update for the first two weeks of campaign month two.


Loose End, Tied Up


First, wrapping up last month. There was one battle fought last month. It was between the Empire and the Ogres. The Ogres won but inflicted very few unrecovered casualties. The Empire player nevertheless cried uncle and offered to bribe the Ogre player to switch sides and attack the player who paid him initially to attack him. Either the Ogre player is doing great because he seems to have all of his neighbors vying for his favor or he is doing poorly because all he’s collected so far are IOUs. Since I am considering eventually hiring the Ogres myself in the distant future I need to see how effective, trustworthy, and expensive they turn out to be.


Month 2 Begins


Everyone has their army builds and marching orders. The Skaven player and the winning WoC each built a fortress on a Glade that happens to be adjacent to other resource tiles. It makes sense for the WoC to do so, not only is he defending resources but his second fortress is very far from his first giving him a good position to send reinforcements to. The Skaven’s fortress seems a little wasteful. The rats aren’t exactly swimming in FPs at the moment and the second fortress is so close their first one it seems a little redundant. I figured a fort would be a better idea, but that’s just my opinion. I built a fort on my magic font to send reinforcements there and fend off the undead since the Vampire Count player made no secret he wanted it (and both Lizardmen and Vampire Counts get an even larger bonus for controlling magic fonts than the other armies).


First the random monthly events. A new Glade showed up right next to my territory in the south center. That would be cause for much celebrating but it showed up in the opposite direction my expeditionary forces were ordered to march, so I’ll have to take it later assuming the other LM player doesn’t make a grab for it before I can get there.


An otherwise unremarkable tile next to the southern vampire count’s forces has been afflicted with a Storm of Magic. Basically any battles in that tile are automatically Storm of Magic battles but I don’t think anyone was going for the tile let alone contesting it.


A tribe of river trolls showed up in the south now will start moving randomly attacking things and de-claiming player territories. It announced itself by stealing a Wood Elf tile. It’s equally likely to go towards the other LM player, deeper into WE territory or north into unclaimed territories (in that case it would be heading towards my peripheral holdings in the center section of the map).


The three Flags on my border converged before assaulting my magic font (as I predicted). They took a different route than I expected so Kaitar’s strike force was not able to cut off one of his flags. I was confident Desserex’s garrison can handle a force larger than itself if necessary. I also get a lovely consolation prize of Kaitar’s Flag having a clear run to take several empty tiles claimed by the vampires.


I was right on where the undead were moving. I was wrong about how the undead were moving, I was also wrong as to what the undead were splitting their forces. I thought his main force was attacking me and his smaller force was fighting off the Dwarfs trying to steal his mine. I had it backwards. Before my battle I got to witness him savagely pummeling my ally. The dwarves were slightly outnumbered and also was a newbie facing an expert player who does not pull his punches.


The Dwarf player managed to recover or flee about 40% of his total army. The vampires recovered almost all of the losses he suffered (except the dire wolves which were almost wiped out), the undead reclaimed the lost mine and won a bunch of experience points and FPs. It was up to me to avenge my ally’s losses.


My First Campaign Battle Report


Defenders
Desserex, Slann Mage Priest, Cupped Hands of the Old Ones, Obsidian Lodestone, 4 Disciplines: Focused Rumination, Focus of Mystery, Becalming Cognition, Transcendent Healing (house ruled to not be worthless), BSB, Standard of Discipline
Yarshen, Skink Priest, Ancient Stegadon with Engine of the Gods, Talisman of Preservation
Jade Spawning, 30 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer
56 Cohort Skinks with Musician
10 Chameleon Skinks and Stalker
2 Salamander Hunting Packs 2 extra handlers

Opposition
Vampire Lord, L1 Lore of Vampires caster with Invocation of Nehek, zero magical items, no vampiric powers that I was aware of, and assorted mundane equipment
Necromancer, L2 Death caster with Purple Sun and Fate of Bjuna

Two large units of zombies (one with both characters)
2 x 5 dire wolves

6 Crypt Horrors
5 Hex Wraiths

5 Blood Knights

The tile had a magical font on it which in campaign rules meant that a magical mystery would be rolled. Since I was the owner of the fort I could decide where they mystic feature was in relation to my watchtower but I had to place it BEFORE rolling to see what it was. I lost the scout roll so my opponent got to pick his deployment side. I therefore chose to put the Watchtower in the center (where it usually goes) as opposed to towards a specific table edge (because then we’d be sharing a deployment zone if he claimed that side and I get headaches just thinking about it.


I put the magical mystery three inches in front of the tower. I figured if I rolled something good the Slann could use it. If I rolled something bad, it would speed bump attackers (it turned out to be a Sinister Statue and it did speed bump the attacker). Instead of putting barriers around the tower, I made two walled in enclosures off either side. I figured nothing he had could dislodge 56 Skinks and a Slann so I WANTED him to charge the tower.


Deployment, I stuck my 56 Skinks and Desserex in the tower. To their left, I put Yarshen and his EOTG. To the tower’s right I put the Jade spawning, they deployed seven wide because I had to fit them entirely within the enclosure in order to be able not put them on my table edge (next time I am defending a fort I need to not be afraid to have the barrier stick out in front of the tower and premeasure it to fit whatever Sauri I’m planning to use). There was not enough room to put the Salamanders either walled enclosure so they were in my regular deployment zone (aka my table edge).


My opponent didn’t want to risk his heavy hitters near the Sinister Statue so his Crypt Ghouls and blood Knights pointed at my Saurus while the zombies arrayed themselves on the other side. The center most zombie block had both his characters opposite Yarshen. The Hexwraiths were towards the left of them facing my Salamanders. The Dire Wolves took to the right most side. I plopped my Chameleon Skinks in front of them and he used his vanguard move to march towards the Chameleon Skinks. The Hexwraiths headed towards my Salamanders with their Vanguard move.


Despite all the numerous campaign modifications, this was still technically a watchtower scenario so the attackers got first turn.


Vampire Counts Turn One


The Sinister Statue attacked my Skinks and killed two of them. Then it attacked the Jade Spawning but failed to inflict a wound.

The Blood Knights and Crypt Ghouls charged my Saurus, losing a knight to a dangerous terrain test assaulting the barrier. The zombies advanced. The dire wolves could not charge post-Vanguard so they walked within an inch of my Chameleon Skinks. The Hex Wraiths rode through my Salamanders inflicting two wounds on one of them.

Fate of Bjuna managed one wound past my Slann’s 2+ Ward Save 4+ Regeneration (campaign house rule that both saves can be used concurrently). I dispelled the rest of what he tried to cast.

Close Combat saw the Sauri inflict a wound or two on the Crypt Ghouls, lose about a rank of members and hold due to being steadfast and near the Slann.


Lizardmen Turn One


The Sinister Statue killed three Saurus, a few zombies and wounded a Crypt Ghoul.

Yarshen charged the nearest zombie block with the characters. The Chameleon Skinks looped around the dire wolves. The Salamanders failed their march test and did not move as far from the Hex Wraiths nor as close to the zombies as I would have preferred.

Yarshen used the Engine of the Gods to put a wound or two on the Crypt Ghouls and take out several zombies. With the Blood Knights engaged, I couldn’t zap them with magic missiles. I recognized the Sauri were in over their heads and tried casting Enchanted Blades of Aiban on them, but it was dispelled. I cast Transmutation of Lead on the engaged zombies to take them down to WS0. I then cast Final Transmuation on the unengaged zombies and took out several of them out, I got IF force off. I used Cupped Hands to pass the miscast on to the vampire who lost a wound and several zombies due to Calamitous Detonation.

I gambled that the Salamanders would roll a good distance and the gamble paid off. Between the Salamanders and tower Skinks shooting, I killed about a dozen zombies on the unengaged block. I forgot to shoot at the dire wolves with my Chameleon Skinks (Mahrlect!*).

I am not used to fielding Stegadons and I forgot to roll for impact hits. I was just so excited that I was to savage WS 0 troops (they would be hit automatically and unable to strike back). My opponent cleverly prevented me from doing so by challenging Yarshen with the vampire lord but this cost the undead dearly. Between the Howdah armor save and the Talisman’s Ward Save, Yarshen was unscathed and the Stegadon put an unsaved wound on the vampire lord.

The Saurus inflicted a few wounds but they lost combat and just barely lost steadfast. They broke and were run down by the Crypt Ghouls. The Blood Knights failed their restraint and NEARLY lost another model crossing the wall.


Vampire Counts Turn Two


The Sinister Statue killed a few zombies and put a wound on Yarshen’s Stegadon.

The engaged zombies charged Yarshen’s flank. The dire wolves charged my Chameleon Skinks who held (I accidentally left a tiny corner in their charge arc, (Marhlect!). The Hex Wraiths ran through the Salamanders again but whiffed their damage rolls. The Crypt Ghouls and Blood Knights positioned towards the tower and away from the Sinister Statue.

With both casters engaged, the only spell my opponent could try was Invocation of Nehek and between Becalming Cognition and my dispel dice, it failed miserably.

There was nothing to shoot.

The Chameleon Skinks killed a wolf then lost four members, broke and successful ran away (towards my watchtower and the backs of the Blood Knights). The new zombies couldn’t fight in the battle since Yarshen and the vampire lord were still fighting a challenge (though they provided CR for flanking and charging). I put another wound on the vampire lord killing it. I lost combat due to all the modifiers but Yarshen was Stubborn and near the Slann, so this mattered not. The first zombie unit passed the crumble check, the second lost a small amount of models. The Hex Wraiths passed their test, the Crypt Ghouls lost a model, and both Dire Wolves units were wiped out entirely.


Lizardmen Turn Two


The Sinister Statue didn’t attack anyone this turn except Yarshen who was far too tough for it to wound.

The Salamanders charged the flank of the zombies flanking Yarshen. The Chameleon Skinks rallied (they had no enemies at their back so they kept their facing at back of the Blood Knights.

Yarshen zapped several zombies off both groups with the Engine. Searing Doom on the Blood Knights was dispelled. I got Gehenna’s Golden Hounds off with IF and obliterated the Knight’s unit champion. I rolled Magical Feedback. Desserex took a wound, but Yarshen made his save. That ate the rest of my few power dice.

The Skinks in the tower wiped out the last remnants of the Crypt Ghouls with a spectacular number of poisoned hits (I think I average 40% poison this game with them!).

The Salamanders killed the zombies they were flanking. Yarshen and his mount killed many more zombies. The combined CR took out the rest of the other zombie blocks with Crumble and the resulting Crumble took out the Necromancer as well.

My opponent conceded to save his Hex Wraiths and last Blood Knight.


Campaign Recovery Phase


Both the Vampire Count characters rolled full recoveries. Mahrlect!* The Crypt Ghouls made a full recovery (not surprising since Regenerating with T5 recover quite easily). He got about a fifth of his zombies back but both of his zombies are below legal size and have to go back to his main base until next month’s build phase. The Blood Knights recovered MOST of their members, I don’t remember if they were pushed below legal size or not.

My recovery rolls were not as successful. My two dead Skinks remained dead. I got back seven of my thirty lost Sauri. Now below legal size they are grounded at the nearest base (but they were already in the nearest base, so no biggie). I got back one of the four Chameleon Skinks the wolves killed. My Stegadon and Salamander made full recoveries.


Experience and Loot


(units gets exp for surviving battles, characters don’t)


-Skinks survived a battle and wiped out the Crypt Ghouls (2 exp),
-Saurus got no exp because they didn’t kill anything and technically didn’t survive the battle and would have gone into negatives (if 0 were not the floor) for losing their standard and being taken out (0 exp)
-Chameleon Skinks survived a battle (1 exp)
-Slann served as general, wiped out a unit (technically part of the Skink’s unit), cast a spell, survived a miscast (4 exp)
-Yarshen broke a unit, destroyed a unit, captured a banner, killed a hero, and killed a lord in a challenge (6 exp)
-Salamanders survived a battle, broke and destroyed a unit, captured a banner (4 exp)

-The Hexwraiths survived (1 exp).
-The Blood Knights survived and broke the Sauri (2 exp)
-The Crypt Ghouls broke and destroyed the Sauri, then were shot to death (net 0 exp)
-The zombies and characters got no experience

FP (7 total)
1 for winning against a smaller army
2 for defeating a hero (the Necromancer)
1 for defeating a unit champion (the Blood Knight Castellan)
3 for defeating a Lord (the vampire Lord)


I technically won pasting his army and defending my 9 FP tile, but with all the points the VCs got versus the dwarves (at least 11 FP) we pretty much drew this week.


What Everyone Else was doing


Moving along clockwise, My dwarf friend clashed with the vampire player’s northern forces. He took the undefended mine tile from him week one. Week two the vampire counts main army marched in and retook it, brutally.


It seems the Warriors of Chaos have continued their expansion unhindered. With their new fortress to the south providing an advanced point where reinforcements can arrive, he has increased his lead on the other players even more


The Skaven player expanded a bit with a single Flag. A second Flag has tunneled into the middle of the Warrior of Chaos holdings. I do not know if his plan is to attack the Warrior of Chaos’ soft underbelly or if they are heading to attack my new Dwarf friend in the northeast corner. I’m going to assume the latter until proven otherwise.


The other Warriors of Chaos player who missed last campaign month finally began his expansion and promptly got in an accidental scuffle with the nearest Chaos Dwarf player as both moved into the same empty tile. The Chaos Dwarfs explained to the primitive humans that they provide them with their weapons and armor and aren’t about to be beaten by their own creations. I was told the Chaos Dwarfs won quite handily.


The other Chaos Dwarf player expanded unhindered. His large yellow and black blob shows he’s inching up the pack in terms of territory and FPs. Between the Chaos Dwarfs expansion and the fact that my forces are poised to take many tiles away from the vampires, these Chaos Dwarfs are probably going to slide into third place uncontested.


The two Empire players have expanded a bit. The Ogres have been bribed to switch from attacking my secret enemy to attacking the other Empire player. I am still waiting on the news for how the battle turns out. This battle is being delayed due to one of the players being sick.


The southern vampire player has expanded unhindered.


The Wood Elves expanded a bit, but the River trolls halved the player’s net gain so far. His marching orders seem to be to move his one mega-Flag east (MAYBE attacking the southern vampires, I don’t know enough to make an educated guess) and now he has not one but two set sets of water loving invaders to worry about.


The other Lizardmen player decided not to wait for my anti-demon task force to arrive and managed to jump the Pink Horrors before they could move from their tile with his first army. They played out the battle and crushed the demons quite easily. Then he used his second campaign move to demolish the Chaos shrine that spawned them. I’d prefer I’d get the FPs for taking out the demons and the shrine, but I’m glad he’s removing the threat quickly before the demons can tear into either of our borders. Sadly Jirtallis still has to carry out his marching orders to go to the tile anyway. No real harm done because his Flag is pretty small and does not represent a significant dilution of my forces. The other LM player used the bulk of his FPs to raise another army up a new offensive Flag which he teleported east. After landing just west of the Wood Elf realm, the Flag attempted to invade and failed a movement roll for dangerous terrain and got stuck in the mountains, right next to the Game Master controlled river trolls.


The odds are pretty good that the next two campaign weeks will see the Wood Elf realm turn into a powder keg. Not only are the LM and trolls encroaching on the western border but the undead and Wood Elves seem likely to clash on the eastern border. The Skaven seem poised to come into conflict with the bigger WoC realm in two places (unless they are attacking my Dwarf friend in which case he is really screwed). The smaller WoC and Chaos Dwarf realm seemed poised to accidentally bump into each other once again along the eastern board if their Flags target the tiles I think they will.


Fortunately, no one seems poised to mess with me the latter half this campaign month. Unfortunately no one seems to poised to mess with me this campaign month. It’s just my luck that the quietest period of the campaign for me lines up with when I have a week off from school.


With the vampire incursion defeated and all my Flags having preset marching orders for two campaign weeks. I have no decisions to make at the moment until the other players roll out their battles for week three and four of month two. I don’t know how long this will take in real time, but I’m guessing I’ll have two to three weeks to ponder my next move. By my estimation I will have a solid second place standing well head of the third place player and well behind the first place player. I should have over 50 FPs to spend. That will be over 8,000 points of troops to play with one. Sadly I can’t have more than 2500 fight on any one tile unless it’s a siege battle.


Looking Ahead


There are three things I must do, the question is when and how to do them.
1) Continue my fight against the undead. I have a points advantage right now and I need to keep pressing it because he is a better tactician than me and very competitive, so I can’t give him an inch.
a. I can try to lay siege to his home base
b. I can try to sweep his exterior territories and force him to turtle in his main base
c. I can send a Flag or two to take down his northern army since I now know what’s in it. It’s very similar to his favorite tourney list. Big block of skeletons with the front rank made up of a blender vampire lord and Cairn wraiths and a buried Invocation of Nehek Necromancer in the back. Two blocks of zombies, two units of dire wolves, a Terrorgheist (probably going to be two after his next build phase), six Crypt Ghouls, five Hexwraiths (in place of the Vargheists in his pre-campaign tourney list), and a Death Master Necromancer to assassinate enemy characters.
2) I have to roadblock the Warriors of Chaos to keep them from sweeping the board, this ties into number three if they push south far enough.
a. I can ignore the WoC for one more turn so I can put all my manpower on the vampires
b. I can attack his expeditionary Flags on the border of his Empire to halt his expansion
c. I can use the LM teleport ability to deep drop into the middle of his territory to try to claim and then demolish his Chaos Shrines (which are worth 5 FPs to him per month each).
d. I can try to talk someone into helping me fight the WoC. My diplomacy track record is not the greatest and while I have far fewer FP than the WoC, I have far more FP than all the other players so it will be tough to make a “hang together or hang separately” schtick sound good.
3) I need to build some forts and/or send reinforcements to my central holdings. They make up half of my FP generating tiles and are defended by about a tenth of my total army.
a. I can build a fort now in which case I’m stuck with a fort where I don’t really want it
b. I can build a fort once I take the mine on the river which would be a very strategic location but I risk losing the area to someone else in the interim if I don’t get reinforcements there soon.
c. No one has moved near this region but me, if I gamble that my good fortune lasts and am correct, I can save the army points for my contested border and continue claiming empty tiles.

There are two things I’d like to do but probably can’t afford to do so now.
1) I can send some FPs on a caravan to help my weary and beaten dwarven allies, though if I lose the caravan to a vampire attack it’s disastrous.
2) I can send some FPs on a caravan to pay the Ogres to do my bidding either against the Warriors of Chaos or against my game objective enemy or perhaps pay them in advance for a callable favor (with all the IOUs he’s taken he’d probably be appreciative of being paid in advanced). The odds of that hypothetical caravan being intercepted are low (since that portion of the board is currently uncontested) but the ogres are not the most trustworthy realm on the board, so the risks are different entirely.

Anyway, at the moment my sections of the board are enemy-less and there is a lot of violence ensuing on the rest of the map so it’s going to be a lot of hurry up and wait, so there won’t be a lot for me to do. The Empire players are having a nice civil war with the Ogres being used as enormous pawns. The Chaos Dwarfs and smaller WoC player are poised to bump into each other a second time, and the Wood Elves home realm is likely to turn into a powder keg.


I’ll post what my campaign month 3 plans are once I have them (and once the map is updated). Feel free to add your comments, advice and questions. I’m not going to have much to do over Spring Break besides assemble models.

 

I was delaying my last update until we the GM updated the map, decided to post it anyway sans map. Hours later the map is updated. Go figure.



For those keeping score, I’m blue with green stripes in the southwest corner with two segments with a lake in between (hah! Aquatic units can cross water map tiles suckahs!)

Clockwise from me, my vampire foes, my dwarven ally, the Warriors of Chaos player in first place, Skaven, the Warriors of Chaos player in last place, Chaos Dwarves, more Chaos Dwarves, the purple blob not on the edge is the Ogres. The green blob bordering them is my game objective Empire foe. Continuing clockwise is the other Empire player, then the other Vampire Counts player, then the Wood Elves, then the other Lizardmen player.

Numbers represent flags. Until our Flags meet there is no way to tell if a Flag is 10 Marauders or a 2500 point WoC army. The colorless Flag between the other LM realm and the Wood Elves are the GM controlled trolls. The crossed swords represent battles I mentioned.

It seems I still have some breathing room against the WoC and it would be difficult for me to get my Flags in their way so I’m probably going to hold off on road blocking them for the moment. I really hope the Skaven will throw the first blow since he is the only player with Flags bordering (or in) the Warriors of Chaos realm. It also looks like I can continue expanding in the south center with relative impunity. Month 4 will almost certainly see me clash with the Warriors of Chaos as we both run out of empty tiles to expand into. BRING IT!

 

Man, you stomped those vamps. Too bad about the Saurus though.

Interesting choices you have. The Ogres seem fairly stretched thin at the moment, so I think that sending him some aide would be most beneficial. Who knows, maybe the two Empire players are toying with him to weaken his forces so they can both take him out of the picture.

 

My last Spring Break ever before I am done with school (my second spell in school), and what did I do with it? Why prepare Lustria.online posts and glue Sauri together!

The first rule of warfare is “Get there first with more.” That battle was never in doubt. If things go according to plan, on one front I’ll get there second with more and on the other front I’ll get their first with less. Those conflicts have me worried.


Month Two Draws to a Close


The last two weeks of this campaign month were filled with minor setbacks. This month I stole five tiles from the vampires. The battle worn remnants of the undead Flag that tried to attack my magic font did not flee back to his main base but instead pushed south into my realm stealing one of my tiles. On the whole this is a good trade for me and I should be willing to take a 5:1 trade multiple times. The real setback is not the 1 FP he stole from me but the liability he represents next month. If I leave that Flag be, it’s likely to take four more of my tiles (including a Mine). If I chase after it, I have to redirect troops away from my primary objectives. If I send troops after the Flag and fail to predict where they are going, I’m out both the opportunity cost of the wasted troop movements and the tiles the undead steal.


To add insult to injury, his main army Flag pushed north and stole some tiles from my Dwarf friend. A periphery Flag performed a Tireless March to really book it East arrived at a magic font on the edge of the Warrior of Chaos territory the same time a WoC flag game in, and the WoC withdrew! The most powerful player in the game ceded an 8 point territory! Perhaps this will convince the collective group to fight him. The WoC have lots of Flags but they are generally small and weeny, that’s why he withdrew. That’s the story I’m telling my Skinks on the ground. If they think the vampires are allying with the strongest player on the board, I’m sure they’ll mutiny on me.


Random events hurt me more than the enemy. The Vampire Counts took 100 points worth of my territory. My general area of the map flooded and I lost about 400 points of troops. Serves me right for smirking about all the other players taking flood damage in month one. Also I mislabeled one of my map movements so one of my expeditionary Flags is noticeably farther west than I prefer. My fault, opportunity cost 1 FP now, 1 FP next month.


What are the other players doing? Lets go counter clockwise this time.


My Lizardmen ally poached a few tiles from the Wood Elf. I think the reason for his unprovoked attack is to bait the WEs to try to block his progress with an army. By campaign rules, LM get the opportunity for serious bonus FPs whenever they fight versus a defending army as the aggressor (recovering sacred artifacts, or in my case pieces of the Pylon of Phyra).


The loose trolls continued randomly moving and blundered into the Wood Elf Fortress. That’s a good break for the Wood Elf player. I highly doubt there are enough trolls to threaten his main, so it’s basically giving him free battle FPs as the dumbass trolls splatter themselves against his walls (while fighting in the shade naturally). That’ll make up for the FPs he’s missing out from the hardline Itza Lizardmen stealing his tiles.


Random movements continue. The Storm of Magic that appeared near the vampires is moving north towards my territories. The aforementioned southern vampires peacefully annexed some empty tiles. The Ogre player expanded a bit. My game objective enemy also expanded too (and his realm is long and skinny like the country of Chile now). The other Empire player decided to drop out of the campaign altogether .


The larger Chaos Dwarf realm expanded. The Chaos Dwarfs and Warriors of Chaos clashed again in the northeast. I thought this might occur, but I don’t get any FP for being right. I seem to be better at predicting events far away from me than I am at figuring at why my immediate sparring partner is doing.


The Skaven player is trying something unorthodox. See a normal move is one tile and lets you grab a tile. A special move (tunneling, forced march, tireless march or teleport depending on the army) covers extra distance but has a risk of a mishap and doesn’t let you conquer tiles immediately. Every other player is expanding out from the nucleus of their base. The Skaven player has most of his army in two Flags and they are tunneling like crazy. I can only guess what he’s trying to do. Since he put a Fortress on a glade, my educated guess is that he is trying to cherry pick tiles grabbing things like mines and magic fonts and then fortifying them both to defend the tiles and increase their value. Quality versus quantity. I can’t completely rule out that he isn’t setting up an attack against someone: either the dwarfs, WoC, me, Empire, or Ogres (so at least I’ve narrowed it down).


The larger WoC expands his realm like any unholy plague. Now the poor Dwarfs are completely surrounded by enemy tiles and there is next to nothing I can do about it. Fortunately the Dwarfs received 10 FPs from a beneficial random event (beneficial magic bloom).


Combined with the flooding damage I took and the FPs he got from fighting the Dwarfs, my substantial FP advantage on the undead into a margin of FP advantage is razor thin.


The Empire player I’m not warring with has dropped out of the campaign. That means there’s a lot of empty tiles in the corner that only the Ogre player and my Empire foe can reach (okay I guess the Chaos Dwarfs can tunnel under the lake) but that corner is pretty bare of bonus resources so I’m not too concerned.


Risky Diplomacy


Desserex knew that the fight with the vampires would be long and difficult but he couldn’t ignore their reason to be in the Chaos Wastes in the first place. They needed to reconstruct the Pylon of Phyra and most of the fragments were embedded in the human fort to the east.


If Merestar came up with this plan, Desserex would have called it naïve and poorly thought out. But Desserex saw he was low on options. He decided he was going to try to buy off the Ogres


I decided to hire the Ogres. To try to keep them from turn-coating me I plan to pay them before they actually do something for me.


I asked his permission to build a Fort two tiles away from his main base. This Fort helps us both.

What I get
-I have a nearby position to launch offensives against my Empire opponent
-If the Warriors of Chaos sweep into my territory I have a fall back point far away from him
-If the Warriors of Chaos push east I can contest the tiles in that section of the map.

What the Ogres get
-I can send FP caravans to pay the Ogres quickly with negligible risk of the payments being stolen by third parties
-If either of his two immediate neighbors attack him, I can send in reinforcements.


FPs at the end of Month 2

26 Tiles 26
1 Magic Font 7
2 Mines 6
1 Glade 3
1 Fort 1
1 Fortress 3
Battlefield spoils (conveniently occurred at my Fort so I don’t have to transport them) 7



Warriors of Chaos 89
Lizardmen (me) 53
Vampires (enemy) 31 + 7-12 points grabbed from the Dwarfs he fought he needs to take to base (or use to build a new Fort on the mine which I view as more likely)
Lizardmen (ally) 41 (16 of his FPs are battlefield spoils and are unusable until taken to his base unless used to build a new Fort)
Empire (secret enemy) 33
Chaos Dwarfs 32+ depending on the outcome of his battle with the WoC
Chaos Dwarfs 32
Skaven 25
Ogres (soon to be ally I hope) 22
Vampires (benign) 18
Warriors of Chaos 19+ depending on the outcome of his upcoming battle with the CD
Wood Elves 14+ depending on the outcome for upcoming troll fight


Month 3 Begins


I don’t have enough FPs to build a garrisoned Fort in the center and still accomplish my war objectives against the vampires. All my 53 FPs are going to buy me 5300 points of reinforcements. Here is my new army, 8,081 points (not counting my immobile 3000 point garrison at my capital). It doesn’t feel like enough. I’m estimate the Warriors of Chaos have around 13,000 points of troops and the Vampire Counts 6,500 points.


Army at the Start of Month 3 8,081 points
Assault Team A, Desserex, Slann Mage Priest, Cupped Hands of the Old Ones, Obsidian Lodestone, 4 Disciplines: Focused Rumination, Focus of Mystery, Becalming Cognition, Transcendent Healing , BSB, Standard of Discipline, 4 exp
Laershin, Slann Mage Priest, Forbidden Rod, Obsidian Amulet, 3 Disciplines: Focused Rumination, Focus of Mystery, Becalming Cognition, Bane Head
Kalmayat, Slann Mage Priest, Cupped Hands of the Old Ones, Banehead, Obsidian Amulet, 3 Disciplines: Focused Rumination, Focus of Mystery, Becalming Cognition, BSB

Kaitar, Scar Veteran, Light Armor, Armor of Fortune, Great Weapon, Venom of the Firefly Frog, Cold One
Assault Team A, Yarshen, Skink Priest, Ancient Stegadon with Engine of the Gods, Talisman of Preservation 6 exp
Karik, Skink Priest, Ancient Stegadon with Engine of the Gods, Glyph Necklace, Scroll of Shielding
Teyish, Skink Priest, Level 2, Ruby Ring or Ruin, Plaque of Tepok
Daeresh Skink Priest, Level 2, Cube of Darkness
Zarik, Skink Priest, Dispel Scroll, Blood Statuette of Spite
Jirtallis, Skink Chief, Charmed Shield, Venom of the Firefly Frog, light armor, blowpipe, Additional Hand Weapon, BSB
Hyrok, Skink Chief, Charmed Shield, Venom of the Firefly Frog, light armor, blowpipe, additional hand weapon, BSB
Vralic, Skink Chief, Charmed Shield, Venom of the Firefly Frog, light armor, blowpipe, BSB

Kaitar’s Spawning, 35 Saurus Warriors, FC
Jade Spawning, 35 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer
25 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer, Spears
26 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer
54 Cohort Skinks with Musician 2 exp
Teyish’s Guards 20 Skink Skirmishers with javelins and shields and Brave
23 Cohort Skinks, with Musician and Brave
15 Skink Skirmishers with javelins and shields
15 Skink Skirmishers with javelins and shields
13 Skink Skirmishers with Javelins and Shields
14 Skink Skirmishers
14 Skink Skirmishers
14 Skink Skirmishers
14 Skink Skirmishers
15 Cohort Skinks with Brave
15 Cohort Skinks with Brave

30 Temple Guard, Standard, Banner of Eternal Flame, Musician
25 Temple Guard, Standard, Banner of Eternal Flame, Musician
10 Chameleon Skinks and Stalker 1 exp
10 Chameleon Skinks and Stalker
10 Chameleon Skinks
10 Chameleon Skinks


Assault Team B, 3 Salamander Hunting Packs, 3 Extra Handlers 4 exp
Assault Team A, 3 Salamander Hunting Packs
Attack Team, 2 Salamander Hunting Packs, 2 Extra Handlers
8,081 points


Desserex broke off his telepathic communion with the new Slann who had arrived with many more of the First. He trusted them all, but there were so many variables outside their control, their gambits were risky.


Western Front


Daeresh the Skink Priest is going to take over the duties of commanding my Fort, along with the 54 Cohort Skinks that guarded it before, a new block of 25 Saurus Warriors with spears, and 10 Chameleon Skinks. I find the odds of my font being attacked this month to be pretty low, but the tile is too valuable for me to get careless about it.

Desserex is going to lead an army with Kaitar, Teyish, Yarshen, 35 Saurus Warriors, 6 Salamanders, and 20 Skirmishers to attack the vampire’s main base. Laershin is going to take Karik, 30 Temple Guard, 35 Saurus Warriors, and 10 Chameleon Skinks to attack the vampire’s main base. If I’m not blocked by a bad dangerous terrain roll, a random event, or the movements of the enemy, they should arrive at the same time. That’s 4,212 points of attackers hitting 3000 points of troops soften up by a starvation roll if everything goes according to plan. I’m probably going to go Life and Death for my two Slann but I haven’t ruled out Fire in place of Life or Death.

Kalmeyat is going to take Zarik, 25 Temple Guard, 28 Saurus, 10 Chameleon Skinks, 12 Skirmishers, and 2 Salamanders to play cat and mouse with the vampire Flag that tried to assault my base last month. Best case scenario I engage it again and get more FP before clearing them out of my interior and then redirect Kalmeyer’s force to join in against the base assault. Worst case scenario I can at least keep my mine safe. If he catches the undead he’s probably going to take Metal because the Hex Wraiths and Blood Knights are still intact in that Flag.

A Chameleon Skink unit champion is going to lead his 9 spawning brothers on a mission of disruption to claim as many undefended undead tiles as possible, if I don’t win my battles against the Vampire Counts I can at reduce his next month’s FP count.


Eastern Front


The Skink chiefs Jirtallis, Hyrok, and Vralic will take two Skirmishers units each and head in three different directions. Their mission is to destroy the three Chaos Shrines I’m holding before the Warriors of Chaos can claim them. I may not have the resources to fight off the Warriors of Chaos, but I can at least deny them the bonus FP for the shrines (and get me some bonus FP for destroying the Shrines). I’m relying on teleport moves and those are temperamental, so a lot of this is down to luck. If they roll well and destroy the Shrines early, they are going to try to land grab (ideally the Glade that popped up last month but I think the other LM player is going to get it before I come close).

The larger Cohort Skink Flag is going to head east to survey a site for a Fort near the Ogres territories. The other is going to try to grab some empty tiles to the center, mainly I want the river mine, anything else is gravy.

 

As an old D&D player, I know if the DM says “there’s a dragon in the chamber you just entered” and then tries to describe the chamber, no one will listen to him talking about the chamber. Always describe the chamber then the dragon.


Describing the The Chamber,


“Epic” Battle


Wrapping up Month 2. 15 River trolls are attacking the wood elves 3000 point garrison. I could have stayed around to watch the game since my battle did not take long, but the game looked a lot like this:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0456.html
You see the only elves in the fortress are characters, every unit is a Dryad, Treekin, or Treeman. So instead of half finishing the battle in the Siege Pre-battle shooting phase he has to wait for Trolls to pass their Stupidity test and batter themselves against the walls and/or get attack spells past the dispel rolls and Regeneration saves.

The Wood Elves should consider themselves lucky I bear them no malice. I bet a Fire Slann could take down his 3000 point garrison with only 1500 points of troops backing him up without even softening them up with a week of siege first.

Month 3 began with no random events, weird weather, no new map features, no GM controlled rogue armies, no mercenaries offering to work for FP (to players who spent all their FP).


All noisy on the Eastern Front


My surveyors that I was planning to send to build a base near the Ogres got a good teleport roll, then was jumped by the southern vampires, then ran away landing on the tile near the Ogres I was aiming for arriving far earlier than I expected. My other surveyors grabbed two tiles including a nice juicy mine.


Jirallis team either made it to the shrine they were aiming for, but the Warriors of Chaos are breathing down my neck. If I don't go before them on week 3, I doubt I'll be able to destroy the shrine. Hyrok and Vralic both rolled a minimum distance teleport on week one teleporting the same distance they could have gone while walking. Week 2 Hyrok rolled a 1 again moving walking distance. Vralic got a mediocre roll and landed on my own mine, well it used to be my mine.



“All right brothers, we got a slow start, so we need to get ready to march on out double time!. It seemed we landed at our own mine, I can make out the old ruined human structures from here”

A few unarmed Skinks emerged unexpectedly from nearby holes in the ground.

“Thank the Old Ones you’re here! Zombies have overrun our mines!”


Battle Report 305 points of LM versus 309 points of Undead


I had two groups of 14 Skink Skirmishers with blowpipes and Vralic the Skink Chief BSB with a blowpipe, light armor, Charmed Shield, additional hand weapon, and Venom of the Firefly Frog. They had accidentally jumped onto a tile recently conquered by an expeditionary Flag from my hated enemies the Vampire Counts. A level one Necromancer, 5 Hexwraiths, and a big block of zombies. I was technically the attacker (because the undead conquered the territory before I landed there). Whenever I’m the attacker we scatter about 3d6 tokens to represent fragments of the Pylon of Phyra. I rolled an impressive 17.


He beat me on the Scouting roll so he forced me to deploy first. His side had more than half of the fragment tokens, but I still had a fair number of my side. I deployed my blue Skinks to the right and green Skinks to the left to be as close to the tokens as I could (the blue ones deployed on a token). The Hexwraiths were put in front of my blue Skinks so I put Vralic there. They Vanguarded into my face. The zombies were deployed between my two Skink units.


LM Turn 1

I won first turn, the blue Skinks picked up two more Tokens and Vralic shot at the Hex Wraiths (he was the only one capable of hurting ethereals) and killed two. The green Skinks claimed a token.

VC Turn 1

He did not want to try his Hex Wraiths against Vralic now that he saw what Venom of the Firefly Frog could do, so he charged the green Skinks with his Hex Wraiths. The Skinks fled, and then he failed to redirect the charge into the blue Skinks. I dispelled his attempt at Invocation of Nehek. The zombies advanced.

LM Turn 2

I moved the blue Skinks to shot up the Hex Wraiths outside their charge arc and killed one. The green Skinks claimed a token or two.

VC Turn 2

The Hex Wraiths marched away from the Big Bad Skink with Venom and roasted 3 green Skinks by riding through them. The Zombies pointed themselves at Vralic’s unit. I dispelled Invocation of Nehek.

LM Turn 3

Vralic’s unit killed about five zombies with shooting. The green Skinks tried to get out of the charge arc of the Hex Wraiths.

VC Turn 3

I got sloppy and accidentally gave the zombies an easy charge on Vralic’s unit. He successfully cast Invocation bringing back more zombies than I killed and healing a Hex Wraith. I failed my Fear test but I concentrated attacks on the Necromancer killing him. I lost combat by a fair margin and broke (BSBs don’t auto-die, they have a 50/50 chance to die, so do models carrying Pylon tokens). Vralic lived but all three of my Token carriers died as the survivors fled. Losing the Necromancer led to a few zombies dying.

LM Turn 4

Vralic and company rallied. The Green Skinks looped towards a small cluster of tokens and away from the Hexwraiths.

VC Turn 5

The zombies charged again getting peppered with a Stand and Shoot. Vralic and company would have drawn in close combat were it not for the zombie musician, they held anyway. The Hex Wraiths crumbled away due to the necromancer being dead.

All other turns

Vralic stabbed th rough another zombie, the holy venom rendering the walking corpse inert and braced himself for the remaining ones to swarm him. Then they unexpectedly collapsed to the ground, the magic sustaining them finally ran out. Vralic was wounded and all his spawning brothers had fallen to the zombie horde, but the last of the undead had fallen. The workers were cautiously exiting their hiding places.

“What are you gawking at! Get back to work!” Vralic ordered, slumping to the ground in exhaustion as soon as they were out of visual range.

Spoils of War and Recovery

He got back one out of five Hex Wraiths and about five of the thirty-ish zombies. The Necromancer recovered with “old battle wound.” From now on, that Necromancer has to roll a d6 before deployment. On a roll of 1, he has to sit out that battle.

I got back one of the 14 dead blue Skinks and none of the 3 dead green Skinks.

Vralic was the general of a victorious army and killed a unit of a zombies (3 exp)
The green Skinks survived the battle (1 exp)
The Blue Skinks got 1 exp for killing the Necromancer, but they can’t keep it, knocked below half of legal size, they will lose the exp when I rebuild them.

I got 2 FP for killing a hero, 3 FP for winning a battle of against an army of roughly equal size and 7 FP from loose tokens the green Skinks picked up. A 305 point army just got me 1200 points next month and the cost of 112 points of Skinks this month. Someone—I want to do a fist bump!


And the rest!


All the other players grabbed tiles as best they could

My LM neighbor surprised me by turning away from the Wood Elves and taking the empty tiles between him and the Elves rather than pushing in (I guess he wasn’t attacking after all). He also has a Flag moving to claim the new Glade that showed up last month, this does NOT surprise me. I kind of wanted said Glade for myself but I can’t have everything.

The Wood Elves meekly claimed a few tiles.

The southern vampires are expanding with two Flags. One of those two paths cut a swath through the Empire realm but their armies accidentally bypassed each other so territory was stolen without a fight. One of these Flags accidentally bumped into where my Skink teleported to. They didn’t plan to attack me, but were excited at the prospect. This concerns me slightly because he just built a Fortress on the edge of the no man’s that serves as the small shrinking neutral ground between the southern vampires, Empire, Wood Elves, and my central holdings.

The Ogres moved in and are going to protect my Flag while they build a Fort, or double cross me. The Chaos Dwarfs clashed with another Ogre Flag just north of his main base. The Chaos Dwarfs claimed a shrine not far from that. A third Flag swiped another shrine from either the lesser Warriors of Chaos Player or the lesser Chaos Dwarf player (I’m not sure which one). He is nipping at my heels to try to steal second place standing from me.

The other Chaos Dwarf player expanded a little at the Warriors of Chaos expense. The second WoC has yet to recover from not having a move month 1 and I doubt he ever will. He’s 0 and 2 for actual battles with his stocky neighbors.

I can never predict what the Vampire Counts are doing, but I was right about the Skaven. He is cherry picking and is gunning for Dwarfs. He took a magic font and Chaos Shrine with one Flag, attacked my Dwarf friend with the other. He told me he’s coming for the mine I just took too. Fine. If he makes it that far my Skinks will be long gone, so he can take the mine but he won’t stop my land grab. There are Warriors of Chaos Flags from the player in first by both the Skaven’s juicy new conquests. The optimist in me tells me that the Skaven and Warriors of Chaos are going to start fighting, but I have to assume the worst case scenario. He is probably working with the Warriors of Chaos (or at least has a non-aggression agreement) since no one tried to stop his western Flag from leap frogging across the WoC realm to attack the Dwarfs.

The Warriors of Chaos Player in first place expanded on all fronts and is now bordering me in two places. He is very polite and gave me a warning where he was going so I could have my armies ready for our meeting (but he was unexpectedly unable to make this meeting so the GM moved his armies by proxy). He is indeed targeting the shrines I’m holding but he does not seem to be targeting me specifically. He’s expanding and I happen to be in his way.

My Dwarf friend is now completely penned in. The Vampires have invaded him last turn is sweeping his undefended tiles in the south up. The Skaven have invaded the tile adjacent to him and clashed with the army the Dwarfs put there to defend the tile (or maybe the Dwarfs were on the way to counteract the vampires). The Warriors of Chaos have not invaded, but they are blocking his hope of expanding into empty territory. The least experienced player with the smallest realm is now being double-teamed, maybe triple-teamed.

My vampire nemesis dwarf killing Flag is holding station but his other troops are very active. Well he’s got a Flag sitting on the Font he grabbed from under the Warriors of Chaos last turn. He sent a Flag to take my mine which I took out. One Flag is pushing into the Dwarfs territory. But most of his troops are elsewhere….


“Oh, and there’s a Dragon in the Chamber too.”


Daeresh the Skink priest watched the two Slann’s armies disappear over the horizon. He was on guard duty. He was not sure whether he was upset that he was missing out on the action or whether he was relieved that he didn’t have to be fighting. He looked absent mindedly from his tower view and saw a strange discoloration moving towards the tower. All the Chameleon Skinks were heading towards the tower at a full sprint not bothering with stealth.


“High one, the undead built a Fort of their own not far from here. Hundreds of undead soldiers are coming with many large monsters!”


Daeresh knew better than to show his fear and spoke projecting a confidence he did not feel inwardly.


“Head back out again immediately and see if you can’t scout a vulnerable spot. Sound the alarms. I will magically contact the Slann and tell them to return. One Slann sent the last attack force scurrying away, now two Slann will do so. We only need to hold out until they arrive.”


So the Vampires built a fort right next to mine. He put about half of total army into a massive attack force. He won initiative and he pounced on my tower before my attack forces could split off and begin their separate sorties against the undead realm. That’s around 4500 points of mine versus around 3000 points of the undead. That sounds like I should be really happy. There are two catches.


The first catch is that only Daeresh’s 902 point garrison is there to hold off the vampire hordes. The other 3700ish points of mine have to arrive as reserves. If my rolls to arrive are late or poorly coordinated, he can fight my army one small piece at a time.


Second catch is I have some duplicate magical items. If two of the same magic items are on the field at once, both items fail to work. That means my Obsidian Amulets, Baneheads, and Banners of Eternal Flame are going to go inert as soon as both Slann’s forces arrive.


The attack forces is a crap load of skeletons, zombies, ethereals, necromancers, and dire wolves. A vampire lord, two terrorghesits, a Black Coach, some Blood Knights and Crypt Ghouls.


My defense forces

Daeresh’s Garrison
Daeresh Skink Priest, Level 2, Cube of Darkness
Garrison Force, 25 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer, Spears
54 Cohort Skinks with Musician 2 exp
10 Chameleon Skinks
902 points

Laershin’s Army
Laershin, Slann Mage Priest, Forbidden Rod, Obsidian Amulet, 3 Disciplines: Focused Rumination, Focus of Mystery, Becalming Cognition, Bane Head
Karik, Skink Priest, Ancient Stegadon with Engine of the Gods, Glyph Necklace, Scroll of Shielding
Jade Spawning, 35 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer
Assault Team B, 30 Temple Guard, Standard, Banner of Eternal Flame, Musician
10 Chameleon Skinks and Stalker 1 exp
1,895 points

Kalmeyet’s Army
Kalmayet, Slann Mage Priest, Cupped Hands of the Old Ones, Banehead, Obsidian Amulet, 3 Disciplines: Focused Rumination, Focus of Mystery, Becalming Cognition, BSB
Zarik, Skink Priest, Dispel Scroll, Blood Statuette of Spite
Attack Force, 26 Saurus Warriors, Musician, Standard Bearer
Attack Team, 25 Temple Guard, Standard, Banner of Eternal Flame, Musician
10 Chameleon Skinks
Attack Force, 13 Skink Skirmishers with javelins and shields
2 Salamander Hunting Packs, 2 Extra Handlers
1,724 points


Laershin doesn’t have a battle standard but Kalmayat does. I can decide ahead of time which Slann will be the general. I can name Laershin or Kalmayat the general or say “whoever arrives first is the general.” Laershin has more Temple Guard so I’ll probably use him.

Besides the two Slann, I have two level one Skink priests (one with an EOTG) and one level two Skink Priest. I’m hoping to get Uranon’s Thunderbolt or Chain Lightning to zap the Terrorgheists. One of the Skink Priests has a I can choose any two lores I want (or take one Lore twice I suppose). Both Slann have becalming Cognition. My short list is:


Death, to force crumble checks from killing the general and pluck out annoying Necromancers and maybe the Black Coach.

Life, to keep my Slann and Engines of the God Steggies healthy, I have a Forbidden Rod Slann and this player loves to Death snipe Slann.

Fire, to counteract the many regenerating creatures, provide magical attacks against ethereals and let me retake the tower if the Skinks gets kicked out before my reserves make it to reinforce them.

Light, to cast bubble spells across great swaths of my massive army and take advantage of the Exorcism power.

Metal to nerf zombies, melt Blood Knights and provide magical attacks against embedded ethereals.

Suggestions?

EDIT: Scrubbed these future plans just in case Aussie hadn't read them yet.

If my tower forces beat the attackers with few losses, I can send another Flag up to reinforce Desserex and make assaulting the vampire’s main base go much more smooth. Even if I barely fight off the attackers, I can probably take his Fort. He used it as a staging point to bring in reinforcements but left no garrison.


That wasn’t the dragon, this is…


My Vampire Count enemy has allied with the Warriors of Chaos.


That doesn’t change my plan, it just makes it harder. My plan was/is to take out the vampires quickly, then redirect my resources towards the Warriors of Chaos.


I don’t know if the Skaven are working with the Warriors of Chaos or the Warriors of Chaos are just turning a blind eye while they tunnel through to attack the Dwarfs. If they are allying with the Warriors of Chaos, this does not make the grand alliance against me stronger in net terms, The other Lizardmen player’s game objective enemy is the Skaven and he currently has noticeably more FPs than the Skaven do. If the Skaven have joine this Axis of Evil, I should be able to talk the other Lizardmen into backing me up. Assuming the Ogres don’t lose their patience with me they are in as well. In the unlikely event the Dwarfs survive the massive beating they are getting, they are in too. The other players have vaguely said “if we don’t join forces against WoC Player’s Name, he will kill us all.” I welcome any player to join in, but currently the other players are not near enough the Warriors of Chaos to do anything.


The Warriors of Chaos may be recognizing the vampire’s borders but he doesn’t seem to be sending reinforcements into the vampire realm to fight me. He wants territory and seems perfectly willing to let his ally twist in the wind while he grabs empty and poorly defended tiles. If I’m right, I should be able to deal the vampires a crippling blow before the end of the month and I won’t have to worry about a two front war anymore.

EDIT: Up to Date Map is Ready

I guess the Chaos Forces pushes south have a Vampire Flag backing them up. I think most of the Warriors of Chaos Flags are small and I was emboldened by my win against the Vampire Counts liberating my mine. If Jirtallis is attacked, he’ll probably stand his ground, at least long enough to see what he’s up against. If it’s more than 600 points, I can just flee off the board, but if it’s a one Marauder block Flag, I think I can circle it with Skirmishers and kill it. I can’t run away forever. I have Sauron and Saruman after me. I doubt I’ll be able to win, but I want to take out Saruman (the vampires) before I lose. The bad guys may win the win the war but I'm going to win the battle!



PS, due to Easter weekend and various people having real lives, the big battle between me and the VCs and then the next map move session is a good ways off.

 

Okay, now I've been compromised. That's my vampire foe everybody! That means I have to stop posting my future plans and write in the past tense. I'll put on my latest battle report later if there is demand for it (or if I get some free time, lots of tests this week). Unfortunately it was a disastrous defeat. I got tabled, lost about 2000 points of troops. I took out several zombies, dire wolves, blood knights, and a Necromancer but he bounced back stronger using the vampire ability to zombify defeated foes. Two blender vampire lords is one more than I can handle at once.

On the plus side, Daeresh is the most bad ass Skink Priest of all time.

To answer your question, Aussie. The answer is no. If you were fighting the first place player instead of toadying to him, I would consider paying you tribute, so I could focus on the first place player. You have presented yourself to me as an extension of the first place player, until that changes I will invest all my not inconsiderable FP in taking you down.

 

I have to be careful what I say on this blog now because apparently the LAPD and Captain Hammer are among our viewers.


Remember the Alamo!


I had 54 Skinks in a tower with the world’s most bad ass Skink Priest, Daeresh. 25 Spear Saurus with a barrier to their side. I had some Chamo Skinks in the open corner the undead left me.

Left to right there was zombies, Crypt Ghouls, more zombies, a big block of skeletons packed full of characters, more Crypt Ghouls, more zombies, two Terrogheists, and three small packs of dire wolves.

Vampire Counts Turn 1

Zombies attacked the tower taking a stand and shoot naturally, Crypt Ghouls attacked my Saurus, the rest of his stuff moved.

Daeresh struck down his magic phase with the Cube of Darkness (his first of many acts of awesomeness)

Shooting saw a Terrorgheist or two take a few wounds off my Saurus.

Close combat saw the Saurus get wiped out (I really should not have deployed them near my Fort, they would have better deployed back to wait for the reinforcements). Close combat also saw the zombies lose combat against Daraesh and his Skinks (not quite an act of awesomeness because zombies are pathetic).

Lizardment Turn 1

I got one 35 sized block of Saurus and a 25 block of Saurus for reinforcements and my Engine of the Gods. I didn’t have a whole lot of consequential movement

Daraesh called on more magic than he ever had done his whole life summoned a massive storm of lightning. Though two Skinks died, the Skinks with him cheered for the spell wounded both Terrogheists, wiped out three quarters of all the Direwolves and took out some zombies in a matter of seconds.

My tower Skinks threw some javelins at the zombies. My Chameleon Skinks shot at some more zombies.

Vampire Counts Turn 2

The Black Coach arrived along with his Blood Knights filling the empty table edge in my upper right corner (the only troops representing his second Flag). The Crypt Horrors assaulted my tower taking taking a wound from javelin fire. The rest of his stuff moved around.

Despite me using my Scroll of Shielding I lost many Saurus to the Winds of Death. The Purple Sun he was aiming for my Saurus blocks misfired and he lost a small number of skeletons. The template nicked my tower but the two Skinks it hit both passed their Initiative test.

The Terrorgheists killed a few Skinks.

The Skinks lost to Crypt Horrors, but would not break. They would go on to hold their ground despite four or five more Crypt Horror attacks and a couple blasts from Terrorgheists.

Lizardmen Turn 2

All my remaining troops arrived. Two Temple Guard bunkered Slann, a Skink Priest in a Skirmisher unit, a pack of two Salamanders, and twenty more Chameleon Skinks. My Chameleon Skinks had no where safe to go so they angled for a shot. The re

Sadly my Metal Slann was just barely out of range of the Black Coach so my Life Slann put up Throne of Vines then I tried another high dice casting of Chain Lightning and got Irresistible Force again. Once again Daraesh was unwounded and I only lost a negligible amount of Skinks. Like last time I hit many targets, but unlike last time, the lightning was far less damaging. I put a single wound on the Black Coach, a wound or two on some Crypt Horrors and killed one or two zombies. That miscast ate the rest of my power dice sadly. I lost some more Saurus to the damn Winds of Death vortex. The Purple Sun vortex veered off and NEARLY hit some undead troops.

My one unit of Chameleon Skinks that was in range of someone fired impotently at the Black Coach lacking better targets. My Tower Skinks failed to wound the nearest Terrorgheist. My Salamanders were so far away I decided not to risk trying an unlikely to succeed shot on a puny pack of zombies.

Subsequent Turns

I don’t see the need for a turn by turn break down. I got a third Chain Lightning off with Irresistable Force (this one with a small number of dice) but I couldn’t finish off the Terrorgheists because I didn’t roll enough hits and he was healing them with the Lore of Vampire’s lore attribute. The miscast didn’t directly hurt me but it cost me critical power dice. I never got any of my two Slann’s ueberspells past his dispels the whole game.

My Engine of the Gods was taken out by a Purple Sun and later the Skink Priest that was killed by a Terrorgheist scream. My foe had two blender lords (ie they had Red Fury and ASF). Whatever fought ended up butchered. They basically took apart my Saurus blocks one by one while I tried to take apart the rest of his army. After five or six assaults on my tower, the Crypt Horrors finally broke Daraesh and his last eight Skinks.

Spoils and Recovery

Laershin and Kalmayat had reached out and found each other and those who managed to flee. The two Slann had just barely managed a short ranged teleport to save their lives and some of their guardian. The rest escaped by fleeing or hiding. The Skink Priest Daeresh had escaped the tower with a small number of survivors by temporarily blinding the Crypt Horrors with a flash of light and sneaking away.

“Regroup it’s time to prepare our counterattack.” Laershin declared to his shell shocked warriors


Well I wiped out three dire wolf units, a pack of Crypt Horrors (and a model or two off the other block), two or three blocks of zombies, a unit of Blood Knights, the Black Coach, a level one Necromancer, and an inconsequential amount of skeletons.

All but one of the wounds on the Terrorgheiss were restored. Most of the wounds on the Black Coach were recovered. All of the Crypt Horrors recovered (though I think they are down a wound or two). The zombie units I took out recovered some models but were knocked below legal size (which means they have to go back to a base and wait to be restored). Two of the three dead Dire Wolf units stayed dead. Another one saved one doggie (has to go back to base like the zombies). I got very lucky and not a single one of his Blood Knights recovered. The Necromancer rolled death on recovery table. That’s hard to do so it should be cause for a celebration but a 65 point character is not exactly a military victory worthy of parades. Aussie about 1100 points of free troops by zombifying my unrecovered dead (so I guess his zombies and dire wolves don’t have to be grounded). That more than covers what he lost. He got 14 FP to play with next month.

My Saurus and Temple Guard rolled okay, on average the units are at about half their original strength. 14 of the 54 tower Skinks survived. My Salamanders made near full recoveries (one is down a wound). My Ancient Stegadon is down a wound. The Skink Skirmishers and Chameleon Skinks were not completely destroyed, but they have all been reduced below legal size so they have to chill at my main base till my next build phase.

One Slann has a chest wound (-1 Strength) and the other has a smashed leg (no march). Fortunately the GM has ruled that since Slann don't use their legs, his floating has not been impaired. Zarik the Skink Priest survived with a hand injury (-1 WS). Karik the Skink priest fled off the table and did not have to make a recovery roll (better part of valor and all that).

Daeresh the most badass Skink Priest in history was not about to be brought low by something as paltry as the "Character Recovery Chart". He not only recovered fully with no injuries but rolled “Battle Veteran” on the chart, so he made a full recovery PLUS 5 bonus experience points. With the 6 experience he earned this battle from wreaking bloody destruction on his enemies he qualifies for a big fat upgrade. An extra power and dispel die to each magic phase. My silver lining for this horrible debacle of a battle.

I got 5 FP for killing a hero and some unit champions. That puts me to 16 counting my decisive victory in our 300 point match. While I'm behind in casualties I'm slightly ahead in FP.

The biggest blow is that I lost the magic font tile. Which is worth 9 FP to a Lizardmen or Vampire player (7 to most other players).


A sad day for the campaign


The newbie Dwarf player has decided that he was unable to recover from his losses and has withdrawn from the campaign.

The Warriors of Chaos player who got a late start and was hemmed in by a Chaos Dwarf player decided he could not dig his way out of the hole he was in and left the game as well.



The broad situation



One of my Skink task force flags managed to destroy a Chaos shrine and get out safely before a Warriors of Chaos Flag claimed the tile. That’s 5 FP for me for destroying the shrine and 5 FP denied the Warriors of Chaos player for claiming it. He’s still got a massive lead, but I’ll take whatever victory I can get. Another of my anti-shrine task forces overshot the shrine he was aiming for and landed on an Empire Flag which thankfully chose not to attack me. Even better, it appears that said Empire Flag destroyed a Chaos Shrine themselves meaning I have one less Shrine to worry about destroying before the Warriors of Chaos push further south. I don’t really care if I destroy the shrines, I just want the shrines gone.

My remaining expeditionary Flag (lucky number 13) continued it's land grab unmolested. Despite the fact that the Skaven player threatened to steal it from me soon, his Flag in that general region chose to move elsewhere. Hopefully since Aussie stole his nearby magic font, he'll go after that instead of my mine. I expected the Warriors of Chaos to send a Flag towards the mine as well but he did not do that either. I think he's focusing on creating a uniform block rather than cherry picking the tiles with special features.

It seems I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to people’s building choices. The southern vampire player, other LM player, Empire player, Skaven, and Warriors of Chaos have all built multiple fortresses. Only Aussie and I have taken the philosophy that Forts are more bang for your buck. The others are all springing for the fancy buildings. That means if I ever resolve my fight with Aussie and end up fighting the others, I’m going to have select Flags with eye towards winning siege battles (that means more Sauri, fewer Skinks).

The remaining players have all expanded. The Warriors of Chaos player has encroached on my territory though he has taken a lot less than I was expecting. He seems to be giving the Skaven and Aussie free reign to take whatever tiles they want as long as it’s not from him. Just because the Skaven and Aussie are both nominal allies of the Warriors of Chaos, this does not make them friends. They have both poached territory belonging to the other (though their armies have not met each other on the field at this time). Aussie is winning this cold war since he lost a regular tile and gained another magic font.

I find myself rooting for the Skaven in this conflict. I hope no one tries to take my Lizardmen membership card away.

This whole situation only feeds into the unbeatable-ness of the Warriors of Chaos player. This is political brilliant. Both of his neighbors are desperate to stay on his good side and they are unwilling to work together themselves, so they are unlikely to unite against him. Brilliant.

The southern vampire player has moved a Flag into the Ogre’s territory without invading it. I can only assume that like me and the Empire players before me, he believes hiring Ogre services is a good idea. If the Warriors of Chaos weren’t sweeping the map like the Mongol hordes of yore, I’d say the Ogres are in a good political position right now.

There is now a tile where one of the Warriors of Chaos Flags is bordered by one of my Flags (admittedly a small one) and a large Flag belonging to the Wood Elves and a large Flag belonging to the other Lizardmen player. If this doesn’t lead to a grand anti-Chaos alliance next month, nothing will.


Coming Attractions

In weeks three and four of campaign month 3 there are several battles waiting to be resolved. Most of them are between me and Aussie.

A Chaos Dwarf player has attacked the very tile that I was planning to build my Ogre-LM alliance fort on. Now I’m glad the Ogre player had the foresight to leave an army there (before I thought it was wasteful). I would very much like to be there for the battle, but that’s a long way for me to drive for a battle I can only have a minor effect on.

I gave the Ogre player permission to use my 19 Skinks to bolster his forces but pointed out that it will be hard for me to pay him next month if my Skinks die. My plans will take a setback if Chaos Dwarfs take the tile. I’d very much like to know what the CD player is planning. I’m guessing this was an accidental meeting of Flags and we just accidentally got in his way.

The Empire and southern vampire player have two armies clashing along their shared border. I don’t know who to root for.

The survivors from the Alamo are attempting to retake the magic font. I cannot explain here my reasoning until after the battle. Without me explaining my reasoning, my fans are welcome to debate whether I am being stupid or crazy or both.

By accident or successful hunting attempt, Aussie’s Flag that once pummeled my dwarf friend have caught up with the expeditionary Flag that was poaching his territories up north. I plan to stand my ground despite being vastly outnumbered. Again I cannot explain my reasoning at this time.

Desserex’s Flag is under orders to assault Aussie’s main base. I hoped Laershin could reinforce him, but due to Laershin’s beating, Desserex and mighty Kaitar must make due with the troops they have. Aussie beat me as an underdog attacker. Can I do the same?

My anti-shrine task force that by dumb luck helped me liberate my mine from the undead has successfully caught up with the fleeing Necromancer. I believe Aussie is planning to just concede that one since 15 Skinks including a chief packing magical attacks versus a Necromancer is very one sided. That means I get FP for killing a hero, winning a battle, and the Necromancer has to roll on the character recovery chart again. I’m hoping the GM will give me a chance to get a pylon token or two but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

After drubbing the Necromancer they will try to wail on him again if he’s still alive and/or try to take to make a grab for the Fort that Aussie built at the start of the month. It’s not worth near as many FP as the one Aussie grabbed from me, but Aussie conveniently left it empty. A 2 FP tile is a poor consolation prize for a 9 FP tile, but I’ll take whatever I can get at this point.

The only thing better than FP earned is FP stolen. FP gathered outside the building phase has to be stored in a Fort or Fortress. I happen to be making a grab for every one of his Forts and his main Fortress. My odds of this grand plan succeeding are fairly small, but if I succeed I’ll recover all that I lost last battle and then some.

 

Unfinished Tales


The Warriors of Chaos player in the nigh unbeatable first place has got a job several states away. Since he controls about a quarter of the board, we can’t really keep playing without the campaign being completly turned on its head.

Aussie is starting a new job that doesn’t give him weekends free to play. While Aussie leaving has a relatively small effect on the campaign as a whole. I was very much enjoying our duel despite how heated it sometimes got between us (often I was not as sporting as I should have been and I was hoping to do better in future games). He is a very skilled tactician and kept me focused. Also it was fun coming up with evolving campaign fluff for our battles. It would feel empty playing the campaign without him.

This next weekend is my last free weekend for a while. I need to spend pretty much the whole month of May doing work not play (in fact I should probably delete my Lustria bookmark and stop visiting the site until June but I don’t think I have the discipline). Since the other two players are leaving, I decided to leave rather than ask for permission to put my battles on ice for a month.

I wanted to finish the battles we started earlier, but Aussie said he did not have time.

The campaign has been scuttled early. Our valiant GM is once again reassessing what went well and what didn’t in pondering how to go about his third campaign attempt. I’m thinking smaller scale is better than larger scale, so we can actually finish it. An open ended campaign like this is almost inevitably going to involve players dropping out causing the game to die unless the total group is very small (and the instinct we all have with a cool campaign is to invite as many people as we can find).

What I was planning to do originally


I got beaten despite having a decent point advantage over the other team. Now the undead around the magic font are bigger and I am smaller. I chose to attack anyway. I am not stupid or crazy, I was making a desperate sacrifice for the greater good.


My plan was to 1) switch both Slann over to lore of Death, 2) configure the Engine of the Gods to lower the casting cost of death spells, 3) spam the crap out of the vampire general and time permitting his second in command (and maybe third in command) to force crumbles and then 4) run away before a major reprisal can be made. Then I was going to repeat the attack with the survivors again. While I was likely to lose lots of troops, the action would thin out the undead a little and more important keep them from pushing south and blocking in my main base or poaching my remaining high value tiles. A force that is attacked can’t move if it’s beaten in initiative. Thus I’d sacrifice some troops in order would save me FPs for next turn and buy me time to bring in reinforcements.

Since my little Flag that fought off the zombies from the mine was heading towards his undefended Fort and the main force was pinned down (at great cost). I would be able to seize his Fort and then send in a large quantity of reinforcements right on the doorstep of the super valuable magic font that was stolen from me.

My Chameleon Skinks were tangling with a 2500 point force. Their plan was to grab some tokens and then flee. In addition, because the Skinks were technically the aggressor, they effectively stalled the northern undead forces and thus made sure the mine remained in my hands and not his. If I ended the month with extra FPs (unlikely but possible) I was planning to build a Fort on that mine.

I was attacking a 3000 point garrison with a 2300 point army. If he met me in the field I was probably going to lose. If I DID win I would have captured Aussie’s Fortress completely undamaged so I was willing to chance it. I was planning to death spam his characters to force crumbles and use a combination of Spirit Leech and Lore of Heavens to knock his Terrorgheists out of the sky.

If he was planning on fighting me around his fortress I was going to turn his own fortifications against him. The campaign has a rule that battles are fought till one side is all dead or fled rather than for a time limit. I disagree with this rule but it is necessary given how Flags and recovery are set up (though I also disagree with the recovery system, though realistic I believe using something closer to standardized army size leads to smoother game play). Just because I disagree with some of the system does not mean I’m above using it to my advantage. A lack of time limits is a fantastic advantage when you have a lot of ranged attacks and your enemy is pinned down.

My plan was to stall a major offensive as long as possible and thin out his base with my six Salamanders and my Engine of the Gods. Even with the optional undead siege equipment the GM came up with, the lack of VC ranged attacks would make it hard for the undead to prevent me from nickeling and diming their forces to death. While this was going on Desserex would float around the fortress blasting every spell caster to death with lore of Death and watching the army crumble. To complete this victory, my Skirmishers were going to use the time my other forces spent stalling to snatch up every loose pylon token on the map (which would be present because I was the attacker).

I had no idea what Plan B would be if I was going to do if the Chaos Dwarfs evicted my little eastern flag and the Ogres with them from the tile I was planning to build a Fort on (I’d be cut off from having a trade route with the Ogres by powerful Chaos Dwarf Flags). If the Ogres won as I was hoping, my plan was to build the Fort, put up about 2000ish point garrison with a Slann there and give the Ogres about 10 FP and hopefully send the Ogres off after the Warriors of Chaos controlled shrines. The force was going to sit there and wait for the dust to settle in the eastern front before launching any offensives.

My original plan was to use the base near Ogre territory to launch an attack against my Empire secret foe. 1) teleport troops deep into his territory, 2) seize his fortress, 3) get the 25 bonus FP for taking the base of my secret foe and then 4) letting the Empire retake the fortress without a fight and teleporting out. Then I’d funnel all the FP I got into my anti-vampire and anti-Chaos forces. I decided that was a bad plan. A rational player who wants to win the campaign at all costs would think “It was nothing personal, and now I know who my secret enemy was and I don’t have to worry about an unexpected attack ever again.” Gamers don’t think like that. Gamers are vengeful. If I did that the Empire player would be out to get me for the rest of the game. That cost me more FP than it would net me and I was really hoping to talk the Empire player into attacking the Warrior of Chaos player or hoping that if left to his own devices he’d come to that conclusion independently. That would not happen if he was thirsty for Lizardmen blood.

I still have no idea how to justify it in fluff terms, but I was negotiating with the Skaven player. He was irked that Aussie stole his magic font and planning to retaliate AND planning to attack the Warriors of Chaos player. We were both happy to leave the other alone while the other attacked our mutual foes. As an added bonus he seemed to forget all about his promise to steal my poorly defended mine. Skaven are sneaky and underhanded but the human player of this army is nicer than most. I wasn’t planning to betray him, but I wasn’t planning to intervene if he his forces got in over their head against our mutual foes.

There was a gathering storm cloud where the main armies of the other LM player and the Wood Elf player, and myself all had Flags bordering the expeditionary forces of the Warriors of Chaos. Hopefully that would lead to a multi-front attack on the Warriors of Chaos. Most of my FP were preordained to boost my anti-vampire forces and the rest was going to bribe the ogres but I figured I’d have enough left over to make another Flag or two of skirmishers and send them via teleport moves deep into Warriors of Chaos territory (away from his armies incidentally) to destroy his FP generating Chaos Shrines. Thus I’d be able to help the anti-Chaos alliance at relatively low cost to me.

If I captured Aussie’s main base not only would he have been dealt a serious setback but his base was ideally positioned to launch Flags into Warrior of Chaos territory. If I had somehow taken his main Fortress and made a good showing of myself with my crazy assault on my old magic font, I was going to try to sue for peace. My non-negotiable demand probably would not have been met. I was not planning to stop attacking Aussie until he agreed to fight the Warriors of Chaos rather than work with him. In fact I was even willing to pay small tribute to him on the condition he attacked the WoC (I wasn’t going to call it “tribute” though I was thinking “supplies to a reluctant ally”).