Patrol-Leader Tlopek sniffed the air and looked around the misted green land. Their cold one mount shook her head, trying to dislodge the last feathers from between it's teeth. "Where are lesser-skink-kin, strong-one?" grunted the cohort champion to their side. "Stay-formation, lesser-skink-kin search for path-ways" Tlopek was feeling the closest thing to concern a saurus warrior could. Their cohort had been taking a "shorter-path" suggested by a skink guide one moment, the next they had stepped through the jungle mist into the cold sunlight of this strange land. Wooden buildings dotted the landscape and warmbloods ran in fear, leaving their fowls for the eating. Tlopek glanced at the shifting grass nearby, the familiar sight of a Sotek-spawn-blessing still accompanied the cohort even in this cool land. Suddenly a sound and movement ahead, mounted figures in the mist between the buildings. The sunlight glinted off their armour and lances. A flash of inspiration, bordering on genius for a saurus warrior, came to Tlopek. This must be the battle-leader of the warmbloods, but lizardmen had no fight with warmbloods as far as Tlopek could recall. "Cohort leader stay." they grunted "I address-query lesser speaks-warmblood-food. Seek knowledge." Urging their mount forward Tlopek bellowed out a simple greeting, suitably worded for speaking with a lesser caste and not unduly frightening them... Baron Gastonne felt the heat of anger rising up his neck as the hideous beast roared its senseless challenge across the hamlet. "Praise ze Lady, today we will all be made monster slayers!" shouted his second by his side reaching for his horn. Though some had fought orks, the undead or badland beasts in their time none had seen creatures like these lizards that walked like men. "Zere is no time to wait on zer levvies, let zem come as zey may" the Baron shouted, lowering his visor "We charge and cleanse our lords realm of zis filth! For zer Lady!" The horn sounded as the knights spurred their steeds forwards... First game in a local escalation league, 500 points which doesn't work particularly well but is great for learning! The setup Skinks scouting to where they MIGHT be some use? No never mind, no sixes scored from my ambush. I took them with blowguns but I can't work out WHY as it seems very difficult to be in a position (not moving or in half-range) where you can use multiple shots and hit on sixes, whereas javelins are move-and-shoot. After moving my units forwards, his knights somehow make a huge charge across the board towards the most hated enemy - a handful of snakes and lizards! Swarms seem to make for GREAT roadblocks, being unbreakable. We didn't move the swarms correctly for combat, apparently they don't have flanks so I should have been able to line them all up to fight. His knights shuffled around in victory leaving them open for my units. My Saurus veteran fails their stupidity roll and bumbles their way into combat! The saurus warriors join in. My general takes a wound and barely survives a duel and I lose two warriors, but I do kill some knights! The peasants join in!
Alas, with the general overkilled in single combat the warriors rout and are unsuprisingly run down. What follows is the jungle critters hilariously doing their best, the skinks killing a few peasants, then the Brets mopping up. The moral of the story - don't get magically transported into foreign biospheres full of frenchmen if you can help it! What did I learn? Jungle swarms seem to be hilariously good roadblocks, I still have to work out how to actually use skink skirmishers though being Scouts seems to be amazing.