Summer 997 - The Battle of the Abyssal Hordes

The battlefield had a small woods on one side and a large plateau running down the other side and into the centre. This consisted of hills in four sectors that we joined together because we could. Stygustan occupied the hill and Altengard chose to attack up it rather than to manoeuvre round it.

Although the Stygustani army routed, the demon remained and routed the Altengardian army, killing its general. As a result, there were no permanent losses other than the Obviously Dead general and a wizard who overextended himself. We ruled it an Altengardian win because they had defeated Stygustan. The demon was just a road bump and could be dealt with properly this turn as Altengard occupied the province.

The Butcher's Bill
1 Altengardian General
1 Level 1 Wizard

Both armies passed 2D on National Morale, so the war will continue next season.

Mirish versus the Brethren

"Yes?" Pereira asked the Brethren Messenger.

"The Grand Master issues a personal challenge to you," the Brother Knight said with a smile. "Surely one so honorable as the General cannot refuse."

"It's a fair fight, the Master wishes I presume," Pereira replied.

"Yes, a fair fight."

Pereira stared at the messenger with no show of emotion. 

"Tell him he will get as fair a fight as he gave those during the Jellway Massacre. He has 1 hour."

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Summer 997 - Campaign Progress.

The spring saw a suitably bloody start to the campaigning season:

• Tereken took a province from Treyine without a fight, but this easy victory seems to have demoralised their warlike spirit as their National Morale went down.
• Treyine has capitulated to the Brethren and to Mirish, possibly in order to better focus their efforts on Tereken.
• Mirish has successfully defeated the Beastmen, and must now repel Mangu.
• Stygustan took a beating at Hecksmouth but will continue to fight Altengard.

Ongoing Wars
Altengard invades Stygustan
Mangu invades Mirish
Tereken invades Treyine

New Wars
Brethren invade Mirish

Talomir Summer 997

Spring 997- The Bows of Treyine

Sorry to have taken so long on this one, I have decided that going forward I will just play with what I have on hand. Every time I try to get the whole army painted before the battle I fail miserably.

 Grand Master Roderick was a young zealot with a fervor for the old glory of the order. Reactionary elements had ushered him into power and fed his delusion that the Red Sun wanted it's kingdom on Talomir.

 Lord De La Warre had defeated these fanatics before. The orders lands had been reverted to the crown. He would not truck with these upstarts, they would be defeated again.

During the pursuit none of the Brethren were lost. I suspect that the Spear of St. Lindorf was lost when Grand Master Roderick routed. The Wind Maiden was interesting but ended up not playing much of a role in the battle. I counted the air ships as 3 separate flyers for scouting, this gave Treyine a big advantage which led to them becoming the attacker.

 I feel like I have yet to use cavalry effectively. The Brethren Knights charged because of an Enemy Threat Test and then could not score a hit due to poor dice rolling. The odds did seem stacked against them from the start though.

Spring 997 - The Battle at Hecksmouth

"Oh great Pharaoh, the enemy has formed up. It looks like they will charge soon."
"Prepare the sorcerers and instruct the men to hold this hill. We shall use this terrain to our advantage while our otherworldly minions crush the enemy so that we may drive our chariots over their corpses!"

It had been a hard battle, thought General Von Rountundrount, but they had left the field victorious. Well to be accurate they had left the field fairly quickly to avoid the two battling demons.

The battle had started well with General Von Der Rountundrount holding the centre ground. The right flank, with the White Company, leading the attack and on the left the heroic Druncastein leading the way.

The Stygustani army occupies the hill in the foreground, looking like a ragtag collection of figures proxied in to roughly represent the right troop types. The light horse on the left are actually the chariots. The Altengard army looks more like it should

Then things had started going wrong the enemy seemed to have a lot of wizards and demons started appearing all over. The White company soon decided this wasn’t in their contract and together with several skirmishers left the field.

The first two of several demons appear on the left flank while the enemy light horse make a foray around the right flank to disrupt the Stygustani troops from behind

Druncastein had much more success on the left and soon was attacking the enemy flank, while the General lead his men up the hill and into the face of the Stygustan force. The battle raged on the hillside. Eventually the Stygustan resolve broke, as did the coven of wizards. This also meant the two remaining demons turned upon each other.

A demon too many? The demons became uncontrolled and suddenly found themselves closer to each other than to any enemy troops. Meanwhile on the hill attrition has taken its toll and the last of the Stygustani rout in the face of  the bloodied but unbowed remnants of the Altengard army

I definitely made a mistake in summoning too many demons. More blast spells should have been the order of the day, but I got carried away with seeing my high level spells actually working! Other than that, it was a rough battle for both of armies with many casualties on each side.

The butcher's bill
4 Stygustani archers permanently lost
1 level 2 Mage obviously dead

Stygustani morale took a hit, but they will fight on next season despite that.

Fight to the Death

"We are outnumbered and the humans have many cavalry, sire" said the Beastman.
"What is your point, Snarlz?" replied the Beastmen Alpha-Male.
Snarlz looked at the others and asked "What will we do?"
 "Why, we will die!" The Alpha-Male let out a terrifying laugh. "It's not when we die, it's how we die. Now let's die well!"

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It went pretty much how I thought it would except for the cavalry losing the melee and retiring. If the Beastmen would have activated first they would have charged the retiring cavalry and maybe eliminated some units but they were hopelessly outnumbered. This is the first time the bows of the Clibinarri cavalry played a role. The threat of them shooting the Beastmen to death forced them to charge into melee.

The Crystal Light of Yakub, raisng the morale of the Mirsih Army, played a big role, as did the Hero.

Overall the Beastmen fought splendidly, giving out huge numbers of casualties, but it was a foregone conclusion.

Not Enough Killing in Your Pursuits?

Here's a little tip that goes a long way.
When you win a battle and have a major pursuit, that's the best time to deal your opponent a devastating blow. Here's how we do it:
According to the rules for Major Pursuit. The loser places his units from right to left in a single line on the table.

Next the pursuer places one of his non-routed units opposite one of the losing units. He starts with the loser worth the lowest points and goes to the one worth the most points. Now here's where you can raise the stakes.

The winner can start his pursuit with slower winning units, saving his faster (LC) units for more expensive losing units.

Example -
The loser has 2AC 2 skirmishers, 1 AC 4 infantry  and 1 AC  6 Knights lined up for pursuit.
The winner has 1 AC 2 Skirmish cavalry, 1 AC 2 skirmisher and 2 AC 4 infantry to pursue.
He decides to pursue the first 2 skirmishers with his 2 AC 4 infantry and uses his AC 2 skirmish on the losing infantry and the AC cavalry on the knight. The last two winners now move faster than the last two losers.

 If the losers pass 1d6 on the Casualty Recovery Table (page 43) they are destroyed.
So to make it easy to remember. Place your slowest moving winners first on the low point losers and keep your higher moving winners for the more expensive losers.

Now, back to our wars!