Conquest of the Shadowborn - Claiming an Idol of Power

Hey guys,
So today I'll do something a little different. I've played 3 games in the past week, today I'll write up a report for one of them in a different style (the game was almost a week away now, so hard to remember battle rounds). So I'll give a more narrative approach this time. We'll have to see if I get time to write up the other battle reports.

But first up, lets see where my warband is at!

The Shadowborn in their glory

Shown above is the current status of my warband. It's missing a Chaos Spawn (Which may or may not make the cut next month anyway) since it's unpainted, but that's basically the models I've run with in March. The Giant still requires some detailing, but that's something I'll have to finish off after Easter (Writing this a mere hour before I need to leave for a flight).
So far I've been really happy with all the elements in the warband. The Chaos Warriors are tanky as hell, especially if I buff them with my Sorcerer Lord. The Chosen are pretty choppy, and the Knights tend to survive the grind, but certainly their Glaives occasionally turn the tide. The Horsemen add a little bit of ranged fire power to soften up units before others do the dirty close combat work. The Chaos Lord (Know he's an Exalted Hero model, but running him as a Lord for now) tends to be a bit of a glass cannon, a 4+ save with 5 wounds doesn't really go that far. He tends to output some good damage though, but does tend to die if he gets stuck into the frey. The giant has been pretty interesting so far, we'll see how he goes in the reports below. Finally the Sorcerer Lord adds some much needed magic to the force, and makes my guys even tankier with the ability to cast Mystic Shield and grant his visions.

So lets get onto the battles!
Battle 1 - Highborn Aelves
This battle took place on the Campaign day against a newcomer to the Escalation League. He was running his Highborn Aelves led by Teclis and Tyrion with a Loremaster in league with them. Obviously the name of the game was buff Tyrion.

The Shadowborn face off against Tyrion and Teclis

I was defending the objective, my Chaos Sorcerer Lord carefully extracting the Idol of Power from within. The game started off fairly interesting with the Silver Helms charging headlong into the Chaos Chosen, only to be cut down over a few rounds of combat. On the other side, the Swordmasters had made a long charge into the Chaos Knights and that battle was taking tolls on both sides until my Chaos Lord joined the fight.

With the aid of their Lord, the tide of the fight is swung in the favour of Chaos. But the Swordmasters would leave a lastimpression on the Chaos Lord

The extraction process was occurring quicker than expected, and Tyrion urged on Malhandir into the Chaos Warriors. Sunfang was devestating, laying waste to the Warriors and slicing through the Chaos armour.

Chaos armour is nothing to Sunfang

Nearby, Teclis was assaulted by the Chaos Chosen. The Chosen almost slay the mighty mage, but 2 are felled in return. Would Teclis be able to survive to aid his brother?

Teclis's sword and staff cut down 2 of the Chosen

Meanwhile, the Swordmasters had been finished off, and the Chaos Lord directed his Knights towards Tyrion. He must be stopped, and the Chaos Warriors were swiftly been depleted.

Surrounded, Tyrion must face the mighty of Chaos

And yes, he certainly can survive. The wounded Chaos Lord is cut down in swift fashion, and with the help of the Sea Guard that had arrived, the Knights and Warriors were on their last legs, even while Tyrion stood on 1 wound remaining.

Tyrion and the Sea Guard cut through the forces of Chaos

But it was all for naught! For the Chaos Sorcerer cackled gleefully as he pried the gleaming skull from the pillar it was contained in, for this was one of the mighty Idols of Power. Already, he could feel the power surging through his body. Surveying the field, he met the eye of Tyrion, let out a smirk and quickly turned to retreat back into the safety of the swamp.

The Sorcerer Lord has his prize, and makes off with it into the swamps

And the battle was over! This was great fun. Since I rolled high for the extraction almost every time, the outcome seemed a bit inevitable, but when Tyrion joined the frey after sending the Silver Helms to his death, it was a little worrying as he seemed unstoppable. I managed to get him down to 1 wound, to find out that he still has an extra life remaining! This is a difficult game for the invading force (As said by Games Workshop about the scenario - The Ritual - which this is heavily based off of). I don't think a single attacking force won the scenario all weekend, but I think everyone enjoyed themself.

Doing this style of report is quite interesting as well. I think I'm going to have to properly name at least my characters. The Chaos Sorcerer Lord deserves a name after all for stealing the Idol in the midst of the Shadowborn defeat. Tyrion and Teclis will no doubt be looking to seek him out and deliver justice.

Southern Escalation - Entry into Ghur

Well, it's been a month since the last update. Certainly I should try to get some updates out more frequently. Yesterday was the 2nd campaign day that has been run in the league. That means the league has been going for a complete month now, and people have had time to glue some new figures together, slap some paint on them, and expand their armies from the 6 point deployed forces we were playing a month ago.

In terms of my painting over the last month, I was lacking a bit of motivation at the start of the month. I had finished my previous months warband bar the Chaos Knights, which were in a state of needing additional layers after having been washed. It took me about 2 weeks to get on and finish them. Finishing off units can be a particularly tricky sometimes. I started these before the last campaign day, but after doing so much painting the week before the campaign to get my warband up to snuff, I basically took the week off from Warhammer the week after. By then, some of the drive had worn off to get them finished, and I wanted to move to other stuff. But I buckled down in the end and got them finished.

My finished Chaos Knights in one of the games on the day

The only other model I actually finished during the month was my Chaos Sorcerer. I love painting up single figures. Generally I'll just sit down one day of the weekend, and smash it out. Same deal happened here, and he was complete.

The characters in my Chaos Undivided Warband

Unfortunately, too much humming and haahing about what I wanted to add into the warband next meant the rest of my models for the month were unpainted. In my original plan I made before the campaign started, I was going to do my Chaos Sorcerer and 10 more Chaos Warriors over the last month. However, I don't really want to get bogged down in painting infantry.
Another thing is that eventually my leader will be the Chaos Lord on Daemonic mount. One of the issues buying second hand though, is that you trade off price and quality sometimes. My figure is missing the top of his hammer, and I've been having a tough time trying to find a suitable replacement for his weapon.
So then, we finally come to the humble Chaos Gargant. I had used my Gargant in a game last month, and he's got some pretty cool rules, and is fairly cheap in the Pool Points document at the moment. The problem was, I needed to get a base for him, and didn't want to just order the base. I finally walked into GW last Friday and found out that those size bases come in the base packs they have in little blisters, so that was a simple purchase. So now he's definitely on the painting block for this month, just gotta figure out what else I want to add into the army now!

Back to the campaign day itself. About a week before the event, I wrote up a quick pack for the event. Those interested can view the pack here. Just some very simple Time of War rules, a special benefit for those that manage a Major Victory on the day, and a scenario.

The scenario for the day was Idols of Power. It's a scenario that was largely based off the Ritual for the most part, with one warband extracting an artifact while the other warband wants to claim it for their own, but was a bit late to the party. Now they must wipe out the enemy, or destroy the Idol so nobody can have the power.

The Stormcast are extracting the Idol, but the Noble Free People believe the artifact is the Holy Grail!

I think everyone had good fun playing the scenario. I wanted a scenario that was different than last months objective (which was both armies clashing for an objective in the centre of the table), but I  wasn't certain if armies were going to be big enough to try for 2 objectives (say a home objective to defend and an enemy one to claim). The only thing I'd tweak is I think I'd put the Extraction number back to 20 where it was in the Ritual scenario. Whether it was due to rolling high or otherwise, I think in almost every game everyone managed to complete the Ritual. I'd tweaked the number because I was worried a wipe out at smaller model numbers might be too easy to achieve before the average of 5 battle rounds was met. In hindsight, wipe out is potentially quite hard to achieve anyway if the enemy tries to retreat units from combat.

Stormcast elsewhere in the swamps defend an Idol from a marauding Orruk warband

Also, one of the excellent things of the day was that we managed to have 3 concurrent games going on again. Even better, was that half of the people playing were new to the campaign and didn't participate last month. We had a few last minute pull outs due to other obligations, and some others were unable to make it due to other commitments on the day, but it's great to see that if everyone managed to come on the same day, we could have like 5-6 games going on at the same time. For something I was considering not running due to fear of lack of interest in the game, I'm quite happy to have this turned around and turning out to be a very popular day.

Sean's Highborn Aelves led by Tyrion and Teclis clash against the Shadowborn

Zak's Orruks Waaaagh has them clash against Ben's Stormcast Eternals

Shown above are the armies of the newcomers this time around. Zak while not new to Warhammer, hadn't played in many years and was learning the rules basically on the spot. After his first game and hearing how well my Chaos Gargant went against the Highborn, he altered his own list to include a pair of Aleguzzler Gargants! Talk about devastating.

Orruks don't defend, they attack! The onslaught of the two Gargants leaves the Highborn devestated

And with 6 games played overall, that's the end of the 2nd campaign day. Good turn out, lots of fun. If you're on the edge about trying to get something going, I heartily recommend just doing it! There's plenty of gamers out there just waiting to come out of the woodworks, and even if you just have 4-5 players, then you can tailor the experience for what the wants of your little group is.

Now I just need to figure out what to add to my army for next month...