Southern Escalation Wrap-up

Hi all,
Long time no post. Unfortunately I've been pretty busy the last two months. Still been playing in the campaign, and doing a bit of painting on the side. I've got a battle report to post for June at some point (as long as I can remember enough of what went on to write it), and 2 weeks ago we had the conclusion of the Southern Escalation campaign.

The campaign concluded with 6 people duking it out in a 3 on 3 mega battle. Those interested in the particular rules of the battle plan can read it here, but the short of it is: An Orruk mage with the last idol powered himself up, and was basically the objective of the two sides fighting to kill the Orruk and claim back the last Idol.

The forces of Order face off against the combined might of Chaos, Death and some Dark Aelves

As it so happened, nothing ever quite turns out how you'd expect. The goal was that the team who did the most damage to him would win. By default, the Orruk Shaman (Known as Udermadd) has a 3+ re-rollable save that ignores rend and a 4+ save against mortal wounds. Pretty tough, and with 20 wounds to boot. If you held more of the objectives than your opponent, he would lose some of his toughness (first the re-rolls, then the ignoring rend, and finally the ward save). As it turns out, a 3+ re-rollable save isn't actually that tough, and since he starts in the middle of the board, he is easily chargeable on the first turn as well.
So what ended up happening, is that Order won the first turn, and immediately while moving up a bit, dealt 10 wounds to Udermadd, narrowly not winning on the first turn before Chaos even got a chance to go. In return, the Chaos forces focussed their entire attention on Udermadd as well, and the Chaos Gargant with a swing of his club managed to equalise by dealing the last wound.

All the monsters beating on the poor Orruk

So at the bottom of turn 1, the game was a draw and we hadn't even hit lunch time yet! Not the way I planned the mega battle to go out! So after a bit of discussion, we all decided we'll just keep track of how many wounds each side does to the Orruk, and at the end of fourth turn, the side that did the most wounds would claim the death of the Orruk and would win the battle.
At the end of the battle, the forces of Chaos were largely diminished but the arcane firepower of their mages was enough to win the day. Not quite how I was expecting the game to play out, but everyone had a bunch of fun and was a great way to conclude the campaign.

The Orruk teleports out of the action, and the game ends

So that concludes the campaign. It was a great run, and we created a great little community of Age of Sigmar players down at the club. In the end, the campaign ticked all the boxes I had going into it. In fact, all my New Years Resolutions for running the campaign. I didn't quite tick all my boxes for my Slaves to Darkness warband. I didn't manage to write nearly as many articles as I wanted, and my entire force isn't quite painted (Be'Lakor, Chaos Warshrine, 5 Chosen and Lord on Daemonic Mount unfinished). Still, it was a good run, and it got me the majority of my stuff painted, which was one of the main reasons I wanted to run the campaign.

Anyway, that's that. What's next for Age of Sigmar at the club? Well, the Generals Handbook has just dropped (Another good reason that it was the right time to end the campaign so we can shift from community points to GW points). Another guy is pretty keen to organise and run something based on that. What it turns out as is still in discussion. Later on in the year, there's been talk about holding an Age of Sigmar tournament as well. Plenty more to look forward to in future!