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...