Even as Lord Magwe and his loyal minions labored to rebuild the ruins of Kaiqubotl into a functioning temple city, the Chaos invaders continued their onslaught. The latest incursion was led by a legendary hero of Khorne, who, with the gigantic metallic creature at his command, had subjugated a number of knights sworn to the rival god Nurgle and bent them to his service. With pillaged lizardmen gold the would-be conqueror also funded the importation of a vile Hellcannon and it's crew from far off Zharr-Naggrund, and then set his sights on the still under-defended Kaiqubotl, hoping to catch the occupants unawares. What they found standing in their path, however, was a ferocious looking host of lizardmen, led by a scarred, hulking, albino saurus: Gor-rok, hero of Itza, sent to bring relief to Lord Magwe and his besieged city. For the record: this ended up being the best, most fun game of Warhammer, or anything else, I've yet played. On the table was: Lizardmen- Gor-rok: general 23 Saurus: spear, full command (Gor-rok here) 24 skink: 3x Kroxigor, full command 4 terradon chief skink: ancient stega, war spear 2 salamander: Warriors of Chaos Hero: general, Khorne mark, giant monster, super weapon Hero: horse, power weapon 3x5 knights: Nurgle mark (heros in 2 of these) 2x5 light horsemen Hellcannon The highlights: This got bloody right off the bat. The hellcannon fired into my big skrox unit and rolled a bullseye, killing over ten skinks and wounding a krox. The terradons wiped out a group of light horse with their rocks and nailed a javelin into the neck of an unlucky knight before a salamander fried the man next to him. The remaining light horse group rammed into my saurus block, hoping to block us up for a flank charge. The horsemen splatted against the wall of spears, and the stegadon scared the three flanking knights away, while salamanders burned another in the process. The hellcannon missed it's shots from here out, but the Khorne general and his knights were barely in range to get a charge off on the front of the skrox. The skink brave absorbed the general's attacks in a challenge, and one krox was finished off by the unit, but the krox struck back and killed 2 knights! Skrox still had enough victory res. to hold, and my general and his saurus flanked the combat on the next turn. The terradons positioned themselves behind the enemy to catch them when they fled, but by the end of combat the saurus had more numbers than the skrox and the general fled through a gap, hoping for freedom. Skrox ran them down with an 11" pursuit, taking them towards the far end of the table. The third group of knights, with mounted hero, had been making it's way gradually down this side, hoping to come in on the side of my battle line, and they tried to charge the skrox, failing and stopping short. Meanwhile, the hellcannon misfired (as it seems disposed to) and rampaged forward 14" to crash into the terradons, who were also charged by the group of two knights. The terradons were wiped out, and the hellcannon ended up almost back to back with Gor-rok and his sarus. Gor-rok's men turned and prepared to charge the cannon their next turn... The skrox decided to charge the remaining hero and his knights on the far side of the field, connecting and slaying a knight before being broken and run down. The knights roll a 16 for their pursuit, bringing them towards the saurus, though still quite far away... And on their turn, ended up being 1/4" inside charge range and flanked Gor-rok and his saurus! Saurus fell left and right, but Gor-rok's stubborn leadership enabled them to hold, for now... The chief rammed the hellcannon with his stegadon and scored big hits, but almost all of them got allocated to the dwarves, so only one wound on the cannon. The stegadon and demonic artillery began slugging it out... By this point, people had started gathering around the table, seeing how close things were getting, and a number of them stopped playing their own games to see how ours turned out. Anyway... Gor-rok was able to move into combat along with the champion on round 2, and the champ soaked up the chaos hero's hits in the inevitable challenge while Gor-rok shrugged off countless wounds and brought down a knight. Stubborn leadership held again, and the chief and hellcannon continued their duel, with the crew losing all but one. The salamanders unsuccessfully shot at the two renegade knights, who tried to find an opening into combat. Round five, Gor-rok rolled two fives and a six on his leadership test- disaster! The knights ran the saurus down, missing the stegadon by a fraction of an inch. The skink chief was slain as well, falling into the maw of the beast, but the hellcannon got down to one wound. Turn six: the salamanders set up perfectly on the victorious chaos knights and fried two of them, but they held their panic test. The last stegadon crewman died, just before the stegadon, with it's final attacks, slew the hellcannon once and for all. The remaining enemies (Two knights, and one knight with a hero, fled north to combine their strength and claim a table quarter, while I held the one we were in with the salamanders and the leaderless stegadon... and that's the game. Phew!!!! When all was said and done, the two banners the enemy had captured put him up by 161 points- enough for a draw in his favor. And, while I made a number of mistakes, both of us playing- and our spectators- had one holy heck of a good time. See ya next time, when Jihan the carnosaur rider takes on our #2 ranked league player and his mighty Tomb Kings in: Thermopylae, part two. On the blood drenched battlefield the natural sounds of the jungle began tentatively to return, punctuated by the mournful bellows of a lone stegadon as it nuzzled the twisted remains of it's trainers. While the enemy force had been shattered beyond repair, the cost had been unimaginably high, and the surviving dregs had made away with two precious and ancient war banners, souring the achievement. As the skink beast handlers led their salamanders and the reluctant stegadon into the trees on their journey home, all on the battlefield clearing became still... Until, from underneath a tangle of jumbled corpses, an enormous, clawed, white hand emerged... Tearing the Chaos blade from his abdomen, Gor-rok screamed his defiance to the sky.
Looks like a good fight! I'm glad you had a good time with it. I've not played against Chaos with my fledgeling lizardmen so I'm hoping that our Chaos Mortals player on the other side of our campaign map will get close enough for me to bust him up a bit.
What model do you use for Gor-Rok? He sounds like one of the more solid named characters we have acess to.
I converted a temple guard model to be Gor-rok, with a saurus champion head and various bits to make a chest protector. His Shield of Aeons was made out of a temple guard standard, and I cut away the knee joints to make him look like he's rearing up. One foot is on a slain marauder head I traded for, and he's got arrows and a lance sticking out of him to represent his "resilient" special rule. Once my old lady figures out how to work the digital camera she bought I'll try to post a picture on here, but don't expect miracles as it's my first converted piece. (still awful proud of him though!)