8th Ed. 2400 points versus Dwarf led by Bugman

I played my largest point battle this weekend. Like way too many of the smaller scaled battles I did, I was wiped out to the last man.

First Meeting Engagement. There were many terrain features but only two mattered, a building in the corner of my deployment zone and a long river cutting across the table diagonally fairly close to the actual center dividing line. My opponent put down a cannon, an organ gun, and a rune master. He had a gyrocopter come in as reinforcements the first turn. Apart from the war machines and rune master, nothing deployed normally. My opponent used Bugman and a special rune to deploy two groups of scouting rangers with some characters and a unit of miners.

My plan from the start was to have my Slann and Temple Guard form up my center with the two Saurus units flanking it. The salamander and skinks would advance ahead to soften up or distract the enemy and the Saurus would close the gap as quickly as possible and start close combat to make them impossible to target with range. Hopefully with some nice Lore of Light buffs they would win their combats. The Terradons and chameleon skinks were there to hunt war machines or attack other targets of opportunity. I moved my units as close to the center as possible so they’d theoretically have the least distance to cross. A simple battle plan that was hard to mess up, or so I thought. I also thought with scouts coming ny opponent would want the building, but it wasn’t really tactically useful to him and my chameleon skinks ended up wasting a turn exiting the building.

Since my opponent deployed first I should have deployed my forces with the expectation that his scouts and miners would come in behind me. But my simple plan was thwarted by my opponent’s unorthodox army. I had to waste a turn reforming my Saurus units to face the large blocks coming in behind them. Only my terradons, my slowed down building chameleon skinks, and the skirmishers with the FSOD actually advanced past the river. I didn’t get a lot of useful spells off, in fact a miscast took out several temple guard with a miscast (I whiffed my Cupped Hands roll). A couple more temple guard and Saurus died to shooting but nothing significant.

The already depleted Temple Guard, got whittled down to just the Slann and one surviving member with the standard bearer surviving, this gave the Slann stubborn for one turn avoiding what would have otherwise involved the Slann breaking and automatically dying (given he was a battle standard bearer). My Saurus helped support the Slann but they weren’t enough. My Cold One Riders with the Scar Veteran ended up as reinforcements. They helped the fight with a nice rear charge, but they didn’t earn their points before being ground down. I was so worried about my Slann dying (rightfully so), so my salamander and chameleon skink had to forgo unimpressive shooting to join the melee as well. The last temple guard was wiped out while the Saurus were thinned. The Slann took some hits but only one Wound thanks to good ward save rolls. Then in later turns the Slann was hacked to pieces due to a sheer volume of attacks and below average ward save rolls and after losing combat badly with no general or battle standard bearer surviving, my salamander, one surviving chameleon skink, and two Saurus units all broke the same turn. One Saurus unit and the Chameleon got run down, the other units rallied but got wiped out later. I killed a lot of dwarves during this debacle but no whole units, so no points for me.

The periphery of the battle was interesting but didn’t affect the outcome. My FSOD of death left the skirmishers he was with, got a very poor charge roll attempting to charge the cannon. Then took a cannon ball hit and due to a lucky roll took only one wound. Then the next turn he got another very poor charge roll. Then got hit by another cannon ball and slain. My chameleon skinks eventually got up to the cannon crew, but lost a combat and broke. My ten skirmishers now deprived of their FSOD buddy took some fire from the gyrocopter and panicked. The fleeing chameleon skink and skirmisher unit got finished off with cannon and gyrocopter shooting before they could rally or flee of the table.

Early on the in the game my Terradon riders got thinned out by the organ gun then charged the organ gun and killed it. They attempted to overrun into the cannon crew and ended up clipping the rune lord instead. None of the combats were that decisive. It got down to just my skink chief, his terradon, and the rune lord. Most close combats were draws had no wounds inflicted at all. Eventually the rune lord killed the skink chief, but he was down to his last of three wounds. It was a close albeit long fight. If I killed the rune lord it wouldn’t have pulled me away from a major defeat but at least I would have felt better for having won the lengthy fight.

 

The champion was targeted specifically, I didn't think that was worth mentioning before.

 

It doesn't really make a difference if a Slann sans Temple Guard is cut down or not because if he's the bsb and he loses combat, he automatically dies. Now adays I'm boosting my Temple Guard blocks to 26 (with the Slann making it "30") and that buffer of scaly fodder has done okay far keeping my toad alive.