8th Ed. Jungleheim: Mordheim in Lustria

[Warden]

Instead of making multiple threads for my Warhammer Mordheim Games, I am going to combine all future Mordheim games with my Mayan/Lizardmen terrain into a single JUNGLEHEIM thread.


INDEX:

My first game of Mordheim is posted on a separate thread: New World of Gold

Jungleheim Games

1. Treasure Hunt! (04FEB18- Bretonnians vs. Bretonnians)
2. Sibling Rivalry: Treasure Hunt! (03MAR18- Bretonnians vs. Bretonnians)
3. Attack of the Wood Elves (04JUL18- Bretonnians vs. Wood Elves)
4. Lizardmen Strike Back (JUL18- Lizardmen vs. Wood Elves vs. Lizardmen)
5. Monkeys in the Tower (DEC18- Savage Orcs vs. Skeletons)
6. Tower of Fire (DEC18- Skeletons vs. Savage Orcs)

Also got some Mordheim Jungle Encounters, with pictures!

 

[Warden]

It has been quite a while since my last game, but I got the chance to start a new Mordheim campaign this weekend with my wife. I am hoping to use the same warbands for a few games (hopefully 6) over the next few months, or whenever I can convince her to play another game with me


Battle Report: Treasure Hunt

1) Setup and Warbands

2) Battle Report

3) Results & Endgame, plus Critiques


Setup:

The match is the inaugural game for both the gaming table itself and the (hopefully) future Mordheim campaign. We set up the battlefield in a 4x4 foot playing space in the center of the board. I used some jungle fortress walls (badly in need of repair) to shorten the actual playing board.

Unlike the last game we played, this time we actually followed the rulebook for terrain setup in the scenario, by each taking turns to place one terrain piece at a time. This made setup actually pretty fun and unique; the setup was way different than anything I would have setup on my own.





Warbands:

Doing an inventory before the battle, I determined that in my collection I have enough minis to make a few different types of warbands, including Bretonnian Knights, Lizardmen, an Outlaws Warband (Outlaws of Stirland Forest rules, using my Merry Men), and a Restless Dead warband (thanks to my newly painted Wight King and Skeletons!).

For simplicity however we decided to stick with Bretonnians though. This meant neither of us had to figure out magic/necromancy rules, and could stick with the normal Human statline. Warband construction also was nearly identical at the start, with some of the squire’s weaponry slightly different:

- The Questing Knight was the warband leader, equipped with a sword, light armor, and a shield.

- 2x Knights Errant: light armor and a shield plus a mix of weaponry including greatswords (double-handed weapon), ax (count-as mace for the knight), and a morning star.

- 2x Squires: all had bows, and had either axes or swords as a secondary weapon.

- One units of 2x Men-at-Arms: each had a halberd and a shield

- One unit of 3x Bowmen: each only had a bow, but all warband members have the free dagger too. None of the bowmen ever made it into combat in this skirmish though.

My band of knights of the Kings Men:



My wife's warband, the Templars:

 

[Warden]

Battle Report:

Because we were already familiar with it I decided we would play the Treasure Hunt (Wyrdstone Hunt scenario). Seven tokens were scattered across the board, to ensure that someone would walk away with more tokens at the end of the game.

Wyrdstone/Treasure Tokens:



Sorry for the blurry pics, some of them didn't turn out very well. Lighting in the room isn't the best either


The locations of the treasure tokens are listed left to right, as according to the picture above:

1) Far left edge, in the tower above the Tuloom temple

2) Lower left-hand corner; third level on the House of the Pigeons (new terrain piece!)

3) Center of the board, hiding by the luggage cart and between the Arch of Labna and the high pavilion taking up the direct center of the board

4) Sitting on the edge of the well, bottom of the board closest to the lower right-hand corner

5) Above-center, hidden below the gallows on the plaza (you can see the plaza from other pictures better)

6) Right side of the board within the roof (fourth level) of the Tower of Palenque

7) Last token was in the upper right-hand corner of the board, on the second-floor of the Rattlesnake house.

You can also see the deployment zones on this map. Since I won the roll to deploy I picked the upper left-hand corner of the board (Red Zone), while my wife got the lower-right (White Zone). We deployed from a 1x1 foot square in the corner of the board for simplicity’s sake, basically within the two buildings on either corner.



Turn 1 and 2:

The first few turns was just a scramble to grab as many tokens as possible. Token #6 in the Tower was out of reach for everyone at the moment.

My wife got first turn and quickly grabbed token #4 by the well, and sent all three of her knights to flank up to the upper right-hand corner of the board towards token #7.

Token #4 at the well:



In my first turn I was able to move my archers up the ladder on the Tuloom Temple and grab token #1, and spread my forces out within striking distance of tokens #2, 3, and 5.

One of my archers on top of the House of the Pigeons:



My Questing Knight and his squire, preparing to sneak around the cart to grab the wyrdstone:



Lucky for me I got to go first on the second turn, and was able to grab all three open tokens in the center of the board.

By the end of turn 2, I had secured four tokens, while my wife only had two. However I was painfully aware that in the upper half of the board she had all three of her knights staring across the plaza at my single Knight Errant and two men-at-arms flunkies .

Hiding behind the gallows:





Turn 3 and 4:

Turn 3 didn’t go very well for me. While my archers up in the House of the Pigeons had great fields of fire over the entire battlefield, they only were able to take one of her squires out of action.

The rest of her forces charged my knights guarding the wyrdstone tokens. One of her men-at-arms succeeded immediately at knocking down my questing knight on the first try! Not good to have your warband leader go down so easily… the only thing that kept him alive was one of my knight’s errant running over from the other side of the board to save him from getting killed on the ground.



My troubles grew much worse as I attempted to flee the upper region of the map onto the center high pavilion. Thanks to our first random encounter, an Ogre Mercenary in the form of one of my new Gatormen showed up, and agreed to lend his aid to my wife’s warband (at a price of course). He along with her knights proceeded to attack my men-at-arms, knocking one down and contesting the wyrdstone of another.

Gatorman Mercenary joins the Templars:



Neither of my men-at-arms soldier lasted very long and she stole the treasure token…

But it did give enough time for my morning-star knight to hold off the rest of her soldiers while one of my squires sprinted his way to the top of the tower, grabbing the last treasure token (#6). This was just at the end of turn 4, right before I needed to take my mandatory route test for 25% of my warband out-of-action.

Sadly my brave knights were not very brave, and I failed my route test, forcing me to yield the field to my wife’s knights and her reptilian ally.

 

[Warden]

Results:

Me: 4 tokens

My wife: 3 tokens

Victor: Templars (my wife), thanks to me routing from the field.



Securing four tokens was nice, but not enough to stop me from failing a route test. In the end it was clearly a victory for the White Knights, especially the way things were going at the time. While at the end of turn 4 I did have the most tokens, considering where her soldiers were I was going to be hard pressed to keep my advantage in turn 5 and 6, especially with that Gatorman hacking his way through my knights. The only chance I would have had was to have all three of my knights converge on him at once, but the odds of being successful were probably not very good…

Spoiler: bonus pics

Two more battlefield shots:





The battle of the center of the board, where one men-at-arms was already gone, and the other one (on his back) was about to be eaten by a ogre-sized alligator. Things did not bode well for me if the game had gone on any longer

Endgame:

King’s Men:

Sadly I lost one of my men-at-arms in the battle , but I hired two more men-at-arms henchmen with some gold gained through selling some wyrdstone.

I also almost lost one of my squires, but he survived his trip to the fighting pits after a ferocious fight with an amazon (count-as pit fighter, I used my new amazon model to stand in). He did loose the fight, but only got all his stuff stolen. I had to buy him a new bow instead.

Current warband is standing ready for the next fight with 2 wyrdstone, 11 models, and a 66 warband rating thanks to the new recruits.


Templars:

My wife’s Templars survived the skirmish with no casualties, and after paying off the Gatorman mercenary she spent a few more coins on extra gear for her soldiers, including some light armor for her squires.

Currently her warband stands at 3 wyrdstone, 9 models, and a 54 warband rating.

She is currently winning the campaign too, thanks to three wyrdstone, and though my warband has a slightly higher rating this just means she gets the extra experience bonus next battle.



A few critiques of the game:

Positives: It was a fun one

1) Overall the game was fun. The random terrain emplacement at the beginning was interesting; we really crammed the board full of terrain, and having the tall terrain pieces served to make the board even more interesting to play on. Hopefully by the next time we play a game I have even more buildings complete, and maybe a few more road sections.

2) The gameplay in Mordheim is a lot of fun, its quick and fairly easy to explain, especially since I have most of the to-hit and to-wound charts from old Warhammer mostly memorized.

3) I am very glad I more knights on foot recently to add more potential figures to the game. Having only a small group of skirmish figures is relatively easy to convert up really quickly, especially since I have so many bits and pieces lying around.


Negatives: Too much book-keeping, not enough MORDHEIM!

1) The book-keeping for a Mordheim campaign is rough. From setting up the warbands at the start, to all the tiny little experience point/treasure hunting things you need to do at the end, it takes a lot of time away from bashing away at your opponent’s figures on the board. I am glad we started the campaign and have a solid list of minis left for the next game, but it took a long time to get through all the extra steps, while the battle itself was only four turns! Definitely a bit detractor for us both, so I hope to figure out a way to speed it up on any future games.

2) Mrs. Warden is displeased with the lack of gloating about her exploits in this battle report…


Until next time, I hope you enjoyed the battle report!

 

[Warden]

... so instead of continuing my last Mordheim campaign, I played an epic skirmish with my sister this weekend! She has never played Warhammer before, so like my wife I had to explain how the game works and the basic rules. I did a better job this time because I taped some abbreviated rules on the wall of the game room for easy reference.


Battle Report: Sibling Rivalry(Treasure Hunt!)

1) Setup and Warbands Lists

2) Battle Report Part 1: First Few turns

3) Battle Report Part 2: Last Few turns

3) Results & Endgame, plus Critiques


Setup:

The match was played with the entire 4x6ish board space this time, since I really didn’t want to use my broken-down fortress towers and walls until they are fixed. We took turns placing out the buildings and other terrain elements to satisfactory results. I was able to use my new Xochicalco and El Tanjin boards (they are nearly complete), plus two more terrain buildings that were new since the last jungle battle.




Warbands:

For simplicity’s sake we went with a very quick and easy set of matching Bretonnian warbands (eventually I will run some Lizardmen too…):

- 3x Knights: heavy armor and a shield plus a sword, one of hers had a greatsword. They just used the basic Knights Errant statline this time.

- 2x Squires: longbows.

- One units of 3x Men-at-Arms: each had a halberd and a shield, one for each knight

- One unit of 3x Bowmen: each with a longbow.


Green Knights (my warband):



White Knights (my sister):



We picked a random assortment of knights from my Bretonnian foot knight collection, so no Templars graced the field this time. I was the Green Knights (led by the knight with the double-crossed axes) while she took the White Knights (knight with the eagle).

 

[Warden]

Battle Report:

The scenario we played was Wyrdstone Hunt!

Spoiler: map detail

I tried drawing a map so you can see where the treasure tokens were deployed better:


The buildings are blue (platforms dark blue), with terrain pieces in green (trees are round). The road pieces and the plaza are grey, and for the sake of having them stand out the wyrdstone/treasure tokens are red. Deployment zones are also marked.

Locations of the treasure:

1) On top of the Palenque Tower.

2) On top of the Chicanna Temple in the corner.

3) On top of the main House of the Pigeons building along the side of the board.

4) Center of the board, hiding behind the statue on the El Tanjin platform.

5) Hidden inside a jungle terrain piece in the Plaza

6) Top story of one of the houses on the far side of the board

7) Top story of the house that was on top of the Xochicalco platform.

My sister deployed her knights and soldiers in the White Zone, while I deployed opposite her long ways on the table in the Green Zone.

First Few Turns:



The first two turns ended with our warbands being just out of contact with each other. We immediately raced towards the center to grab the unattended treasure, with my warband quickly securing tokens #7 and #5 in the plaza. Meanwhile my sister’s minions had captured three, securing #2 at the Chicanna temple in the corner, #1 on top of the tower, and #3 in the center of the board on top of the platform. This put her in superior position for commanding fantastic archery fields of fire across the entire board.

Her archer on top of the tower preparing to rain down arrows on my warband:



My sister’s lead knight takes control of the wyrdstone in the center of the platform:



In contrast I had only two tokens, with #6 just out of reach and #3 within easy grabbing distance of her archers. I planned to rush her knights on the platform during turn 3, but the jungle had other plans during the Random Encounters phase…



A pack of feral dogs appeared on the board, and as luck would have it they spawned directly behind the main thrust of my warband!



It was at this point I knew I was in trouble. I had to sacrifice one of my archers to deal with two of the dogs, while a long men-at-arms was brought down by the third one. We technically needed to have a pack of 6 dogs appear, but I only have two actual dog models on hand. The third dog was represented by an undead skeleton dog that came with the Kings of War skeletons box.

My poor archer attempts to fight off the dogs:



With the pack of dogs behind me, the rest of my warband prepared to engage the brunt of her fighters in the center of the board by the plaza:



The only true victory during the first few turns for me was the fact that two of my archers, having taken up a good position in one of the outlying buildings, succeeded in taking down her lead knight while was celebrating his treasure!



Definitely a very fortuitous set of dice rolls on my part, as he was in cover and had heavy armor.

 

[Warden]

Battle Report (continued):

Last Few Turns:

By the start of turn 4 my sister had lost one knight to my archers, while I had already lost two peasant soldiers to the rabid dogs that were still closing in on the back of my warband. One of my squires was able to sneakily scramble up and grab token #6, bringing our wyrdstone counts up to 3 for me and 4 for my sister.



This is when the battle became more of a slog. Our forces collided at the side of the plaza, and for the next two turns our knights and men-at-arms battered each other for supremacy of the treasure token in the hands of my green foot knight:



Since this was the first battle my sister ever fought we didn’t take any route tests where all the warband members flee off the board when loosing 25% casualties. We had both lost enough models by this point, due to the combat and the dogs, but during one of the turns (turn 6?) I scored another random happening roll. Instead of a hindrance this one actually gave me an extra wyrdstone token, bringing our totals to a tied 4 to 4.

This meant that the only token that was contested was the one carried by the knight in the middle of the melee in the center of the board… so we decided to fight it out and see if my sister could wrest a victory away from my heroic knights!



After SEVERAL more turns (we went all the way to turn 10!) and totally forgetting about the archers because they were shooting abysmally, my warband finally started falling apart. On the last turn all my troopers were dead, with only the green knight himself remaining. After surviving another few rounds of combat in which he was alone and unafraid, fighting her knights and men-at-arms in the front and simultaneously fighting the feral dogs in the back, he succumbed to his wounds and was taken out of action :

 

[Warden]

Results:

Me: 3 tokens

My sister: 5 tokens

Victor: the White Knights! (my sister)



A few critiques/things we learned from the game:


Positives:

1) I am glad I made more ladders before this game, they add a lot to the “height” of the table, giving the minis more places to explore:

Spoiler: Ladders

2) The growing collection of Mayan/Lizardmen terrain looks great on the table!

Spoiler: more pics!

3) Having the rules posted on the wall were super helpful for quick and easy reference during the game instead of constantly flipping through the book

Neutral:

1) Technically it’s a negative because it did make the game drag on, but deciding to prolong the game and forgo the route tests was still a good decision in this case because we had the satisfaction of fighting out a duel in the center of the board. It was a ton of dice rolls, but my knight was able to achieve a glorious demise, and my sister was able to secure her first Warhammer victory!

Negatives:

1) Deploying the huge board was fun, but next time I would deploy the opposing forces along the short edges of the table. Having to run across 6 feet of space meant that essentially nothing happened the first three turns…

2) Other than taking out her knight early in the game, archery didn’t do too much as we were constantly dealing with long ranges and cover . I think if we had made the board smaller it would have mitigated this. Or deploying opposite the short ends of the table.



Overall, the game was a lot of fun!, I hope you enjoyed the battle report!

 

[Lord-Marcus]

I will be watching with interest.

You should share this on Bob's boring mordheim forum

 

[Aginor]

I don't understand the rules but your BRs sound pretty exciting nonetheless!

 

[Lord-Marcus]

I don't understand the rules but your BRs sound pretty exciting nonetheless!

If you ever have the inclination, mordhiem is well worth the read.

That or play the video game port available via steam

 

[Warden]

I will be watching with interest.

You should share this on Bob's boring mordheim forum

Never been a member, but that site is great! I go there all the time for inspiration.

 

[Lord-Marcus]

Never been a member, but that site is great! I go there all the time for inspiration.

Go register and lurk. And post this jungleheim stuff

 

[Lord Agragax of Lunaxoatl]

Love your Mordheim Reports! I really need to look for the Mordheim rules online to try to find a PDF of it. Also your scenery is absolutely amazing!

I've still been working on my converted Plagueclaw at the moment and I've still got a lot of units to make, so I'm far too busy to be making scenery. Also I have to apologise to everyone about my lack of BatReps because I'm lazy at taking photos with my iPad. I'm actually playing a game of 40K at the moment with my dad - Necrons vs Chaos Marines, but I forgot to take pics of the first four turns . I really need to up my game in this department.

Also it's interesting to see how you taught your sister to play Mordheim - sticking the rules up on the wall sounds a really good idea, although if I did such a thing to teach a potential girlfriend my mum would not be pleased as it would ruin the wallpaper . I'm interested to see what the best way to teach a potential partner would be, in case I found the lady for me and I wanted to teach her how to play in a way that got her to understand the rules quickly and wouldn't be brain-bustingly boring for her. I've taught two people how to play Warhammer so far in my life - one got bored of it quickly, the other became really into it and started Skaven, but those were mates of mine - I imagine it's a bit different for a lady. Any tips on how to increase my success rate as a Warhammer teacher?

 

[Warden]

Love your Mordheim Reports! I really need to look for the Mordheim rules online to try to find a PDF of it. Also your scenery is absolutely amazing!

I've still been working on my converted Plagueclaw at the moment and I've still got a lot of units to make, so I'm far too busy to be making scenery. Also I have to apologise to everyone about my lack of BatReps because I'm lazy at taking photos with my iPad. I'm actually playing a game of 40K at the moment with my dad - Necrons vs Chaos Marines, but I forgot to take pics of the first four turns . I really need to up my game in this department.

Also it's interesting to see how you taught your sister to play Mordheim - sticking the rules up on the wall sounds a really good idea, although if I did such a thing to teach a potential girlfriend my mum would not be pleased as it would ruin the wallpaper . I'm interested to see what the best way to teach a potential partner would be, in case I found the lady for me and I wanted to teach her how to play in a way that got her to understand the rules quickly and wouldn't be brain-bustingly boring for her. I've taught two people how to play Warhammer so far in my life - one got bored of it quickly, the other became really into it and started Skaven, but those were mates of mine - I imagine it's a bit different for a lady. Any tips on how to increase my success rate as a Warhammer teacher?

Thanks for the compliments! The scenery really helps set the mood and makes the table look great. As far as making your own, I would start out slow, and be a little more inclined to invest in good quality terrain supplies than I have been in the past


As far as introducing someone to the game goes, I would also start out very slow, with the first game just being a basic shell of the full-Mordheim experience:


First Game: introduce the players to the MOST BASIC game concepts, starting with the basic turn sequence: Recovery, Movement, Shooting, and Combat. Ignore all the campaign stuff, and even some of the crazier stuff such as the Random Happenings/Encounters. Just focus on showing them how to move around the board, using the ruler, positioning figures behind terrain under cover from shooting; how to measure distances for shooting, how charges work, how the to-hit/to-wound rolls work in combat, and then how armor saves work.

If you want to make it even simpler, ignore critical hits/injuries completely and just remove models when they get wounded. I would even go so far as to just focus on moving, shooting, and combat and leave the rest out for simplicity.

I would also recommend for the first game to leave out magic, and make the warbands for you and your opponent as even as possible. I found that it was really easy to have to basic, bare-bones Bretonnian warbands for each of us to fight with so far, nothing really crazy comes up with basic human statlines!


Second Game: speaking of stat lines, here is where you can really have them start figuring out the to-hit/to-wound charts on their own, and what the unit stats mean. A little less hand-holding is appropriate, but don't be afraid to help them out.

During this game, if you feel your new opponent has mastered the basic concepts of the turn-sequences and moving/shooting, I would go ahead and start adding some of the more challenging stuff. If they are prepared for just how random Mordheim can get, feel free to add random happenings! They easily can slew the game to one sides favor/accidentally make the game unfair, but that is part of the fun.


Third Game: If you can get this far, consider starting a campaign, especially if they want to keep playing more! From all the battle reports I have seen on youtube, the campaign is where Mordheim really can shine.

The downside to campaigns is that they can be a lot of bookkeeping. For those who don't have an RPG background, or no real miniatures experience to begin with, this is a challenge for beginners. Be prepared to do most of the writing, and if possible streamline this as much as possible so you dont get bogged down in boredom and get back to playing more games!



In summary, take it slow is the biggest advice I can give. Take the rules in small doses... their are a lot of them... so its easy for new players to get overwhelmed. Don't be afraid to take it "easy" on new players too, I doubt they will want to keep playing over and over again if they keep getting pummeled.

I hope this helps...

 

[Warden]

Here is my Mordheim cheat-sheets in case you find them useful.

I took the long series of rule sheets in the original pdfs, cropped out the important bits, and put them into these sheets for reference.

Page 1: TURN SEQUENCE, character profille of a basic human, MOVEMENT rules, SHOOTING (BS) chart and modifiers, Critical Hits, and Injuries

Page 2: TO HIT and TO WOUND charts, Armor Saves and modifiers charts

Page 3: Summarized Combat and Missile Weapons Charts, to include RANGES

Page 4: Campaign Rules: Summarized Post Battle Sequence (3, 5, 6, and 7 are ignored if you really want to streamline your campaign for beginners)



For your first few games, focus only on the first 3 pages (while ignoring critical hits and injuries for ease of gameplay)

 

[Lord-Marcus]

I really need to get back into this.

 

[Warden]

My brother and sister came up to visit last weekend, and in amongst the many games we played while they visited we played two epic games of Mordheim with my brother’s Wood Elves taking the field. This is the first of the two games.

Battle Report: Attack of the Wood Elves

1) Setup and Warbands Lists

2) Battle Report part 1 and part 2

3) Results & Endgame, plus Critiques


Setup:

The match was played over the entire 4x6 playing space. Even though this is a bit too large for only two Mordheim warbands, we were really excited to use my brother’s river segments and swamp terrain pieces for the first time.



The canal pieces looked fantastic amongst my jungle terrain collection, giving the effect of giant canals running through the ruins of a lost Temple City!



You can see his swamp tiles in the corner of this picture:




Warbands:

During this battle I fought with my Bretonnians once again under the leadership of Sir Boran the Undying (heraldry: two red axes crossed on field of green), while my brother took to the field with his Wood Elves. This battle marked the first time my brother has ever played Mordheim, and the first time either of us have experimented with the Wood Elf Mordheim rules.

Here is my Bretonnian list:

- Sir Boran (Questing Knight): sword and shield

- 2x Knights Errant: one with greatsword, the other with a sword and shield

- 3x Squires: all with longbows

- One units of 2x Men-at-Arms: each had a halberd and a shield



I am not sure exactly what everything was using on the Wood Elf side other than a healthy assortment of elf bows for extra range. One of the heroes also had Birch Wine to give his elves extra bravery/immunity to stunned during the battle (which I am pretty sure we forgot about as soon as the battle started):

- Way-Warden: the leader of the bunch, also head a greatsword I am pretty sure

- Spellwalker: basic wizard

- 2x Pathfinders (heroes)

- Two units of 2x Glade Guard

- 1x Hunting “Cat”: proxied by one of my Bretonnian wardogs since we didn’t have any cat looking models in either of our collections.



My brother didn’t realize until after the game was over that he technically could not have brought the hunting cat unless he also had a Wild Hunter hero in his list, good to know for next time we play! He also hopes to convert up an actual hunting cat model, maybe out of a mountain-lion or something similar. If I ever make a jaguar for my jungle terrain setting that could work too.

 

[Warden]

Battle Report:

The scenario we played was Wyrdstone Hunt!



Since my overhead shots didn’t turn out well, this was the best long-view to give you a good idea of what the board looked like. Also here is the top-down drawing:



Buildings and platforms are in grey, surface roads are brownish. I had to change them from blue due to the addition of water features in this map! Green is of course small jungle terrain features or trees.

We took turns setting up the treasure tokens first:

1) Top floor of the House along the top of the map

2) Top floor of the Palenque Tower

3) Top floor of the Uxmal Long House, which was on top of the Sayil Platform

4) Top floor of the House of the Pigeons, which was also on top of the El Tanjin Platform

5) Hidden under the Rattlesnake House

6) Sitting in a jungle terrain feature on top of the Snake Pit.

7) Top floor of one of the side sections of the House of the Pigeons at the bottom of the map.

When building the map we tried to give lots of movement options both on the group and especially up high above the canals down below with a liberal use of ladders connecting between the buildings, platforms, and towers. We also deployed some of the roads over the canals to allow faster movement. We decided before the battle started that any figures (that did not have the aquatic special rule) would have to move at half speed if they decided to move or run through any water feature, canal or swamp.

After the map was set up and treasure tokens hidden, we deployed our forces along opposite long edges of the map (I was in the green zone on the left, my brother deployed his wood elves along the red zone on the right).


First Few Turns:



Because of the large size of the playing area, little happened during the first few turns as our warbands raced to secure as much treasure as possible. My warband seemed to have an advantage of being closer to more tokens, but my brother’s wood elves had a lot of speed on their side, especially with his hunting cat. He raced to move over the archway over the canal first to secure the token within the Rattlesnake House (token #5), while at the top of the map his archers moved to secure token #1 across the swamp.



In my turns my valiant Bretonnians moved towards of the Palenque Tower, hoping to be able to secure its high vantage point and token #2:



My largest contingent of forces, including two Knights Errant and two Squires, rushed up the platform ladders to reach token #4 before the Wood Elves make it across the arch. Since this location was near the center of the map, I figured it was the best place to make my stand against his superior speed.



Meanwhile a lone Men-at-Arms takes a plunge into the waters of the canal to secure token #7 at the bottom edge of the map, which luckily for him the Wood Elves decided to ignore for favor of massing their firepower in the center of the map:



At the start of Turn 3 the first Random Encounter occurred, unleashing a Storm of Chaos onto the map. The Storm Gods decided that two of our heroes (randomly selected) would be their champions and were ordered to fight to the death. However our close combat heroes were ignored in favored of one of my squires (Friar Tuck) and his Spellwalker (the wizard)… two of the weakest heroes on the board, let alone each warband. The storm gods have an interesting sense of humor…

My squire and his wizard now rushed towards the center of the map to meet each other in single combat.

However by the end of Turn 3, fortune favored the Bretonnians. I had managed to secure 4 out of the seven tokens (2, 4, 6, and 7), while my brother’s wood elves had only secured 1 and 5. Token #3 still unclaimed, and my men-at-arms in the bottom of the map had managed to secure both token 6 and 7 from the wood elves.

Here, my Men-at-Arms cowers behind some soft cover with his treasure, fully aware the Wood Elves on top of the arch have him in their bow sights:




Token 7 is secured, and this Men-at-Arms ponders his situation: stay put behind a solid stone wall or risk running out into the open to be pelted by the Wood Elves now sitting on the high terrain just outside the building?

 

[Warden]

Battle Report: continued...

Midgame:

My Bretonnian were in a great position at the start of turn 4, but here is where things started to fall apart. I decided to play things a bit more aggressively by splitting my forces. Friar Tuck the Squire was already on his way to engage the elven wizard, so my second squire followed him along with a Knight Errant for backup.

My other two knights meanwhile were directed to move toward the center of the board and capture token #3 before the Wood Elves reach it. I was gambling that if I could deny my brother a third treasure token my victory would be assured.

Here is my other Errant charging across the ladder over the canal:



My Questing Knight exited the relative safety of the Palenque Tower in order to cut off the Wood Elf Way-Warden from reaching token #3 first. I assumed that if the Way-Warden did charge up the ladder, he would be easy prey for my heavily-armored knight.



Friar Tuck, my squire still en-route to engage the Spell Weaver, stares him down in this picture, preparing to charge next turn:



Unfortunately things did not go as I had planned.


One of my brother’s Pathfinders peeked out from his hiding spot behind a stone and with a precise shot and perfect set of dice rolls, sniped my Knight Errant crossing the canal:



Meanwhile the Way-Warden, spotting the obvious trap of climbing the ladder and challenging my Questing Knight in single combat, made a dash for the Tower of Palenque instead. One of my bowmen valiantly attempted to stop him from climbing the ladder, but failed to stand up to the wood elf’s great weapon attack on the next turn.


To top everything else off, my brother’s wood elf firing line was commanding great fields of fire in the center of the board atop the archway, and were raining deadly accurate bowfire over my troops positions.


Their accurate elf bow fire took out my other peasant bowman and another squire, and managed to knock Friar Tuck off his feet just as the Spell Walker reached him to engage in their storm-appointed duel.






Final Turns:

At the start of turn 6 the wood elves successfully exploited their initiative.

The hunting “cat,” with treasure token in tow, charged into my Men-at-arms hiding by the snake pit to contest his treasure token:


In the center of the board, my Questing Knight attempts to finally secure a fifth treasure token, but he is knocked down by concentrated Wood Elf firepower (in fact he was hit so hard his shield accidentally failed off when he failed his armor save) :



The following turn, against all odds Friar Tuck was still alive, but my Men-at-arms was mauled by the hunting cat, meaning that total treasure tokens had now dropped to 3-3:


At this point things did not look good for me, with my brother’s Way-Warden racing up the Palenque tower to steal another token from my Squire, I was about to drop down to 2 tokens. In order to save him I decided to gamble once again, this time with the fate of my Questing Knight. At the start of the next turn, he got to his feet, grabbed token #3, and jumped from the top of the Uxmal Long House onto the platform below, in order to rejoin his comrades and make a last stand…

… and failing his jump test, he promptly stunned himself at the edge of the platform (pic turned out too blurry to show, just imagine a knight hanging off the edge of a cliff).

This made him an easy target, and he was again sniped by one of my brother’s pathfinders, at almost the exact location his fellow Knight Errant had met his doom a few turns earlier…

I was back down to three tokens, tied to my brother’s 3, with at least two more ready to be contested in the next turn.

At the start of turn 7 I elected to voluntarily route with my battered Bretonnians to head back to base came and lick our wounds, and surrendered the field to the valiant and hard-fighting Wood Elves!