Water is the source of life. Rivers are the veins of the land and this one has become poisoned. Death awaits at a spring which once held re-birth. The plan of the old ones doesn't include death filling the body of the swamp fed by this polluted river. And so it shall not stand! Lizards Vs Vampires ~1235 points we were aiming for 1200 and got a tad carried away Vampire forces: 19 ghouls lead by a lv 2 Vamp as his armies general 19 skeletons with shield and hand weapon lead by another lv 2 vampire 16 ghouls 3 Wraiths lead by a Banshee Lv 1 Necromancer with bonus spells, a ring which lets him save 1 leftover power or dispel dice for the next magic phase and some other item which took away a units charging bonus against him and caused the effected unit to go last. Opponent said he totaled at ~1235 Lizard forces: Skink priest on EotG, lv 2 caster with 2 dispel scrolls 440 Scar Vet on a cold one with,LA, BoM and ES 145 16 Saurus with spears no command 192 2 x 11 skink skirmishers 154 6 Cold one Calvary 210 6 Chamo skinks 72 Total: 1213 Vampires get a large assortment of spells Skink priest gets portent of far and Urgosh's Thunderbolt The table is dominated by a curving river which comes on in the middle of the right table edge and makes a question mark shape ending at a spring just to the right of table center. In the bottom right and top left there are a small forests, and hills in the top right and bottom left. To the left of center in the top of the board there was a squarish ruin piece. After deployment Saurus with Scar-Vet are dead center on the bottom of the board, skinks in front of the EotG just to their left and more skinks to the right. Cold one calvary are between the board edge and the bottom left hill in order to go for a flank. 16 ghoul unit is dead center top of the board, 19 ghoul and general just to the right and wraith & banshee just to the right of that. Skeleton unit with 2nd vampire are between ruin and forest in the top left. And the Necromancer is alone between the ruins and long table edge. Chamo skinks infiltrate behind top left forest near table edge. I tried drawing a map of this but quickly lost patience, in the future I'll make sure to get at least one photo in order to make this clearer. Lizards won roll to go first Top of First round: Chamo skinks move through the small wood to march block and harry the skeletons. Saurus, left skinks and steg move forward. Cold one cavalry march forward around the hill to the far left. Right skinks move up and to the right skirting the woods. In magic a thunderbolt goes off on the wraiths causing 1 wound and no other casting as portent of far would be useless here. EtoG puts up it's ward save and chamo skink shooting kills two skelies. Bottom of 1: Both units of the ghouls and the wraiths move forward toward the Saurus. Necromancer walks through the ruins and stands just out in front of them. Unit of skels turns to face the chamo skinks and walks up to within 1 inch. Vampire general casts gaze of Nagosh on the saurus inflicting 1 wound. Summon undead horde fails on four dice and all other casting is dispelled with dice. In shooting the banshee does her howl where she rolls 2D6 – units leadership = number of wounds inflicted. She rolls a 12 and I make three ward saves losing one more saurus, go EtoG! Top of 2: CoC attempt to charge the necromancer who rightfully scoffs and holds. The charge is about an inch out of range and fails. Chamo skinks sidestep the skells with their six inch move that takes them out of line of sight between the skel unit and the top board edge. Since I foolishly had my left skinks in the way of my EotG's charge they move up to the left of the 16 ghoul unit, out of LOS and take aim at the lone necromancer. Saurus move forward a little bit with the steggy just to their left, maybe 6-7 inches from wraiths and no more than 5 from the other two ghoul units. Right hand skinks move into the river. Both of the skink priests spells are dispelled by dice this turn and the burning alignment rolls a 3 and fails to singe anything. While I was cursing my luck here worse was to come on the steg. Chamo skinks kill another 2 skells and three ghouls from the vamp's unit die to skink fire. Thank god the undead are vulnerable to poison. The poison darts on the nec only result in one wound between not using multishot (bs 3, move and fire, lone character) and a lucky light armor save. Bottom of 2: In a surprising move the necromancer charges the skinks. More logical charges follow with the 16 ghouls charging the EotG and the Vamp's ghouls and wraith unit charging the saurus/scar-vet block. Everything passes necessary terror checks and holds since the necromancer is too close to stand and shoot at (my mistake there). The skelle block once again turns to face my chamo skinks and moves to within one inch of them. Vampires attempt to summon all sorts of undead all of which either fail or are dispelled by dice. Banshee scream also fails to cause any wounds. In the large saurus combat the three wraiths badly wiff their attacks and the combined efforts of the vampire and ghouls kill only account for two dead Saurus. In return the Scar Vet puts three wounds on the ethereal wraiths with his magic sword accounting for a wraith and the banshee and the saurus kill 1 ghoul and another dies to combat resolution. The right column of my saurus unit effectively can't help here since they can only reach the ethereal wraiths. The ghouls trade hits with the EtoG putting a wound on the priest while the steg manages to step on a ghoul or two. However I lose combat resolution due to outnumbered and ranks. On my stubborn, cold blooded Ld8 (general's ld) test I roll 5,5,6 and run! My flee move is a 10 and the gouls roll a 12 to pursue running down my 440 point model. This sucked but dice happen, my burning alignment the next round would have been nasty and I don't regret having my steg in this position. In other news the skinks beat the necromancer to death and take no wounds. Top of 3: Chamo skinks slide around the skels again into the edge of the ruin. Left and right skinks skirmishers move to block the ghoul unit from getting a rear charge in turn 5. Cold one riders frontage of six can't fit between the forest and ruin to charge the skels so I set up for a flank charge on the Vamp + ghoul unit. The large CC continues. While I have no magic phase now, in shooting chamo skinks down 1 skel and 4 ghouls die to a barrage of skink darts. Sweet revenge. In the important CC the Vamp goes first, kills a saurus, then the scar-vet who cleans our the last two wraiths. The ghouls kill another saurus and the saurus kill 2 more ghouls with a third dying to lost combat resolution. Bottom of 3: In the movement phase the skel block tuns toward the CoC and shuffles in their direction giving up on catching those annoying chamo skinks. The goul unit turns and scoots toward the skink line. In magic the vampire with the skeletons summons up six zombies blocking the CoC from getting a flank charge into the vamp / saurus combat, no other successful magic. In CC the vampire kills 2 saurus and the ghouls another for a total of three. The scar-vet and remaining saurus retaliate with a satisfying 8 wounds on the gouls who lose another 3 to combat resolution. Top of 4: CoC charge the summoned zombies hoping for some blood and an overrun into the quickly dying vampire general's unit. The chamo skinks and left skirmisher unit stand still so as to take better aim and the right skirmisher unit moves to fully block the goul rear charge on my saurus. In shooting the chamo skinks down 2 skels and the skinks skirmishers down a satisfying 7 ghouls. In CC the vampire only manages to down one more saurus. The ghouls wiff and are killed off completely by the remaining scar-vet and saurus. Due to combat resolution the vampire takes two wounds and evaporates. At this point the Vampire player concedes as the zombies and ghouls begin to evaporate leaving just the second vampire with her skels sitting in the corner. After all that there are only four of the original 16 saurus left. That's game. When asked what he might have done differently the vampire player said he hadn't expected the gouls to suck so bad against the poisoned blow guns of the skinks and that he might of brought something different if he had known. He also elected not to name a MVP since he said the vampire general did most of the work and still didn't preform up to snuff. I would happily name my scar-vet as MVP, he preformed much better in this central role than when I used him with the outflanking CoC in my last game. Speaking of CoC that is the second game in a row where these expensive and scary lizards failed to kill anything at all. Overall both the vampire player and I had a good time and came away happy with the game. The river ran red from the blood of dead saurus and the dirt was covered in the ashy remains of the undead. But red is the color of death, and also of birth. Soon the river would again run pure, and new life would be the reward of these warrior's sacrifice.
I'm going through and making index cards of my units in order to save time on looking stuff up every round and I noticed stegedons have immune to phsychology. Does this mean that the break and over-run the gouls did to me in the above game couldn't of happened? Or due to the character do I still have to make these the break check? - Doh, just answer my own question BRB pg 78 "a character that is not immune to physchology and joins a unit that is, becomes immune to phsychology for as long as he stays with the unit." Things to know for the future!
regarding the steg, you cant use a character's LD if you're stubborn (unless the enemy modifiers are less than the difference in LD). i'll explain.... your steg is LD6 your general is LD8 example 1 - you loose combat by 1, test using general's LD, so test is at LD7 example 2 - you loose combat by 5, test using your stubborn LD of 6, rather than using the generals of 3. eitherways, getting charged by a ranked unit with a steg is usually death.... get the charge and those impacts!
Thanks for the rules clarification, it seems like we made a few mistakes. That was only my third fantasy game ever.