Battle-shot of the Week - Tuesday December 28th 2004

Here is a quick pictorial walkthrough showing the main events in this year's X-mas game pitting my Wood Elves against my brother's Skaven. The deployment of both armies can be seen in the previous Desktop-shot.

1st turn - The rats go first: The rats got to begin the turn and swarm across the board. In my turn I prepaired for the Skaven Gutter Runner tunnelling team (represented by the coin) that could appear from the 2nd Skaven turn. Also, I shot and panicked the Night Runners on the far right.

2nd turn - The Gutter Runners appear: Well, those Gutter Runners are just plain evil. They appeared as planned (no scattering about) and charged my bow-armed glade riders (old HE reaver models) who were chased off the battlefield with the rats following. In my turn I prepared to deal with the Gutter Runners when they return, and I also started getting my troops in place to attack the main skaven horde.

3rd turn - the archer-shield: The Gutter Runners returned, moved into position to avoid being charged by the Dryads, and were shot and panicked by my Glade Guardian's Bow of Loren and the bow-armed Warhawk Riders. The rat swarms moved into the wood (to drive out my mage from hiding) and I moved my foot archers up to block the Ratling gun in the centre of the Skaven Battle line. The plan was to move the Dryads and Treeman into position for a charge with the Skaven units being limited to charging the archer unit.

5th turn - whoops, missed photography for a turn: The Skaven slaves charged the archers and (being more a painter than an experienced gamer) I forgot about my plan and fleed the rats making room for the Ratling Gun to shoot at my Dryads. Plain stupid! Furthermore, the Skaven Warlock engineer skitterleaped a Skaven hero in combat with my Mage and an Assassin revealed himself from the Clanrat unit and moved into position to throw multible warpstone throwing stars at my Treeman.

No surprise my Mage was killed by the Skaven hero who nevertheless turned his tail the next turn because of the nearby terror-causing Treeman. Dryads were shot to pieces by the Ratling gun and the Treeman charged the Clanrat unit hoping that they would fail their terror-test (which they didn't). The Skaven assassin, however, did fail his test and started running towards the table edge.

6th turn - a final attempt make my loss honourable at least: After holding the Clanrats for three rounds of combat the Treeman was finally defeated and run down by the persueing rats. The Skaven Assassin managed to fail rallying in all but the last turn and was by then standing by the very edge of the battlefield. My Glade Guardian shot and took the Assassin down 1 wound, but was then charged by a the mage-killing Skaven hero (who rallied in turn 5) and was cut down.

My final attempt to gain a few extra kills was to move the warhawk riders into position for the champion to shoot at the Assassin by the table edge (the undefined dot next to the rocky clifts in the back of the photo) and the two remaining troopers to shoot at the Skaven hero: Three dice - one red and two white: 4, 5, 6! Yup! All 3 arrows were spot on, but unfortunately none of the Skaven characters were wounded and thus the victory and honour of the match belonged to my brother...