The Battle of Broken Barrow. Part One.

The introductory narrative is here.

The first photo shows a pretty clear view of Broken Barrow (you will have to imagine the fog, I need all the cotton wool I have because of the 5 month old). The graveyard hides the secret entrance to the home of Mausolus the Liche with it's extensive library and well appointed laboratory. In one of the graves there lies a rather impressive relic weapon (or so the Daemon-Lord Jeeyofiz would have us believe). Lord Savage and his warband enters from the near end of the path and must exit into the woods opposite to make progress on his journey to the proving grounds. Despite his temporary alliance with Mausolus, Lord Savage has his own set of victory conditions that leave plenty of room for cowardice and treachery on his part. The Orcs live in the next valley across and swarm in from the right of picture. Mausolus and his Undead deployed on the left of the picture.

"Come Vigareux! Grollo! Let us scatter the archers, then we will slip past the rear of the Orc army and be on our way..." ~ Lord Savage.

Mausolus' army consists of 90 skeletons with shields (divided into 4 roughly equal units), 20 zombies, 5 Undead cavalry and a bound Chimaera. The skeleton and zombie units have no standards or anything and though the skeleton models have spears these count as hand weapons.

The next photo shows the Orc horde of Toady Rob'imsum as it crests the ridge and pours into Mausolus' valley.

 "Wuns morr! Wuns morr! Inta da vally o deff!" ~ Warboss Rob'imsum. 

"Wos Morr gotta do wiv it? Fah Gooork!" ~ Boss Grobhurtz.

The early stages of Warhammer 3rd edition usually benefit from a bit of speeding up. The armies crawl towards each other at a fairly sedentary pace at the best of times so the last thing you want to do is throw too many obstacles in their path. We took a less is more approach to terrain for this 2000 point clash. We said the rocky outcrops offered no movement penalty and only left units unformed if they were charged while halfway across them. We allowed any unit to enter the graveyard in skirmish formation which we GM'd on the fly as appropriate. The trees were never an issue. We moved one model or one rank to show the position of units during our turn then moved up the rest in our opponent's movement phase to save time (must make some new movement trays!).

The armies begin to form battle lines and units face off against their targets. The Undead infantry had to manoeuvre around the graveyard while the cavalry wandered off to the left as a result of stupidity (they were outside of Mausolus' range). This was rectified in the first Undead magic phase as Mausolus boosted his control range to 24".

"Slaves! The enemy lies this way, you will serve me, I am your master!" ~ Mausolus the Liche.

Eventually the armies reach the road. Note that Thantsants' Orcs are still in a rather neat battle line! Yup, we forgot animosity. Again. I guess I owed him after the Battle of Plank Street. It just goes to show how easy it is to forget obvious stuff like that in the excitement of pushing your toys about.

The photo below gives you a squirrel's eye view of the impending carnage. Note the Grenadier Chimaera that has slammed into the Orc regiment just past the Hob-Hounds. That results in a failed fear test and a series of free hacks that sees the Chimaera eat at least 20 Orcs before they make it off the table.

"Nomnomnomnom!" ~ Chimaera.

Part two is available!

Thanks for stopping by!