The Black Castle.: The Battle of Broken Barrow. Part Two.

Introduction.

Part One.

Orc's POV (part one).

The next photo shows Lord Savage goading his pet ogres Vigareux and Grollo towards the Orc archers. The idea is to crush the Orc's left flank and circle around the back of the Orc main body to enable a simple escape. The Dark Elf crossbows are giving support fire while out of shot a badly deployed Beastman unit desperately tries to keep pace with events. The Giant appears to be making for the graveyard, possibly to dig for that relic. The idea was that a unit would be vulnerable while doing this but if the Giant goes in he would surely be unaffected by a few gravestones! A cheeky bit of tactics from Warboss Rob'imsum methinks. The skeleton hordes move up as fast as possible to desperately try and keep the Orcs too busy to think about the objective. The Orc archers keep up a steady rate of fire against one of the Undead infantry units and whittle them down significantly. It probably helped that the Shaman was accidentally counted as a front rank bowmen a couple of times!

"Wossat Shaman doin wi me bleedin bow! Gissit back yoo twonk!" ~ Grunk, rear rank Orc archer.

You can just catch a glimpse of a svelte Warlord Paul in his natural environment in this shot. Also, you can see the wreckage of the Orc right flank as it collapses under the pressure from a star-performing Chimaera and the Undead cavalry. The Giant has been forced to abandon his dash for the graveyard and turn to face a unit of skeletons.

"Blahdy ell lads this wuns goin dahn ill farst. Dem dead fings jumped all on me dawgs da buggas".

~ Arry the Ob-Ound Andler.

The two Orc units behind the Giant have a Shaman nearby to protect them. He starts to throw a few zone spells out there as well as frenzying up some of the lads. The successful Undead left is suddenly left seeming vulnerable to counter-attack.

"Into the wall of burning light Master? Into the flames of true death? Master wills it? Very well! We give our lives once more!" ~ Kho'han, Mausolus' Master of Horse.

Yet another failed fear test sees an Orc unit turn and flee. The ensuing panic will affect the Black Orcs. The skeleton infantry unit tha has attracted the attention of the Giant turns to face it.

No wun tole us this scrap wood be aginst dees fings! I aint no nutta! ~ Attributed to an Orc soldier.

The Giant is poised to pounce on the pesky little bony things snapping at his ankles. He charges in and sweeps his mighty club back and forth killing... only one of them. Disaster! The Orc General declares a charge back in the direction of the skeleton infantry unit threatening to overwhelm his centre units.

"Hur hur, I big and strong. You are very tiny things with no big tree for club. I stomp on you and hit you with my club. Hey! Stay still!" ~ Mick Vast'un, Giant.

The numbers don't quite add up for Mick who becomes the latest in a string of fleeing Orc units to head for the hills. Worse is to come as the Chimaera has eaten all the Orcs it was chasing and is now poised to have Giant for pudding. The two Orc units on the Giants left are having more luck as they ignore the problems going on around them and stick to the task at hand. Under the capable leadership of Fillhar Dring they are shredding the Skeleton infantry in front of them and placing the graveyard under direct threat.

"Hur hur them things won't stay still I go and play with pussy cat hello pussy cat nice kitty hur hur."

~ Mick Vast'un, Giant.

Things don't go well for the Undead cavalry. They triggered an instability test as they lined up for the charge against the Orcs which left them needing -1 to hit. As I subsequently declared the charge, muttering something about 'taking a new instability test which would override the first' and 'liking them odds', I almost inevitably rolled a 1 and saw them turn into useless shades for the rest of the battle. The rest of their battle was not to last that much longer as it turned out. Fortunately a couple of lucky 6s on instability tests for the skeleton infantry saw this part of the battlefield get bogged down nicely while I tried to get some reinforcements in place.

"The light! It burns us! It burns! NoOooOooo my SOooOooOooul!!!" ~ Kho' han.

The skeleton infantry unit attacking the Orc centre sees one of the enemy units off the table and leaves the Black Orcs a few millimetres from doom. This could be a key moment in the tussle, we've all seen units come back from the brink to perform a vital task!