Grand Campaign Chaos versus Lizardmen Part 1

This Campaign was played out over several weeks, 5 battles long and each battle impacted on the one played after it. Henk’s Lizardman army played against my Chaos army for control over a vital magical conduit, which once captured would allow Chaos magic to overpower the remaining defences of the Old Ones around the Talek’kriskov Ziggurat, a vital Lizardman community.

The 5 games that we have planned are as follows:

Rules were any victory meant your army received the bonus for the next game, and any draw result meant the winner of the previous game received the bonus for the next game.

Battle One: 500 Points Border Patrol, the winner of this game becomes the attacker in the next game.

Battle Two: 1000 Points Flank Attack, the winner of this game becomes the attacker in the next game.

Battle Three: 1900 / 950 Points Last Stand, the winner of this game receives +1 special feature in the next game, randomly rolled for at the beginning of the game. (This meant it could provide +1 PD/DD, or cause hatred, or +100 VP)

Battle Four: 2250 Points Battlefield Supremacy, the winner of this game gets +50 Points to spend on their army in the final game per objective they hold.

Battle Five: 3000 + 50x Points Pitched Battle, the winner of this game wins the entire campaign.

As of this posting, (22 August) 4 of the 5 battles have been played, with a current tally of 1 win, 1 loss and 2 draw’s for both armies. The 5^th battle is set to be a massive undertaking and will decide the winner.

In my next posts, I will briefly describe each of the 4 battles already completed from memory. (It’s been a little while, but I will do my best)

Grand Campaign Chaos versus Lizardmen Part 2

Battle One: 500 Points Border Patrol, the winner of this game becomes the attacker in the next game.

The Chaos armies general was a Level 2 Chaos Undivided Sorcerer, along with a small unit of Chosen Warriors and 5 Chaos Screamers was a very small army numerically, but made up of some strong units.

The Lizardman armies general was a Saurus Scar-Vet and the units he took along were a unit of strong Kroxigors (brought because of a tendency I have to use chariots I believe), a 2 salamander strong unit and a unit of poison blowpipe skinks.

The exact details of the match are a little fuzzy, but it ended in a decisive victory for chaos, with the Kroxigors being slaughtered by the magic of the Chaos Sorcerer and the skinks running off the board away from the Screamers, who then went on to ambush the lone Scar-Vet and finish him off. The Chosen warriors went from 12 strong to about 2-3 strong with shooting from the Salamanders, but they provided ample protection for the Chaos Sorcerer and he survived unscathed.

Final Units left were a few Chaos Warriors, the Chaos Sorcerer, more than half the Screamers and the 2 Salamanders.

Victory went to Chaos, meaning my Army was the Attacker in the next battle, the Flank Attack.

Grand Campaign Chaos versus Lizardmen Part 3

Battle Two: 1000 Points Flank Attack, the winner of this game becomes the attacker in the next game.

This battle being twice as big I don’t remember as many details about it… probably also because it did not go very well for me!! J

My army included the regulars, Chaos Chosen to protect the vulnerable Sorcerer and Champion, as well as Warhound screens and 2 Chariots. Then maybe some Spawns… or maybe some Screamers.

The enemy army included the usual strong arm of the Lizardmen, Salamanders and Kroxigors guarded by copious amounts of Skinks. As far as I can remember, it also included a Scar-Vet and a Skink Priest, no doubt to deny me magical domination.

Tactics were terrible on my side, the Flank Attack special rules being that I could bring units in on the side from turn 2 onwards; however they would be worth double victory points!! I chose for 1 chariot and 5 Warhounds to arrive on the flank, leaving me outnumbered with the army set up in front of the Lizardman army. When the chariot and Warhounds finally arrived, and then finally got into combat (turn 5) the rest of my army was already dead.

Victory went to Lizardmen, meaning the Lizardmen were the Attackers in the next battle.

Grand Campaign Chaos versus Lizardmen Part 4

Battle Three: 1900 / 950 Points Last Stand, the winner of this game receives +1 special feature in the next game, randomly rolled for at the beginning of the game. (This meant it could provide +1 PD/DD, or cause hatred, or +100 VP)

This was a very interesting battle, I was the underdog with only 950 points to spend, but on the plus side I only had to do 951 points worth of damage to the advancing Lizardman army to win! The battle began with my army having an 18” square in the middle to deploy, which I was able to do in and around a fortress I had quickly build from random bits of polystyrene and kebab skewers…. Plus a tower in the middle. Lizardmen started on both ends of the board with the tactic of advancing towards me and catching me in the pincer of his two forces, each of which was as big as my entire army!

As the storyline goes, my Chaos warriors were thoroughly massacred in the Flank Attack, leaving only a few straggling survivors. While they ran away to regroup the oncoming Lizardman army, which had swelled in size since the last battle with new spawnings, reached an abandoned Orc fortress… which was now filled to the brim with Chaos Daemons!

They couldn’t afford to leave a formidable fighting force behind them as they advanced on the Chaos regrouping position so they decided to wipe them out, with as little loss to their own lines as possible.

I used a new army list to what I normally use here, opting to try out the new Chaos Daemons Army Book and see how well it went.

The Army I used was a Tzeentch based magic army, led by a Herald of Tzeentch. I also took along the Blue Scribes of Tzeentch, a unique Hero-level unit. For Core choices I had 2 units of Pink Horrors, each 10 strong and counting as a Level 1 Wizard. As well as that I brought along a Beast of Nurgle, (a Chaos Spawn without all the good bits as I found out) a unit of Screamers and a unit of Flamers, 6 strong. (By far the best investment I made)

The army I faced was pretty much the same as the 1k army, Krox’s, Sallies, Skink Priests and Scar-Vets was about the lot of it, as well as an obscene number of skinks and a large unit of Saurus Warriors and Cold One Riders.

The battle started off ok for me, massive amounts of shooting and magic on my side in an attempt to whittle down the enemy forces before they hit my army and squashed it. Best shot of the match was my Flamers, firing at the Saurus cavalry. They only killed 2 out of the 10 or 12 there, but Henk failed his cold blooded leadership test on LD9 – and promptly ran his 600 point unit off the table!

This boded very well for me, only needing to cause another 400ish points damage to win the game. Unfortunately, I sent my screamers out Skink hunting and they got slaughtered by salamanders. I then sent out my Beast of Nurgle to charge and hopefully slow down the large unit of Saurus warriors, but it got annihilated by Combat Resolution and took 4-5 wounds from that alone. The horrors and the herald did quite well, causing some hits on the skinks reducing a few units to less than half unit strength, and ended up scoring some more points when the skink priest miscasted on himself, but a lack of consistent damage got me in the end when the Kroxigors charged my Horrors and slaughtered both groups. Worst choice was the Blue Scribes, who floated around the battlefield doing SFA, casting maybe one spell the entire game. Best choice was the flamers, who lasted a good while and also shot to pieces a good chunk of the Lizardman army.

In the end, I did about 850 VP’s worth of damage, 100 points off the win, but too much for Henk to claim a win as well.

Draw for the Chaos and Lizardman army, but because the Lizardmen won the previous battle they gained the bonus for the next game. (An extra special objective)

Grand Campaign Chaos versus Lizardmen Part 5

Battle Four: 2250 Points Battlefield Supremacy, the winner of this game gets +50 Points to spend on their army in the final game per objective they hold.

This was our big battle that took place last week – and the first battle to include Lord units in the game. (Therefore, I was expecting a dirty great big Slann mage priest to fight) There were 4 objectives on the board to begin with, plus one more for the Lizardmen to put where they wanted to. This extra objective, surprisingly enough ended up right in his deployment zone. It also happened to be the +100 VP objective, but as this battle wasn’t decided by VP’s that became irrelevant.

We put one objective each into our own deployment zone, my objective was a tower, and Henk’s objective was a lake. Then we had two more objectives, one was a forest and the other a rock, which were placed in the middle of the board on the right and left side respectively. To guarantee a win, you needed to hold 3 objectives by the end of the game with a unit of at least US: 5.

Warhammer Battle - 24 July 08 - Part 5: 2v2 Wrap Up

To wrap up this massive battle we had on the 24th, ill sum up the fight and go over some highs and lows.. and incredibly lucky moments.

Forces of Evil defeated the Forces of Good by betweet 600 and 800 points, resulting in a marginal victory for Chaos and Dark Elves. The Dark Elves had a repeater bolt thrower, his sorceress, scouts and crossbowmen left, Chaos had the large unit of warriors with the BSB in it left as well as the exalted Daemon, High elves has all 3 Spearmen units above half strength, and Woodelves had a group of Glade Guard (yes THOSE Glade Guard) left. Had we gone to turn 6 nothing much more would have happened, would have resulted in about the same victory point score, as well as it was getting quite late, we decided to call it there at the end of Turn 5.

Among the high points were the Chaos Spawn who somehow survived a charge of Dragon Princes and a Hero, the crazy amounts of 6+ ward saves my warriors made, the Aspiring Champion of Chaos laying the smackdown on the Branchwraith... oh wait these were only high points for my army :)

Low points for us (read high points for the forces of good) were the dark elf sorceress slaughtered in the the first round, the dark elf lord running away and into a cliff from scouts.. and possibly Aiden managing to fail 5/6 armor saves at 3+.... hehe.

All in all, a good game had by all, it was close fought up until turn 4 where the tide really turned in Evil's favour. Thanks all... and ill be back to write up another battle after sunday when i play against John's crazy 5000 point dwarf army.

Warhammer Battle - 24 July 08 - Part 4: Wood Elf Army Rundown.

The final army that was involved in this battle was the Wood Elves.

The units they took were:

6 Wild Riders

13 Glade Guard

1 Treeman

6 Scouts

1 Waywatcher Hero

1 Other Hero (never saw what he did, he died too quick)

1 Branchwraith

12 Dryads

6 Wardancers

1 Treeman

This was quite the tricky army in deployment, as the treesinging spells they had could be quite vicious especially in a battleground like ours, dominated by 2 forests. One group of scouts was set up 12" away from our line, and the other scout - the waywatcher hero - was set up behind our line, a few inches away from a valuable dark elf sorceress. The rest of them were set up on the Good sides right flank, opposite the large unit of chaos warriors, with the notable exception of the elite Glade Guard on a hill on their left flank. The wood elf strategy was simple - rushing forward with almost the entire army in an attempt to wipe my Chaos warriors off the face of the earth. The Treeman in particular is a very tough nut to crack, weapon skill 5, toughness 6, and 6 wounds with not only a 3+ armour save but a 5+ ward save as well!

Combining that with a bunch of angry dryads and the elusively elite wardancers even my stoic warriors were a little worried. (The large unit of Dragon Princes didnt really make matters any better either).

The waywatcher hero inflicting a serious blow to begin with forced the dark elf heavy cavalry to waste a valuable turn and reduced our armies magic capability by 1/4 which affected the rest of the game, at least in the magic phase. The scouts peppered a few people with some arrows not causing much trouble with the exception of forcing the dark elf hero on cold one to flee and kill himself in some impassable terrain.

Wood elf magic was highly ineffective, not managing to cast a single spell. The 4 dispel dice they had managed to shut down a further 1/3 of our spells, but it mattered little as the ones that got through were very effective. The treeman notably killed off a chariot of khorne as well as a spawn of chaos, (doing slightly better than the dragon princes who were facing the same monsters) the treeman then went on to land the first charge against the Tzeentchian chaos warriors. Unfortunately for him, he was not able to land any wounds on the warriors, and had to take a leadership test due to the huge amounts of Combat resolution.

The next few turns proved decisive for the treeman, who only managed to kill off a few chaos warriors out of the very large unit, even when supported by the dryads who lent their strength to the fray, their fate ended the same way... defeated by static Combat resolution and forced to run into impassable terrain. However, not before slaughtering the chaos sorcerer who bravely (foolishly?) cast Flaming Sword of Rhuin causing two wounds on the Treeman before the enraged Ent squashed him like a bug.

The wardancers were about to support the massive battle against the chaos warriors, but spied a new target - namely the exalted daemon of slaanesh who had flown into view. After the daemon narrowly missed blowing itself up with a miscast the wardancers launched into combat with him. Unfortunately for them, the Daemon struck first and killed 2 of them, the remaining wardancers unable to land a blow on the daemon. They turned and ran from the gruesome daemon ... into impassable terrain.

While this drama was happening on the left flank of the Evil side, the right flank was going much better for the wood elves. Volley after volley landed on the dark elf cavalry and the battlefield was strewn with their corpses. About 15 riders and 5 warhounds all fell to the arrows of the glade guard within a few turns and they ended up picking off other weakened units by the end of the game. Definitely the Most Valuable Unit for the Wood Elves this game.

Warhammer Battle - 24 July 08 - Part 3: High Elf Army Rundown.

Continuing on with my report and analysis of our 2v2 game on the 24th, I will discuss the High Elf Forces and how well they did in the battle itself.

The High Elf force consisted of:

11 Dragon Princes

20 Spearmen

20 Spearmen

20 Phoenix Guard

2 Heros (one with the battle standard, one on steed with the dragon princes)

Notable tactics this army was using were the 2+ ward save to magic missiles the Hero in the Dragon Prince unit had... which we only found out in turn 4. Also one unit of spearmen caused fear and the unit of Phoenix guard were immune to psychology, rending my terror causing demon a little bit underwhelming for a turn or two.

Unfortunately for John 60 of his Spearmen (including Phoenix Guard spent practically the entire game running in circles trying to chase down a couple of fast moving units. His only fighting unit that got into actual combat was his Dragon Princes plus the noble. They charged their way into the fray, with the obvious goal of slaughtering the large unit of Chaos Warriors anchoring the Evil players left flank. Unfortunately for them they hadnt reckoned with a single chaos spawn in between them and their goal. Charging the spawn first, they managed to only inflict 2 of the 3 wounds they needed to kill it and carry on through into the warriors. Due to its unbreakable nature, the spawn did not turn and run and held up the Heavy Cavalry for a single, valuable turn. The next turn saw them being charged by a Chariot of Khorne, inflicting heavy casualties. After a couple more turns of slaughtering the remaining spawn and the chariot but attracting large volumes of missile fire while doing that they were reduced to 2 knights and the hero.

They ended up charging the unit of chaos warriors but lost the combat and were forced to flee... before being run down by the Aspiring Champion of Tzeentch.

Still, given the slightly befuddled performance of the 3 Units of Spearmen, the Dragon Princes were the most effective unit the High Elves fielded.

Warhammer Battle - 24 July 08 - Part 2: Dark Elf Army Rundown.

To continue with the descriptions of the Armies that we were using in our battle on the 24th, I will describe the Dark Elf Army. We had planned to use the synergy of a large proportion of light cavalry with his Dark Riders and Cold One Knights as well as some good shooting and magic to help out with my more melee combat orientated army.

The units he took along were:

3 units of 5 Dark Riders

1 Unit of 10 Xbows

1 Unit of 7 scouts

1 unit of 6 cold ones

1 Bolt thrower

1 Hero on a Cold One

2 Sorceresses, 1 mounted.

The scouts were able to march block and stop some of the high elf units from advancing into our deployment zone on the day. (Referring to John's post again for more details on the battle itself: http://stumpyheaven.blogspot.com/ )

Unfortunately one of his 2 Sorceresses was cowardly assasinated by a Waywatcher Wood Elf Hero at the beginning of the game, which didnt help our plan at all. The cavalry advanced quickly on to the enemy positions, but was slaughtered to an elf by the withering fire of wood elf longbows. (Looks like they tried to fight in the shade... ) The hero on a cold one suffered a similar fate, routed and destroyed by a group of wood elf scouts. Lucky the Bolt Thrower and Crossbowmen stayed firm and delivered some punishing blows on the enemy with their attacks, slaying a few of the noble elves from afar. His scouts spent a couple of turns fleeing, but they eventually came back and helped with Victory Points by contesting a table quarter.

Most valuable unit in the Dark Elf Army: In my opinion probably the Repeater Bolt Thrower. Consistently killing a few elves throughout the whole game helped in close combat when the press of numbers started to weigh against the chaos units in the fights.

Warhammer Battle - 24 July 08 - Part 1: Chaos Army Rundown.

Lets begin.

We had a 2v2 battle on the 24th, between the forces of good, high elves and wood elves, and the forces of evil, chaos and dark elves. 3000 points a side, 1500 point armies each. We split our army dispel and power dice up between us, set up an interesting looking scenario board, and proceeded to beat the living snot out of each other.

For a really cool look at the battle itself, check out John's blog here (has graphics and all that carry on) --- http://stumpyheaven.blogspot.com/

To begin with, ill post the army that i played with and (what i remember or can find out) the other players armies as well.

Chaos Undivided Army:

20 Chosen Chaos Warriors of Tzeentch with full command and shields. In amongst this group was 2 of my heroes;

Aspiring Champion of Tzeentch with Battle Standard and Warbanner on a Barded Steed.

Sorcerer of Tzeentch with 2 power stones and the Lore of Fire.

This made my group Unit Strength 23 with a Armour Save of 3+ (2+ in combat) and a Ward save of 6+. (Aspiring Champ had 2+, and Sorcerer had 4+) I like to deploy them 6 wide, so they were also 4 deep. This was my anchor unit, and was (theoretically anyway) supposed to be nearly unbeatable in combat. 6-7 Combat resolution without causing any casualties (7 with outnumber, which i should almost always have had) is a pretty good headstart when taking on other units and forcing them to break.

They also rerolled break tests with the Battle Standard, and could cast spells from the sorcerer.

To supplement this rockhard unit of mine, i needed some things that had a little more manouverability, and most importantly, a long charge range.

For this I took along 2 Chariots of Khorne. These things are just amazing with the new WD list for Warriors of Chaos, and they got cheaper as well. Frenzy now applies to the mounts, giving the chariot as a whole 8 attacks a round. (4 from the horses, 4 from the riders). Add to this d6+1 impact hits at strength 5, and they can dish out some serious punishment. ... as long as they get the charge off on an enemy that is.

To ensure that they get the charge off, I brought along some good reliable warhounds. Costing next to nothing, they can march and charge 14" and make an excellent screening unit. I couldnt care less about losing all of them if need be, as a unit of 5 is only worth 30 points. A much better prospect than taking even one wound on an expensive and much more tactically powerful chariot.

I now had the basics of a good anchor, and what i needed was a third hero character. Looking through my options, there wasnt anything that really appealed to me for this game against a bunch of elves... ASF was a bit daunting especially against high elf heroes. To counter this, I came up with the idea of a Daemon of Slaanesh. Once i had built this little beastie, I realised i had a one man army at 380 points AND was individually better than almost any other character at this level, with most stats being equal to or better than a lord character. Add to this his special rules of Always Strike First, Terror, Immune To Psychology, Stubborn, Flying and Eternal Hatred this guy could tear most heroes a new one as well as surviving against small units of infantry or cavalry.

Last but not least, i had a few more points to spare. Taking my favourite rare unit was a must then! 2 Firewyrms of Tzeentch finished off my points nicely and also had a few tricks up their sleeves as well. Strength 3 breath weapon whenever they were not in combat is ok... not great against high armour or toughness enemies but against elves i figure likely to do some damage. The biggest bonus these guys bring to the field is the fact they are unbreakable!! This has saved the skin of a lot of my units before by holding off a dangerous unit for that one extra turn that i needed.

Most Valuable Unit in my army on the day: Most Probably the unbreakable unit of Chaos Warriors... but close second was the flying terror causing demon!

So that was my army, 2 level 2 wizards, (daemon with lore of slaanesh and sorcerer with lore of fire) so 5 power dice, a good chunk of warriors and a few suprises here and there. Ill quickly run down Aiden (the dark elf players army) and see what he was planning to do: