Righty-o, then!
Got m camera emptied and let photobucket du the resizing for me, so here goes nothing!
First off, a warning: Don't fly with siege towers. It does NOT work.
Some groovy guys unpacking their valuables. Fr1day, Finlay and Midaski in the top pictures, and the master of the fawn white imperials, warhammerlord_soth below.
And the campaign mentioned! A hexagonal map with armies and heroes moving about! The system's rules can be found in the IO, under Medium campaign system. The Chaos forces (green) are sorely pressed by the yellow alliance of Venerable lord Midaski and the Dutchman denyer warhammerlord_soth on one side and Fr1day and Finlay advancing from the right. LochNESS and I was controlling the blue team, securing land on both fronts.
The first battle was played between the daemons Phil & Phil and Fr1day & Finlay.The even point-size-wize battle was won by F&F enterprises and the daemons had their main army beat while Midaski and Soth were cutting their other forces off.
A few turns later, the Chaos forces are forced to retire to thir stronghold, low on resources while the Loch-Shadow alliance are conquering land on all fronts, expanding their empire!
After a bit of one-upping of their armies, the Hochlanders and Talabheimers attack the Elder ra.. sorry, the senior generals of the Midaski-soth alliance. Facing Grand Master Soth and warrior priest S:t Midaski themselves in battle!
Hidden setup was used (we agreed on it) and Shadowwolf's pre-made 2000 point list was used for the Talab-Hochland alliance, switching a few of the Talabheim units for Hochland equals.
The Senior generals made a new list, tooling up on the pie-platers, going for 2 Mortars and 2 Helstorms, and knights to face the tactical combat horde of Shadowwolf's device.
Avast, Lady Luck must have cursed the numerous template artillery, for all game, they only managed to halv the unit of Talabheim spearmen with their shells and rockets while the single Talabheim rocket battery first turn deletes the only infantry unit of the enemy, second turn hav the enemy outriders with another perfect hit and then kills the enemy cannon crew with a third perfect shot.
In the background of the picture below, the last swordsmen of Soth's troops just manage to rally before the table edge.
In the background you can also see two knight units. The left one, contain an elderly warrior priest and the right one is the bodyguard of grandmaster Soth. These two units spent the battle watching their army die as the wave of red green and white troops surged forward, protected by their meat sh... Archer screens. When the younger alliance finally hit the artillery line after slaughtering all support units sent against them, the Soth and Midaski alliance surrendered their remaining forces and fled the battlefield to spread the word of their glorious victories to the beer-hazy surroundings. A good battle!
I am sure LochNESS have a few pictures of the numerous enemy artillery missing everything. And when hitting failing to wound archers. Friendly fire, I say.
After this, the campaign was restarted, expanding the map and dividing every team into teams of one player in order to get more games for everyone!
Eager for battle, I set off to comendeer some forest sections from my former team-mate LochNESS. His Hochlanders brought a shooty 1000 point army versus my own 1000 point army. The twin mortars of the enemy needed to be neutralized, but my attemts were not very successful. At least not according to plan.
LochNESS had a large hill in his peloyment zone with a cannon and one of the mortars and just in front of it llined up a regiment of handgunners. If I could panic those, they would run through the artillery pieces and hopefully take them out. But my mortar blew up when targeting them. Second turn, my meat shiled all but used up, in my desperation I targeted them with my Helblaster, which I had pulled forwards, ignoring the juicy, short range, flank threatening knights in front of it. Of course I roll a misfire and the Helblaster blows up.
But it fires 30 shots doing so! The handgunners are vapourized and panic the Hochland halberdiers and Mortar crew!
With his right flank collapsing, LochNESS rallies his troops for the Talabheim onslaught. With my knights able to charge down his last missile troops and the mortar AND my spearmen coming marching around the corner, LochNESS conceded rather than having his characters killed by the Talabheim forces.
With LochNESS (Yellow on top) culled, the Talabheim armies of Me (green) can advance upon the middle and the realm of Lord Soth, who is occupied grabbing land in the centre and battling Fr1day (Purple) on his other flank. Finlay (Red) tactically deny Midasi (Blue) food by advancing into his territory. With out Food, Midaski cannot reinforce his troops (food is vital) and retire grumpily to his castle to brood upon the fate of his realm.
Around here we decided to end the campaign and play free for all battles.
The final score for the players was:
Midaski: 5
Finlay: 9
Fr1day: 14
whl_soth: 9
Shadowwolf: 15
LochNESS: 7
Around here, I was challenged by Lil-Phil and his army of Khorne Chaos warriors. Led by Archaon! As I had never had the chance to kill Archaon in battle, I accepted. Unfortunately, I never took a picture of the battle, but the many chaos knights and marauders got diverted, failed charges and were accurately disposed off by flank shots by cannons and stern ranks of Halbardiers. Archaon's unit was wiped out by a cannon and that made archaon a valid target for my Helblaster! 22 shots later, Archaon suffered 2 wounds from the first salvo, but then charged a unit of pistoliers, which fled through a forest. He kept running and hit an archer screen. Doubling his attacks, he wiped out the archers (doing a wound to himself as well) and with his overrun move caught the five pistoliers. But leaving himself out of combat in my deployment zone. Once again targeted by the Helblaster, Archoun disappear in a spray of red mist, swiss cheese armour and lead. The rest was just mopping up stray marauders, chaos knights and foot warriors.
Bodacious also had a go at Lil-Phil's Khorne warriors and got massacred by the little fella, this time dropping a few units and throwing in a GIANT.
Bodascious numerous Knights Panther army.
And Lil-Phil's thin red line. OF DEATH!
Cisse also had a go and the local daemons.
A war altar and a steam tank might seem harsh, but considering he was facing daemons, everthing is allowed!
LochNESS facing local Orcs and Goblins. I heard it held some insane WAAAAGH!s
And now, that which all have been waiting for! The ships battle! In spite of bringing two siege towers and re-assembling them, I never got to play a siege battle, so I was determined to play with the boats at least! Selecting the Skoner from Warhammerlord_soth's collection I joined the Legend of the high seas campaign Soth and Midaski were running. That ment they had better and more numerous crew than I had, but what the heck!
The pirate captain of the skoner Shadowwolf surveys the brig of his rival, the Gentleman Soth!
The two ships are about to meet to the clamour of 8 pounder cannons accompanied by the crackling of muskkets and the occational Arrr!
From the deck of the Brigg, the crew of the Gentleman survey the pirate ship as they close in on each other, rolling out the guns through the gunwhales.
The marine brig and the Shadowwolf both go for each other's throat, leaving the ship of pirate captain Midaski far upwind.
The first passing by sees some clever movement leaving the rearward cannons of lord Soth's brig out of reach of the faster Skoner with her cannons midships.
The veritable cloud of smoke appear between the ships as every cannon and small fire arm fire upon the enemy. However, the rear cannon of the port deck on the Shadowwolf explode, damaging both the ship and killing one of the many rogues manning them.
The Shadowwolf pass behind the enemy Brig, moving out of it's firing arcs, forcing it into the path of the other pirate captain's path.
But lord Soth is not without resources himself and go upwind, trying to keep the Shadowwolf with port side (with only one cannon) facing her. Captain Midaski is closing in from the other table edge, making good speed through the water with guns ablazing. Captain Soth's guns take 3 hull points of the scrawnier pirate Skoner, bringing it down to 12 HP, as opposed to the starting value of their brigg; 22 Hull points. The Shadowwolf was not as lucky with it's initial rolls and only had 16 hull points.
But shame to the one who surrenders! With a bold move, the captain of the Shadowwolf bring his skoner around hard, just managing to pass behind thestern of the enemy brig and firing it's cannons as short range. Grapeshooting the crew, two cannoncrew fall, forks in their eyes.
The brig retaliates, and take another 4 hull points off the skoner. In the background, captain Midaski continue an ineffectual barrage of the Brig and the Skoner.
The Shadowwolf moves again and slow down right behind the enemy Brig, both cannons firingat point blank range into the rear of the brig! There goes the captains quarters!
The tough Brig escape the enfilade and the ship continue circling each other as the hours move on.
In order the bring the battle to an epic end, the Captain of the Shadowwolf, after only managing to take 2 Hull points off the Brig with their cannons, decide to take to more drastic actions! Taking the initiative, he sails his ship right in under the bow spit of the enemy brig, forcis the Lord Soth to ram his ship!
Although the ships crash together with a deafening 'boink' no damage is done to either hull, and the Shadowwolf now opens fire with her batteries, simply unable to miss the enemy ship in front of their cannons. Finally the effort pays off, and the two cannons take 4 hull points off from the enemy Brigg.
Well, that's the end of my photos! I'll gladly comment on a few otehr photos when they are posted
BTW, the Siege twoers didn't survive the trip home unscatched either. I had gotten a sturdy cardboard box from whl_soth to protect them, but to no avail.
Someone at the airport must have exclaimed "Here is a bag which looks pretty soft! Let's place the wrought iron safe with the Fragile label and the piano on it. We wouldn't want any scratches in their paintwork."
The cardbord box had been slowly mashed under the weight, but had held most of it as the six wheel axes gave some extra support, although they broke from the effort. As the strained wheel axises (made from barbeque sticks) splintered, the balsa wood toweres shattered from the residual strain.
Well, at least I got a lesson of first aid.
I had FUN! See you guys next year!
Shadowwolf
