Stabbed in the back!

Last night I once again had a nice game via Vassal. This was the second of the Annihalation battles that form our short campaign. Just before I begin to describe the battle here is a nice Blog I have found. It has a lot of terrain articles and these are applicable for all games. They are pretty easy to follow and I guess to copy. I have finally thought of how I can construct a games table for my house so hopefully soon I will get to make some more terrain! I am looking forward to that. I do have to make some more house renovations first but the promise of having a good gaming set up is inspiration to get me through it I hope!


This is the deployment for the game. All the images here are thumbnails so you can click on them to enlarge. I finally figured out how to code that. It was of course really easy to do! Anyway the Butcher was lined up against Epic Severius. I had expected Irusk to take the field so I was a little annoyed to see the Butcher instead. I was pretty worried going into this. Especially when I saw that I was facing off against very little infantry. That limited my feat and the spell influence. I also had no access to an arc-node as my campaign list was designed by an idiot (me!) and he only took one. He also then had it wrecked beyond repair in the first battle. I deployed first and went first. In my mind I was assuming that the Khadorans had 'jacks with nasty ranged weapons. So I set up accordingly. However as I started my first turn I realised my mistake. Well done me! We both pushed forward in the first turn, me much less aggresively.

I wanted to make the best use of my ranged weapons so I held back a little. The Butcher was a tiered list however and the Men O' War were able to get further up the field than usual. Infact they got a lot further up the field than I expected. I began the slow process of bunching the Zealots up. The Khadorans were attempting to refuse their flanks. They hadn't the numbers to contest the outer objectives and so they advanced towards the centre. This really didn't suit me as I was going to lose if it ended up in a big melee in the centre. I also didn't have the numbers to delay long enough and win the scenario.

This was much less of a decisive turn than I expected and hoped it would be. I popped my feat and got ready to destroy the Khadorans. This was the time I felt I could get the most use from the feat. However my control zone was a little bit too small and while I was able to roll a six for taking control of the enemy I only had five grunts within range. I promptly charged the Butcher with two of them!

This picture shows how things were at the end of my turn and before the Khadorans could respond. I had charged at the Butcher who was on armour 22 with the focus he had camped. Thankfully my opponent had forgotten to cast Iron Flesh. With some nice rolling I managed eight damage from the two charging attacks. I only managed to anger the Butcher but still it all adds up... I ran the three other Men O' War infront of the Khadorans to block up some charge lanes and to present some nice targets for my shooting! The rest of my turn involved getting everything in nice and close. Anything that could shoot did and I set fire to the Butcher, Destroyer and surviving Men' O War in the area. My final act was to charge the Templar in. He was able, thanks to Beat Back, to prevent the Butcher charging thereby limiting his damage threat. I left a focus on him also which would negate one damage roll against him thanks to the bond he shares with Severius.

I managed some more damage on teh Butcher with Fire this turn. A nice roll managed two more pips of damage. The Butcher made a massive mistake in not feating earlier this turn. He engaged the Templar on full focus. However the high armour of the Templar prevented a lot of damage and the Butcher feated with his last attack to try to get some more damage on the Templar. Again he rolled very low. The Juggernaut charged in and did a lot of damage. However the Templar was still, barely, standing and the Men' O war had to close in also to try to inflict some damage. In doing that they gave me a great opening. The Templar was wrecked and this let the Destroyer move up to my lines and engage the Vanquisher.

At this point in the game I had three chances to kill the Butcher. The first was with Severius, the second was a blast from the Deliverer Sunburst and the third was the zealots who were now close enough to advance an rain down some holy hand grenades! Severius extricated himself from the mess of the Destroyer and advanced to see the Man' O War beside the Butcher. I then proceeded to cast Influence six times. Four of these hit and due to the fact that the Butcher had no focus to boost his armour I killed him. A nice victory for the Protectorate! There will be some harsh questions for the Man O'War that stabbed the Butcher in the back once he is brought back to the barracks.

I do have to say that after the battle we realised we forgot the War Dogs special rules throughout the whole battle. Actually I had no idea what it could do. So things may have gone differently at the end as the Butcher would have had a boosted defence and I surely would not have hit as easily. I did have enough attacks from other sources though so I still think I would have gotten him in the end. So losses for me consisted of only a Templar. That leaves me with two 'jacks for the next two battles. The Khadorans also got off light with only two Men O' War dead. That evens out the casualties over the long run sadly but at least the campaign result still hangs in the balance!