Rats gnaw on the Bones of the Dead (Batrep)

Vaul Presents;

Rats gnaw on the Bones of the Dead

Not often that I make a big song and dance on a forum about a game that I lost, but I decided to muster the humility to make a thread about this one because it was a fun, good looking game and I really like the way Mr Tibbles' army looks on his deserty theme gaming table. Both of us played like idiots this game, especially me. Enjoy.

Also, full length audio/slideshow commentary on my youtube page -

p1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUAsQKb7Xlk
p2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8P018SG5ak

Below: The Tomb Kings army has a warsphinx that looks like an undead mammoth. He's got his Liche Lord Heirophant in with the tomb guard horde, king in a large unit of chariots, and in the top right of the photo, those other chariot models with the purple feathers are to represent Necropolis knights this game. Scenario is Blood and glory, i'm running a Skaven panzer division as Pete D would call it, with the bell, furnace and abom.

Below: By my turn two i'm in a fantastic position. He's moved his chariots forward, letting me get the charge with my horde of giant rats. Extra warpstone tokens allow me to frenzy them, meaning I have nothing to fear from his death mask, and the unit is pumping out about 54 attacks (frontage of 9, didn't quite get the 10th in there). This should hold him up a couple of turns, in the meantime my hellpit is in the perfect position to prevent his tomb guard from charging anything but the big beastie, and unless the necroknights want a piece of that as well, they are going to hit a 40 slave bus tarpit. I'll be able to crush both his king and high lich's units with my second wave.

Below: The rats have been stamped out after the warsphinx sat on them in his responding turn, but the pursuit roll didn't quite take the king to the furnace, meaning i'll be able to countercharge him in MY turn. Yus. Also, the rats have gnawed the wheels off his chariot - Luckily the TK book has rules about how you play the King after he dismounts (he stays as part of the unit).

Below: Sadly, the warsphinx rolled an 11 on his pursuit roll, but that line missed the furnace and hit my clanrats instead. This puts my tooled-up warlock in danger, so I make the rediculously stupid decision to flank charge him in my turn with the gutter runners. In turn one both units fired a combined 28 shots that would poison on 6's, and only got two. So the sphinx was still on plenty of wounds. Chances were that the gutter runners weren't going to kill it, and would then break after the sphinx won combat against the clanrats. Facepalm!

Below: Here's how the big turn of combat looked - good position for the skaven. I've got the bell and abom in combat with his tomb guard + 3 characters, the king has been charged by the furnace and flanked by a slave bus, and his necroknights are going nowhere fast against the other slaves. But here I made my second uber-mistake, forgetting to unchain the giant censer on the furnace at the end of the combat - that's an artillery dice worth of str5 hits I missed out on, if i'd taken even 2 wounds out of that it would have meant that the king and chariots would have ultimately been destroyed and I would have kept my own units. Argh.

Below: The final combat of the game, a very convoluted one so i've used mspaint to put tags in, and arrows showing which direction each unit is facing. After the king and his sole chariot companion finished off the furnace, monks and slaves, they reformed and then charged the other nearby combat. We decided that he was in the Abom's flank arc, and there was enough room behind the bell (clanrats mostly dead) to squeeze past. This put them fighting the abom but not the bell unit itself, and the surviving chariot was the standard, with flaming attacks for it and the king to burn the Abom with. The necroknights finally dispensed with the slaves and reformed to hit the abom from the other side. In the front i've destroyed everything except two characters, which I picked off during this round. forcing him to crumble at the end.

But he killed the last of the clanrats, and the abom broke, failing its stubborn 8 check - it was run down, we didn't bother reading the rules but assumed the necroknights and chariot could chase it despite the bell staying in combat, because those two units themselves were not fighting the bell directly. Rules lawyers might have their say here.

The Seer was dead but didn't concede points due to his mount surviving, I cast cracks call at the king while he was in combat (another dodgy rules call?) and killed him, so at the end of the game it was just the bell left, and he had a catapult, unit of archers, necro knights and warsphinx. He also won on scenario. Probably a 12-8 or 13-7.