Tier 3 Shadowbane Escalation League

Tier 3 Shadowbane Escalation League story battle:

Brother C here back with another report from the Fantasy Escalation League: Shadowbane. This was our tier 3 story battle. Each player brought 1000 points worth of their army to bear. 

The mission was split into two teams. Order vs. Disorder (evil guys) 4v4, and since we had 2 tomb kings, one went on each side. We played on a table that was 12’-0” long and each player had secret objectives. These objectives were passed out to each player on each side, and no one knew what each other’s objectives were, not even on the same team. So you had to work as a team… without actually being able to tell your teammates what you were trying to accomplish. Now, judging by how certain armies played and deployed, you could tell right away what their objectives were, but not all. It turned out that each player on the opposing side had mirrored objectives. Tomb Kings just had to beat the other tomb king in victory points. The Skaven and Lizards had to secure a warp objective in opposite corners, and then got bonuses for helping their allies win their objectives. The elves and Ogres had to destroy/protect the fields (there were fields scattered throughout) and the Empire and Orks had to Protect/Destroy buildings (a small town). On top of THAT, there were 5 pieces of a broken amulet scattered throughout the board which were the primary objectives to continue the story. Whew. I think I got it all. So needless to say it made for a very interesting game with a ton of shenanigans.

The Skaven and the Lizards ended up outflanking their armies onto their objectives in the corners, while trying to wreck as much as they could in the process, while still holding theirs. (due to special deployment rules, we were allowed to deploy our entire forces from the table edges). The empire headed into the main town to protect the buildings from the orks, and the orks stampeded towards the town as well. The mornfang charged forward and was looking for a turn 2 rampaging, but instead took a flame cage spell, lost a single rider, failed leadership, turned and ran, and lost a few more wounds. Meanwhile, being bombarded by spells and warmachines as they tried to get themselves righted. They ended up destroying a crop or two, but not much else. (lucky high elves). The tomb kings deployed in the small farming sector of the board (see pictures) and basically just tried to aid in the other armies’ quests while staying cautious not to give up their own victory points.

As the battle progressed, the Lizards continually dropped comets onto large blocks of infantry, causing them to retreat, run in directions they didn’t want to go, or just simply get squished. The empire held off the ork charge combined with a flank from some ironguts. But the orks managed to take down I believe 2 or 3 buildings before the town was secure. The tomb kings had a sort of stalemate going in the middle, as Isaac (Order Tomb Kings) tried to hold the flank versus Nate’s Skaven and Colin’s Evil Tomb Kings. High Elves of course did nothing, they were too scared of the charge of the mornfang to move out of their castle formation. The evil Tomb Kings had a scarab squad pop up and take down the high Elves bolt thrower, the hellblaster, and the master engineer. The salamanders finally took them down on their way to claiming a piece of the broken amulet.

 

Lee and his ogres were duking it out with lizardmen skink skirmshers dashing around the map, and the large empire blocks protecting his paths to the field. He tried to cast a spell with his fire belly, miscasted, and rolled the miscast where every ally spellcaster had to take a strength 6 hit. It ended up throwing a wound on the Ork witchdoctor, killing the evil tomb king’s leader; which in turn caused his entire army to being crumbling.

On the last turn of the game, the Salamanders from the Lizards, turned on his high elf ally, taking down a block of spearmen and causing them to flee the field, while also taking a piece of the broken amulet for themselves. The Even Organizer (Jared – playing empire) announced that the Lizards were no longer allied with Order, they were now their own alliance. (keeping tabs, that makes 3 teams on the field) which.. I had no idea would happen. I simply thought.. it was the last turn of the game, so.. what the hell, lets kill something. And since the high elves literally had not moved or done much the entire game, I was going to hit them with the flame templates. Well as it turned out, I had secured a total of 2 pieces of the amulet by myself, Order held one and Evil held one, so I actually ended up winning the game with my own alliance. Which was pretty funny. Now, my secret objective was to hold the temple, which I did, but I was unable to get bonuses for allies completed their objectives because I no longer had allies, So I lose some points, but gained some by winning it all.  Honestly, it was perfect for my fluff of my army so I was happy with the result. Of course everyone on the Order side was mad. Nice.  
 

The skaven held their secret objective, the high elves ended up protecting more fields than the ogres desotryed. The empire protected more buildings than the orks destroyed. And the Evil tomb kings slightly edged out the Order tomb kings despite having lost their general.

Lord Supay was very pleased with the victory and his new shiny amulet.

Thanks again to everyone who participated, it was a blast. And.. we are now escalating to 1500 points..

A reminder to anyone interested; we host gaming every Thursday night. We usually try to get our league stuff in these days, but with spring and everyone’s schedules going crazy, it has turned into just a full out gaming time. So it is NOT specific just to the Fantasy League. We also hold the 1^st Saturday of every month Gamesday as well. If you are interested, come and check us out.