Massacre on the Plains Near Spikehole

Tim (Skaven) vs Gill (Tomb Kings) 

In a time of war, sometimes the most unusual of allies can be found.

The unbridled power of the Undead Nation was surging north toward the Empire and already the foul verminous ratmen had been the most pivotal race to stay their advance: taking and holding the vampire staging post of Fortress Malefic and hurling back the zombie hordes on the plains near Spikehole, their own bastion.

But the Undying ones did not forgive and would never EVER forget. Already they had expelled the Skaven from Fortress Malefic and now they surged north once more, endless ranks of clattering, staring skeletons.

Once more they had come to the plains near Spikehole and once more the armies of the Skaven scuttled out of the depths to meet them, this time rallying round the greatest and most ostentatious Screaming Bell the Old World had ever seen, truly an alter to the Horned Rat!

Dozens of reeking Plague Monks charged forward, rabid and frenzied, Censer Bearers running beside them and crackling and bouncing at the flank ran a hypercharged Doomwheel, fresh from the forge and spitting lightning.

But in the foliage at the edge of the marshy plane, the Tomb Kings had hidden a Casket of Souls! As its lid rose the air was filled with the vengeful spirits of the long dead but a whispered phrase from the Skaven Grey Seer and the land clanked down shut, just as howling Gutter Runners leapt out of the bushes and hacked the casket master and his guards apart.

The two mighty armies crashed into one another but as the myriad screaming bells tolled the Skaven close by became frenzied. Bolstered further by the sorcery of the Grey Seer they hacked and hacked and bit and gouged as Frostclaw, the Skaven general, beheaded the Tomb King commander.

Ushabti were felled by ravening Rat Ogres, a horde of no less than sixty giant rats fell upon the Screaming Skull catapult, picking the bones it was made from clean and the Plague Monks smashed skeleton after skeleton to bits.

Inspired by the Screaming Bell, the Clanrats refused to break and as the battle went on it was only a matter of time before they could be victorious.

Finally only a handful of undead warriors fought on, surrounded and doomed.

The revenge of the undead had spluttered and died resulting in an overwhelming massacre.

It did not bode well for the Undead Nation as now the lands they'd already won lay undefended.

Now was not the time of the Tomb Kings. It was the time of the rat!

Spotlight on: Nagash!

When I first created this blog I put a picture up of this beautiful model that I use to represent that most notorious of arch necromancers Sauron Nagash!

I think it’s one of the nicest miniatures ever created and though I own the original GW Nagash and did my best to “save it” with the paint job, it still wasn’t quite good enough alongside modern miniatures for the high standards I aim for (even if I don’t always achieve them). 

Now I wish I could tell you what model this is and I’d certainly be grateful for anyone who can remind me. I bought it on eBay a couple of years ago and I just spent ages searching for it again just now.

Each year I hope GW will release a campaign book about the return of Nagash but still no word as yet. I always hope he’ll appear in one of the undead army books, but no luck so far.

Of course my entire campaign storyline is based on Nagash leading his undead armies north toward the Empire so having him appear in games is pretty vital. Sadly, so far he’s not had much luck in games. I used rules for him based on those on the excellent Nagashizar website. And I just found sort of rules for him in the Vampire Coast campaign book on the Tempus Fugitives website.

Bascially in the game, he’s such a vast sink of points that he struggles to earn the points back. I guess it’s just a case of reducing the points until they make better balance. For example, in one game, he was in combat with a huge unit of zombies alongside. The zombies got their asses kicked but good while Nagash killed loads of the enemy, but because of the overall combat being a loss, Nagash was killed through combat resolution. The annoying thing being that if he hadn’t had loads of zombies “helping him” he would have easily overrun the enemy unit and gone on to win the game.

It’s that kind of thing. 

But who cares in many ways. He’s a beautiful model with a fantastic history that is integral to my campaign storyline.  

To paint him I used turquoise over a very dark blue for the robes and bronze over Tin Bitz for the armour. I was aiming for a fairly subtle realistic look.The "skin" was a series of greys.

I decided to have the skulls as bronze accessories rather than real skulls - because the model is 54mm and they would have been way too big for normal skulls. 

The dust weathering was graveyard earth under bleached bone. 

He has a really nice aggressive stance, making him look like a martial general rather than just an evil wizard. I just really do love this guy!  

Tactical Review: Return to the Fields of Contagion

Tim: 

This was a good game, by my definition of a good game:

If you aren't sure who won unless you add up the victory points then it was close enough that both could have won. That way there's no depressing decline where you know you're going to lose.

Obviously the narrowness of the board (playing down the length with a river to boot) was restrictive but the trade off was the realism of the setting which made it worthwhile.

Strategically I took four things from this game:

1) Put the Casket of Souls in a building.

2) Always have large hordes of skeletons with Tomb Kings or Princes in each.


3) Don't forget the Tomb King curse (which took out my enemy general)


4) Don't bother charging a Hellcannon with crappy skeletal horsemen


All in all a nice time; and Mike and I didn't fall out once!

Mike: 

Well it was the closest of battles, with only a handful of points between the two armies. 

It was a difficult game to play as the board was so narrow, trying to funnel so many units through a small gap was tricky and perhaps I didn’t make the most of my elite units this game.  Although the chaos knights created merry hell with Tim’s horde of skeleton warriors I couldn’t get my chosen or ogres near battle and they ended up being decimated by the casket of souls.

One point to note for me in the future is that if I pay for a level 2 wizard then perhaps I should remember that in the battle and use two spells rather than one!!! STUPID BOY.

Apart from that amateur mistake I think everything else went as well as it could have.  I think when games are as close as this then neither player did anything wrong. 

Return to the Fields of Contagion

Lord Thorgrantis Kul surveyed the riverbanks of the Trebleca at the Fields of Contagion, the dread pox-ridden wasteland where one hundred years before, the plague dead of the doomed city of Fell Glen were buried until the undertakers could walk no more themselves. 

Beyond the river, the remnants of the Orc host yet fled that had been battled backward by the legions of undeath. He smiled grimly. With the undead hordes weakened from battle, even in victory, they would be able to offer little resistance. It was the perfect time to strike.

The perfect time to take this land as his own and add it to the realms of Dunkel Schloss.

He gave the order, and the army of Dunkel Schloss charged forward.

Up the rise, nestled between the river and one of the ancient chapels, the dark king Gorper hesitated, understanding the danger to his realm. With the Chittering Horde pressing hard against his capital of Barak Varr, a loss here could crumple the entire western arm of his realm. And as Lord Kul had surmised: his warriors were weary and battle worn, the magics animating them grown wan and dim.

Still, retreat wasn’t an option; nor surrender. In ancient times, while life and heat clung to his bones as flesh, as one of the greatest warriors of Nehekhara, he had fought himself and his men free from situations more fell than this. And more laden with doom.

He lifted his great curving blade; paused long enough for all empty sockets on the field to see it, the cleft it through the air toward their enemies.

The clash began immediately, as heavily armoured Warriors of Chaos marched silent and dreadful into combat, unhurried but lethal in every twist of their mighty sword arms, ignoring even the dread vortex summoned by the Liche Priests to drown them in smoke. They were outmanned by the wide sweep of skeletons but not outmatched, and their fiendish god-spawned power cracked skull from shoulder and hand from arm.

Through the shallow waters of the river there, skeleton horsemen ran down the mighty Hellcannon with its Chaos Dwarf crew, but the hammer blow they had hoped to deliver never fell. The daemonic war machine was far more powerful than expected and soon, dread horseman and dread horse alike were only scattered bones.

But from the chapel, concealed within, the casket of souls hurled forth the screaming dead, dragging the spirits of the warriors of Dunkel Schloss from their empty bodies. And in the midst of the battle line, Gorpor thrust and slashed with his mighty blade.

The skeletons fell and the warriors fell with them, the tide of battle turning first one way, then another. But as both Gorpor and Lord Kul were driven from the battlefield, it became clear, though barely, that the Tomb Kings had won the day. Such was their strength in battle that even after their defeat of the Orcs, they still possessed the strength of magic, bone and will to combat and defeat their enemies.

Lord Kul commanded the retreat but not before a wind captured his attention and turned it downriver. His routed men fled around him, but he paused long enough to gaze down the length of the Trebleca where, far off, distantly, the aging spires of the pestilential city of Fell Glen stood visible in the evening mists.

And a name came to his mind; a name from history; one who had wronged him as he had wronged that man. And though his heart was as stone and felt little in terms of fear; still, Kul experienced a twinge of what might be described as presentiment.

He knew not, why the name might spring to his mind now, but as he turned and spurred his fell steed on, away to his lands, he wished that he had not recalled it. For it unsettled him.

And the name was Simian Crease.

Massacre on the Lonely Approaches

Tim (Spider Goblins) vs Gill (Tomb Kings) 

Only five miles now from Barak Varr, and the host of the Spider Goblins had swept all resistance from their path, winning every battle bar one and now within sight of the towers of the ancient Dwarfen stronghold, now in the hands of the Tomb Kings. 

Horde after horde of loathsome spiders crawled over the moorland, cresting the final peak of the Hills of Valenka where the aged Dwarfen  rune stones stood, the Tomb Kings were fighting a withdrawing battle, mustering their forces closer to home for a final last-ditch defence, but the dregs of the previous slaughters were still battle-worn and in no fit state to attack, even in desperate defence.

Only a single host of skeletal warriors stood ready to prevent the breakthrough of the Chittering Horde and it would be not nearly enough.

The Goblin King, with eternal hatred in his heart, roared a challenge and charged forward and battle was begun.

Conjuring a whirling maelstrom of eldritch power, the tiny Night Goblin Shaman pushed it into the midst of the Tomb King forces, blocking off their advance down an entire flank as the bony steeds stamped the ground, unsure whether to proceed.

And as that flank pontificated, the huge Arachnarok Spider slammed into the serried ranks of the Tomb Kings, even as the Spider King and his giant spiders scuttled alongside. They planned to take out the Tomb Queen atop her Undead Rhinoceros with a sharp strike of the mallet but the surge of undead warriors that came back at them, quickly overwhelmed even these mighty beasts.

 But it wasn't enough. From the east came the throngs of spiders, led by the Goblin King; and as the Skeletal warriors hacked on the corpse of the Arachnarok, they left their rear exposed. The Goblin King took full advantage of this, pushing his spidery hordes into the remaining forces on that flank.

They destroyed a Screaming Skull Catapult, the deathly Hierophant, a Casket of Souls and then finally pummelled the bones of the Skeleton Warriors. The Goblin King himself slew the Tomb Queen with his Dwarf-forged axe Killa Killa.

All the Lonely Approaches were covered in creeping and crawling spiders as nothing now stood between them and Barak Varr, ancient hold of the Dwarfs and capital now of the Tomb King armies.

Clash in the Fields of Contagion

Tomb Kings (Tim) vs Orcs (Gill)

In the far south west of the Devil's Pathway, north of the ruined city of Fell Glen on the edge of the Black Gulf, lay a place of death. Here, the plague-riddled cadavers of the dying city had been borne by boat down the River Trebleca and planted such that their contagion couldn't spread to the living.

At least until the doomed city folk had been too poxed and afflicted to do it.

Now, almost one hundred years later, these Fields of Contagion lay on the edge of the realm of the Undead Nation, every league of land to the south and west a shunned and desolate wasteland. And the Tomb Kings were at war!

Poised in the corner of one of the many cemeteries laid out for the richer denizens of Fell Glen, those who hadn't been thrown into sprawling mass graves, the Orc Warlord roared, thrusting his axe forward, and kicked his Wyvern in its flanks to raise it clumsily into the air. And all around him, his arrayed army charged forward across the Fields of Contagion, determined to take it from the dead.

But the Tomb Princess commanding the undead legions only smiled, holding her own forces in place as her grand hierophant strode forward and raised his withered arms. The ancient priest whispered Sakkmet's Incantation of the Skullstorm and abruptly a huge whirlwind of screaming skulls formed from the packed dirt and lurched toward the onrushing horde.

 The Orcs were crazed for battle, their nostrils enflamed on the still putrid air. They sped on, uncaring of the danger floating towards them. And before the deadly storm of skulls could reach them its power faltered and it faded away.

Hungering for glory, the Orc Warlord crashed his Wyvern down to the earth before his undying foes, but shunting suddenly from the cadaverous stillness, the warriors of the Tomb Kings surrounded him, led by the Tomb Princess on her mighty Undead Rhinoceros.

First the Wyvern and then the Warlord himself were eviscerated and slaughtered.

The rest of the horde packed in behind it as the undead reformed to meet them, but the skinless creatures felt no pain. They could be destroyed but they would never flee and in short order, they cut down their enemies.

The Orc shamans let loose powerful magics, bringing down both Liche Priests, whose magics empowered the skeletal legions, but this wasn't enough to end the battle. The Tomb Princess was felled, but even that was not enough to stay the deadly defence of this unholy region.

And soon, only a scattering of Orcs remained, confused and faltering as the warriors of the Tomb Kings cut into them and strode over their corpses.

The Dead Fall, The Dead Rise & Chaos Blossoms

Tim (Spider Goblins) vs Gill (Tomb Kings) 

And in the south west as Nagash's dread magics had brought down meteors from the baleful green moon, a storm of magic swept the plains before Barak Varr. There the Chittering Horde descended on the Tomb Kings, wiping them out once more as the final battle between these forces drew closer. Every fight had been won by the goblins and this was no different.

Even as unholy sites were imbued with the power of Arcane Fulcrums, the wizards of both forces took command of the eldritch might, throwing devastating spells in all directions. 

It mattered nought. The Chittering Horde won as they ever had, crushing bone and banishing magic. 

The dead could no more stand against them than they could breathe again.

Tim (Skaven) vs Tomb Kings (Mike) 


And in the midst of the Border Princes, as Tomb Kings closed their skeletal claw around Spike Hole, the Skaven fought hard and bitterly. Again the power of the Arcane Fulcrums cascaded from the ground but again, the defending force were pressed to maintain control of it. The Tomb Kings tried to hurl the ratmen back from the field of blood but their power was not great enough.

Biding their power and not allowing their greed to risk losing control, the Skaven slew each enemy wizard, gaining the fulcrums and hurling the Tomb Kings back in turn.

Mike (Tomb Kings) vs Tim (Spider Goblins) 

But again in the south, scant miles from the gates of Barak Varr, the Chittering Horde finally outstretched itself. Drawing might from a new tome of ancient knowledge (the new Tomb Kings army book), the undead legion suddenly recovered the might that they had once used to slay every last dwarf in the Dwarfen City of the sea.

The Spider King and his unnumbered  crawling lackeys were more powerful than any living foe but this close to their fortress, the legions of death could not be defeated. It did not matter how great their strategy and how powerful their magic, the skeleton warriors showed no mortal weakness and an immortal strength.

In time, they drove off the goblins and their spider mounts, signalling their first defeat in this lengthening war and blunting at last their seemingly unstoppable surge to capture Barak Varr.

Chaos Daemons (Tim) vs Wood Elves (Gill) - Massacre

And so evil battled evil, waxing and waning as the fates decried and in the north, the spiteful Elves of Linwe  skipped into battle with those most unholy of enemies, the Daemons of the Pernicious Gate.

But pure evil cannot be destroyed and undiluted malice lay at the heart of the daemons, where once, millennia before the Elves had known goodness. Bloodwood Drakes soared into the air to destroy the things before them but flames cast high brought the first one low before it had even the chance to roar.

 As the other Drake neared the Daemon lines, fire ripped the Wood Elf lord from its shoulders and the throng of unholiness brought the beast down, surrounded on all sides by the devilishly clever creatures of chaos.

The bloodletters hurled themselves into the onrushing ranks of Dryads and Treemen as Seekers of Slaanesh ran ranpant behid then Elven lines. And soon only daemonic flesh stood amidst the blood and corpses. Only daemonic voices screamed of victory.

On the Painting Table: Tomb Kings Ushabti

Tomb Kings Ushabti have always been some of my favourite miniatures but the price tag made me shy away. For years and years.

But there are many benefits to being married and one of these is having someone to buy me the occasional surprise present!

 

 

I’m working on an unusual principle at the moment where I’m painting about four different projects simultaneously, starting new units as old ones are completed. I painted these guys alongside some Beastmen, a Skaven Doom Flayer, my Fey Enchantress and some other stuff.

The colour scheme is Dwarf Bronze | Flesh Wash | Shining Gold and Hawk Turquoise | Ice Blue.

I’m looking forward to seeing how they do in the game. At 150 points they’re quite points-heavy but again, coolness is always the overarching factor for me.

And these guys are chuffing cool!