Warhammer Siege Campaign - Final Assault

Throndin Groznog pulled the ancient helm of Groznog down onto his head and hefted the great Groznog axe in his right hand.
The time had come for war.

The climax to our siege campaign! Despite some success at attacking the Orc war machines the Dwarfs have largely been on the back foot. Could I turn it round and throw back Ruglud’s forces as the prepared for a final assault (regular readers – thank you both – can probably guess the answer to that one)?

Steve and I settled on 4,000 points of defenders versus 2,000 of attackers. We toyed with 6k and 3k, but in the end decided it would interfere with our drink consumption too much to have to move all those soldiers.

 Gyrocopter's eye view of the (open) Dwarf gate

 Crossbows, followed by Ironbreakers, try chewin' through that!

Longbeards keep the Thunderers in line

As a result of my earlier success the greenskins would have to pay double for any war machines. However the gates of the Groznog hold were open and one of the walls was undermined!

Crikey there's a lot of 'em

Over on the Dwarf left a hulking spider deployed. The only sensible response was a cannon shot or two right between the (many) eyes.

On the right a pair of giants and a siege tower held sway whilst most of the remaining greenskins surged toward the gate and collapsing wall.

The greenskins lobbed more rocks at the damaged wall and soon a hole appeared large enough to break through.

The giants took crossbows and organ guns to the face, but still made it to the wall.

The Trolls made it to the gate, but the dwarf defenders stood prepared with a pot of molten nastiness. There then ensued a small debate about whether or not a huge pot of molten metal was “flaming” or not and thus prevented regeneration. Common sense triumphed over strict rules and the trolls were not coming back from their fiery bath.

Look up, lads

Throndin's hearthguard moved to cover the gate and slaughtered the remaining trolls. Meanwhile the Orc siege tower hit the wall and disgorged some angry greenskins into the crossbowmen.

 Waaaagh!

 Some support arrives

Right, let's be 'avin you!

The clansdwarfs moved to cover the gap in the wall, expecting a giant to come rampaging through, but instead some spiders failed their animosity test and scuttled over the ruined ramparts and into the warriors. The result was as expected, however the dwarfs pursued the fleeing spiders through the gap in the wall and out into the open.

Cut them down and stand fast! Oh.

A giant duly crashed into the dwarf unit, however the stout fellows stood strong and the giant was vanquished. His death fall saw two more dwarfs squished, but he also toppled into his fellow badly wounded giant. Sadly for both the dwarfs and comedy he failed to kill the other giant as he fell.

However the rash charge of the clan dwarfs had left the breach in the wall undefended. Frantically the Longbeards marched toward the ruins, grumbling all the way about "young 'uns abandoning things and leaving it for proper dwarfs to sort out and me with my bad foot..."

Up we go!

Meanwhile the Ironbreakers held the Orcs from the siege tower on the wall.

We could do this all day long..

From nowhere a unit of spiders ran over the wall and headed for the innards of the fortress. Frantically the dwarf cannon crew took aim…hit…but failed to kill the eight legged horror and with that the greenskins raced into the Groznog hold and claimed the victory.

Yikes, where did they come from!

This was great fun.
The armies and fortress looked splendid and for the most part the venerable Siege rules served us well. And when it didn't we made stuff up. Just like we usually do.

At the start of the battle I said out loud that I intended to kill a spider from each of the small units Steve had, as they had the best chance of quickly getting off the table and winning him the game. I then did that for all but one of the spider units. With inevitable consequences.
However, given the successes the Orcs had enjoyed in most of the previous battles the result seemed mostly to be fair and appropriate.

Throndin Groznog wiped the thick Troll blood from his axe and gazed in horror as greenskins poured through the gap in the fortress wall to begin the sack of the Groznog hold. As he watched centuries old Dwarf architecture began to be ripped apart as goblins, orcs and giants rushed deep into the internal corridors of the hold.
"Bugger. They're going to take some shifting" he sighed.

Warhammer Siege Campaign - Test the Defences

High on the walls of Fortress Groznog Snurti Longsight took the telescope from his one good eye and slowly folder the brass device away. 
"Nowt to worry about lads - I've seen spiders bigger than the ones they're riding in mi bath"

Despite the setback of having their war-machine smashed by the desperate dwarf sally  Ruglud has continued to turn the screw. Now, emboldened, he's decided it is time to assault part of the fortress outer defences.
The Orcs would have 1,000 points including a single war machine versus the Dwarf 500 points of defenders. I decided to give the Ironbreakers rocks to hurl on their foes.

 Dawn breaks. How many Groznog dwarfs will live to see another?

 Ironbreakers wave their defiance

Any sign yet, lads?

 The Orc horde advances

Never leave home without ladders. And a big badass Black Orc

Man the ramparts

The greenskin advance began with their spider riders scuttling forward. The Dwarfs shot, but drew no blood

 Scuttle...

 ...creep

 A rather less subtle advance

Soon the greenies were at the wall, though dwarf shooting had whittled the big unit of Orcs heading for the gate to give it a good hard ramming.

 Ladderz!!!!

 Up and over and in!

Kerrrrunnch!!!

Whilst the simple minded Orcs smashed against the door under a hail of fire from the thunderers and crossbows the Black Orc delivery system Night Goblin units raced into combat with the Ironbreakers

This was to prove a protracted affair with at least one lot of goblins running away at least twice. However the Black Orc kept swinging and the Ironbreakers kept killing but with ever dwindling numbers.

 Fleee!

Oh bugger!

In the meantime the spiders had clambered up and over the walls and were seriously distracting the dwarf gunline from its main task of killing Orcs.

 On we grind...

Double bugger!

At some point during this the Orcs with the ram dropped their weapon and fled but the spiders overran the crossbowmen and began properly whittling the Thunderers

Finally it was all too much and the Orcs returned to the fray, picked up their enormous log and thrust it through the vaguely resisting doorway and forced themselves home.

In we go ladz!

And so the outer Bastion of Fortess Lerpak the ancestral home of the Groznog Clan has been breached!

This was good fun, The actual sige rules seemed to work pretty well and the door only cracked on the very last turn of the game. I suspect the full game will just turn into a bit of a grind with endless combats that neither side can win decisively enough to force the issue. However at this size it worked rather well and I'm looking forward to the grand climax.

Warhammer Siege Campaign - Sally Forth

Throndin Groznog slumped further onto the iron hard Throne of Groznog and pulled his belt one notch tighter. He'd been looking forward to some roasted beef and a gallon or so of Bugman's Best.
Footsteps approaching across the hall snapped him from his reverie.
"Stand up Snurti Longsight" he gruffly ordered the Dwarf kneeling at the foot of his throne "What news?"
"They've started building some kind of big thrower my Lord. 'Appen it'll be quite powerful if'n they get it finished. Throw a big rock straight ovver oor walls I reckon"
The Lord's brows knitted together and he smiled grimly.
"Well we'll not be allowing any of that nonsense now, can us?" Abruptly he stood up "Get the lads ready, time we stopped hiding in here like wusses!" he bellowed.

The Starve Out game took less than an hour, so we had plenty of time to set up and go again with a different scenario. Technically there's a mechanism for rolling to see if the campaign ends and there are some slightly dull not game benefits you can rack up, but I think we've decided to just play most, if not all, the scenarios and then finish with a really big game of siege.

So for this one I had 1,000 points against a similar quantity of greenskins. The Dwarfs have to get across the table and sabotage a big Orc war engine. And the Orcs have to stop them. The original scenario has a turn limit of five turns, and assumes you'll have a mostly cavalry force. At first we thought this meant the Dwarfs would never do it, but I suggested we just play without the turn limit and see if the Dwarfs could make it despite the odds.

 Eager for a proper fight the Dwarfs head for the gate

 The gates of fortress Groznog swing open

 Red capped gobbos await

And some boar boys. Bugger.

The Dwarfs began by shooting quite a lot. Crossbowmen and rangers on the walls took aim at the savage orcs and Ruglud's lads whilst the Stone Thrower targeted the Savage Orcs. None of which was terribly effective.

 A single fanatic is unleashed - to little effect.

The Groznog longbeards sally about a bit

The savage orcs moo-ve in for some more cow based frolics

In short order the battle lines clashed.

 Eat axe, Grobi scum!

 Longbeards v Savage Orcs. Again

Chop, hack, crunch!

At around this point the hitherto triumphant Orcs and Goblins discovered that big, ranked up units of Dwarfs are a tougher nut to crack....

The Longbeards went through the Savages like a horde of short, grumbling northern psychopaths through some ineffective green things. And the clan dwarfs saw off the night goblins.

At some point Rugluds lads failed animosity and moved, so lost a turn of shooting and the Bolt Thrower was reliably hopeless.

Flushed with success the Clan Dwarfs raced towrd the objective.

Pursued by Orcs on pigs.

Before the stout Dwarfs could dismantle the warmachine, the boarboys were on them!

However in a susrprising turn of events the Dwarfs held and at the second attempt succeded in destroying the war machine!

 Chaaarge!

Hmmmmmm.

Huzzah! Victory for Clan Groznog!

Turns out we needn't have worried about the turn length thing at all. 8th edition charges and pursuit mean even stunty legs can cover quite a lot of ground in a short space of time...