Zapping Sphinxes, Scorching Skellies, 2400 vs skaven

SO, I’m not typing that many battle reports. Forcing myself here, cause it was a good one. My prince this time left one of his wizard lackeys at home, exchanged his fathers TG for regular warriors and traded the scorpions and some stuff for a catapult and some stuff. The final list:

TK
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Characters:
Tomb prince with shield and amulet of magic resistance 4+
Lvl4 high lich with scroll (desiccation, smiting, protection, vengeance)

Core:
~60 skellie warriors, HW+SH, Mus+Ban
6 charriots, Ban, flaming
~20 archers, Mus

Special:
Warsphinx with flames
4 Knights, Ban, Champ
6 Ushabti, GW, ban

Rare:
Casket
Necrosphinx
Catapult


The battle was still part of the unending crusade against the vile Skaven invasion. They brought:

Skaven
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Characters:
Warlord on warlitter with 4+ ward and weeping blade
Chieftain with BSB with Stormbanner
Engineer with doomrocket
Grey seeer with scroll (13th, scorch, warpgale and warp lightning)

Core:
~60 slaves
~25 clanrats
~40 stormvermin with armorpiercing banner
5 giant rats
5 giant rats

Special:
5 gutter runners
40 plaguemonks with plaguebanner
2 ratogres, champion
2 ratogres, champion
2 ratogres

Rare:
Doomwheel
Hellpit

note the novelty tactic of rat-ogre-darts; viscious little torpedos, especially with the masterbreds.


Deployment:
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On my left flank were the casket, with the archers in front of them, and the ushabti and the necrosphinx right, towards the centre. On the opposite of the field were a rat dart, the doomwheel, and the gutter runners had scouted left of the archers
On my far right were the chariots, and left of them the sphinx, and left of him the knights. On the other side, the plaguemonks were right in front of the chariots, the stormvermin in front of the sphinx/knights, and some rat-ogre-darts scattered through that.
In my centre were the warriors, with the prince and the wizard, and next to them, a bit to the back, the catapult. Right on the other side were the slaves with the warlord, the clanrats with the seeer and the engineer, and the hellpit abomination.

In the spirit of recent reports of Sleboda, here’s a picture.



Here I could also state to wait for your guesses of how the battle would go, and they ARE welcome of course. However I also have to go back to work now, so more to follow…

Casket, I hope, is going to annihilate those GR. If not, well, that's some trouble you have right there.

Bring it on!

The suspense is terrible....I hope it lasts.
Looking forward to the battle. I take the MR3 tally agains Skaven too. Comes in handy against all those savable damaging spells. Definitely a good investment/underused item.

What kinda of "Forrest" terrain features are those? "Gumps"?

LOL. A lot of battle reports that do not actually have battle reports in them appear to be popping up.

A wall of text has a tendency to fatigue the modern reader :-)

Hopefully within half an hour I'll fin dthe time to start typing people. promise I'll finnish it.

Allright, so, turn one. Being heavily outdeployed in terms of drops (and rolling a 6) I got first turn.

TK1
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Movement: I attempted a swift reform with my arches, which I failed. I decided to put them as wide as possible, between the casket and the gutter runners, so that the casket at least would get cover from them. Ushabti, necrosphinx (stormbannered), warriors, knights, warcat all shuffled forward somewhat. The charriots I positioned somewhat more carefully just within chargerange of the plaguemonks and one of the ratogre-darts, to invoke their frenzy.
Magic: Realizig too late that the necrosphinx would get in range of the doomwheel, I put the 5+ wardsave on him. My opponent let me do this because of the casket. Subsequently I 6diced the casket on the doomwheel, but it actually MADE its save after the retry from his BSB
Shooting: Charriots killed two plaguemonks; the catapult scattered from the hellpit into the slaves and kill 10 or so.
No combat

Skaven1
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Movement All frenzied units made their saves (throughout the battle, skaven would roll suspiciously well for leadership), then the hellpit and doomwheel lurched forward, the last one indeed in range of my necrosphinx. The gutterrunners went towards their doom (my archers), as the other choice would be to stand back uselessly. All rat darts and ogredarts went forward for future tactical use. Storm vermin and plaguemonks advanced so that I wouldn’t be able to pull stuff like before again.
Magic He wanted to draw dispel dice with warp lightning on knights, which I dispelled with almost all recources. He then proceeded to cast scorch on the skellieblock, as planned, and my magic resistance saved most of them. That was one item that made his points back, and one annoyed opponent for doing such unexpected things
ShootingStupid doomwheel rolled an 8 for strength and got through my wards. One dead necrosphinx that didn’t get to prove himself this battle. An doomrocket killed some 8 skellies or so. I was down to 49 by then, I think.
No combat

I intend to put up a picture after every turn. At least this time, we’ll se if it will last.



TK2
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movement: Ok, so, being genuinely afraid of that hellpit, I charged it with the warsphinx. The hellpit, however, is equally afraid of those 8str5+2d6str4flaming, and decides to FLEE! The warsphinx then redirects to the gaint-rat-dart that happened to be in range, wich flees due to terror. The sphinx lurches forward a few inches, failing his charges, but satisfied with being very scary nonetheless. Trouble is that his flank is very exposed for future plaguemonk attacks, and seeing as that would result in at least 30 str3 attacks with reroll to hit AND reroll to wound. Long story short, I charge the monks with the chariots, in which I they succeed. The ushabti, bound on avenging their fallen construct necrofriend, collide with the doomwheel.
magic: I six diced the boosted desiccation on the monks. The casting succeeds but doesn’t miscast, so the spell is wisely scrolled by my opponent.
shooting:
3 gutter runners die to bowfire, the others hold and stay there for some reason.
close combat: The impact hits of the chariots kill a whopping TWELVE plaguemonks. In the ensuing battle, 4 more monks die, while I receive only 9 wounds in return (45 monk attacks, you would expect 12 wounds actually, so I was lucky). Anyway, I win that battle, and though the monks hold, they lost their banner and their frenzy!
On the other side of the field, the ushabti deal just ONE wound. Having charged, bringing a banner and still having a rank, however, they scare the doomwheel to death. While the ushabtis restrain, the doomwheel flees like the scared little rat it is… into a tree! Failed dangerous terrain test, 5 wounds, one tree falls in the wood and there is no doomwheel left to observe it.

Skaven 2
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Movement: the 2 ogre-darts in the vicinity charge the sphinx, and one succeeds. The slaves with warlord charge the ushabti, but fail. The GR charge the skeletons, the rat-dart at the top left charges the skeletons. The hellpit rallied. Stormvermin are hampered by the ogres that failed their charge and move around or something.
Magic:I think I actually lost some skellies by the 13th here, down to 38 or so. Whatever happened, the seeer lost 3 levels due to a miscast
No shooting
Close combat: The bowmen eventually destroyed the GR and overran the rat dart. Safe casket is safe. The monks suddenly decided to make a comeback, and obliterated the chariots, and reformed to 5x4. The sphinxcrew trashed the ogre champion, the sphinx trashed the other ogre and the handler fled through the stormvermin (which unfortunately held ). The sphinx restrained by the way.

Picture:


TK3
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Movement: First, the knights charge the stormvermin. Having secured those, the Sphinx is free to fool around. A terror charge on the 20 remaining plaguemonks results in 20 plaguemonks falling of the edge of the world. The sphinx redirects to the last ogre-dart.
Skellies move some, ushabti move some, archers reform and put a wound on the hellpit I think.
Magic: First I pretend to draw dice with desiccation on the stormvermin. It passes. Then I six-dice a boosted smiting, no miscast but no dispel either. Healing and attacks across the board!
shooting: I don’t think that stupid catapult did anything during the whole game
Combat: The stormvermin are cut in half, but hold (seriously, weren’t skaven supposed to go running all the time?). The last ogre dart is smashed by the sphinx, which overruns or something.

Skaven 3
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Movement: The hellpit runs into the flank of the knights. Aie aie aie. The slaves+general finally make it to the ushabti.
No magic:
No shooting:
Combat:The snakes die. They manage to take 5 stormvermin with them, but that’s it. The ushabti start grinding. Slave die in droves, while the warlord is untouchable. This will simply last till the end of the game.

Picture:


So, I can cover the last three turns at a quicker pace:

Turn 4:
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First, The warsphinx backtracked a little, and then cooked the remaining 15 stormvermin. The 5 that survived ran away, and then rallied on their turn. The casket did nothing, the catapult blew himself up unfortunately. The hellpit started moving towards my skellieblock, containing my characters.

Turn 5:
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The sphinx charged the block of clanrats, with his character. My skellie block had no escape anyway, so it charged the hellpit to avoid impact hits. Magic gave the skellies wards and smiting and a few guys back, and the casket killed the last 5 stormvermin
All skaven units were now engaged. The skellies actually barely survived two rounds toe to toe, 9 or so remained (characters still not in contact), and they even managed to put two extra wounds on the hellpit. At the same time, the ushabtis were still holding themselves, getting steadily grinded away by the slaves. The warsphinx killed the BSB and a few rats.

Turn 6, Final turn:
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Casket fried an innocent pack of bystanding prairiehounds as there were no targets available, smiting gave my skellies an extra attack. The sphinx didn’t manage to break the clanrats in the end. The ushabties died in the skavens last round.
Back at my bunker, the hellpit crunched 7 more skellies, and then it happened: now in contact, my sissy prince had no choice. He swung his weapon four times (smiting) and completely failed to mis the hellpit! 3 of those hits wounded, and the hellpit was so impressed that he rolled 2,2,3 for regeneration. So there you have it; that prince became a man by killing his first hellpit.

And that was the fight. I had left:
Skellies (technically)
Hich lich
Prince
Casket
Sphinx
Archers
~1140

He had:
Slaves (technically)
Clanrats
Seeer
Warlord
~712

So that’s a minor win for TK
As for final comments:
-The not-zapped sphinx performed very nice on the flank. Terror charging is a nice thing to try if you can afford to. The hellpit fleeing as a deliberate choice should be possible by the way; it’s stubborn, which doesn’t mention fleeing.
-The block of skellies had a lot of attention from the opponents ranged capabilities, and what was left managed to outgrind a HELLPIT! They get to come back for sure, luck or no luck.
-Casket cleaned up some small guys for victory points, but didn’t kill anything mayor. The free dispel dice were of course unmissable still, and the FEAR for the casket killing something mayor allowed me to get other spells through, resolving at least two spells per turn.
-I learned the value of bubble smiting this game, going to do that more.


and there you have it then, thanks for reading!
cheers,

Worth mentioning it but I'm fairly certain the Abomination is Unbreakable and thus cannot elect to Flee as a charge reaction. Otherwise, great stuff!

IIRC it's just stubborn and not unbreakable.

Hey, this sounds like an error: the stormvermin were too few to rally. Once you're under 25%, a unit will run until it reaches safety (and is removed as casualty).

The issue is whether it's immune to psychology or not. It probably isn't, but since it causes terror, it's immune to fear and terror. The psychology left is that it can flee, and that it can panic.

Nope! If you're under 25% you can rally on a double 1! Page 24.