Reikwald Beastmen meet the Goblin Hordes, A tale of terror, magic and destruction

So, the Reikwald Beastmen met with the Goblin Hordes today... My army is detailed in HERE

The opposing Orcs & Goblins were:

Black Orc Lord (General)
Goblin shaman lvl 4

Orc shaman lvl 2
Goblin shaman lvl 2
Goblin hero BSB
Goblin hero riding a giant spider
Goblin hero riding a giant spider

20 Night Goblin Archers w/Fanatics
20 Night Goblin Archers w/Fanatics
20 Night Goblin Archers w/Fanatics
20 Night Goblin Archers w/Fanatics
20 Goblin Archers w/Sneaky stabbas
20 Goblin Archers w/Sneaky stabbas
30 Night Goblin Spearmen w/Fanatics
30 Goblin Spearmen
30 Orcs

Spear chucka
Spear chucka

Yes. That is 210 infantry models (against my 143 infantry models), excluding lords and heroes, with 120 of them carrying bows (against my 10 bowmen)... That is a serious amount of firepower right there. Not to count the fanatics who will really hurt anything charging in onto the masses of bowmen. Not that much on the way of melee capacity however, so once I DO get through the hail of arrows and fanatics anything that is alive might actually make it.

What comes to magic he had 8 levels of wizards against my 9 levels. But counting the fact that I had four wizards, including lvl 4 with Lore of Death, and herdstone against his three shamans with no additional power dice generating mechanisms I was pretty confident that I could outdice him regularly during the magic phases.

The scenario was rolled to be the Meeting Engagement and I got the first turn. Deployment turned out like this:



My Shamans were basically all dancing around the Herdstone behind the Gors whikle my BSB (Banner of the Beast) joined Gor herd and my Beaslord joined my Bestigors. My Bestigors were 6 wide and 6 deep, my Gors were 7 wide and 5 deep and my Ungors were in Horde formation of 10 wide and 5 deep.

His shamans, BSB and General were in the right flank inside the Orc and the Goblin Spearmen units while the giant spider riding heroes were on both flanks acting as "goalkeepers" to keep my Razorgors and Raiders away from his flanks. His Night Goblin bowmen, like most of my units, were set almost at the edge of the deployment zone so much of the armies started just 12" apart from each other...

This post has been edited by polaria on Jun 17 2012, 06:44 PM

Turn One: The Horror, the Horror...

Okay, so he had 120 bows and 2 spear chuckas trained on me... I could count for one round of shooting being relatively protected by the Chalice of Dark Rain, but we were pretty close, so even then he would probably be hitting and wounding me on 5's... which would mean I could lose a lot of guys even BEFORE the fanatics launched.

Well, I was not going to have any of that. Putting Razorgors and Giant into charge on the left flank I was determined to hit some of the bowmen and the warmachines early on. The stand & shoot reaction together with the fanatics being released made a short work of the psychopigs who died squeeling their pain when getting mixed up in the chains of released fanatics. However, that did open up the route for the Giant who charged ahead just to fail his charge as night goblins failed their Terror test and ran...

However, the sight of running Night Goblins was too much for many of the other goblins and the Giants failed charge started a proper chain reaction causing most of the goblins in the whole army turn the tail and run for the hills. The movement phase wasn't even over when fully half of the opponents army was fleeing and his whole right flank and centre were in rout.

On my magic phase I casted a few miasmas into the Orcs and the Bowmen, reducing their Initiative. The opponent didn't bother to dispel these as he figured he would be losing Initiative against Beastmen in many cases anyway... Quite correct, yes, but then I followed up by throwing all my remaining five dice into Pit of Shades casting it with irresistible force and killing five of his Orcs. Nice spell, although my shammy did lose a level and the Pit of Shades spell due to the miscast.

He spent his turn rallying (or, well, trying to rally) his goblins and doing some pretty ineffective shooting (due to my Chalice of Dark Rain). His magic phase did success pretty nicely, though, as he managed to give Armour Piercing to his Night Goblin Spearmen and Gork'll Fix It on my Bestigors.




Turn One: I'll hex you... No, I'll hex you

So okay, some of his units had already fled off the field due to the panic sweeping through his ranks, many of his fanatics had been killed by my chaff units and I had softened up his Orcs quite a bit. So I was in pretty nice place now and charged right ahead with Giant, Bestigors and Gors. The Giant failed his charge again, not because of bad rolls, but because his prey (the spear chucka) promptly failed a Terror test and ran, leaving th Giant yet again without a target.

That didn't stop the Bestigors or the Gors who dived right in, taking their share of casualties (about 20 models dead from both units total) from yet another batch of fanatics, and charging the Night Goblin spearmen and the Night Goblin archers. Seeing as my Bestigors were Hexed with Gork'll Fix It and facing a block of Armour Piercing spear I had to even out the things in my magic phase and I dropped the Night Goblins WS to 1 with Miasma. I also anticipated that my Gors would quickly overrun the Night Goblin archers and thus continue their charge into the Goblin spearmen beyond, so I decided to "fix" that unit too with Miasma dropping their WS to 1 and and Writhing fixing their T into nice score of 2. As predicted, the Gors each did their job, driving the Night Goblins into fleeing the scene and Gors finishing by engaging the Goblin spearmen. The Bestigors, however, had suffered so much casualties from fanatics that the spearmen outranked them and held their ground even with huge casualties.

My opponent used his spider riders to charge off my remaining chaff units and his Orcs dove in to the fray with the Gors. On his magic phase he tried to put most of his dice into Hand of Mork and use it to remove my Gors from combat, but I dispelled it. His remaining spear chucka self-exploded in misfire while trying to nail the Giant. The Gors did not manage to break through his spearmen and the combat was stuck there. The Bestigors, however, swept down the Night Goblins after hacking away their extra ranks and were now free to re-engage...




Turn Three: The Slaughter

My Bestigors charged ahead into the Orcs, taking YET AGAIN a bunch of Fanatics into face from the nearby bowmen unit and lost another 10 guys. The remaing few charged the Orcs joining into the same melee with Gors and spearmen. My Ungor "Madhouse" (called that because they are modeled and painted to be a bunch of Frederheim Sanitorium madmen as per p.26 fluff of Beastmen Armybook) had spent two turn manouvering their horde into striking position and now charged, hitting both the goblin archers and the goblin spearmen. My magic phase failed to do anything so it was down to blades now... I had Bestigors, Gors and the "Madhouse" engaged with his Archers, Spearmen and Orcs. Both sides BSBs and Generals were committed too. He had maybe a total of 25 Orcs, 20ish spearmen and 10 archers left. My Bestigors and Gors had both taken MASSIVE casualties from Fanatics and were both at around 20 models. My "Madhouse", however, was mostly intact, having lost only about 10 of its original 54 model strenght.

The first round of fighting in my turn ended in an exact draw with both sides losing around 10 models. On the second round, in opponents turn, I managed to block his spells and my Wargor BSB killed his Goblin BSB putting him into a serious disadavantage when he lost the round by quite a lot. Predictably his weakened blocks failed the leadership rolls and with no BSB left they ran...



This post has been edited by polaria on Jun 17 2012, 07:30 PM

The Wrap-Up

The final result was clear: He had lost around 2200 points worth of units and given up yet another 275 points due to lost General, BSB and other banners.

I had only lost four chaff units: Both Razorgors and both Raider units for a total of 170 points worth of units. My other units had lost well over 50% of their total strenghts but they were still on the field, holding it out...

Victory to the Reikwald Beastmen!!!


The analysis of the battle was pretty much a Warhammer Fantasy Battle 8th edition 101 - Back to Basics. The 8th edition if famous (or notorious) for favoring large infantry blocks and powerfull magic and that was exactly what my Beasts were bringing. None of my blocks were under 40 models with characters in them so they could hold out even after taking literally massive amount of losses from the fanatics and when their axes could not handle something alone my Hexes would pave the way.


The Heroes of the Game: Orcs & Goblins



These guys did 140 points of my lost 170 points worth of units and also caused another 10 model casualties to my Gors and around 15 models more for my Bestigors, killing in total maybe around 400 points for a cost of 150 points investment. In addition, when the shooting failed due to bowmen fleeing, they put so much hurt on my big blocks that the few close-combat units the Orcs had could hold their ground for one round of combat even when charged. It was only when choppas gave up and the magic (and Madhouse Ungors) piled up that the few-but-brave orcs had to bend.


The Hero of the Game: Reikwald Beastmen



This fight my "Jolly Blue" really pulled his weight. Without ever touching a single model during the whole game his irresistible charm and gentle manners caused a total of 385 points worth of Goblins to flee the table. In addition his appearance in the opponents right flank caused a sweeping wave of terror through the enemy ranks, putting more than half of opponents army into flight and, even though most units eventually DID rally, caused my opponents battleplan (simply put: make the beastmen furry pin-cushions) to collapse in the very first movement phase. No doubt about it, even though "Jolly Blue" still keeps insisting that he didn't do any fightin' at all (technically true, he never even reached anyone) he still won the battle for me.

This post has been edited by polaria on Jun 17 2012, 08:05 PM

Great Batrep! Nice to see you roll over those NG with little trouble. Wasn't the hardest list on his part, without 80-man NG units with 5+ GW characters, NG great shaman with mushrooms, and manglers

Thanks for the report! Do you have any pics of this unit? They sound cool!

Thanks for the report! Do you have any pics of this unit? They sound cool!

Unfortunately I only had this one picture of their unit filler... I think I'll have to set up the whole bunch for a group shot later:

Awesome!!!