Battle of Cometfall Plain

Sixth battle of the Twilight Prince campaign!

With 1500 points now at my disposal, the campaign is nearing its end as the second last battle kicks in. It is a game of Battleplan: Starstrike, in which my Freeguilders must fight the Maggotkin of Nurgle for the domination of objectives that fall onto the board on 2nd and 3rd battlerounds.

Since there was no short story to herald this battle, the beginning of this report will be a tiny bit more narrational than usual. These are narrative batreps, after all!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After the Khornate attack on the Hygrian Altars had been thwarted, Captain Oswald Wesley had returned to the two scholars to hear the next destination of their journey. Both Gunmaster Fersen and Battlemage Rosengart claimed that the key they possessed would have to be 'empowered' before it could be used to enter the arcane dungeons. This feat could be accomplished by bringing the artefact up to a recently fallen star and absorbing the celestial orb's power.

Oswald knew what that meant. It was yet another perilous task for his company of Averbury recruits. He had known this even before he received the scout's report as they had been marching to the Cometfall Plain some leagues to the north: sightings of a daemon army marching up to meet them at the site.

Now Oswald was standing on that very plain, gazing at the howling horde of Nurgle daemons just across his battleline of shivering human soldiers. A swampy region with strange,  fang-mouthed trees everywhere, this place was one of the worst he had ever served in. Not even the infamous Rakeweed Steppes in Ghur, back in the day of his service as a mere sergeant, had been this bad a place for military operations. This would be a bloodbath.

Gunmaster Wolfgang Fersen had joined this operation too, bringing along a Helstorm Rocket Battery for a test-run. It was rare enough to see the scholar on the actual battlefield, even rarer to see him being rather useful by bringing a huge gun to the fight. In Oswald's mind, the fact that Fersen was here stood testament to the gravity of this mission's goals. They needed the power of a star to empower the artefact, lest everything accomplished thus far be in vain.

From across the swamp the daemons were slowly marching into view. Rank upon rank of open-bellied Plaguebearers, lumbering Beasts of Nurgle and heavily armoured Blightkings, with the form of Rotigus the Generous One towering over the morbid mass of bodies. In front of the daemonic army the ground grew swollen and a shade of sickly green, with trees of living flesh and gnashing maws sprouting up from the swamps to herald this horrific advance.

Several soldiers vomited in the ranks, out of sheer terror. They were clutching their weapons with white-knuckled hands, staring at the approaching enemy with glassy eyes. How could they possibly stand up to a foe like this?

Just then the greenish clouds above them in the sky rumbled. A small drizzle began, drumming gently on the shiny helmets and breastplates of the freeguilders. Then suddenly Rotigus roared something in the distance, reciting the secret words of power of a spell. The drizzle turned into a rain, the rain turned into a deluge. And the water that came down in sheets was yellow as pus.

At first, a couple of men cried out in disgust. Then someone screamed. Soon the ranks fell into a total chaos as soldiers realised the water was eating through their armour and clothes, melting skin and rotting wood. Some fell dead on the spot as the raindrops ate through hats and skulls, others ran off into the swamps with mangled eyes and arms. A couple of men even turned upon their comrades in their panic, lashing out at their fellows as the water got into their eyes and melted them away.

"Redress ranks! Onward!" Wesley roared, urging the battleline to advance. He knew that should they remain where they stood, they'd be reduced into a heap of corpses before they even exchanged blows with the enemy. The men didn't hesitate obeying the order, as even their most primal instincts told them that anything was better than standing still right now. The freeguilder battleline staggered onwards, the tight formations bleeding corpses behind them as the rain claimed more victims.

Behind the main lines Fersen was tinkering with the Rocket Battery alongside the crewmen. The rain had ruined some of the rockets, and the wood of the gun carriage was turning spotted and weak.
"Fire! Launch them now or we'll lose her before she's done anything for us!" Fersen ordered the crew, sliding a fresh rocket into the racks. One of the men grabbed a clump of hot coal from the nearby bracier with a pair of tongs and lit the fuses. Three rockets soared away into the green skies...

...and all three landed amidst the Beasts of Nurgle crawling closer on the right flank. The explosions flashed bright yellow in the rain, shredding the swollen flesh of the beasts and drawing painful screams from their distorted mouths. Yet both of them kept coming for the freeguilders.

On the left flank, a small comet struck down from the skies and crashed deep into the ground beside a band of Blightkings. The pillar of swamp water and soil was visible all across the field.
"No!" Fersen cried out as he rammed another rocket into the artillery racks, trying to find the Captain with his gaze.
"Wesley! We must secure that comet!"

Oswald turned around to cast a look into the comet's direction. His expression was pensive. Then the captain waved a signal to a nearby trumpeter who rang out a three-note signal, causing the group of Greatswords at the backlines to head towards the crash site. With an acknowledging nod in the Gunmaster's direction, Oswald turned back to the approaching enemy lines.

The irregulars unleashed a volley of shots and shafts at Rotigus, who was lumbering towards them along with the endless legion of Plaguebearers. Several pistol shots and arrows struck the mountain of rotting flesh hard, opening up dripping wounds here and there. As soon as these wounds had been caused, however, the Generous One's flesh re-knit itself and closed them, leaving no marks of any missile fire at all. Cries of despair rose from the ranks of the handgunners as they were getting similar results with their barrage at the Plaguebearers.

Then the daemons crashed into the human lines.

Rotigus thundered into the fray like an avalanche of flesh, his gigantic form crushing a handful of men in the front ranks before they could even raise their weapons. The Generous One proceeded to sweep across the freeguilder ranks with his gnarlrod, sending soldiers flying in the air like ragdolls. The irregulars enveloped the greater daemon, hacking at it with maces, swords and axes, but each wound they managed to inflict was healed almost instantaneously. The militiamen's desperation grew even greater as the temporary wounds they caused rained corrosive pus and bile upon them, killing many brave men as their flesh melted away under the touch of the daemon's lifeblood.

The Plaguebearers set upon the soldiers with glee, their rusty swords slicing open bellies and severing arms with every strike. Where ever such a plaguesword scratched a man's flesh they caused the skin to darken and die, incapacitating many freeguilders so that only a couple of daemons got dragged down by the humans.

The clash of arms rang throughout the battlefield, with the Averburians mostly taking the casualties. Men got skewered on plagueswords and were sent flying by Rotigus' sweeping blows, whereas for each two daemons the freeguilders slew one more blinked into being in the Maggotkin back ranks. It was a slaughter. It was hopeless.

The corrosive rain wouldn't give in. The Rocket Battery was being prepared for another salvo, but the gun carriage crumbled into a mess of rotted wood, collapsing the warmachine. The crewmen looked up at Wolfgang who was staring at the wreck in disbelief.
"Gentlemen, I believe we must take the matter into our own hands now. Pick up some tools for weapons and follow me!" he said, setting off into the direction of the swamplake where the Halberdiers were struggling against two Beasts of Nurgle and a bunch of Blightkings. He fired his repeater pistol on the go, taking one of the heavily armoured Nurgle warriors to the ground with holes in its helmet.

The freeguilder battleline was getting thin, Wesley observed. The irregulars had taken a heavy beating in the first moments of the charge, and now the Halberdiers were taking heaps of casualties too. They had to hold the line and wait for more comets to fall.
"14th Averbury Sword, step up and make ready!" the Captain barked.
The swordsmen behind the front line took positions next to Oswald, ready to fill the gaps that would soon appear in the ranks. They had their shields above their heads to give protection from the rain, and their swords were pointed at the foe, gleaming in the dim light of the sporadic gunfire around them.

"Crossbows, take aim! Right flank, target heavy infantry, LOOSE!"
At Wesley's second command, the crossbowmen behind him sent a volley of bolts into the Blightkings that were cutting down the halberds, pin-cushioning one of the armoured warriors.
"Well done, rewind and prepare," he instructed while letting his gaze sweep the field of death, his experienced eyes reading the battle's tactical layout like a map.

On the left, the Greatswords charged a band of Blightkings protecting the fallen comet, carving into them like Sigmar's fury. A single Nurgle warrior went down under the zweihanders and the freeguilders' finely wrought armour kept them safe from retaliatory blows, locking the two elite units in an intense combat.

In the middle, the Plaguebearers were engulfing the handgunners with their numbers. Whenever the arquebusiers managed to take down a couple of daemons with their daggers, more rose up from the swampy soil to join the fray, hacking the human gunners to death one by one. Rotigus was making short work of the militia, his enormous gut-maw eating men in twos and threes, while blows from his gnarlrod crushed men like a makeshift battering ram.

Captain Wesley was about to command the swordsmen into the fray at the centre when another comet crashed down into the swamp, just behind the Blightkings and the Halberdiers on the left.
"Swords! Secure that crash site and bring salvation to your comrades! Charge!"
The 14th Averbury Swords let out a warcry and rushed unto the swamplake in which the Beasts and Blightkings were ripping the halberds apart.

The Rocket Battery crewmen who'd been smacking at the Nurgle warriors with their tools stepped back as the charge came. The Swordsmen surrounded the Blightkings and drove them back several paces, creating more space for the hemmed-in Halberdiers. The men took heart from the reinforcements and cut down the foe's heavily armoured standard bearer with their polearms, leaving only two Beasts and two Blightkings against a score of freeguilders. Slowly but surely, the proximity of the recent comet was being claimed by the freeguilders.

The Crossbowmen had winded their weapons and unleashed another volley at Rotigus, who merely waved his massive hand and caught the bolts in the rubbery flesh of his arm. There were still militiamen skittering around his mountainous form, jumping up and down in the pile of human corpses while trying to dodge Plaguebearers or land a blow at the Generous One himself.

The reality blinked around the handgunners once more, bringing more Plaguebearers into the fray as they crawled from the depths of the soft marsh. Rusty blades struck deep into human flesh even as the skin blackened around the wounds. Some of the daemons were now turning their attention to the handful of remaining irregulars, hacking them apart with their plagueswords while Rotigus snatched up and gulped down some choice individuals. The company of twoscore militiamen had been slain down to the last man, leaving the handgunners all by themselves amidst the lesser daemons.

Meanwhile on the right the Blightkings made themselves known. Their spotted scimitars and spiked maces crushing through shield, armour and bone as they waded into the ranks of the Swordsmen. Every blow struck back against them bounced off rubbery flesh or merely chipped at their heavy armour plates. The Beasts of Nurgle giggled like children as they rolled across the ranks of the Halberdiers in the swamplake, their long tongues snatching soldiers by the throat and their gaping maws wolfing down everything they managed to drag within munching distance. The murky lake was strewn with the dead.

Yet despite the horrendous casualties the freeguilders were suffering, they held the line. The Maggotkin could not gain any more ground and the second comet was firmly under human control by now. The men of Averbury had proven to be too tough a nut for the Generous One and his legion. Harried by ineffective missile volleys, the daemons of Nurgle strolled off back the way they came from, with Rotigus muttering something under his breath as bolts and bullets pattered upon his back.

Wesley's company was left standing in a sea of corpses, exhausted but triumphant.

"That was a rough ride," Wolfgang said as he walked up to the Captain.
"We managed to secure the comets, and of that I am grateful. I am also terribly sorry about your men, Captain. They did Puffington Empire a great service today."
"Save your breath, scholar," Oswald shot back. His gaze was locked on the bloody mess of the corpse-strewn battlefield, his eyes burning with silent anger. Or was it genuine sorrow?

"Look at this terrible sight before you. My company is no more. The men... no, the young lads who followed me, they have given their very lives for your scholarly fantasies!" Oswald roared, turning to the Gunmaster.
"I do not know what Scholz saw in your damned 'quest', and I do not care! You came to me and my company from the misty woods, begging for help, and we gave it to you. And what did WE get? Three battles that bled my company dry, three battles that DESTROYED the young lives I was trusted with!" Oswald spat, staring at Fersen with murder in his eyes.

Wolfgang looked the Captain hard in the eye. He felt guilt for what he and Rosengart had asked of this man and those who followed him. He felt guilt for all the men who'd perished on this plain today. Yet still he felt pride for having moved one step further in the journey he and Leopold Scholz had begun so many days ago.
"I am sorry, I truly am."
"To Shyish with your apologies," Wesley muttered, turning away.
"I'll have nothing to do with you or your foolish quest anymore. Me and my men will burn the dead and return to the warcamp. You and Rosengart can have your way with these bloody comets."

With that, the Captain walked away. Fersen shrugged and went the other way, unloading one of his repeater's barrels into the face of a Blightking that was still twitching in a bodypile near the swamplake as he walked by.
BLAM!
"Better fetch Ernest right away," Wolfgang mused to himself as the holstered the gun.
"Soon we'll be late in the schedule."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Major Victory for the Free Peoples!

This game lasted only two and a half battlerounds, with the game clock ticking faster than we could toss the dice. Of the 136 models I began the game with, only 58 (~43%) still stood at the end of it. This victory was all because of the time running out, with my opponent in firm lead with his 2 Victory Points against my 0. I managed to play the 3rd round, he didn't, so by capturing the second comet I got those 3 VP that won me the game just as the clock rang. A nasty and unclean (he-he) victory here, but it was a nice experience to face the Maggotkin on the field. They have many nasty abilities and that Rotigus is a true monster, and I'm not talking about the keywords!

All in all this was the second last battle of the campaign. Next up, a short story leading up to the final, 2000p clash that will decide the fate of my Averburians and their dubious quest!