Here comes another game I played at the local store a couple of weeks ago, the merciless Battleplan: Three Places of Power pitting my Sunsplitterz against a force of Seraphon in a race to capture battlefield objectives using only Heroes. I have played this Battleplan before, and I like its concept, but I feel it too often favours factions with a wide selection of strong heroes, as opposed to horde armies or largely neglected ones like Freeguild, Dispossessed or Aelves.
We had an extra rule to spice up the scenario: a wandering Troglodon skulking the battlefield, which both forces could try to take control of by casting a scenario-specific spell on it!
I picked two casters to lead my orruks into the fray, with a healthy unit of 20 Morboyz acting as the heart of my army. Let's see how my orange maniacs fare against celestial daemons!
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Prophet Wozoc Squinteye squinted his eyes beneath his warmask. In the distance a sharp stony spike reached out towards the skies from the desolate landscape, towering high above the treetops. The rock was known as "Mork's Tooth", a holy place of ancient power to the greenskins of the region, and the Sunsplitterz had decided to visit it on their way from one defeat to another in the Realm of Ghur.
Wozoc squinted again. Was that a trick of light he was seeing? It was as if the air around the Tooth was twisting in upon itself and glittering in the rays of the evening sun. Suddenly there was a loud crack as the fold in reality flashed, producing a full force of Seraphon, the repitilian guardians of the firmament. Wozoc did not know what the Saurus and Skinks were about here on holy greenskin lands, but by Gorkamorka's guts he and his boyz would teach them a lesson for trespassing!
The Prophet's warmob drew into a rough battleline as it readied itself for a defiant charge. Their pet gargant Hargoth, who they hadn't sliced up for his bones yet, was goaded to the right flank to keep an eye out for the wandering wild Troglodon that had appeared there. Wozoc had previous experience with the nasty creatures and he knew better than to leave a hungry Troglodon stalking around behind his lines.
Leading the Seraphon was an ancient Slann, sitting upon a hovering throne of obsidian and contemplating the orange horde ahead. The creature raised a finger and signalled towards the orruks, summoning a pair of meteors from the skies that smashed into the orruk Prophet and his accompanying Wardokk. The celestial missiles landed with the force of thunder, knocking both of the orruk leaders from their feet with the shockwave that shot out from the impact. Slowly, both of them rose from the ground and dusted themselves off.
Shaking his crooked staff above his masked head, Wozoc signalled his warband to charge the enemy and drive them from the sacred ground!
The Morboys surged forward and caught a cohort of ten unwary Skinks by surprise, cutting them down to two repitilians who retreated back to their lines in the face of the slaughter. The Skinks' blowpipes might be deadly at a distance, but they were of no use against the whirlwind of chompas and shivs that shred their formation.
The other cohort of Skinks kept their distance and backed off from the charging Morboyz and Hargoth the Gargant, peppering them with largely ineffective volleys from their blowpipes. The Skink priest behind the screening skirmishers approached the wild Troglodon in order to sway it to fight for the Seraphon.
A group of Saurus, the Skinks' larger and more powerful cousins, charged out of the woods on the left flank and crashed into the Morboyz in the centre, clearly a selfless attempt to protect their leaders. Orruks had no interest in their enemy's tactics, and merely cried out in joy as the celestial warriors fell upon them and began tearing boyz apart. The Morboyz fought back with equal glee and ferocity, stomping out the unit of Saurus in short order. As the celestial corpses lay on the ground, some already starting to dissipate into glittering dust, the orruks danced around waving their weapons in triumph!
Hargoth the Gargant didn't get his slice of the fighting in the middle, so he entertained himself by running straight into the line of Skinks screening the distant Skink Priest on the right flank. Hargoth trampled a pair of Skinks into the dust, swiping his tree-trunk-cudgel across the enemy line and sending battered corpses flying out like dismissed ragdolls. The remaining handful of Skinks stepped back from the gargant's onslaught, reforming before their Priest in order to protect it.
Out on the right wing the Skink Priest reached out into the wild Troglodon's mind with a luring spell, converting it to fight for the Seraphon cause. Once convinced that the beast was friendly to him, the Priest then cast it off into a portal of magical energies that propelled it across the field to reappear behind Prophet Wozoc!
With Hargoth the Gargant and the Morboyz chasing Skinks around the battlefield, Wozoc Squinteye had no protection against the charge of the converted Troglodon. The giant monster swooped in on the orruk wizard, spitting out a spray of noxious spittle that burned away at the Prophet's orange hide. Drawn to the wizard's pained screams, the Troglodon then sank its teeth deep into Wozoc's forearm as the orruk tried to fight off its assailant.
His demise would have been certain if it weren't for the acute reaction of the Arrowboys and the Big Stabbas, who immediately rushed to their leader's aid and surrounded the monster.
Hargoth the Gargant smashed into the handful of Skinks in his way, sweeping them aside with his club in an attempt to reach the Skink Priest behind them. The little mage seemed not to mind the presence of a towering monster coming for it, it's mental powers harnessed to siphon the energies of the sacred ground around Mork's Tooth.
The Arrowboys and the Big Stabbas crashed into the Troglodon's side on the left wing, their arrows and giant spears sinking deep into its scaly skin and forcing the beast to drop the still-living Prophet from its jaws. The orruks then piled over the creature, toppling it under the sheer weight of numbers and stabbing it to death with daggers and spears. As the wild Troglodon's life force leaked out of its many wounds, the Morboys in the centre found themselves regaining their expended energy and strength as the beast spirit reinforced their resolve.
Hargoth had fought his way through the Skinks on the right wing and proceeded to chase down the Skink Priest harnessing the sacred site's power in all tranquility. The gargant gave the little mage a hefty kick in the chest, before splattering the ground with strange ichor by bringing his giant club down onto the sprawling form of the Priest.
On the left the remaining Arrowboys formed a protective circle around wounded Wozoc, seeking to shield their Prophet from harm as they stood amidst the corpses of their fellows, whose bodies still bore the sizzling marks of the Troglodon's venomous bite.
"Uhhh... Ya boiz seen da Profet?" asked one of the dumb-founded orruks.
"Nah, 'Aven't seen 'im since we saves 'im from da spit-beast," replied another.
"He woz roight 'ere just an eyeblink ago... wait, wotz dat? Oi! It's Wozoc's leg 'ere under da glowin' rock" observed a third.
With a shrug the orruks decided their Prophet was gone for now and they turned back towards the field to see how the battle was going.
Slann folded the reality once more to conjure up another Skink Priest to siphon the magical energies of the orruks' sacred site, but the Morboys had picked up their pace again and were closing in on the Slann and its accompanying Astrolith Bearer through the diminishing ranks of the Skinks. The Saurus bearing the Astrolith-device looked to its master, and the Slann replied with a slow nod. The cause here was lost now, and harvesting the energies would have to be left for another time. In a flash of light and a twist of reality, the Seraphon disappeared back into the void, leaving the astonished orruks swinging at nothing but empty air.
As the orruks gathered around the comet that had buried their Prophet, they considered their options. Both of their leaders had been lost, but they desperately needed someone to guide them to their next fight or camp site. After an hour or so of brawls and shouting, the Sunsplitterz began digging up their shaman so that he could lead them back home, dead or alive.
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A Major Victory for Sunsplitterz!
In an astonishing feat of generalship (or just dumb luck!) the Sunsplitterz took two of the three battlefield objectives for a round, then held onto one objective for a couple of rounds more after my Wardokk died, before finally losing both Heroes and my means of gaining more points. Yet the heroism of Hargoth the Gargant saved the day, as the behemoth stomped the Skink Priest holding the Seraphon's only objective, thus denying the enemy their means of balancing the scores!
In the end my victory came about thanks to the Morboyz holding back the Slann and the Astrolith Bearer long enough for my Gargant to crush their only Hero close enough to an objective to score points, and thus by denying the enemy their gains my forces managed to hold onto their hard-earned lead and carry the day.
The game was very close and extremely fun, with the tide of battle swinging back and forth up until the very last round. I learned a lot from this game against the Seraphon, their summoning abilities and units are hard to predict and their magic is so numerous it's almost impossible to stop in its entirety! Luckily my orruks are now better equipped to face this foe in the future.
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