I am happy to bring you yet another battle from our ongoing Firestorm II -campaign, this time pitting my Hammerhal Aelves against a ferocious legion of Seraphon. The Battleplan was one of the surprise battles introduced in the Firestorm rulebook, establishing an interesting betting system to determine which side would be the Defender and which the Attacker.
Well, to put it as simply as possible, the betting system works like this: both players secretly write down a number they are willing to bet in Victory Points. Once the numbers are revealed, the player with the higher number will be the Attacker, whilst the one to bet lower is the Defender (who in this scenario had some special rules hindering his forces). The gist of the system is that at the end of the game, the Defender gets as many Victory Points extra as the Attacker bet at the beginning of the battle!
To use our game here as an example, I secretly bet 125 VP, whilst my opponent bet 400 VP. When the numbers were revealed before deployment, it was thus established that I would be the Defender (having bet lower). BUT! at the end of the game I will received +400 extra Victory Points on top of the VP I got from killing off enemy units. Truly an amazing system in all its simplicity.
So, my forces began the game with D3 units "sleeping" in my camp, meaning they could not do anything, and my opponent also got the first turn. I rolled a 1 for the number of sleeping units, so only my Archers were useless in the first round.
On with the story!
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Having insisted on pressing east even after the battle against the hated Anvilgardians at the Caverns of Fulminax, as opposed to staying put and waiting for reinforcements, Lord Aenarel Dawnspur had put himself in a sticky situation. He had only allowed his depleted forces enough rest so that the accompanying artesans had had time to fashion his levy bowmen some basalt-tipped arrows, half a quiver each, before forced marching his army over to the Eyes of the Prismatikon, a massive array of tall towers tipped with lenses that could focus the searing energies of the Realm of Fire.
With the Caverns of Fulminax behind them now under proper Hammerhal control, they would have a steady supply of weapons utilising the new enhanced basalt that seemed to thrive in the Aqshyan climate, glowing bright hot and melting through armour like it was parchment. Now that he was staring at a Seraphon force descending down on his army's encampment at the Eyes of the Prismatikon, however, even the prospect of future superior weapon shipments did not cheer the old aelf up. The new test-batch of arrowheads would have to prove nigh-miraculous if he hoped to survive ths encounter with his forces intact.
With he heavy losses he suffered at the Caverns, Lord Aenarel now only commanded his personal Swordmaster bodyguard and a regiment of levy archers, accompanied by Archmage Aristeides Clearsight. As he watched, the mage was starting to round up the sleepy bowmen by storming into their tents and kicking them up to take their positions on the nearby ruins. Casting one final look in the direction of the approaching enemy, Aenarel mounted his dragon and took off into the air. It was night, and even if the archers got into position in time, he knew they and their enhanced arrows would be of little use.
He had barely landed next to his bodyguards as a Carnosaur burst out from the nearby woods, carrying a roaring Saurus Oldblood in its back. By the looks of it, this was the very same Kraq-Nar that his son Morduviel had faced further south only weeks ago. Suddenly his vision was blurred by a brilliant flash of starlight as the Saurus legions in the distance blinked out of existence, only to reappear dreadfulyl close to his right flank.
"Masters of time and space, indeed..." Aenarel muttered to himself, recalling the legends surrounding these celestial lizard-daemons.
Only the sudden impact of the Carnosaur against the dragon's flank jerked him out of his reveries. The primordial beast bit a chunk of flesh out of his mount's side, to which the dragon replied by raking its claws across the Carnosaur's face. Aenarel exchanged blows with the Oldblood, saddle-to-saddle, but neither managed to land a telling blow.
Aenarel turned his attention to the Saurus ripping his Swordmasters apart. Even the magnificent skill and valour of these aelven elites was not enough to overcome the numerical superiority of the Seraphon. A gout of dragonflame and a bone-crushing charge later Aenarel had entered the fray with his dragon, mowing down his cold-blooded foes like so much wheat. A sweep of his blade bisected a pair of roaring saurus, while the claws and jaws of the dragon cleared the space around the remaining Swordmasters one enemy at the time. When Archmage Aristeides wove a powerful spell around the Swordmasters' greatblades, making them blaze with the fires of Aqshy, the fate of the Saurus was sealed.
By the end of it, a huge mound of slowly dissipating Saurus corpses surrounded Aenarel and the last three Swordmasters. They did not have the time to even catch their breath before another flash of starlight brought a Slann Starmaster, a cohort of Saurus Temple Guard and a squadron of Terradon-riding Skinks, armed with fiercely flaming bolas. Whipping the gore off his blade with a sharp twist of his wrist, Aenarel prepared to cut through another wave of enemies.
Aenarel took to the air and glided past the enemy lines, aiming to go for the Slann Starmaster; once that powerful spellcaster was gone, the Seraphon would not be able to summon more reinforcements from their distant world-ship any longer. He descended into the Temple Guard like a comet of doom, flattening a number of elite Saurus before scorching a couple more with dragonfire. His magical heirloom blade flashed in the moonlight illuminating the nightly battlefield, drawing celestial blood. Aenarel managed to cause a series of deep wounds on the ancient Slann mage before the Temple Guard fended him off, and before he could return to the fray a shower of grot-sized meteors bombarded his position. In the hurricane of explosions and flashing impacts Aenarel fell from his dragon and lost conciousness.
The wounded Slann redressed the ranks of its Temple Guard and set towards the remaining aelves in the ruins, even as the Stormcast Vanguard-Raptors lurking in the shadowy woods unleashed a storm of bolts that shredded the last of the Swordmasters.
But just then an immense, fiery beam of superheated magical energy slammed into the ground in front of the advancing Slann and the Temple Guard, cutting a deep, smouldering gouge in the soil as it continued slowly towards the Seraphon lines. Aristeides Clearsight whistled in astonishment and relief.
"Seems like the scouts Lord Aenarel dispatched last night have found their way to the Eyes of the Prismatikon," he mused, turning to the levy archers standing beside him open-mouthed. "You have done well today, for we have held the enemy's attention long enough for the scouts to claim this superweapon."
The Seraphon conducted a hasty retreat from the wrath of the Prismatikon, dispersing into the wilds as aelven cheers resounded in their ears.
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A victory for Hammerhal!
The game was a close one, ending 820-620 in Victory Points. Had my opponent not bet that 400 VP at the beginning of the battle, we might be looking at a very different outcome indeed!
Although it is worth mentioning that the VP totals above do not include slain Summoned units, as we were unsure how they score in victory points. Do they yield as many victory points as units that began the game on the table? Do they yield victory points at all? We resolved not to delve too deep into it as the Aelves of Hammerhal triumphed even without those extra points, but it is something I will definitely get an answer to before the next game.
Meanwhile, go check out how the war itself is going. Until next time!
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