Siege of Kazad-Zul

Greetings!

Time has come for another game of Old Skål, this time using the rules for Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th Edition despite what I decided back in the Old Skål article. What can I say, well, a little change of pace in WFB is always welcome, so you'll most likely see both 3rd ed and 6th ed batreps here under the Old Skål banner from now on. The game mechanics do not show through the narration anyway, so what does the edition really matter?

This game pitted the stout Dwarves against a fearsome horde of Warriors of Chaos in a siege scenario. There was no time limit for the battle, and the side that shattered the opposition first would be the winner. The Chaos forces totaled up to 945p while the defenders got about a third less, 616p. On the other hand, the defenders did get a huge castle as compensation. I'll include the army lists down below if anyone's interested.

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The eleventh day of the siege dawned warm and hazy, the sun shining down upon the upturned fields surrounding the dwarven hold of Kazad-Zul. Where once had been fields of hardy mountain wheat swaying in the wind, now lay dozens of corpses rotting in the warmth. The air that had once rang to the merry whistling of dwarven workers now resonated with the buzzing of corpse-flies that fed on the waste of the conflict around them.

Ten days before, a sizeable Chaos army had fought its way to the gates of Kazad-Zul, setting camp and laying siege to the hold. Earthworks and palisades were erected around the siege camp to protect the invaders from defender raids and sallies, and thick-timbered catapults had been hammered together and brought to bear against the castle walls. Day after day the hordes of the Dark Gods bashed their might against shieldwalls and masonry, yet no ground was gained. The dwarf hold was well stocked with supplies and fresh water underground, the siege camp was not. Disease and daily skirmishes took their toll on the followers of Chaos.

Thane Bulgrem Varinsson climbed the battlements of Kazad-Zul as he had done each morn since the siege began, greeting the sentries and gazing out onto the fields beyond. There was movement in the distant camp, bodies of troops shifting around the way they did when organizing for battle.
"Aight, lads," Bulgrem called out, his bass tones echoing across the courtyard. "The buggers are preparin' for one final push. I bet they ran out o' food already, and the chief just wants to make the most out o' his hirelings afore they get bored an' kill 'im."
His speech drew fits of tired laughter from the defenders. There were but thirty-odd dawi still fit for a fight in the hold, while Varinsson knew the enemy to still boast at least half a hundred capable warriors. The tired and ragged clansdwarves around him would have a hard time holding their ground against anything resembling a determined assault.

As the sun climbed higher in the vault of the sky, the barbarians poured from their lair to mount their final assault. The siege engines had fallen silent just yesterday, when the enemy numbers had dwindled so that they had no manpower to fashion more boulders to fling at the dwarves. For that, Bulgrem was thankful.

Letting out a ragged cheer, the Quarrellers clambered up the battlements to take their positions. Bulgrem himself led his Longbeards down to the gate, along with the hold's Runesmith Dorin. The clansdwarf warriors assembled on the courtyard, ready to pluck any gaps in the defenses and to repel the enemy should they gain foothold on the walls.

Down on the fields the hordes of Chaos marched forth from their camp. Bare-chested barbarians marched alongside tall, armoured warriors, while mounted tribesmen and a hulking Spawn brought up the flanks.

Leading the horde was Varnir the Terrible, and Exalted Hero of Tzeentch, and his (relatively) trusted second-in-command, Sorcerer Silvertongue. They were determined to claim this hold in the name of their god and, of course, personal glory. With their army's numers having dropped drastically over the last weeks, they were desperate to gain a stronghold in the region to which more followers of the Long Night could flock.

As the barbarian hordes closed within bowshot, the Quarrellers on the walls let fly from their crossbows. Iron-tipped bolts punched throught the air and rained upon the closest Marauders, who raised their shields against the downpour. A single blond-haired man cried out as his chest sprouted a shaft, tumbling dead into the grass to join his rotting brothers.

With no ranged weaponry to cover their advance, the barbarians marched on with gritted teeth. More bolts kept raining down from the walls as fast as the dwarves managed to rewind and loose, clattering into the approaching enemy formations to a terrible effect. The closest Marauder warband was vaulting over the broken fence lining the old fields as a cloud of shafts slammed down upon them, bearing down four muscular warriors who would not see the break of day again. Howling oaths and curses, the Chaos followers kept marching on through the barrage.

The Marauder Horsemen rode daringly to the foot of the walls, tossing their javelins at the defenders, only to have their missiles bounce harmlessly off the stone crenellations.

Silvertongue the Sorcerer chanted fervently in the Dark Tongue, gathering about him the malicious winds of chaotic magic with forbidden words of power. Thrusting his horn-capped staff at the walls, Silvertongue unleashed a powerful spell that took the form of an arc of purple, leaping flame that slashed across the battlements. Cries of pain lasted but a few heartbeats as the dwarf Quarrellers were first scorched, then immolated. Living torches rolled down from the ramparts or jumped off the walls altogether in a futile attempt to escape their fiery doom.

With the crossbows now silenced, the barbarians let out a triumphant roar and doubled their pace to reach the walls. Carriers from the back of the warbands handed over long scaling ladders to the warriors in front in preparation to storming the walls.

Ladders were hefted upright and set against the walls, their tell-tale clacks and clinks signalling the defenders to rush for the battlements or lose them to the opposition. With the Longbeards defending the gates alongside Thane Varinsson himself, the duty of holding the walls fell to the two remaining Quarrellers and the ten dwarf warriors on the courtyard.

Varnir the Terrible was the first to scale the walls, his deadly rune-axes claiming the lives of the two crossbowdwarves in one swing. As the rest of the Marauders dropped onto the bloody ramparts, the dwarf warriors sounded their warhorn and charged the intruders. Long-hafted axes and hammers pounded the barbarians, one particularly well-placed swing even shattering a marauder's head in a burst of gore. The enemy advance had been halted for now, but the Chaos tribesmen had already gained a foothold on the walls.

While the fighting raged on the castle walls, Silvertongue led his own Marauders and Chaos Warriors up the ramp towards the gates. At the very fore of this macabre procession ran the Chaos Spawn, a hulking many-limbed monster who threw itself at the reinforced gates in a fit of rage, rocking the barrier on its hinges. For now, the gates held.

Raising his voice once more above the din of battle, the Chaos Sorcerer recited the arcane phrases of a spell as he grabbed one of the marauders beside him by the hair.
"Ascend, servant of Tzeentch! The Changer of Ways has seen your inner power and recognizes you as worthy of his gifts!" the Sorcerer shrieked.
Beneath the spellcaster's palm, the flesh of the barbarian began to flow like wax, reforming itself and growing in size. Pained cries split the air as the man's bones cracked and flesh bubbled, transforming the marauder's appearance to that of a towering, muscular warrior clad head-to-toe in blue armour. In his hand the newly formed warrior hefted a large, daemon-possessed axe. The Sorcerer grinned, pointing at the castle gates.
"Now, fulfil your destiny and show us your worth!"

On the walls the battle shifted to the favour of Chaos as Varnir himself waded into the rnaks of the defenders, cutting down two of the dwarven warriors. His Marauders brought down two more, sending the remaining dwarf warriors retreating across the courtyard. Jumping down onto the courtyard from the corpse-strewn battlements, Varnir the Terrible laughed. He could already taste victory.

Hearing the commotion behind him, Thane Bulgrem issued a command for the Longbeards to turn about and present a shieldwall towards the courtyard. The gate behind their backs creaked and shook, but was still holding its own against the fury of the Spawn.

Runesmith Dorin slipped out of the Longbeard ranks as Varnir's Marauders assembled on the courtyard. He knew Bulgrem was about to charge the enemy and knew he had to keep clear in order to try and counter the Sorcerer's magics.
"For the Hold! For the Clan! Butcher the buggers! Khazuk!" Thane Varinsson roared, echoed by his Longbeards.
"Khazuk!"

The veteran warriors followed their Thane as he charged across the courtyard, smashing into the Marauders with the fury of a landslide. Behind them, however, the gate began to give away to  the monster behind it...

Axes swung back and forth between the courtyard combatants, splintering wooden shields or glancing off plates of armour. One of the veteran dwarves dropped dead on the flagstones, his helmet struck in half by a blade, but in return two marauders were hacked apart as their shields gave way under the fury of the dwarven strikes. Behind the struggling Marauders the dwarven warriors had regained their courage and were now closing in on their rear.

Thane Bulgrem Varinsson issued a daring challenge to Varnir the Terrible, and the two faced off amidst the courtyard carnage. The Chaos chieftain rained down blows with his runic axes, their hateful magics burning red trails in the air. Bulgrem's heirloom shield bore the brunt of the assault, deflecting Varnir's axes so that the Thane's own warhammer could swing around and catch his adversary in the kneecap. The Chaos chieftain's pained curses did not last long as Bulgrem's hammer struck up and caught the man in the throat. Varnir the Terrible crashed onto the bloodied flagstones, stone dead.

The six remaining Marauders panicked at the sight of their lord's demise and turned tail, only to run into the vengeful dwarf warriors right behind them. Great-axes rose and fell mechanically until the cries of the intruders were snuffed out entirely.

Seeing the enemy within the walls taken care of, Bulgrem roared a command for the Longbeards to resume defensive positions by the gate. By then, the doors were rocking dangerously back and forth on their hinges.

Just as the dwarves redressed their shieldwall behind the gate, the doors were torn off and into the ground, revealing a huge monster scrambling over the wreckage to get to grips with the dwarves.

The creature's bony claw shot out and caught a Longbeard in the chest, punching through plate and mail straight into vital organs. The veteran was dead before he hit the ground. Thane Varinsson leaped forth and brought his runic hammer down onto the distorted skull of the Chaos Spawn, caving it in. Another strike across the monster's enormous chest saw the creature flung out of the gateway and down the side of the cliff, down unto the ground where it then laid unmoving.

Not bothering to stop the momentum of his attack, Bulgrem charged out of the gate and into the Chaos Warriors making their way up the ramp. The Longbeards could not leave their liege unprotected, so they followed him into the fray.

Swatting aside the shield of a hulking warrior and smacking the man in the belly with his hammer, Thane Varinsson waded into the enemy formation like a comet of destruction.

Two of the Longbeards following him ran into the awaiting maces and blades of the Chaos Warriors, but the sheer momentum of the dwarves' charge pushed the enemy back, sending one towering warrior flailing down the side of the cliff to his doom. The rest of the Chaos Warriors gave up under the onslaught, clambering off the ramp and making their way off into the woods.

Bulgrem and the last six Longbeards pressed their advantage and smashed into Silvertongue's Marauders further down the ramp. With the newly transformed champion and fifteen barbarian warriors by his side, the Sorcerer was confident in his success.

It was not to be. Even as the newly ascended Chaos champion managed to smash through Bulgrem's shield and gauge a bloodu wound across his arm, even this slave of darkness fell under the might of Varinsson's runic warhammer. The Longbeards rammed into the Marauders with their shields, using their downhill momentum to knock the first enemy rank off their feet. Quick and efficient axework followed this charge, making sure the fallen stayed down forever, and soon the fighting carried on to the rank behind the first, and the one behind that.

As more and more Marauders fell without so much as a retaliatory blow, the rest lost heart and tried to flee, only to be run down like rabid dogs by Varinsson and his Longbeards. Even Sorcerer Silvertongue met his fate at he blunt end of Bulgrem's hammer, his once-clever brain matter now splattering the road leading up to the castle gates. 

Bulgrem and his veterans looked up from their bloody work to see the remaining Chaos Warriors and Marauder Horsemen fleeing into the countryside. They would prove to be a nuisance in the coming weeks as they would raid nearby farmsteads and mines, but at least the major threat to Kazad-Zul itself had been thwarted.

The day had been a bloody one, with the dwarves having lost half their initial number and the besiegers nearly three-fourths of theirs. The hold had been saved, but funeral pyres would blaze long into the coming night...

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Victory for the Dwarves!

Victory points were scored from slain or damaged enemy units, the castle courtyard and of course slaying the enemy general and capturing banners. The Defenders racked up 1345 VP, as opposed to the Attackers' 188 VP.

The Defenders had 32 models at the beginning of the battle, while Chaos had 48. By the end of the game, 18 dwarves and 35 attackers lay slain, amounting to 56 % and 73% casualties, respectively.

The army lists:

CHAOS
Varnir the Terrible, Exalted Hero (Mark of Tzeentch, Runesword) 170p
Silvertongue, Chaos Sorcerer (Mark of Tzeentch, Spell Familiar, Book of Secrets) 180p
10x Chaos Warriors (additional hand weapon, full command, War Banner) 215p
15x Chaos Marauders (shield, light armour, full command) 110p
15x Chaos Marauders (flail, light armour, full command) 110p
5x Marauder Horsemen (light armour, shield, full command) 105p
Chaos Spawn 55p
= 945p

DWARVES
Bulgrem Varinsson, Thane (shield, rune weapon (ASF, +1A,+1S)) 137p
Dorin, Runesmith (great weapon) 74p
10x Longbeards (heavy armour, shield, full command, a banner rune(?)) 160p
10x Warriors (heavy armour, great weapon, full command) 125p
10x Quarrellers (light armour, shield) 120p
= 616p