Light The Beacon

Warbands Here

Battlefield: Hilly
Weather: Heat Wave
Scenario: Burn Em Out
Defender: Beastmen

The torch bearers

Setup:

The Beastmen clustered round the path entrance leading to the tower door, where the Dwarves had to reach to light the warning beacon on the tower, warning of the incursion of the taint of chaos. The Dwarves had split themselves into two groups. The main party (left) had the torch bearers, the second group had the bear cavalry and crossbowman to harry the enemy.

The dwarves pushed through towards the pass. On the other side the bear flanked round the back of the tower to distract the beastmen and the crossbowman looked to cause problems from the side. The beastmen responded by moving to defend the pass whilst leaving their Minotaur warrior to protect the tower, leader and rear from the cavalry. A force was sent en-mass to try and quickly take out the crossbowman so that they could concentrate on the main force...

Which they did.

The heatwave weather conditions were taking their toll already. The bear had somewhat hampered his progress by becoming fatigued (as had a beastman and dwarf), and the two generals were choosing their activation dice carefully to avoid more heatstroke. As the dwarves tried to push through the Minotaur joined the heavily armoured chaos warrior to block the way and try and take out a torchbearer (Mrs Valgen) early door.

Mrs Valgen showed why she was the "First Lady" and fought off her attackers and knocked down the chaos warrior for the rest of her comrades to follow up and dispatch. The bear managed to reach the beastmen leader and guard to cause a few problems, and with the dwarven numbers pushing together they were on the ascendancy.

But as ever with SoBH it doesn't take much for the initiative to swing. The Minotaur warrior was knocked back from a melee battle, but the beastmen had managed to come back into the fold, and their numbers saw the bear cavalry go down as well as one of the torchbearers.

Bolstered by the presence of her husband over her shoulder Falkaya pushed forward towards the beacon tower again, but her eagerness lulled her into carelessness and she was felled by the beasts savage attack. Redbeard, the final torch bearer, failed his morale test and started to flee, and Valgen turned to go, the battle seemingly over.

The Beastmen gave chase to the Redbeard and closed in on Falster, the Elite Dwarven Warrior. The beastial jeers and desperate yells from his comrades turned Valgen, and he headed back into the affray.

The Beastmen swarmed to Faster like rats, but fatigue by heat and heavily outnumbered he fought of, exchanging blows left, right and centre.

With such a concentration of numbers at the pass Valgen had no option but to sound the retreat. Redbeard made for safety and The Dwarf Leader glanced back to see his Elite Warrior finally go down under a barrage of tooth and clue.

Battle Result:

Win for Johan's Beastmen.