We had the final 4th game of our campaign, and it was very epic. Brace for it, because this is a long report and story.
The Farsetter Holds - Chapter 4
The cold weather snowfall had hit hard and sudden. Although the clan was thankful it wasn't a hard blizzard. They had been preparing about a month, all the while the greenskins inside the hold didn't show any signs. But on this day Dunhill was going give them something to take notice. They emptied the fort of everyone fit for fighting. This was the entire throng, all of them. Lined up at the base of the mountain, in neat disciplined lines, waiting.
Towering over the throng in the middle was the Klad Barag, driven by Drake and a team of his best cogsmiths. Today was to be its first official battle, a magnificent tribute to Grungni. Also of the new engineerings in the throng was their last organ gun, the Beardforce, (a team of 6 in hovering gyropacks with brimstone guns and bombs), and one of Dunhill's earlier steamsuit prototypes, much larger and bulkier than his current model. It is being driven by his veteran longbeard, Behrun Farsetter.
The throng began to stomp in unison, chanting "Fight! Fight! Fight!". Small rocks were rolling down the mountain face. The Klad Barage let out a massive horn blow, ear shattering and deep, the forest behind swayed as flocks of birds left the canopy. Rolling rocks became tumbling boulders as the mountain let loose more from the reverberations. It would be impossible for the greenskins to ignore such a display and call. Fighting was what they lived for.
***
Dust and some debris were falling from the high ceilings, every greenskin had paused what they were doing and looked up as they heard the distant call to war. The Profut was beginning to stand taller, as if the building waaagh energy was giving him youth. Grox was feeling it too. Then Da Big'un started laughing, big bellowing guffaws. A group of scouts returned shouting about a big battle about to happen, whispers of a waaagh echoed throughout the horde. Da Big'un began stomping in tune with the duardin outside.
Given time they all marched to the exit lead by the scouts. Not a single orruk was going to miss out on this.
***
Dunhill saw the greenskin horde pour out of the entrance, marching down the hill, chanting 'WAH WAH WAH' to match the rhythm of the duardin throng. They had taken the lure, not that they would object to it if they knew it was one. Dunhill signaled the Klad Barag and it let out 3 short horn blasts to alert the throng that the fight had come. The other veterans were calling to their units and forming tighter lines and locking shields. The organ gun was priming the barrels. The familiar hiss of fuel were filling the reserves in the drakeguns. Thunderer handguns were clicking and locking. A subtle thrum emanated from Bree and the other Runelords as she concentrated on the rune power adoring her battle dress.
The greenskins had formed up and marched forward. Da Big'un let out a massive WAAAGH! and as the horde responded, he bounded down the mountainside atop his magmadroth, and landed with a crash behind the cheering horde.
This was the final stand, Dunhill thought. This would be the end of it. The last chance to take back the Farsetter ancestral holds.
***
Each player brought 3000 points, abandoning most matched play restrictions to bring whatever we wanted. The goal was objective based, and the twist was enhanced magic (because of da WAAAGH POWA!), but double 1's or 6's dealt mortal wounds to the casters.
Jarom brought Da Big'un, a butcher, da Profut, and Grox, and a newcomer Warboss on Wyvern. Also his usual host of orruk and fat'uns, and a couple fat'uns carrying really huge guns (Ironblasters).
As in the story above, I had lots of Ironweld Arsenal and units of Dispossessed. The Klad Barag of course was the centerpiece of the army, and the most exciting part, I thought. I also had 3 Runelords to spread the runepower.
It was a really massive pitched battle with lots of back and forth, and by the end, most of our forces were nearly completely obliterated. The forest and rocky areas had been riggeded with firebombs and phosphorous explosives. Causing a lot of blindness with the greenskins in the forests (brought on by the Mystical terrain rule), and inhibiting movement around the fires in the rocky areas (brought on by the Lethal Inferno ruse card from the Open War cards). These worked to help against the greenskin hordes by splitting them up or delaying some of them.
On the right flank, the Beardforce (gyrocpters) were menacing the orruks and the longbeards, ironbreakers, hammerers, and thunderers held out strong against the spear boys, 'ardboys, and ironguts. Hammer Co. was a very early casualty from the brutally efficient Warboss on Wyvern though. The Warboss survived all the conflict and quickly made his way to the right flank to take on the objective that would have clinched the win for Destruction, but fell under irondrake firepower.
Da Big'un was caught off guard by the phosphorous traps as well, and turned out to be especially susceptible to them, losing a couple precious turns. Then destruction finally caught up with the Klad Barag and a few ironguts. They dealt mortal blows to the Klad Barag, and Drake knew it was going down. So in a final act before the boilers finally gave out, he lunged the massive machine forward to grappled Da Big'un and his mount, so when the machine shut down, at least there would be a crushing weight over top the menacing orruk monster.
Profut had seen seen the battle turn, and knew when it was wise to run away as the remaining warriors charged after him, calling a retreat back into the hold.
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| This was all that was left at the end of turn 5. This is how you can tell the intensity of a game, by what's left on both sides. |
The Farsetter Holds - Epilogue
It had been a day of recovery from the battle. Dunhill was anxious to uproot his entire expedition and fort into the hold, he didn't want to give the remaining greenskins any chance to regroup and recuperate. As they regained and recovered some of their ancient homes, they also lit the halls again.
After a few weeks, life was returning to the holds. The proper life. But the clan was significantly reduced in number, and it would be entire generations before it would return to the glory since the Age of Myth. One thing for sure, they did not have near enough to populate all the halls, many remain in darkness, and occupied by other undesirables.
Dunhill stopped sending exploratory teams deeper in search of resources and riches when they stopped returning. It still bothered him that after the dust of the battle cleared, they couldn't recover the bodies of Da Big'un or his generals. The so-called Profut was still at large, that grudge not yet struck out.
The clan decided to keep relatively close together as they resettled the holds, and all were working in full force to repair and retrofit what they occupied. New legends and genealogy records were being scrawled into the walls and pillars of their great journey.
King Dunhill sometimes felt content as they were once again living in their rightful ancestral home, but had to remind himself the threat was far from removed. The greenskins and probably more were deeper in the mountain, and they couldn't dream of eradicating it yet. He knew the time was precious for the recuperation of his house, but all the time spent on that, the orruks had the same. This was not the end of the war, but this would be a new chapter for the Forthammer Clan Throng.
And there you have it. That is the end of the entire campaign. What a rush! Even though Jarom won with the most renown points, there was still a lot of back and forth in the games, and they were all very epic and exciting. I seriously recommend playing a campaign like this to anyone. These are where the best stories out of Warhammer come from.
***
As for the campaign rules, we both felt it was an excellent way of handling the whole thing. We looked over the rules packet I made, and came to a couple planned changes from our experience. One in particular was Renown rewards. No longer will it be random with die rolls, because each time I had the opportunity to roll for Renown, I could never roll above a 1, and Jarom was getting high numbers. So we are opting for static numbers based on the wins and types of wins/losses. I will make a post with the updated campaign rules for that at a later date.
