Good game of
Of Gods and Mortals last night - finally managed to defeat my 13 y.o. Lucas at something!
We played our usual boutique-scale 800 points per side, Lucas took the
Host of Arcadia - Dryads, Centaurs and a Minotaur led by Pan; I took my newly written up
Clan of the Cave Bear warband: eight spear wielding Cro-Magnon hunters, a Wolf pack, a Mountain elemental, a Dire Wolf and a Mammoth owing allegiance to Ursus, the great Cave Bear.
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The battle raged around the Well of Emphidor, a spring of youth high in the mountains where the land rises to the clouds in the foothills of Olympus itself. Pan has led his warband up there, only to encounter the Clan, who have journeyed down from the trapped glacial valley where they hunt and gather...spear and sword, tooth and claw - the ruins of an abandoned temple complex echoed to the sound of blows and howls.
At first Pan strode forth, taunting and mocking the hunters with his infernal pipes, only to have them drowned out by the trumpeting of a mighty mammoth. As the centaurs clattered through the shadows of olives along weed-choked flagstones roaring drunk, a rustle of leaves and a tinkle of laughter suggested the arrival of the sinister dryads among the green shade across a stream. The dire wolf led her wolf pack into an earthy, wooden struggle with these spirits.
Centaurs come clattering through broken marble streets:The Minotaur swung his heavy chain at the legs of the Mammoth, but was rebuffed with a swinging blow from the shaggy beast's massive tusks, which snapped even it's muscle-bound bull-neck.
Meanwhile Ursus was provoked into a rage, and lunged into a fight with Chiron the Centaur, who heroically but foolishly turned and skittered backwards, only to receive blow after blow of might claws in a running fight...eventually he fled, galloping to the aid of the Dryads.
Chiron is duels with Ursus, the Great Cave Bear...:...before withdrawing to support the Dryads:The fight swung back and forth like the branches of a tree in a storm, until eventually Ursus came face to face with his piping counterpart. The enrage bear-spirit silenced the goat-footed god with an almighty blow of his claws, Pan vanishing with unearthly light pouring from his mouth and eyes, the piping turning shrill and vengeful and mixing with a shrieking, chill mountain gust as he faded away...
The Cro-Magnon face down the Host of Pan:With their god banished, and faced with a triumphant mammoth, the centaurs' wine-glutted grins were wiped off their bearded faces, and they dodged away, yelling boorish but empty threats as they cantered backward into the glades. The Dryads made a last stand among a grove of pines, but were chopped down before they could invoke the return of their God.
Last stand of the Dryads:*******
A small skirmish on the forgotten fringes of mythic Greece, but a great evening's entertainment!