Deep in a dark and desolate part of the chaos wastes the ground started breaking up. Some of the rotten bleak trees that were weeping blood slowly started to topple over as rocks get pushed out of the earth. Some of rock looked like they were carved as bog skulls. As the other rocks, earth and mud fell away, slowly an old temple was rising. One of the legendary temple of skulls was bursting from the earth. Unholy Power flowed like the wind through trees en columns alike. Slowly in the middle of the temple, a form solidified. A malign darkness surrounded the temple making it hard to observe what was forming. Slowly the darkness setlled, leaving a casket that had en unearthly glow. It was only clear that whatever the dark gods had created was very powerfull and a boon for any warlord to be on the deamonic battlefields and beyond.
Lighting suddenly struk from the bloodred sky and the presence of the casket was announced. Let the games begin!And so started our weekend as we tried our hands at having a fun gaming session as playthings of the dark gods, with one player using the Storm of Chaos Slaanesh cult list and the other the krhornate army from Slaves to Darkness...
The first scenario was a chance meeting by two of the smaller (750 points) warbands of the warlords. The idea was to slaughter as many models from the opposite site. For every 100 VP (rounded up) a player got a reward roll in the main battle. The general needed at least one roll on the character reward table. Units rolled on the dominant atributes table. We used the tables from Slaves to Darkness. No characer/unit was allowed to have multiple rewards.
The second scenarios was a meeting of the scouting forces (750 points) trying to break trhough to the other side. Every unit being in the opposite deployment zone automatically took place in the last battle. Units that were not in the deplyoment zone showed up on a 4+. The troops from the winner showed up on turn 2 and those of the loser in turn 3.
The last battle we were fighting to obtain the casket that was pressent on the temple of skulls. As soon as a unit toched the casket, a war shrine solidified beneath it. The unit capturing it, also immediatly got a roll on the dominant atributes table... Should the war shrine be destroyed by the other side, then a new shrine formed and control of it would change hands and a new attribute had to be rolled. Attributes rolled earlier were not removed and remained in play. We decided that the casket could not be detroyed, but that the shrine did not have a ward save. Both of us had 2500 points.
The first battle saw on one side:
1 Chaos dwarf hero, with a flaming sword, enchanted shield and chaos armour. (we actually used runic items, but does not matter a lot for the game)
40 chaos goblins
20 marauders of khorne with hand weapon and shield.
8 chaos hounds,
4 chaos trolls
1 chaos chariot
and on the other side:
18 marauders of slaanesh
12 Devoted (we used corsairs for this) with a lvl 2 magic user
5 dark riders
5 deamonettes on Steeds of Slaanesh
6 Shades
The master of madness is standing in the middle of the (chaos) goblin horde. Probably they are all bickering, if only because they were pressed into service before getting a good paint job
The forces of Khorne were clearly allready in some sort of frenzy, because they claimed the first turn and did nothing else then running towards the line of the decadent followers of Slaanesh, who only smiled at this predictable behavior.
Both overall commanders looked at each other and decided that the time was right the bring out the baggage train:
Moving in a fashion as only the drug induced can, the main units of the slaaneshi force pulled back while beautiful and at the same time disturbing deamonettes tried circling around the khornate forces. On the other flank, the dark riders tried the same and also loosened a few shots at the marauders.
During all the manouvering the Blood gods followers started frothing in the mouth and started to come really close, while a chariot tried to guard the rear of the battle line, where the mounted deamonettes were treatening to circle around the army and strike from behind
Calmly the ground troops of Slaanesh stepped back a few feet.
The Khornate forces quickly covered this distance as well:
It was charge or be charged for the Slaaneshi corasirs, who decided to take their chance, while the marauders would cover their flank.
The Chariot in the meanwhile positioned itself between the chaos goblins and the deamonettes on steeds, a noble sacrifice, which kept the deamonettes at bay for another turn
Some of the corsairs must have stumbled, since they didn't really move far
While the corsairs did not reache the line, they came clearly within range of the khorne forces and the entire battleline of blood crazed manics started to prepare for charging their hated foes:
All the adrenaline pumping in their veins made them quite fast:
Not completly unsuprsing, the khorne force hit the slaaneshi line as a cannonball.
Leaving no survivors on the other side, bathing in blood and glory
In the last turns, the dark riders shot the unit of marauders to smithereens
Before charging them and wiping them out in the last turn of the game
While we had to count to see how many gifts/attributes each of us would get in the final battle, it was clearly a victory for Khorne.
The Khorne followers ended up with 6 "gifts" and the Slaaneshi with 4