Vorghan Storms Into Battle

Storm clouds boiled and thunder rumbled overhead as Vorghan peered into the distance. After weeks of wandering the chaos wastes, the hounds had finally picked up a scent. Marauder scouts returned with news that the enemy was nearby. Vorghan bellowed his orders and the Ravagers roared their approval. Battle would be joined, blood would be spilled, glory would be reaped by the victorious.

The first skirmish would be fought using the Warhammer 8th edition rules, though I had the softback Warriors of Chaos army book, which was 6th or 7th edition. We played a scenario from the General's Handbook, which was a straight-forward battle but with the chance of lightning hitting units at the start of each turn, causing damage and preventing them from moving.

The rules came back to us fairly quickly, we didn't have to spend too much time checking the book. The biggest problem I have is mixing up all the versions I have played. But for the most part it went smoothly. It was, as usual, a real treat to play in Matt's dungeon of excellent terrain.

On my right flank Vorghan and his warriors, plus a support unit of marauders, nervously faced off against dragon ogres and chaos knights, a spawn, bestigors and marauders. A few pieces of rough terrain kept the enemy at bay for a couple of turns, and the shaman destroyed a spawn with a fireball. The marauder horse foolishly charged into the bestigor - it was at this point that I was reminded that two ranks fought. Needless to say the horsemen a) lost and b) won't be charging into the front of anything in future games.

On my left flank things looked equally precarious. A screening unit of hounds lasted one turn leaving a unit of chaos knights charged by a giant and a chaos spawn. I was convinced that this could only spell defeat, but amazingly the giant was felled and the spawn barely survived, hanging on for one more combat before he was destroyed. I had forgotten how good chaos knights can be. Sadly this fact was confirmed on my right flank as enemy knights tore through marauders, leaving Vorghan exposed to a potential flank charge.

The only chance for Vorghan was to lead his warriors in a charge down the centre, hopefully crush the enemy then pursue out of harm's way. Luckily, both charges crashed home. Vorghan had to charge across a giant skeleton and naturally his ball and chain got tangled in the bones, dragging him to the ground, his knee impaled on a boney rib. Still, he manfully limped forward and bellowed a challenge to the enemy general, Sven the Simple. Hampered by his injury, Vorghan was bested in this combat, though his warriors made short work of the enemy bestigors and chased them from the field.

The battle ended in typical Warhammer fashion, with practically every unit destroyed. Both sets of knights had crushed everything in their path, Vorghan had valiantly led his troops into battle, and much blood had been spilled to honour the gods. They (somehow) decreed it was a narrow victory to Sven, but were so disgusted with his feeble performance that he was gifted with stupidity. Both armies were rewarded with reinforcements - Sven would be joined by three skullcrushers while Vorghan attracted a chariot. After totting up the points we realised this was already a bit skewed, so Matt valiantly sacrificed a unit of spawn, to make it a little more balanced in future encounters. We felt that neither general had proven worthy of reward, but Vorghan's knights had been valorous combatants and would gain a small reward. And the raging storm? It had no effect whatsoever - only in the last turn did lightning strike, and then harmlessly into the ground.