Last friday we had a campaign game at our club. 2000pts, no magic items allowed. I played with Chaos vs Mr Petzens Skaven.
We had three large woods around the center of the table and some hills. One of the hills on Skaven side 18cm away from the woods. On the 6x4ft table we had 9 terrain pieces in total.
First of all the Skaven had a breakpoint of 17! Mr Petz fielded 10 swarms, 3 WLC, 3 Gutter Runner, 2 Rat Ogres, one Screaming Bell, one sorcerer, one general, two heroes, I don't recall the rest. He built a brigade of 3 WLCs surrounded by 4 swarms and two Jezzails, held 3 Gutter Runners back as infiltrating reserve and made a giant brigade with the Screaming Bell in the very middle.
I tried an infantry approach to take away the Rat's pursuit advantage. 3 Warriors, 4 Marauders, 2 Ogres, 3 Trolls + 2 Spawns (try something different for once), 1 Harpies, 1 general, 2 sorcerers (1 on dragon), 1 hero, BP:8. My idea was to command my Troll brigade with my general as far forward as possible - be it initiative or taking charges the rats would bleed when in combat with the trolls (I thought).
First two rounds were extremely lucky on my side. Managed to take out 2 units of Gutter Runners (he put them in front of me in a wood just to glimpse out a bit). I could flank them by initiative. With my harpies I destroyed 3 WLC + 2 Swarms with (the harpies got another 6 attacks by Rage of Chaos - all three WLCs just made one hit out of 7 shots!). - Hooray!!
Then I put 2 marauder (who were in the fight vs GRs) as far forward in defended position in the wood (just to slow down the big brigade in front - what a mistake!). My troll brigade (returning from combat) unfortunately had one foot in the wood which meant I would only get another two orders through to them til the end of the game.
At the beginning of round three most of the Skaven army stood on a hill with difficult terrain, enemies in 20cm and my sorcerer put Anger of the Gods on them (-3 command). They still managed to come down, surround and kill my marauders (with the second order they were in open terrain and out of Anger of God's range) and put the Screaming Bell far enough to the front to freeze me. He just parted his giant brigade and took his two heroes with their command of 9 to do that (a missed cmd 9 order would not even mean that the Command phase ended - so why linger?).
The Screaming Bell (well hidden by three units in front) came far enough forward to give a -1 cmd on all(!) my characters. Some part of my army was in the wood (tactically good but devastating for the following commands), and the Skaven managed to be in 20cm but only in initiative range for two units as they mostly hid in the woods. So I were in desperate need for a screaming bell on my side - but I only had one general with 8 cmd and the rest with a 7 to begin with.
From then on I would only get another four commands through in total until the end of the game (two of them were used for the trolls as mentioned before). I managed with no command to come into combat contact nor could support the two units that charged out of initiative once (Ogres and Marauders - they were killed in the counter attack). I was paralyzed until the Skaven killed me off one brigade after the other. Fortunately the game ended in round 5 - it was painful enough until then. I managed to destroy 7 units of Skaven until the end.
Nice game - until end of turn two!
