The Battle of Tattle Beck: the final battle of our mini Fantastic Battles Campaign.

 The final battle saw the Ice Elves advance deep into Dingly Dell lands with the Dingly Dell army deploying south of Tattle Beck to give battle one last time. This is how I presented the game to Ian (Army General of Dingly Dell)... 

The Battle of Tattle Beck.

The final battle in a mini campaign between The Ice Elves and the Forces of Dingly Dell.

1,200 points per side, plus the Ice elves get a 30pt bonus from last game. .

The remaining forces of Dingly Dell rush towards Tattle Beck to hold back the advancing Ice Elves. This is their last chance to stop the Ice Elves from conquering a huge part of their lands. The Ice Elves advancing rapidly also send part of their force on a flank march...

Deployment:

The Ice Elves may deploy most of their army within 4BW of the Northern side of the table, one character plus the troops under his command deploy on a Flank March, see p25. The Ice Elf player must write down on which flank his forced march has gone. Once the first action phase begins the Ice Elves can pull a counter for the character and troops on the flank march.

The army of Dingly Dell must deploy all their force south of TattleBeck.

The two forces should deploy at least 10BW apart.

Tattle Beck: causes -1BW to movement and -1 penalty in melee per company to all companies fighting across the beck.

Objectives: both sides should also dice (d6) in secret for objectives p23.

Random Events, p41: at the start of each turn, players throw a d6 for Random Events as detailed on p41

The game lasts up to 6 turns (plus a seventh turn on a score of 4+ at the end of turn 6) or ends when one side loses over half of their companies and /or their Warlord (or Magelord) is killed.

Victory Points: the winner gains 7VP.

If the game is a draw then both forces earn 3 VP.

Players also earn 2VP if they achieve their objectives.

Victory Points total earned up to todays battle: Ice Elves: 9+ Dingly Dell: 1+

So to win the campaign Ian had to not only win today's battle but achieve his objective and prevent me from gaining mine. Ian's objective was 'Troll Hoard' and mine was 'Regime Change' which certainly suited the campaign. 

With Ian winning the throw to be classed as the Attacker we quickly deployed our armies and gave battle. 

Birds Eye view of deployment; but where will the Ice Elf flank march arrive?

Note that some units have been moved forwards or backwards due to mishaps.

We really enjoy the unpredictable nature of many parts of Fantastic Battles. 

Dingly Dell goat swarms attack the Ice elf archers and soon regret it!

(The blue and green counters are used to decide activation). 

Gnome Snail riders, more Dingly Dell weirdness which also proved to be quite tough. 

Dingly Dell spider riders, a 'surprise new unit' fresh off  Ian's painting table. 

My Magelord (Crasterlon Blackheart), prompted by my objective goes hunting for the Dingly Dell Magelord who is cowering behind the witches. It did not go well for me so I withdrew. 

My archers get charged by the snail riders but manage to survive. Next turn they killed a Dingly Dell Captain, Bobby Dazzler. 

The Ice Elf Giant Yeti is slain by missile fire (but thankfully falls safely to one side). 

Ice Elf mounted crossbow riders charge, pursue and catch some witches, whilst the Rogue has used his Phoenix Bow (crossbow) to shoot and kill one of the Dingly Dell mages, Zantaz Poppa.

A random event decided that one company of Mounted Ice Elf crossbow riders defected to the forces of Dingly Dell. Thankfully my flank march arrived on turn 3 and the Draconians soon sorted the problem. 

The Dingly Dell army made good use of Tattle Beck as an awkward barrier against the Ice Elves. However, the giant mushrooms with their very slow move decided to advance. 

The Gnome wizard, Rex Brindle's crafty use of the Summoning Spell bought forward Terrance the Giant slug. 

The Dingly Dell Imps, who are much tougher than they look clash with my Elite Tiger Riders across Tattle Beck. It was a real bucket load of dice clash with my Tiger riders scoring an amazing 19 hits compared to the Imps 7.  My Magelord had cast 'Empower' on the Tiger Riders which really helped and the Imps were destroyed but they did manage to kill the Tiger Riders captain.  

More Dingly Dell magic saw Maizy the Green Dragon being summoned, straight into conflict with the Blue Dragon. The Dingly Dell forces were suffering quite a few losses by now.

On the far left the Snow Trolls were caught in a slogging match with the Dingly Dell elks. 

The trolls did manage to kill the gnome hero Purple Ronnie. 

With the fall of Terence the Giant Slug the Dingly Dell army reached it's breakpoint of 12 companies lost and so victory went once again to the Ice Elves. This gave the Elves a very convincing overall victory in the campaign. A large swathe of Dingly Dell lands now belong to the Ice Elves. 

We had great fun playing the three interlinked games although the high quality of many of the Ice Elf units made it very difficult for the more numerous Dingly Dellers to damage them. Overall this was a fun campaign with Fantastic Battles as definitely our favourite fantasy rules to play. Army building is so much fun and such an important part of the rules as you can see in Ian's weird but wonderful Dingly Dell force in comparison to my more traditional Ice Elves.

Capture the Bridges:15mm Soldiers of Napoleon

 Nigel has set up a great looking wargames table for his scenario of 'Capture the Bridges'. There were three bridges across the river that a dice throw had decided was not passable. There were also various hills and buildings to capture and hold. So with Nigel in charge of the French and Ian and I in charge of the British we dealt the cards and set to. 

Nigel (French) and Ian (British) check out each others deployment.

Ian soon captured the church earning some VP (Victory Points). 

The French chose to advance.

More French advancing. 

The French capture a bridge.

But the British take the Farmhouse. 

The French advanced their artillery but suffered badly from the British artillery that was already deployed. You can score quite a few VP's from destroying enemy units. 

Ian and I played a Special Event card on these French to stall their move across the river. 

Nice view of Nigel's lovely Church model held by the British. 

 

Overview of the table at the end of the game from the British side. We grabbed a bridge on the last turn earning some VP's that sealed a British victory. 

We all enjoyed the game and agree that 'Soldiers of Napoleon' (SoN) are now our rules of choice for Napoleonics. However, our game today progressed slowly as it took some time for us to work our way through the card aspect of the game. Movement, shooting and melee are quite quick and easy and I think we will be quicker with the cards from now on. It is the cards that really give the 'Napoleonic' flavour to the game. With Nigel and his French opting for aggressive tactics and the British more on the defensive we were able to get more shooting in than the French which helped us score more VP. Now we need to check up on one or two aspects of the rules to speed up or next game.