Battle on the Ice Fields: 15mm Fantastic Battles.

 With Ian having acquired a new snow and ice themed battle/gaming mat it seemed a good idea to christian the mat with a game of Fantastic Battles using my Ice Elves in their natural element. We placed a few patches of grey felt on the snowy mat and deemed these to be ice fields. Any unit or company moving over an ice field had to throw a dice and on a '6' fell through the ice to their doom. If a unit or company opted to stay on the ice for more than one turn the chance of falling through increased by 1, so a unit staying on the ice for a second turn would fall through on a 5 or 6 and so on. I did wonder about making it easier for my Ice Elves to avoid this fate as the ice is their natural home but decided that for a one off game this would be unfair but perfect for a campaign.  

This game would also be a first battle for my new unit of Ice Wyrms (fantastic beasts, mounted, furious charge and poison). I only have two of these old DandD battlesystem Miniatures but hope to have a couple more soon. 

Other than the special rules for the ice we played a straightforward encounter battle, the theme being that Ian's Gnome and Nature army were now invading the Ice Elves homelands. The Ice Elves rush to put a force together to face the Invaders across the snow and ice of their homeland. It was 1,000 points a-side. 

Deployment, Forces of Nature on the left, Ice Elves on the right. 

The patches of felt are the ice fields which were ignored and moved around by both forces. 

I think I need to make a few ice themed pieces of scenery. 

The Ice Elves did not suffer too badly from 'Mishaps' apart from a few points of resolve lost. 

The Nature forces also got off lightly from 'Mishaps.'

In the front right of the photo Ian's giant snails with howdahs charge my elf archers to negate the effect of their missile fire. 

The giant snails win that melee. 

Elsewhere my tiger riders squish some witches who failed to evade far enough but my tiger riders are now in danger of being surrounded. Ian's wizard had summoned the giant snail right onto the tiger riders flank. The elf spearmen move up to help. 

There were some very close melee's going on. 

My mage at the rear had taken 'Haste' as his spell choice. This was an experiment for me which back fired as I failed to use it effectively. I need to think about this spell choice but it felt like points wasted. 

Ian's giant mushrooms with a defence of 6 and regeneration proved to be a very tough unit. 

As the various melee's continued quite a few of my characters were destroyed alongside the units they were fighting with. I thought that things looked bleak for my elves.

After a final and hectic round of melee on turn 5 both sides reached their breakpoint at the same time resulting in a closely fought draw. 

I always enjoy playing against Ian's Nature army as he always mixes up the traits and troop types to present me with a real challenge of who and how to fight them. This was another fun game and we both agreed that 'Fantastic Battles' always gives a great game.