Grand battle at the gates of Drakenhoff

Whilst the Sunday club is offline, I arranged a game with Jason at his house.  Having the luxury of more space and time, we opted for a bigger game of 4,000 points; my Dogs of War versus his Vampire Counts.

Jason opted for lots of Hordes, backed up by big blocks of Black Knights, Dire Wolves, a Varghulf and a Black Coach.  There were a total of 5 Vampires!

For my part, around a core of old favourites I added Asarnil, Lucretia Belladonna, a second unit of Knights and the return of Ogres.  I used a lot of tooled up heroes, both to thicken out points, and as anti tank units for his super-elites and spectral forces.

The aim early on was to control the flanks, as ever for my Dogs.  I can generally out manoeuvre Jason, and with three light horse units and two flyers there was every chance of doing this.  My General ended up running intercepts in the northern portion of the battlefield, around the village; whilst a pell-mell action of movement formed in the south. 

Asarnil landed a farmyard in front of a dwarfed unit of Grave Guard, ready to unleash a charge...

Deviously the charge was directed against a small unit of Zombies, in an attempt to collapse his entire flank.  Sadly Asarnil himself got killed (in fairness Belladonna's "gift" at the start of the game had back-fired and left him on one hit already...)  But Deathfang went into an uncontrolled rage as a result, and, barring one failed morale test, fought far better without him.

In the centre my pike and my own undead ground down a unit of 40 ghouls and their vampire master, before facing yet more undead hordes.  The ogres aided the fight with an effective flank attack, but were later caught from behind themselves.  Far to the north the General destroyed the Spirit hosts and turned to charge down the Varghulf

Deathfang was steadily smashing it's way through the Black Knights.  Elsewhere weight of numbers was beginning to tell in favour of the undead, although too late to do much else my general dispatched the Varghulf and headed for the centre of battle. 

By now the rest of my cavalry had disappeared, save for Voland and a single unit of Centaurs.  Even Halflings were in the thick of battle.

Late in the day, scattered remnants of my units fled the mass of undead, and Deathfang finally fell to a charge by the Grave guard.

Dawn arose and all seemed lost!

But, ah you see.  8th Edition would have it different.

On checking the points values in what looked like a pretty clear cut undead win, it turned out that the dogs had won!  As Jasons' units had been destroyed to a man they were worth victory points to me, conversely many of the units he had defeated had survivors scattered across the battlefield, and so were of no value to him.  In the end I lost some 1450 points, of which a third was Asarnil and Deathfang.  Jason lost more like 1650 and so by the present rules I won!

Seldom has a flaw in the rules been so obvious!

Still as the Dogs of War you have to take what you can get.