Oooh! So Close....

Jason convinced me to stretch a Warhammer game to 3,500 points, something which I would have struggled to achieve until a week or two ago. As it was a large portion of the points was in the guise of my new Cursed Company (some 400 points of undead) and a Dogs of War special character - Lucrezzia Belladonna, a 380 point wizard with lots of bonus features!

We'd both decided to mix things up a bit with our forces, I of course had to scrape the barrel to make 3.5k but took a different deployment to my usual tactics, wanting to avoid a losing clash of my knights against his.

Jason has no end of models to choose from, including an obscene number of Blood Knights. for this game he used 6, a mere £60 worth of models!! £60 bought more than half my army! The rest of his force included two large units each of Skeletons and Ghouls and a large body of Grave Guard.

Terrain would play a significant factor in the game, with the maximum number of terrain features on table, well over a third of the board was covered in large fields, the rest was largely open rolling country with some small hills and woods. I've noticed that nowadays no one dare go into woods in Warhammer for fear they turn out to be evil woods of some sort!

Battle opened well for me I let the dead advance under heavy fire over the plains, whilst deliberately drawing the Grave Guard and Ghouls off into the fields. As ever I moved to outflank the centre and harass it with fire and rear charges

As the undead advance continued, Jason tried to use his vampires to break up my own lines, He carelessly over extended himself as a result, leaving one of his vampires surrounded.

Not that I could exploit it! All my light horse failed to make it count.

Still the centre was definitely going my way, with the Cursed Company supported by Lumpin Croop of all people wearing down the enemy. The survivors of my cavalry, having dispatched other enemy skeletons and a black coach ran around the rear...

Up front as is apparent, the blood knights ran through one regiment of pike, but were stalled by the other and ultimately fell to some misfortune and were destroyed by the hero's within the unit.

Late in the battle the Grave Guard managed to make contact with the cursed company; but the Ghouls were drawn far a way from the battle, and as is apparent, I had managed to create a very creditable fighting line to face any subsequent attack.

Due to losses it was a draw, though the dogs of War had definitely held up well. A victory was only the loss of Lucrezzia, sucked into the void of chaos after a miscast spell, away.

Frustration! But one day the Dogs will win and drawing three times in a row against Vampire Counts shows that the new incarnation of the Warhammer rules have gone a long way to helping the little guys, the weak and unloved armies of past editions...