Tactical Review: Massacre in the Narrows

Tim:

Well this game went very well for me from start to finish.

My wife, Gill, and I had played an almost duplicate game in the Narrows on pretty much the same board layout. In that game I took massive losses to shooting early on but managed to use the terrain to limit her ability to win by concentrating my dwindled forces on one part of her army at a time.

Recalling this, I laboured to recreate the same conditions... minus the loss to shooting.

I held back initially, hoping she would close, lowering her shooting accuracy then closed in as she approached. With stand and shoot Strength 5 Bolters, I had my work cut out for me but I managed to get my Exalted Bloodthirster, Prospertine, into combat on turn 2. After that he worked his way in from the right while my Bloodletters dished out the armour slashing attacks front and left.

Redeploying my entire fast left flank (Screamers and Seekers) so that she spent three turns in a traffic jam was also a game-winning move.

All in all there isn't anything I would have done differently.

Though it did look very dicey for a minute in the mid-game when the dice turned against me for a while.

Massacre in the Narrows

Tim (Daemons) vs Gill (Space Marines) 

The Men of Stone had forged south before into the Narrows and been repulsed.by the Daemons of the Pernicious Gate but they knew no fear. Lead by their brave lord, Felix Wulf, they pushed south immediately following their withdrawal.

Their determination to break through to the Pernicious Gate was without compromise.

But again they were caught in the hemmed-in defiles of the Narrows. And immediately the force of Daemons that came to meet them withdrew on the left flank, redeploying their faster elements elsewhere and leaving the mighty warriors and their fire sticks with no targets.

Prospertine crashed through the foliage, a towering Exalted Bloodthirster, and ripped apart the greater knights of Ebon Scar with his huge halberd.

Ploughing through them he struck the second line of warriors and ripped them apart as well, barely breaking stride.

The monstrous beasts that the Men of Stone held in thrall lumbered forward, goaded by the strange magics of the dark and silent warriors as Raptor Riders swept up alongside them, but Bloodletters bounded forward and hacked the Raptor Riders down.

And a Soulgrinder used its lethal claws to tear chunks from the mammoth that led the counter attack.

One of the Triceranoughts smashed into the Bloodletters, impaling several daemons on its horns, but the rest brought it down, Skulltaker himself hacking the gigantic head from its shoulders.

The Bloodletters pushed forward, attacking the second Triceranought but what they had done to one they could do to the next. It fell too as Prospertine led the daemons that had devastated the right flank and centre towards the last remaining knight.

The last knight fell, fighting valiantly, but he could not stand against such powerful adversaries on their home ground.

The daemons had used the terrain to their advantage and now, once again, they had thrown the Men of Stone back from the Narrows.

This time however their army was scattered, all elements of it thrown to the winds.

This land belonged to the Daemons!

Alternative Exalted Greater Daemon of Slaanesh

Well look at this beauty!

Approve or disapprove the use of toys and action figures as proxies - and I've been laughed out of more than one GW veteran's nights by nerdy guys with one half painted army (he said bitterly) - but I like them!

Obviously there is an element of money-savingness but also I've come across and developed what, to me, make lovely centre pieces.

Let's look at the model. 

This was originally the McFarlane figure, Lucidique, from his Tortured Souls range. With a repaint and basing, I'm using her to represent an Exalted Keeper of Secrets - Greater Daemon of Slaanesh.

More specifically she represents the special character in my campaign and ongoing Tale of Years, K'syarta, the instigator of the corruption of the Elves and a key influence on the turning days of the Warhammer World.

Painting-wise, I used Dwarf Flesh | Flesh Wash | Dwarf Flesh | Elf Flesh on her skin and dark red | black wash | dark red | lighter red on her skirt.

Her hair was drybrushed very dark and then lighter grey.

The base was cut from foamboard to the same dimensions as the Araknarok Spider base.

Scale-wise, she's big - and unlike a lot of the other big models I've done, quite slender.

Here's a shot of the proportion to other models - which I'm pleased with. She's huge and scary but there's still an element where you're not sure whetehr you would or wouldn't want to meet her on a dark night.

And of course she is the leader of the Slaanesh element of my Daemon army - and can be used in 40k!!!

Finally, here she is with her eternal lover, Prospertine. If you've started to follow my Tale of Years you'll know that this pair are pivotal and have been mixing it up since just about the dawn of time.

In the present day campaign they command the northern and southern wings of the Daemonic Incursion from the Pernicious Gate.

Time will tell how they fair on the field of battle....

Massacre in the Wailing Woods

Daemons (Gill) vs Empire (Tim) 

Like silent gliding death, the Screamers of Tzeentch glided through the underbrush, tusks glistening, tails flicking lazily from right to left.

And near at hand, as the last rays of sun dropped under the Black Mountains, the daemons of the Pernicious Host ran forward, jaws gnashing, swords and claws hacking the air in anticipation.

All around the spirits of the woods wailed their lamentation of doom. All around the taint of chaos cut into the noble hearts of the Men of New Sylvania.

But they stood proud and stalwart. In rigid gun lines the soldiers of Malko to the south steadied horses or cocked handguns, awaiting the command of their superiors.

When the call came they let fly with bullet and arrow. The wizards called forth and hurled forward fire and ash. The Daemons were cut down as they advanced but did not balk in their assault. They came and they came and they came, uncaring as their comrades fell to the putrid earth in their passing.

The knights charged forward, slamming into the approaching Bloodletters to the flank but Skulltaker, fiend of a thousand worlds, called out their captain. Refusing the refuse the challenge the captain stepped up to battle but Skulltaker had never been defeated in single combat. The captains head vanished in a flicker of unearthly steel and the rest of his knights were cut down with him.

Bearing strange trophies of men whose clothes had ne'er been seen in this land, the Bloodletters surged forward and with them came a cantering fiend of Slaanesh, its tongue flicking obscenely.

A gigantic clanking and steaming Soul Grinder scuttled up to the battle line, filling the gap formed as the last of the Screamers were incinerated in magical fire.

The Men of New Sylvania had deployed cleverly, drawing the Daemons into a bottleneck, but there were simply too many of the unholy fiends.

The ugly naked devil of Slaanesh snipped the cannon crew in twain, even as they tried vainly to target the Daemon lord. The humans were running all too swiftly out of time.

They're entire plan had revolved around a swift assault to follow a blinding fusillade...

But the fusillade had not been enough.

The Daemons closed on the battle line and literally tore the limbs off ever single man. Swordsmen fell. Handgunners fell. The Wizards and Warrior Priests leading them fell.

Soon all that was left of the invading men of the Empire were the stubborn Greatswords. But soon their flashing swords could barely be seen beyond the closely surrounding Daemons.

And then they could be seen no more.

The Tale of Years - Part Three

Love in the Time of Aenarion

Of Daemons and the origins of the Dark Elves 

It is said that in the place that men call the Realm of Chaos – that other worlds name the Warp or the Immaterium – what passes for reality is conjured solely from the passions of the mortal races. Here festers anger and growing rage. Here festers jealousy and hatredHere, sorrow and agony.

From these coalescing emotions come purgatories and hells unnumbered, and to fill them, the Daemons of Chaos themselves; beings of pure emotion made into physical form: the frenzied Bloodletters of the Blood God Khorne, the seductive backstabbing Daemonettes of Slaanesh; the cavorting senseless Horrors of Tzeentch.

But something all but forgotten in men’s fear and superstition is that some of the most powerful bursts of emotion come from what might seem more benign sources; from passion and love. Where then do these sentiments come together? What creatures might be born from this union? Or might these feelings only corrupt the already corrupted? Might they lighten, if only for brief moments, the darkest of hearts?

For this was how it was for Prospertine and K’syarta, towering behemoths of daemonic power who strode the land in the wake of the Great Cataclysm when evil ran rampant and all but unfettered in the winds of magic blown from the north.

He, an exalted greater daemon of Khorne, tramping all mortal life he found beneath his fell hooves; she a perilously beautiful greater daemon of Slaanesh, every bit as powerful as her mate. They destroyed all that they met; pounding it to oblivion or corrupting it beyond measure, but their passion for one another was greater, perhaps, than any coupling that came since: the concentrated love and lust of all man and elvenkind. Theirs was a romance of tears and blood; of brutal kisses and torturous intimacy.

Theirs was the greatest and darkest love that the world has ever known.

But though this time belonged to them, leading a limitless horde of daemonic evil into the south, they and their great pernicious host was not unopposed. From Ulthuan, the Elves that had been created by the Great Old Ones waged war against the goodless things from the Realm of Chaos. Led by Aenarion, first of the Phoenix Kings and god among his fellow elves, bearing the thrice cursed Sword of Khaine, the Widowmaker, that damned both him and his line forever, the elves hurled back the invasion from their land. Aenarion and his army became consumed by war and vengeance and fought on, determined to eradicate every daemon that knew light, but the hordes of chaos were without end as long as the great rift lay wide.

For it was said that for the world that could be seen there was a fractured mirror: a daemon world from whence this invasion came, a world the daemons called Pernicious; a world ten times the size of the world of man; an unending source of evil.

Aernarion would never never surrender, but surely even he could not defeat billions, even with his army at his flanks.

But fate twists and fate turns, and never can mere mortals see the finish, despite their self-belief; and there came a day when the host of K’syarta and Prospertine fell upon a caravan of Elves who trekked the bitter cold, slaying their warriors in moments and dragging off their infirm and their women. But of these elves there was one female who K’syarta instantly sensed was snared at a focal point of the fates; a fair and virtuous she-Elf named Morathi. And she knew that an opportunity lay open here; a chance to turn those fates one day in her favour.

To Morathi’s kin, Prospertine visited the cruelest tortures before her gaping eyes, slaying all of them, but not before they screamed for days in agonizing pain. And to Morathi herself came K’syarta, whispering half-truths and goading, slowing splintering her soul with corruption and sowing seeds in her mind and spirit that would take hundreds of years to gestate.

But before the great Daemons and their gibbering followers could complete their work, Aenarion came into their midst astride the immense dragon Indraugnir. Sweeping the Widowmaker around him in great arcs and bellowing in triumph, he took the daemonic horde to battle.

For nine days he fought them, until all but K’syarta and Prospertine were slain or driven off, the bulk of his own army lying dead in the ice; and then, finally, with all his concentrated might, Aenarion sliced the head from Prospertine, slaying him instantly.

K’syarta screamed an eternal and never-ending scream, losing all coherence in her horror and loss. In moments she had dematerialized, banished by her own dismay, and only Aenarion and the few Elven survivors remained.

For long moments the cold winds swept the battleground, then the elf lord took up the unconscious Morathi, gazing into her eyes as they fluttered open, and he carried the beautiful creature away from the carnage.

Prospertine’s body slowly crumbled to ashes as his dark soul was scattered across the Immaterium, but deep in the Realm of Chaos, on the world of Pernicious, K’syarta could only sob and nurture her hatred; waiting for the moment of her return and her own vengeance.

As for Aenarion and Morathi…

Well she was indeed a beautiful creature, and the greatest elf there had ever been was already falling very deeply in love.

And what might spring from that fell union could only be guessed at…

The Tale of Years - Part 2

The Raising of Nippon

Over eight thousand years before the present time, the Old Ones came to the world from the dark gulfs between the stars.

No one knows their purpose, save perhaps the Slann, but it was they who seared the brand of sentient life onto the plains and valleys and in the mountains. Using magic undreamt of they created the Elves and the Dwarfs, the Lizardmen and the Ogres.

And the Orcs… The Orcs they brought with them as tiny spores, blowing where the wind would take them to fester and grow in the damp shadowy places of the world.

Tales are told elsewhere of these times and of the gift of magic that the Old Ones passed on first to the Slann Mage Priests, and then to the graceful Elves; but here we concern ourselves with tales never spoken of before; facts concealed from previous chronicles. For there is an action that was taken by the Old Ones then that is little known in the Old World and all but forgotten elsewhere; something that occurred scant years before the Great Cataclysm that ended the Old One’s plans for the world for all time.

Far from the land that would one day be called the Empire; far from Ulthuan where the young Elven race looked up at the moon in wonderment; far even from Araby and the Southlands; beyond the great continent of the Old World; lay a dark stretch of turbulent ocean.

Coming down from the empty skies at dawn, the Old Ones reached out with their power – a technology that none save them could understand – and as they gestured, the waters split. A chain of beautiful islands rose into the sunlight for the first time spanning hundreds and hundreds of miles.

Here, in the land the Old Ones named Nippon, the oldest of human civilizations was brought into being.

The Old Ones blessed these first humans with great strength and with wisdom; they whispered to them the secrets of the winds of magic; and they gifted to this people a handful of wondrous jewels.

These brilliant stones contained the most powerful enchantments and were known as the Eyes of Providence. It was said that as long as they remained in Nippon, then the land would forever be protected from harm.

The Nippon people flourished under the benevolent guidance of the Old Ones and the power of the Eyes; each jewel hidden away; each one separated and cosseted so that none could steal them. They became a proud and intuitive people, living in harmony under the cherry blossom and the watchful gaze of their masters.

But then the Great Cataclysm came, and the Old Ones vanished from sight as the very poles of the world were torn asunder, becoming gaping maws into the Realm of Chaos. If they were slain or exiled, no one knows but they were gone and never more did they return.

Their kindness was torn away from the Nipponese people as it was torn from the rest of the world, and this nascent culture; this civilization with so much potential to change the world; was left very suddenly alone.

To the far north, the wastes became a maelstrom of chaos energy, an eternal source for evil and corruption, and to the south… oh so near to the lovely beaches of Nippon, the wastes became the harbor of Daemons – billions upon billions of gibbering squawking monsters whose only desire was to extinguish the living.

But the Eyes of Providence still remained in Nippon and for now, their brilliance provided a bower of safety for this ancient civilization. The daemons could not cross the water and make landing as long as they remained.

The Old Ones may have gone forever, but their enchantment and protection continued... 

On the Painting Table: A Fiend of Slaanesh!

Well this is one freaky looking miniature.

I'm not sure I would have bough one except that on impulse I got it from a bargain half price bin in my local model shop.

I painted it the same colours as my other Slaanesh daemons (Dwarf Flesh | Flesh Wash | Elf Flesh with black drybrushed grey for the hair) and it ties in nicely with them.

In the game it's very fast but not that powerful by itself. It's a support unit running in to help with another charge or a sniping unit, going for Wizards or war machines. As it's so fast (effectivaly a flyer) it's also useful for impeding march moves and such in the opponent's back field.

Battle for the Narrows

Tim (Daemons of Chaos) vs Gill (Men of Stone) 

Deep in the Blood Wood, there is a place where the trees twine and thrust around dense and close-set rock formations - the perfect place for an ambush, and it was here the mighty knights of the Men of Stone set one.

Exactly as their whispering scouts had told the knightly lords, the burgeoning and chittering forces of the Daemons of the Pernicious Gate were flowing northward here in this cramped location.

The Men of Stone were ready.

Ranked in efficient gun lines they let fire at the striding behemoths, bringing down a Soul Grinder and a greater daemon before the soulless creatures even knew they were lying in wait. A shoal of Screamers fell next under a fusillade of mystical fire spat from the strange weapons the Knights of Ebon Scar carried.

Reacting quickly, the Horrors and Flamers fled east, concentrating their forces on the left flank of the Men of Stone.

But it wasn't going to save them.

The mighty dinosaurs that the Men of Stone's enchantments had coerced crashed into the oncoming Daemonic horde, crushing the second Soul Grinder, even as its death throes tore the beating heart from the Triceratops.

Then Bloodletters led by the indefatigable fiend Skulltaker sprinted int from the east, slaying first the Mammoth, then the Knights waiting beyond. And then the general and his bodyguard waiting beyond them!

They took casualties but they kept on coming, even though all had seemed lost.

Meanwhile, fully half of the mystically armoured  warriors were trapped between the narrow rock formations, struggling to redeploy into a useful position. And as they struggled they were picked off by searing flame and sorcery, hurled at them from lurking Horrors and Flamers of the dark god Tzeentch.

Where once an army had stood, smugly tearing down the daemonic advance, now, only a few Knights of Ebon Scar remained.

The daemons were unstoppable!