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Knight-Azyros Halver Aura crouched atop the remains of a once grand building. He could see some activity in the distance. His keen vision was unable to discern whether this was the band that they were looking for, but it was worth checking into.
Flying down from his perch, Halver alighted next to Lord-Relictor Gervas Warden. The Relictor wasn’t quite the same after his reforging from the skirmish with the Ironjaws, his armor didn’t seem to be quite as lustrous as it had been beforehand.
Halver cleared his throat, “There’s some commotion up ahead. Looks like a small band. I couldn’t tell what they were doing though.”
The Lord-Relictor looked down, the sounds a whispered prayer coming from his helmet. “This is where the darkness I felt is coming from. They must be performing a dark ritual in honour of Nagash.”
With that they rushed off. Each man heading toward the enemy as fast as they could.
They must have been noticed, there was the sound of stamping hooves and a blood curdling scream from a Vampire-Lord that alighted on top of a rock in front of Halver. The Vampire looked down at him and screeched, ”You cannot stop me, son of Sigmar! I will gain the power I want!”
With that she lept at him with a speed that surprised the reforged warrior. She slammed into him with enough force to drive her sword through his heart and send him soaring back to Azyr.
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Liberator Oses watched aghast as Knight-Azyros Aura shot into the sky as a bolt of lightning. The Vampire was much more powerful than her small stature lead one to believe.
He turned just in time to see Liberator Ildir ram his blade into a charging Skeleton Knight and see it crumble into a pile of bones. Calling out to him he said, “Ildir, Make for the Altar! We’ll hold them here.”
Before he could move himself he watched both the Vampire and another Skeleton Knight charge Lord-Relictor Warden. The two deathly warriors started pummeling Warden with abandon.
As fast as his feet could take him he made for the skirmish. With a mighty yell he swung his Grandblade into the Vampire. She started to turn and raise her blade, but was too late. His sword swept past her guard and cleaved into her, spattering gore across him and the rest of the combatants.
Oses looked up just in time to see the Skeleton Knight drive it’s spear through the Lord-Relictor. He cried out as Warden vanished in a flash of light.
Oses tried to take out the Knight that had killed the Lord-Relictor, but the knight had seen him coming. He managed to keep him tied up, each warrior unable to gain the upper hand.
Oses heard a resounding boom, felt it reverberate through his body. He instinctively knew that this must mean Ildir hadn’t made it in time.
At his feet he heard a groan. He looked down and saw a dark light spilling from the wound in the Vampire. She was regenerating as he watched.
Without a second though he called out to the other two Liberators, “Make for the Realmgate!”
With that the Stormcast retreated, leaving the un-dead warriors to revel in their victory.
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Praetorian452 (Scott):
Warband Name: Sigmar’s Hidden Blades
Halver Aura - Knight-Azyros
Gervas Warden - Lord-Relictor
Tithgar - Liberator Warhammer/Shield
Ildir - Liberator Warblade/shield
Oses - Liberator Grandblade
Jon:
Warband Name: Raiders of Death
Neferet - Vampire Lord
Flag - Black Knight with flag
Spear - Black Knight with spear
Hell - Hell Knight
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I played a third game against a different buddy’s Death Warband. We didn’t take any pictures of this one either. So I’ll just give a good story for it.
We played the Ritual battleplan with myself as the Disruptor and Jon as the Ritualist. In this battleplan one player sets up an objective on the center-line and within 1” of their board edge. The goal of the Ritualist is to finish the ritual, in every one of their Hero phases the Ritualist rolls a die and adds that to the previous roll. When the count of the rolls reaches 20 or more and the altar isn’t broken, the Ritualist wins.
The goal of the Disruptor is to make it to the objective and roll a die, on a roll of 4 or more the “altar” is broken and the ritual disrupted.
I managed to get first turn and just used it to move up. I had a long way to go and anyone who plays Stormcast knows that they aren’t the speediest in the movement phase. Liberal use of runs and my Knight-Azyros being able to fly brought me close to the middle of the board.
Jon rolled a 5 for his Ritual roll, starting off strong.
Jon’s Vampire Lord was then able to move up and was able to charge the Azyros with his Vampire and the Warblade Liberator with the Hell Knight. The Vampire Lord started the combat by completely smashing the Azyros into paste and sending him back to the celestial realm, those D3 damage per wound is brutal when you end up getting 3 damage and only have a 3 wound model.
The Warblade Liberator pulled out his Underdog gambit of the Poison Blade, instantly killing the Hell Knight. Underdog gambits are designed to even the playing field if one warband had more leftover gold upon creation than the opponent. I was lower in points by a 8 gold, so I managed to roll the Poison Blade as my Gambit. It allows you to, once per game, use the Poison Blade instead of your normal attacks and it caused D6 mortal wounds.
I waited too long to write this up, so from here out the details are a little fuzzy. Turns went back and forth with the Flag knight and Vampire Lord charging the Lord-Relictor and the Grandblade Liberator counter charging. The Lord-Relictor was killed and the Grandblade killed the Vampire. He then got stuck in combat with the Knight for the rest of the game.
Jon’s rolls for the next couple turns were: 2-4-3. This left him at 14 total through turn 4
The Warblade Liberator made a desperate run to the Altar to try to break it. Turn 4 we had some discussion as to what I should do with the Liberator. Jon only needed a roll of 6 to win the game and as I went second this turn, so I needed to plan properly. I could just run the Liberator and try to get close to the objective, but I needed to be 1” away in my Hero phase to break it. My other option was to charge the Knight guarding the Altar and hope for big numbers on my roll to get to the “back” of the knight since he was pretty much standing on the Altar.
I ended up doing the charge and making it close enough. And we didn’t do any damage in the combat phase, but that was a secondary concern.
Everything depended on two things: 1) The initiative roll, 2) Jon’s Ritual roll.
If I got the initiative then I had a chance of winning. If I didn’t my chances were much smaller, but still existent since Jon needed a 6.
We rolled for initiative and Jon won the initiative, and promptly rolled a 6 for the Ritual.
It was a good game, very tense at the end.
Jon got enough Gold coins as his winnings to add a Cairn Wraith to his warband and leveled up the Flag Knight.
My heroes both recovered without any negative effects, with my Azyros again rolling miraculous recovery and getting 9exp for the match. The Grandblade Liberator managed to level up again and on the advancement table gained +1 to wound, so now he’s basically a hero in stats.
