Get the treasure! Beastcaller Battle Company Battle Report

The Beastcaller and his minions are back and ready to plunder some treasure! This was one of those interesting missions where you roll dice to see where your troops enter the board and so there is quite a lot of randomness inherent. The Beastcaller is up against a far more numerous goblin force and the game is all about getting more models on the bridge with the treasure at the end of the game (when one force is reduced to 25% of its starting model count).

Right off the bat (pun intended) one solitary goblin archer who rolled poorly for his battlefield placement is taken out.

A far more numerous goblin force closes in on the Beastcaller, though the extra speed from the warg mount makes it much easier! Goblin archers fire away! But hit nothing.

And some bats are already checking out the potential spoils.

Calling a heroic move with his only point of might, the Beastcaller manages to dodge around a goblin ambush and take out a speargoblin while the nearby giant spider also removes a goblin from the game.

By flying bats into small spaces, they soak up goblin hits while the other beasts claim more goblin lives.

The goblin archers continue to pelt shots at any creature that emerges to stand near the treasure.

The Mirkwood spider entangles the goblin leader in webs while the green spider and two bat swarms inflict further casualties.

And down on the ground even more goblins are dying to the high strength scores of the monsters.

But what's this? Another goblin swarm climbs up behind the treasure! With only one bat swarm there, if two goblins can get to the bridge when the game ends, they'll win!

In a remarkable feat of dice rolling, the goblin leader disentangles himself from the spider webs, is attacked by a giant spider and the mirkwood spider, beats them off and causes a wound on each one!

Unfortunately his comrades are nowhere near as effective as they fall to numerous attacks!

And on the following turn the goblin force is broken, the goblin leader is killed and all but two of the other goblins run away!

But the two remaining goblins are soooooo close to getting on the bridge, if they can get past the bats they'll at least get a tie! But they don't.

The Beastcaller pack wins, though it seemed very one-sided, it came down to the very last turn for the actual victory! Another warg and a giant rat joins the pack!

Beastcaller Battle Company Battle Report

So what do you do when you quite like playing with beasts, but have always loved a little bit of narrative play? You make up a battle company to suit your purpose! The battle company book gives lots of good ideas, so I just made a starting company with the same number of points as all the other companies. It represents one of the beastcaller goblins (Druzhag and Ashrak) and their pack of beasts. 

And I made up a Beastcaller path that is essentially the same as a shaman, but with spells that are about the beasts instead of other people.

So the first mission represents the goblin and crew coming out of the caves and spying some elves just across the river. What better prey?

They are just hanging around, playing their musical instruments and singing annoying songs... destroy them all!

Off to a pretty good start, the two spiders take out two elves as the beasts emerge out of nowhere and attack without warning! Another elf, though, takes on two wargs and the shaman and one of the wargs falls!

Another elf falls to spider poison, while the other spider takes a wound and the hero warg barely avoids defeat by using a point of fate!

These last two elves are surrounded by all the luck of the Valar! Down goes the yellow spider, even after the point of fate it had and the green spider loses a wound too!

Finally the last two elves are defeated! Shar'lok the shaman urges on the gigantic warg and green spider to feast on elf-flesh!

While the beasts are nursed back to health, the shaman does a little healing and as the night progresses a swarm of bats flocks to his pack and report that three bands of dwarf rangers are coming towards the river - time to get back to the cave!

This is the second mission, but the first mission only took about 10 minutes so we just launched straight into it! Three batches of three dwarven rangers are blocking the river crossings!

The high speed of the beasts means that they're less likely to plunge into the river! One dwarf is quickly dispatched as the beasts begin their crossing.

Two more dwarves fall, while the shaman gets closer to the bridge, he's so much slower and is starting to have to dodge dwarven arrows!

In a massive ganging up, another dwarf falls to a warg and two spiders!

To try keep Shar'lok safe, the bats and the hero warg attack a dwarf, who beats them back and takes a wound from the bats!

Two other dwarves hold off the beasts and inflict wounds on the spiders!

As another two dwarves finally make their way around the hill, the brave archer near the river falls beneath flashing teeth!

Near the cave the two dwarves who were doing a great job against the spiders fall under the willow.

The hero warg intercepts the other dwarves to keep Shar'lok safe from throwing axes! He is defeated by the dwarves, but has kept his master alive!

The bats and other spider also put themselves between Shar'lok and harms way.

The dwarves pay for their encroachment!

The final dwarf falls as the shaman makes it back to the safety of the cave!

With so few models, and quick ones at that, the missions are fast and furious! I'm hoping the beastcaller will be fun and might go well against the elves, but then again, I'll probably have to make another hero army so that the elves are never in any "real" danger =) The beasts take a long time to level up, but can be extremely powerful, especially as the spiders start with two attacks and two wounds!