All Along the Watchtower

Dark Elves kick off and advance to the tower

This weeks club game was the first (hopefully of many) of the new WHFB campaign that the club is running.
The game being the Watchtower scenario from the rule book, pitting my doughty Empire hero's, being ably assisted by Dave K (who has been drawn to the dark side of Fantasy gaming) against Kevs' wicked and cowardly Dark Elves in a spritely 1500pt game.
Things started off pretty poorly for the Empire, with the Dark Elves starting play as I was defending the watchtower the Dark Riders advanced, shot my Pistoliers to bits who (quite rightly fled) and my Light Cavalry was shot up by the dastardly Shades skulking in the village and a horde of crossbow bolts even took out a couple of crossbowmen, although the Witches charge to the tower wasn't very enthusiastic and they ended up advancing two inches on a failed charge.
Round two and three went pretty badly two with the destruction of the unit of Halberdiers in the tower in one round all to a whopping 22 casualties dished out by the Witches when they did manage to reach the tower, my Pistoliers and Light Cavalry being out shot by the Shades and destroyed, my Swordsmen with wizard being run down by the Corsairs and one unit of Knights failing to make a dent on the crossbows and being cut down to a man.
Honour was however satisfied by the general Baron Sidle and his Knights who saw off the Dark Riders and then returned to destroy the Corsairs and the enemy general, and the Crossbows managed to do what the mighty Knights failed to do and caused the DE Crossbows with their attendant harridan to flee for their lives in Round four.

Battlefield at the end of play, pretty sparce

At the end of Round Four with nothing the Empire could do to dislodge the Witches from the Watchtower with only the General, BSB and Preceptor and a unit of Crossbows and a unit of Handgunners, the brave survivors decided to live to fight another day and grudgingly allowed the dark ones to retain the tower, for the moment....
Good if pretty brutal game with really only the General and his attendant Knights getting any glory from an otherwise poor showing, and again the changes to the Warhammer rules coming to the fore with the Dark Elves putting down a pretty devistating amount of fire power and followed by an equal amount of attacks in close combat, definitely an improvement for them since the last edition. Again I like the changes to the rules and, with admittedly only a couple of games so far, like the feel much more than the last edition, much more fun games.


The next steps in the campaign will see the Baron pitting his troops against his old adversary in the form of the Ogres and then again against the Dark Elves once again but in the Dawn Raid scenario, at a disadvantage having lost the first round. A part of the next step will be to get some troops painted.