The Library Rubble Rumble

Being the fourth episode of the Mordheim Occasional Mini Campaign, the warbands were really and truly into the rubble of the city, having fought their way through swamp and marsh, forest and jungle, field and farm, the Warbands had now ventured into the Academic quarter of the ruined city, in search of dark and forbidden secrets.

Once again, the terrain has shifted, this time from the fairly open suburbs to the ruined and rubble strewn streets and alley ways of the city proper. Things closing in yet more.

Along with my Gunnery School Cadets this time, were Kens much vaunted 'Kings of Bling' Reiklanders, Kev's 'poorer cousins' also Reiklanders and the previous victors of round two Barry's Skaven.

All the Warbands were there to search for scrolls and tomes of lost and dangerous knowledge left amongst the ruins of the old city library and it's surroundings, (and to do some GBH to any one they happened to encounter along the way of course).

The Rubble Rumble

The initial deployments meant that the Skaven and Ken's Reiklanders were pretty much side by side and almost immediately came to blows in one corner of the field, but with Kev's Reiklanders moving in from the opposite side from Ken soon joined the fray and helped pull some numbers of Skaven away from the out numbered Bling Reik. The Gunnery School Cadets started at the opposite of the field of battle from the Skaven and a fair distance from the all the action, so they entered cautiously trying to keep to cover until they got into range of their black powder weapons.

The Bling Reik soon got the worse of their uneven struggle even though putting up a good defence but only one of the six sturdy Reiklander managed to flee the field in one piece, but they did manage to put a dent into the numbers of the Skaven. Meanwhile Kev's Reiklanders had moved into the ruins and his archers climbed up into vantage points in the centre of the field giving them good field of fire across the centre and fired off a couple of cursery shots at the advancing Cadets, while the rest of the band advanced into contact with the rest of Barry's Skaven.

Cadets move through the alleys

Having finished off Ken's band, Barry now moved towards Kev's band with a couple of ratty types now open to fire from the Cadets, who fired off a couple of ranging shots to no effect. Kev's band soon rushed into hand to hand (or hand to tooth) with the rats with a each giving giving the other as good as they got. By this time the Cadets had reached the centre of the field intact (mainly due to the fact that everybody had decided the greatest threat came from the rats and so were pretty much left alone).

Reiklander archers cover their fellows
from above

By now Kev's much abused archers (who hadn't managed to hit anything - again!) had managed to cover the rest of his band and allowed him to retreive two pieces of sought after loot and deciding that discretion was the greater part of profit beat a hasty retreat before his possible loses out weighed any gain. The Cadets moving into the library ruin and managed to climb (and not fall and hurt themselves) into the rubble and retreive a couple of the dusty tomes.

With all the Reiklanders gone, but a much depleted Skaven Warband left, the Cadets arrived in a pretty good position in a firing line with all guns loaded and blazed away at the remnants of the Skaven horde inflicting around five casualties in a single round to the already depleted band of rats.

The Skaven decided to make a sharp exit, but not before picking up a token scroll in recompense for the loses (plenty more rats where they came from says Barry).

The gun line begins to form

So finally the Cadets come good, (if helped considerably by the Reiklanders) and finally manage a victory and prove they can hit something and survive unscatathed this time.

Kev's and Barry's loses end up being fairly light in the end getting most casualties back (or replacable) but with Kens Reiklanders down to four, it may be the end of the Bling, but possibly not, time will tell.

The next time the bands will venture further into the ruins to see what terror awaits in what will be the penultimate battle in the campaign.