BR: Beasts vs Lizardmen, part 1

Saturday a Lizardman force had found its way to Ratspawns breeding grounds in the upper Empire. The armies spread out to form their battle lines and it did not take long for the 2 forces to come together in battle.

This was another League game. I took my basic army I'm planning on running at the GT in only 10 days. Since I had +50 points, I went ahead and used a resource to give me +25 to make +75 and took an extra Spawn of Slaanesh.

The battlefield had 2 woods, 2 hills, a 1 story farmhouse and some stone walls for terrain.

My battle line looked like this:


Starting at the bottom and working up:
Failed Rat Ogre (Spawn of Slaanesh)
3 Rat Ogres (Minos, und, gr.weapons)
5 cloud runners (chaos furies)
7 Mutated clanrats with 6 packmasters (Beastherd, 7 gors, 6 ungors, full command)
Harbringer of mutation (Lvl 2 bray shaman, d.scroll, bray staff. Spells: Bears anger, beast cower). In with the beastherd.
Rat Cart (beast chariot)
Failed Rat Ogre
5 Giant Rats (Chaos hounds)
4 Rat Ogres behind them.
Temple Structure (this is a league resource. It gives me +1 combat res to any combats within 12" of it.)
6 Giant Rats
Ratspawn w/Doom Glaive (Doombull, undivided, Hvy armor, shield, Hellfire sword)
Ratspawn's Body guard. 5 Rat Ogres with champion, standard.
Failed Rat Ogre
Rat Cart
7 Mutated Clanrats with 6 handlers (beast herd, full command)
Master Moulder (wargor, und, gr.weapon)
Harbringer Setrad (bray shaman, lvl 2, und., Staff of Darkoth, d.scroll, spells: Bears anger, Beasts Cower)
4 Rat Ogres (behind the herd)
5 Giant rats
3 Rat Ogres.

Couple of points of note.
1. I tried out my new beasts movement trays. I made them 5" by 4". So I can rank up 5 wide, which is what I want, or 4 wide, which is minimum. If I have to go wider, I just pull them off to one side. It allows me to move them very fast and they worked great.
2. I ran Ratspawn and body guard 5 wide. Since his 2 main blocks were at least 125 mm wide, that means in a good charge, thats an extra 3 str 6 attacks coming in.
3. The markers you see on the board. There are actually 4 markers. The 2 with skulls and one more in the upper woods with a skull (blocked by tree) were my opponents objectives. He had to claim 2 of those 3. The other marker at the base of the hill was my objective. I had to move the bray shaman in the lower beast herd on top of that marker at the end of the game.

My opponents deployment:


I'm not 100% sure on his magic items. But from bottom to top:
10 skinks javelins and shields
3 Kroxigor
2 salamanders with handler, & skink priest lvl 2. spells: second sign, forked lightning.
10 skinks with blowpipes
20 Temple guard (painted silver. j/k)full command.
2nd Gen slaan. BSB, banner of fear. Not sure what else magic wise. Spells: Death magic. Dark head, Death Dealer, Steal soul, Drain life.
10 skinks with javelin, shields
20 Saurus with full command.
Scar Vet with 1+ armor, sword of might, in saurus block.
3 Kroxigor
10 skinks with blowpipes.

We set up and rolled to see who went first. I won, since he had no long range shooting, I let him go first.

Turn 1a:
The lizardmen surge forward, wanting to stake claim to the objectives early on.
For magic, he had only a couple of spells within range. He throws 5 dice for dark hand of death at my 5 giant rats next to the temple structure. He rolls really high, so I let it go and it kills 1 rat.
He then uses forked lightning but I dispel that.
Shooting is all out of range.

This is what it looked like at the beginning of my turn 1b:


I usually do not charge on turn 1, but I figured, what the hell.
The chariots both charge the skinks in front of them. The 6 giant rats in front of Ratspawn charge the skinks in front of them.
The skinks on the hill flee, both other skinks stand and shoot.
The fleeing skinks run through the salamanders who pass their panic test.
My other 2 chargers are out of range by 1/2", so he stands and shoots. No wounds on the chariot, 1 dead Giant rat.

I then roll for my spawn. 1 moves up by the fence. The one in the middle rolls 16" and hit the skinks who just stood and shot the hounds. So he takes the charge.
I would have let him take it all back, but he didn't seem to mind at all. I need to remember to do compulsory movement before stand and shoots.
Everything else moves up.

In magic, I cast beast cower on the salamanders. with 3 dice I roll 3 1's. :(
I roll an 8, so str x hit and magic ends. He fails to wound me.
No shooting.
In combat, I kill 3 skinks with the spawn. So I win by 2, but with the general within range, he easily passes his break test.

Here was the setup at the beginning for turn 2a:


In the next turn, my opponent makes a bold move. Is it a trap, or folly?

Until next time...