BR: Dwarfs vs Chaos Beasts part 3

So heading into turn 4. I have done nothing, while he has whittled down over 1/3 of my forces. My general is almost dead suffering 3 of 4 wounds from a cannon shot. And one herd is chasing after a gyrocopter on the back side of my field.

Turn 4a: Charge. His Hammerers and general charge the hounds.
His warriors with runesmith and BSB charge my other hounds.
Now when I originally put them there, I was planning on fleeing. What got into me to hold, I'm not sure. But hold I did. With both.
His Gyro rallies and moves up by my chariot.

Cannon shot, at my general. After first roll he is 3" away. Rolls for bounce and he rolls a 2. Ratspawn is saved for one more turn.
2nd Cannon does grapeshot into R5. Hits 1, partial on 2nd. Hit. Rolls, strength 10. Kills 1, I have 2 wounds on the 2nd. Down to 2 Rat Ogres there.

Organ gun fires into unit R-3 with 2 Rat Ogres in it and rolls 10 hits. Totally wiped out. This forced a couple of tense panic checks. R-2 rolls a 11, but re-rolls an 8. B-2 rolls and gets a 7. Whew.

Rest of shooting doesn't do a whole lot.
In combat, With the BSB, Runesmith and 3 dwarfs, they only manage 3 wounds. So 1 hound left. Ouch. I roll my break test. Snake Eyes!! I manage the Insane courage and at an awesome time.

In the 2nd combat, with his Lord and Hammerers, he again only manages 3 wounds and leaves 1 hound. Ugghhh!!! I wanted him to kill them all. I need insane courage again, but fail. The lone hound breaks. I measure and I'm exactly 6" from Ratspawn to the hound. I thought I was a bit further back. I make my panic test. The lone hound flees.
The Hammerers, pursue and roll a 9. So 8" purusuit is just enough to hit Ratspawns unit. Ugghhh!!! I really needed to get the charge here.

Here was the setup at the end of turn 4a:


With the hounds fleeing, his magic number is at 2 out of 8.

Turn 4b: I know Ratspawn is in trouble, but there is little I can do to save him. His Hammerer unit is barely out of charge arc of R2. If he rolls only 7" last turn, I can charge with both. Now, neither. Oh well.
CHARGE!!! R5 into cannon crew.
R4 into Crossbows.
Herd into Bolt thrower.
Furies into Cannon 1.
Rolled unruley and Beastherd 1 moved as fast as it could to the gyro.
The spawn surges towards the thunderers.
Ratspawns body guard moves to the right away from the overrun path of the hammerers.
R2 and C2, do not have to worry about the Warriors, so I turn and head towards the Hammerers.

The Cannon 2 crew fails its fear test and runs off the board. R5 hits the Crossbows instead.
The crossbows stand and shoot at R4 and do nothing.
In combat I kill off 6 of the Crossbows. They break, run and are caught in the direction of the bolt thrower. R4 pursues and hits the bolt thrower crew in combat with the beastherd.
We kill 2 of the crew who whiff back. Outnumbered by fearcausers, they flee towards the table edge, the herd pursues and hits the thunderers.
The warriors wipe out the last hound they are facing.

The furies kill off 2 cannon crew, they break and are off the table. Furies try to restrain but fail and off after them.

Finally the big battle. To keep his general from just slicing and dicing my Rat Ogres, on top of killing Ratspawn, I challenge. And hope for some serious whiffage.
I don't get it it.
General does around 11 wounds to me, so gets his kill and 5 overkill.
The Hammerers, who couldn't kill 4 hounds, commence to knock out 5 wounds on my Rat Ogres, killing 2. The last one flees, runs 5" and is caught.

Rat Ogres 2, make their panic check. Chariot 2 makes its panic check.
But Ratspawns body guard roll a 10 and then an 11 and head for the board edge.

With these 2 units breaking, this brings his magic number up to 4.
Here is the setup at the end of turn 4:


Remember these diagrams are crude and not always to exact scale.

The General with Hammerers, charge the chariot. It is very close to the 6". He will have to wheel an inch or 2 to get around the difficult terrain, but I think he can make it. This would mean disaster as he would easily break it and pursue into my herd and well away from my Rat Ogres and chariot.
So the chariot flees. It splits the gap between the gyro and herd, but actually hits both.
So impact hits on both units. My herd suffers 2 wounds out of 8, and they panic and flee.
The gyro suffers its last wound and crashes to the ground.

The Hammerers and general are now in great shape for me.

The Warriors are out of charge range and so move up.
The bolt thrower has no target and moves as do the Longbeards.
The Volley gun does 4 hits on Rat Ogre unit 4 killing 1 and knocking the other down to its final wound.
The thunderers blow the spawn back to hell from which it came.
(according to the dwarfs).

In combat the Herd kills off 4, while the thunderers kill none. I win by 6. So needing a 3 not to break. He rolls it!! Ugghhh!!

With the chariot and herd running, this brought his magic number up to 6. He only needs 2 more units to go.

So this is the setup at the end of turn 5a:


I knew this was the critical turn here.
Charges: Lone Rat Ogre 4 into flank of Thunderers 2.
Rat Ogres 2, into rear of hammerers
Chariot 2 into flank of hammerers.

Rallies:
Chariot 1 rallies.
Beastherd 1 rallies.

Then the big one.
Rat Spawns body guard rolls an 11. Ugghhhh!!! I use a League Resource I have and re-roll it. I make the 8 and they reform. Whew!!
Furies fly on and land behind the thunderers.

In combat, the herd kills 4 more thunderers, who whiff back. The last 2 are outnumbered by fear causers and break off the table.
I need the herd for turn 6, but not the lone Rat Ogre. I let him pursue off also.
The herd restrains.

Then the big one. Impact hits. I need a 6. I get a 1!?! So only 2 impact hits. Here my opponent found out his armor did not get the +1 for flank or rear. So his 4+ did not become 3+. Between the chariot and Rat Ogres in the rear, he looses 9 Hammerers, leaving only 5 + the general.
But immune to fear and terror, and stubborn 10, he easily stays.

Here was the setup at the end of turn 5:


Turn 6a: The Dwarfs are a bit frustrated from having no charges and not being able to turn around in combat. But they fight on.
The warriors turn to face to the Rat Ogre 5 unit. The Long beards turn to face the furies.
The volley gun gets off 10 shots on the herd. OUCH!! When the dust cleared only the Wargor was standing. With the panic test he rolls a 10. But without the herd, his undivided mark is useful now and he gets to re-roll it. He rolls a 6 and sticks around.
Bolt thrower misses.

Not sure about thethunderers. To be honest, I think my opponent may have forgotten to shoot them. Either that, or they did really bad.

Combat: The general turns and with a whiff of his blade, he only kills 1. He uses his league resource to reroll and kills off 2 of the Rat Ogres. My chariot then whiffs horribly doing 0 wounds. And finally, his hammers with 5 attacks do three wounds and kill off the rest of the Rat Ogres.
Losing by a ton, the chariot flees 10".

The general's unit just needs an average roll of pursuit to get out of harms way. Rolls a 2!!! Whoohoo!!! This gives me one last chance.

With the chariot fleeing, his magic number is up to 7 out of 8. He really needed to not wipe out the whole herd or the whole Rat Ogre unit.

Here is the setup after turn 6a:


Turn 6b: I looked down at the field. He still had all 3 blocks, all 3 characters and 2 of his warmachines left. He was short on his objective by 1. So I had to be careful not to give him the last unit fleeing. But by the same token, I had not picked up my objective either. His general did not have a wound on him. Was still immune to fear and was stubborn 10.

I had one hope, run in with my body guard and kill off the hammerers, completely to a man. Then hope the general doesn't open a can of whoopass on me.
So into the breach they go.

My wargor and Rat Ogres 5 into the volley gun.

I could have gone after the runesmith and bsb, but I figured, even if I managed to kill them both, I'd lose combat break and run and give him his objective.

The furies started to charge the thunderers, but there was a slim crack between the thunderers and longbeards and I could see the bolt thrower. So the 5 furies charged them instead.

Everyone holds.

My chariot rallies, and the rest of my stuff moves to make sure its out of panic range.

I do the Organ gun combat first and kill all 3 crewmen. The Rat Ogres cannot pursue, but the wargor can. He overruns 10" and just misses the bolt thrower crew.

In the bolt thower combat, I kill 1. He kills 1 fury. I still outnumber him 4 to 3. So needs insane courage and fails.

Finally, the last big combat:
He uses his league resource and makes his unit have hatred. ugghhh!! But I still get to swing first. I cannot waste any shots at the general. Everything on the Hammerers. 13 attacks, 4+ to hit. 7 hits!!! Whoohoo!!!
Then 6 wounds!!!! No save. Yes, my dice finally did not screw me in the end.

But now his generals attacks. 4 attacks, 2 hits, 2 misses. Rerolls, 1 more hit. So 3 hits total.
Rolls to wound. only 1!!!!! Whoohoo!!!

Wait, he uses a league resource to re-roll it.!!??? I didn't question it at the time, but I think he had used this resource back in turn 5 to re-roll the wounds in that combat. So watch that Mario. (Maybe I'm wrong, but don't think so.)

So 3 hits, he rolls to wound all 3 wound. Ugghhhh!!!
Each one now does a d6 wounds. He rolls, a 6, a 2 and a 1. So only kills 2 guys as the 6 is capped down to a 3.

So he did 6 wounds, but I did 5, have a banner, unit strength and the rear. I win and he is now subject to fear. He needs insane courage and fails it!!!

Finally, time to add up the points.

I had killed 1337 points of troops.
He had killed 1465 points of troos.

Bonus point time.
He had +100 for my general, no banners and -200 for missing the objective, by 1.

I got +100 for the Hammerers banner, +100 for the general, +400 for completing my objective.

Final score:
Dwarfs: 1365
Glorius Ratspawn: 1937

So a win for Ratspawn and the Rat Ogre horde.

I hope you enjoyed it.
Final thoughts and recap, coming soon.

Until next time...