Xmas HotT: 2nd Game

After the victory against the Ratmen, it was time for a more challenging foe. The next battle for the Xmas army would be against an amalgamation of half finished forces, chaos dwarves, chaos and undead. This army is more heavy on elements that either quick kill or get higher combat modifiers against beasts or mounted, which is half the Xmas army!

The full list is:

Chaos Knights (Gen Kn): 2pts

Chaos Dwarf hero (Hero): 4pts

2x Chaos Knights (Knights): 4pts

3x Chaos Dwarf Xbows (Shooter): 6pts

2x Ratmen (Warband): 4pts

Skeleton Giant (Behemoth): 4pts

The armies lined up and ready. Seeing all the enemy elements that are good at killing Beasts is a bit daunting: 

Battle is joined in the centre:

Given that Beasts, Warband, and Knights all follow up after winning melee, it was never going to be a static battle line!: 

The Wraith moves over from the left flank to prevent the Knights from breaking through. The rightmost pair of Warband use the hight advantage from the hill to force the other Knights back:

A change in the enemy's plan. The general withdraws and the crossbows start to pick off the Christmas trees:

 

The Wraith follows up the enemy general. The Chaos Dwarf hero on the left holds off the snowmen and the crossbows on the right advance to maximise their shooting against the trees:

Things are looking desperate now. The bone giant and Ratmen have advanced off the hill and the crossbows have done their worst. The hero and general are holding the enemy's centre against all my efforts:

The bitter end. Although my final element of Trees destroyed an element of crossbows, my Warband were defeated by the enemy general and the Christmas army lost:

With gaps appearing in the line, the Wraith and Warband were hard pressed to stop the enemy taking advantage of the opportunities this presented. It didn't help that they were badly matched. The enemy were defending so there was very little bad going terrain for my army to take advantage of. That was a huge factor against the Knights. Also, needing to double up Warband elements to get their bonus and having a hero worth 3 times a normal unit meant the Xmas army is reliant on beasts to form the main width of their battle line. This is not a good proposition against an army like the one they faced. 

So the Christmas Wraith returns to the Winterlands to lick his wounds and see what next Christmas will bring his growing army. I'm looking forward to developing this army with the next release from 15mm.co.uk. No idea what it will be at the moment, but some kind of mounted troops or missile armed ones would be nice!