The Big Orange Book Battle

BOYL this year was a thing of highs and lows for me. The absence of dear friends made it an odd experience, but also new friends were made and a project I had long wanted to pull off finally happened thanks to the work of Paul Golgfag Douglas, Tim Ewin, Steve Thantsants Beales, Mike Broadsword McGuinness and Brother Meredith. These fine folks gathered all the necessary figures to field the mighty armies shown on the Duke's table in the 3rd edition Warhammer rulebook. Including no fewer than three Fighting Fantasy ogres! I think you'll agree it's a pretty good approximation.

Note how Tim got the size of his dwarf banner spot on. Mine was a tad puny by comparison!

If, like me, you have ever wondered what the view was like from other angles, here goes!

Now all that remained was to fight the battle and see what happened! 

The mighty elven war chariot rumbles down thr far flank...

...directly towards a band of rowdy snotlings. 

The goblins' chariot also moves up, but waits for a pack of rabid chaos hounds to cross the road in front.

On the near flank the dark elves prepare to meet the zoat and bearmen whilst the elf dragon lines up for a swooping attack upon them.

Stupid trolls bog down the balrog (gargoyle) advance. The skeleton horde prepares for its terrifying charge across the defenders' line.

At the gates of La Maisontal the black orcs try to force entry through the breach but are held back by furied Taalite cultists.

Hoping to clear the way for a grand chariot assault, the boars attempt to mow down the puny snots. The green meanies prove a stubborn barrier.

Skaven do what skaven do, fleeing from the charging giant. The giant then does what giants do- attempts to jump onto the unit and falls on his arse!

Sneaky orcses attempt to find a side way into the abbey, scaling to the high level and dropping through open windows into the courtyard.

Bagrian blasts the black orcs and dragon ogre into oblivion with a vortex of chaos. The abbot has been playing with his black arc again I see! Terrified orcs abandon their flanking attack and run for the hills, but the remaining black orcs stand firm at the gates.

Having incinerated the war wyvern in a fell charge, the dragon swoops upon the giant, chasing it from the board. The long wheel round begins!

In a similar swoop attack the eagle strafes the dadark elves, then the bearmen and zoat finish the job.

Wood elves look on, bereft of a foe, whilst on the far side of the cottage their kin are torn into by the pack of chaos hounds.

The advancing wildcats trigger a fanatic release. The whirling maniacs roll straight over the snotlings, flinging them left and right but doing little actual damage. Crushing the boars and their handler they cannon on into the chariot, smashing it to kindling!

The undead advance clears the stakes, suffering minimal damage and scaring away the militia and a whole unit of ogres. Despite losses on the near and far flanks the evil forces look to be obliterating the centre.

The bearman/zoat team continues its unstoppable rampage, wiping out ranks of Harboth's black mountain boys and routing the unit. The black orcs stand firm but the chaos hounds turn tail and flee! Their behinds are peppered by arrows from the relieved elves.

The elven general refrains from pursuing Harboth's fleeing orcs and redirects his attention at the hemmed-in chariot, slaying one of the wolves.

A change in the fortunes of the undead. Not only do the dwarfs refuse to flee, they counter charge through the defences, pushing the skeletons back. Unable to manoeuvre for a flank attack the minotaurs are left ineffectively misaligned and fumble their assault. The treeman plants itself in the path of the death riders and its impervious limbs crush the bones of rank after rank of the skeletal riders.

The orcs which fled from La Maisontaal recover just in time to mount a flank charge on the frenzied Taalites, but the raving monks are holding their own!

As the trolls continue to stand around stupidly the balrogs push past to engage the giant as it struggles to its feet. Unable to hurt the daemons with his club he opts to grab one and fling it into the others, causing a smattering of fiery damage. Enough to make them test instability and vanish in a puff of smoke!

Cut off by the river, the hounds rally just in time. They ready themselves for another savage charge.

Harboth and co manage to escape their pursuers, but continue to flee for their lives.

A volley of arrows from the elves destroys the chariot crew, causing the hounds to break again, this time plunging to their deaths into the flowing waters. The black orcs finally get boots on the bridge, but fail to make it to the classic image.

Having completed its long turn, the dragon returns, torching the skeletons in its path. Seeing this, the fleeing men at arms just about pull themselves together and get their arrows notched to deal with any survivors.

Stalwart dwarves overpower the dwindling undead horde.

Surrounded by unbreakable stunties on all sides, the remaining core of the evil army crumbles.

 Thrud queues for the lavatory.

That was a lot of fun. At the start we thought the forces of good would be hard-pressed to survive, and initially it seemed that might be the case. However the game swung around such a lot with each turn it was really hard to call. In the end though the solid core of stubborn dwarves, enraged clerics and terrible bearmen won the day. The forces of evil lost their wyvern early on, but the loop the dragon had to take to get back in the game balanced that out. The elven chariot was ignominiously but gloriously obliterated by fanatics, whilst its evil counterpart was so stuck behind slow-moving black orc rabble it couldn't get anywhere.

Really enjoyed it. Thanks to everyone who contributed models, scenery and time to playing it. Special thanks to Tim for taking the terrain boards home and freeing up studio space for me! The grand plan was to take reproductions of all the photos in the book whilst it was set up... but of course time ran away with us and we didn't manage, never mind eh?

The Big Orange Book Battle