TORBEN (aka 'Doctor' in forums):

Welcome to the first Settra Invitational Report. I have been doing a couple of Flash Battle Reports (you can find them in this site), which have been very well recieved by the Warhammer communities that inhabit the danish Goblin's Lair forum and the international 'Warhammer Players Society' forum.

So far, the 'high point' (from my perspective)were the Report I did on the Copenhagen Warlords-final. It was a close game and a good report.

 

I have been toying with the idea of writing a bigger/different report than just the usual 2000 points pitched battle, but couldn't find the time to do anything about it - Fortunately, I am having some time off at the moment (because my new job doesn't start until 1st of April (great - starting off on April Fool's Day - that should cause some laughs...)) so I had the time to arrange a battle. I decided that a 10.000 point game (5.000 points per side), each led by a special character would make an excellent battle report, but I also realised that a 10.000 points 'Special Scenario' game is somewhat of a gamble....Scenarios are harder to make good and balanced for 5.000 points armies - so in the end, it ended up being 5.000 points vs. 5.000 points Pitched Battle.

One thing was clear from the start - I would not be commanding any of the armies. One day in the future, I will probably take my Tomb Kings to battle in a Battle Report (as I have one time earlier - only now is the army painted/non-proxied...), but as I would be busy taking notes and pictures, I would rather be on the sideline in this one.

A 5.000 points fully painted army is not something that a lot of players have lying around, and with only 1 player on each side, it would take a lot longer - so I decided to try to find 4 players - 2 on each side. Mixed army - multiplayer Warhammer is in my opinion one of the best forms of 'casual' Warhammer - something strange always happens with 4 different armies involved and everyone is more relaxed and overbearing than in a 1vs1 tournament game.

My gaming club Settra is pretty much a 1-man club at the moment (the others have been lost to Dark Age of Camelot), so I would need some players from the 'outside'. A post on the danish Goblin's Lair gave me 10-15 interested players from Copenhagen (thanks for backing up a project like this, guys) and from these I found the following 2 teams (they were the first 4 that answered):

The Skaven/Dark Elves Alliance : Michael Vedel and Peter 'the Slayer' Krog

Vedel (left) and Peter are both 'Settra Battle Report'-veterans if you will - Vedel played in the Copenhagen Warlords final, which Peter arranged.

Vedel is a rat player by heart and I had just faced him in a 3.000 points tournament a couple of weeks earlier (we played a spectacular draw - highlights being his Screaming Bell giving his entire army Frenzy (against my Tomb Kings...) and in turn 2 the Grey Seer was shot from his Screaming Bell with a well-aimed Catapult shot. And I'll never forget how those 6 censer bearers held a charge from 3 chariots and destroyed them completely in one turn of combat....)
 

Pete 'the Slayer' is our local Pusher (meaning he works in the Copenhagen Games Workshop) and I knew that his Dark Elf army was always one to produce strange situations on the battlefield.... I had never played against Peter, but was confident that he was a good sport.

The Vampire Counts : Damoun Nassehi and Klaus Bloch

Damoun (left - 'Pipi Harlem' or 'Den Tykke' in forums) is a guy that I knew from med. school before we knew that the other plays Warhammer - and when we found out about Warhammer, we both said 'I knew you were a geek' - or something to similar effect.... We had only played once, in Battle Rage Ballerup, where he won a minor victory - those 2 dirty 2nd generations Slann are a tough nut to crack for my King and his retinue.

Klaus (forum name 'Marloch') is a great guy, who I have played in several local tournaments over the years - lately in the latest Giant Fanatic (nr. 6 I think) I met his Wood Elves- A draw with the highlights being him tossing an Acorn right on top of my Chariots with a Tomb Prince and my Casket going off 2 times early, causing some casualties (including all his Knights! (or glade riders or whatever they are called))..
 
Klaus has a Wood Elf army and Damoun has his Lizardmen....however, 2 skirmish-armies like that would probably not make a very interesting Battle Report, and since they both have Vampire Counts armies as well, it was decided that they would make one large Vampire army. Undead Invasions are always fun and characterful...

Special Characters

I wanted each side to be led by a Special Character. However, for some reason, no-one have special characters in their collections anymore....Back in the days, everyone had them..... (maybe it was because 'back in the days', few other character models were released - so Tyrion was basically the only High Elf horseman looking like a general). So each side came up with their own special character. In the end, the Special Characters were just 'normal' characters from their lists - however if background history and 'fluff' text is written, it's basically the same - so Lord Slayer represented the Alliance (a Dark Elf Lord) and Ramul Morag (a Strigoi Lord) represented the Vampires.

Location

The battle was played out in my own apartment on my gaming table. I had recently made a new table and new terrain, so I was happy to be able to use it! The guys arrived around 10 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, and the battle began!

- Go to Background Story

- Go to Skaven/Dark Elves Army Selection

- Go to Vampire Counts Army Selection

- Go to Pre-battle Preparations