More siege testing for Fantastic Battles

This week JB indulged me with further testing of the siege rules for Fantastic Battles. Using almost all the fortifications made for my by Jim at Dark Architect, we played the largest siege to date, pitching 2,000 points of attackers (my Wylde Elves allied to my Beastlings), against 1,000 points of Fallen Dwarves as the defenders.

With the attackers suffering badly with disease ahead of the assault, the failure of the sappers to undermine the walls, and the total lack of traitors to unlock the gates, my lads (and lasses) had a hard old slog getting in under the walls. 

Although a beastling levy unit did get ladders to the keep wall, they were broken as they tried to scale the defences. Massed shooting from dwarvern handguns and artillery also managed to bring down the siege tower ... which then fell back on the trolls pushing it.

The dwarvern mage-lord, frustrated with inaction, flew his winged bull out of the keep to attack the skirmishing archers. Failing to destroy them in the first round of combat, he proceeded to disengage. Sadly, the movement took him too far on the other side of the fortress where he was charged and slain by the waiting elven stag-knights and their chariot support.

On the far side of the fortress, the second unit of beastling levy breached the gat with a battering ram and spewed forth into the outer defences.

The second gate was then breached, allowing the elven Wylde Hunt to charge in. Ongoing missle fire towards the units defending the keep finally started to have an effect, and the wyrd sister managed to summon her mushroom folk on the inside of the walls. With that it was more or less over for the defenders.

The revised modifiers conferred by the different fortifications meant that the success of the assault was never a foregone conclusion; the arrow towers in particular caused me significant harm. However, JB's army was not necessarily well suited to defending walls and the large number of characters continuously rallying and blessing my troops managed to keep them in the field long enough for the dwarves to lose heart.