Fantastic Battles Spooktoberfest - 10mm Night Stalkers vs Ghostly Pirates

This week my Night Stalkers (vampires and their minions) took on Roger's Ghost Pirates in a spooky season-inspired clash of Fantastic Battles.  

Although playing 1,000 points, both armies were small but perfectly formed (both had break points of just 9). The Night Stalkers used the Night March strategy, hoping to avoid the powerful shooting of the ghostly pirate shot unit. The Night Stalker necromancer was using the Bless spell, to vivify the army, while both ghost wizards were equipped with Curse. 

Despite also having an Igor serving as the army's quartermaster, the Night Stalkers were ravaged by the Mishaps rolls. The poor ghouls were wracked with disease, the succubi were late, and the dire bats overly enthusiastic. Meanwhile, the ghost pirates and their aquatic allies escaped completely unscathed.

 

The night march followed by a swift start allowed the vampiric forces to close the gap between the lines in the first activation. The impulsive ghouls had the capacity to charge directly into the ghostly gunners, but stalled at the last moment, leaving themselves open to brutal short range-gunnery. Over on the right of the Night stalker lines, one of the vampire nobles made his way back to the succubi to bring them back into command, leaving the werewolves, dire wolves and dire bats all under the command of a single captain. 

After a battering from the gunners, the ghouls crashed into the gunners. Relying on his speed and terrifying reputation, Death (a rogue) and his black carriage swung into the ghost pirates' flank. While the large unit of fishmen spears struggled to wheel to respond to this, a ghost-whale-ship-behemoth-thing had the resolve to charge in and hit the carriage in the flank.

Across the front, the creatures of the night were now in melee with the pirates. Vampire knights, led by the Countess herself, counter-charged the monstrous kraken, the werewolves took on some ghost halberdiers, wolves attacked a giant ghost shark, while the bats overshot the enemy ranks to start to threaten their rear. The succubi flew up to near where they were supposed to be at the start of the battle, while a sea giant wheeled about to counter the flying threats.

In a rather predictable melee, the misfortunate ghouls and Death were both scattered, allowing the floating whale-ship to stat bobbing towards the exposed flank of the beleaguered vampire knights. While the necromancer's blessings had kept the knights in combat, the two cursing ghost wizards had taken much of the sting out of the vampiric attacks. The bats charged into the rear of the halberdiers, and were in-turn charged in the flank by the giant.

And by the end of the melee phase on turn four, the Night stalkers were utterly vanquished! Knights, werewolves, wolves and bats all scattered in a cascade of chaos. The Countess and her minions lost 13 companies against their break point of 9. All that remained to retreat were the succubi, a captain, and the magic-user. Among the ghost pirates, the halberdiers scattered and the giant ghost shark was slain, bringing their breakpoints to 4/9.

It doesn't get much more convincing than that. My Night Stalkers are fierce, but brittle. They need to get into combat quickly and overcome a couple of units to feast on the fallen before moving on. Unfortunately, the disease-ridden ghouls had a bad day: between the disease taking away a third of their resolve to begin with, then facing short range gunnery, and finally being cursed before their first melee. They became nothing more than toothless casualties. On the right the various beasts fared better, but the succubi unit was ultimately too late to take part in the battle and the flank could not hold. Isolated, the vampiric knights when down fighting...