Of Byzernians and beastlings - 10mm Fantastic Battles

Jim's Byzernians took on my beastling army of the Red King this week in a hard-fought, 1000 point game of Fantastic Battles.

The battlefield was constricted somewhat with terrain, including two large woods and a settlement that benefited neither of us so, as the defender, the Red King deployed his army of highland mice, squirrels, bunnies and other assorted beastlings in depth across the centre and right. 

The Byzernians launched an ambush across the abandoned left flank with a large unit of axe-wielding gallowglasses. The beastling army responded by redeploying their reserves to cover the wood, and advancing down into the valley on the opposite flank.

The gallowglass unit was pinned and surrounded in the woods, and ultimately abandoned by the rogue leading them, causing the unit to rout. 

In the centre and right, the beastlings were finding the going a bit tougher - everywhere the Byzernians out-matched them in melee and only the bog trolls were doing ok, hurling great boulders at the Byzernian galloping flamethrowers. The match between the Byzernian angel and the moohemoths went well for the Red King, but the battle was balancing on a knife edge.

In the woods, the beastling slingers carried on a shoot-out with the skirmishing Byzernian horsemen, but ultimately they achieved little other than luring their enemies into the difficult woodland terrain.

Having failed to break a small unit of skirmishing irregulars over three turns, the beastling chariotry in the centre were taking a real battering from the Byzernian elite cataphracts. Even the arrival of the shrew wyrd sister leading a company of moohemoths could not save them. The unit of shroomlings that she summoned tried their mindless best to help, but the Byzernian wizard's blink spell messed them about time and again.

With the scattering of the chariots, and a unit of beastling levy, both armies were sitting on breakpoints of 6/10 with multiple units with low Resolve. The beastlings threw everything they could at the Byzernian cataphracts in the centre, while everything else that could shoot, tried to do so.

In the end, the cataphracts broke, taking one unit of moohemoths with them. The bog trolls finally threw enough stones to scatter the galloping flamers, and the last levy unit, only two Resolve from breaking itself, finally broke the last Byzernian spear unit in the valley. The end result was Byzernia 11/10, Red King 7/10 (but only two Resolve away from being 10/10), so a very close-run victory indeed!