Mark: After enjoying the White Dwarf battle report game against Alessio so much, I was pleased when I was asked to participate in a High Elf web battle report. While we were discussing the scenario that we were going to play, I thought it would be a cool idea to relate this game with the one in White Dwarf. It wasn’t too long before Anthony, Owen and myself had decided that to do this I would limit my troop choice to warriors that I had chosen against Alessio, whilst Anthony chose only Undead monsters to use against me. With some background information to build on the scenario setting, before we even began playing, I knew that this was going to be a good battle and a great write up.

After a quick look at the limitations on troop choices and objectives for the scenario, I focused on my two character choices first. Although I had an initial urge to go for a couple of High Elf Mages, a little pondering changed my mind. I know that High Elf Mages can be very potent, but with the small amount of points that I would have to spend, I don’t think that they would have necessarily provided me with the best advantage. The first Commander took me only a short time to compose, basically by putting a couple of magic items together (the ones that he could afford) and optimising him to take on most of the unit types that I knew Anthony could choose from. If Anthony decided to take anything Ethereal my Commander had a good magic weapon to use and an equally effective defence with the Helm of Fortune.

My second character was just as easy to create. As I knew that there was quite a good chance that Anthony could field a nasty Zombie Dragon, giving him the Reaver Bow would give me an effective ranged weapon that could be quite nasty. To complement these two characters, it didn’t take too long to establish a good defensive force using White Lions, Phoenix Guard and Dragon Princes, each having their own respective Champion. All having high Strength and at least some protection with their armour, anything that Anthony decided to throw my way should hopefully be quickly dissolved. Well hopefully!      ARMY

Anthony: Being handed control of the Undead monsters for this variation of the Anulii Patrol scenario, I grabbed my copy of Vampire Counts and started looking for nasty creatures to plague Mark’s High Elves. A Zombie Dragon would be nice, but perhaps a little excessive as I only had 500 points to spend. I was still tempted, but decided against it in the name of fun. I mean, in a skirmish game where the High Elves wouldn’t be arranged in units, and thus wouldn’t be getting rank bonus, outnumbering, etc, the Zombie Dragon would be nigh on impossible to get rid of (though I’m sure Mark would have some cunning plan to deal with it – he usually does). Ethereal troops would be great in this scenario, as again without ranks, etc, they would be hard to kill, for only heroes with magical weapons could actually harm them. This combined with the ability to move through terrain made them a must. I thought the best image for my force would be the idea of a fast moving strike force that would range out in front of the main army in order to sow fear in the enemy. With this in mind, I set about choosing my force.

First off, the more expensive things. I wanted to use a Banshee because she would be a laugh, picking off the odd model with her scream which she could use even when in combat, and her being ethereal would make her very useful. In the same vein, Mark would find a spirit host particularly hard to stop, so I think I’ll have one of them. Bat swarms flapping out of the mist was just a cool image, so a couple of these useful bases would also fit nicely. To go with these, I chose a handful of Vampire Bats. To fill out the force, I chose a big pack of Dire Wolves who could quickly try and swamp the High Elf patrol before they really got a chance to react. The basic plan was to swoop on any High Elf bowmen with the Vampire Bats as soon as possible to limit their effectiveness. The Dire Wolves would launch an attack in two main groups, trying to overwhelm the enemy. I would use the ethereal troops to attack anything that was looking dangerous, like Knights and the such like, which couldn’t harm them but could cause havoc in the rest of my force, whilst at the same time trying to keep the ghostly things away from any of the magic weapon wielding heroes that Mark was bound to take. Despite having a formidably high Leadership value, with the number of Fear tests Mark would need to be taking he would certainly fail a few. And in my experience, they are failed at the worst possible time. We shall see…      ARMY