Borstov Landing Falls!

   The Khador forces made there way south in response to the cries for help from Borstov Landing.  They arrived half-starved, disorganized and without an officer to lead the attack.  After a week of mustering their ranks, those who had not defected faced the terrible reality:  they were to late to save the castle.
   It was from in this grim situation that rose four heroes of Khador.  Sergeant Matt Schroeder, Senior Sergeant Josh Froese, Senior Sergeant Rob Perkins and Junior Sergeant Ben Hancock would not stand by and watch the resource stockpile from the entire southern region be pillaged by the Cryx invaders.  They staged a daring rescue, holding back the overwhelming enemy forces long enough for the garrison to escape, carrying with them the life-blood of the southern Khador army.  It was a costly engagement, but their promotions are well earned. Because of their heroic actions the Khador leadership has granted them and their piers control over the resources allocated to the southern defense effort.  These critical decision-rights will be key in forming the shield and blade that will repel the Cryx.

   Below is the detailed account of the rescue.

Here you can see Borstov Landing to the right and the siege army to the north.  The Khador army approached from the north-west.

The first exchange was the Crxy firing their catapults at the castle.  They destroyed the drawbridge but not the iron gate.

We approached with the shocktroopers through the open field while the Uhlan cavalry came through the forest undetected.

  We also deployed Froese's woodmen behind the enemy.  We had a good time making fun of how useless they are, but they actually did take out some dangerous back-row Cryx and split their forces some.

The battle took part largely in the forest, as the Cryx warjack and raiders charged blindly into the forest.  They ran into our guys trying to sneak up, including Froese's horses, which was a shame because they were not able to unleash their more powerful charge abilities.

The garrison inside the castle moved up and prepared to make a run for it when the time was right.

At this point the second wave of Cryx forces showed up.  We were worried we would not be able to push forward to the castle gate to enable the escape.  We were able to wreck the warjack in the forest though, with a nice combined melee attack from the Iron Fang Pikemen and big damage from the Manhunter.

Wrecking the 'jack enabled Froese to charge his horses at the new-comers.  They did huge damage to the second wave 'jack, ultimately completely disabling the very powerful Harrower.

Below you can see that Froese did end up losing his horses, although it was likely worth it.  Rob really wanted to get his Winterguard killed, (they eat to much!) so he had them charging out of the forest in to the teeth of the catapult barrage.  He actually ended up destroying one with a Rocketeer though.

Here we made a costly sacrifice, but with time running out it had to be done.  We ran our two 'jacks into the second wave to prevent them charging us.  This spelled curtain death for the warjacks, but it served to push the battle line closer to the castle gate.

The Greylord Ternion came through again in this battle.  Here they found gaps between the 'jacks to cast their magic attacks, catching several Bane Thralls and Bane Knights under them.

Next the garrison decided it was now or never if they were going to get out of the castle.  Below you can see them single-filing out of the gate to engage the second wave from behind.

Between the garrison attacking from behind, the Greylord Ternion's magic from behind the 'jacks and the shocktroopers, we eventually took down the second wave of Cryx forces.  The third wave was inbound though, and it was time to make a run for it.

Here we had to make more sacrifices.  Matt's Demo Corps and my Shocktroopers engaged the final units of the second wave even though we knew they would not be able to get away from the third wave incoming.  The rest of the forces and the garrison started making their escape behind the brave souls who gave their lives for Khador.

Unfortunaly, their heroic sacrifice resulted in a gruesome death...

Our second battle

Our Second battle was great great fun once again.  The Khador forces came down from the north to rescue a village under attack from the evil Cryx.  Here's Josh deploying our forces.  The grey and brown bad guys were Bane Knights.  They were high armor and could go through walls and got extra attacks.  Our plan was to run round through the forest to the east and stay away from the houses because they could close with our ranged units through the buildings.

Our fearless and stern officers are ready for battle.

The poor villagers were running for their lives...

At this point we're closing along the fence.  The baddies are waiting behind buildings.  We put Schrag's widowmakers in the front so they could shoot when the enemy decided to come out.  We put Rob and my winterguard on either side with Andrew and Matt's Greylord Ternion on the flank.  My shocktroopers held down the center.  You can see Jared's Doom Reavers in the distance there.  They double-timed it across the map so they had to join the battle a few turns late.  We decided also to take advantage of Anrew's Kossite Woodsmen's ability to deploy on a later turn, trying to find an opportunity to flank them.

At this stage Cryx pulled their first trick.  They had 2 Helldivers, who instead of attacking could burrow underground.  So they moved out and hid in range of our front line gunners.  This was bad because when they attacked they were able to engage some of Schrag's Widowmakers.

Throughout our advance the enemy Necrosurgeon was invading houses and making Mechanithralls out of the poor villagers.  We had to advance quickly, and in hindsight we got a little to close...

The Helldivers popped out right on top of our widowmakers and the Bane Kights charged.

This was our chance to get our shoots in and we needed to make them count.  Things went very badly, however.  Our left flank was a total loss, as you can see below they took cover behind the fence and our attacks from the Greylord Ternion, Winterguard and Widowmakers all missed.  Even the rockets and mortars were useless as they shrugged off blast dmg with their high armor.

The center of the line fared a bit better though, as my shocktroopers steped forward and wrecked one of the helldivers.  This free'd up a Widowmaker to fire, which proved very effective against the Bane Knights as they could ignore the armor with the snipe ability.  (below the round shields and red feathers are the shocktroopers and the rock is the wreck marker from the helldiver)

On the left flank things went quite well.  Without the fence for cover Andrews Greylord Ternion were able to spray whole swaths of the enemy lines, killing several per attack.  Rob's Winterguard used ranged combo attack and then his Manhunter charged the defiler on that side and wrecked it before it had a chance to shoot.
Things went from bad to worse on our left flank.  You can see below the Bane Knights have advanced over the fence and are cutting through Matt's Greylord Ternion and my Winterguard don't have long to live. We deployed Andrew's Kossite Woodmen at that point to help, (the green guys) however their bows did not fair real well agaist the high armor.  In the center the shocktroopers soaked up the damage and were quite awesome overall.  They killed their share but also kept them at bay for Andrew's Greylord Ternion to line up another round of devistating frostbite sprays.

We decided to send Jared's Doom Reavers around the back, but they took to long to get around and the battle was largely over before they made it.

After finishing off the guys in front of them, the shocktroopers formed up to take on the charge from our crumbling left flank.  Again they withstood the considerable damage output from the Bane Knights and held the line for the Greylord Ternion to do their thing.

 After the battle the villagers were very happy...

That is at least until Jared's Doom Reavers realized the battle was over and they didn't get to kill anything...