Hordes of the Things battle report

In addition to playing Song of Blades and Heroes last Tuesday, I also got in a game of Hordes of the Things, using what has to be my favorite army, my skeletons (repurposed 20-year-old Warhammer minis).  My opponent once again was da Baron, who brought out his Scorpions of Dirz (Confrontation prepaints).  Again: no camera; used phone; crappy pictures; apologies:

I won the roll, so da Baron was the defender and got to set up the terrain.  Since his army had four warbands, four shooters, and a beasts element (in addition to a behemoth and a hero general), he decided to put lots of bad going (woods) on the table to make things hard for my spears and artillery. (Y'know, now that I think about it, and looking at these pictures, I think he actually had 26 army points worth of elements on the board instead of the standard 24 AP.):

My opponent naturally had some great PIP rolls the first few turns, and his beasts, shooters, and warbands went through the forest like it wasn't even there, eventually chewing up my right flank and destroying two elements of shooters.  My lurker, however (that's him in the top left of the photo), did manage to destroy one of the enemy's elements in my first bound--and more importantly, was able to exert a zone of control against the behemoth and later the hero general, preventing them from moving away from that element (a technique known as Barkering, after one of the rules' authors):

Since my magician general was in danger from enemies in the woods, I decided to get him out of there--and into range of the enemy hero general.  Before the spellcaster could attempt to shrivel the hero's testicles (my favorite spell in HotT), he had to fight off attacks from the front and side--which he did, destroying the warband to his front and recoiling the element on his flank:

The spell didn't work, so I decided to risk my general in close combat with the opposing leader.  This was risky--heroes and magicians get along like Republicans and Democrats: when they go toe-to-toe, only one of them will end up walking away.  However, I just couldn't play it safe, so I moved forward and risked the game on a single die roll.  The result was not what I expected:

To sum it up: a nice (and rare) win for me, and a frustrating loss for da Baron.  Still, I think he has the better win-loss record overall.  It was a good time, and a nice way to finish a rare evening of gaming.