Handful of Points Escalation League: Session Two

Another month, another exciting day of gaming here at the HoD offices. This month saw the Handful of Points Escalation League go from 500 points up to 750 points, which means new and exciting goodies (and baddies) in our armies. If you haven’t read our article about our first session, you can find it here. I was also able to get my hands on the new General’s Handbook, which increased the number of battleplans we could use to a whopping twelve, and gave us the new seasonal mechanics for Galletian Champions.

Last month, my Chosen stormed to victory against two opponents before finally falling to a volley or mortal wounds and aelf nonsense. My Daemon Prince was also there. This time I doubled my army size.

I was excited to try both the Theridons since they read like absolute blenders on the page, and the new Galletian Champion mechanics courtesy of my Chaos Lord. The basic idea remained from last week, but this time with more friends; the prince would be joined by Khornate Theridons on one flank, while the Chaos Lord would take his Chosen bodyguards on the other. Once again I was counting on the small points limit protecting my units as much as their own stats and well…let’s see how that went shall we?

Escalation League Round One: Slaves to Darkness vs Soulblight Gravelords

That’s right folks, the first game of month two would be against the same opponent as month one. This time Arron had made his force considerably scarier by including some Blood Knights. I’ve encountered Blood Knights before and they can absolutely wreck shop if allowed free reign to move as they please, I was not going to let that happen.

The battleplan for our game was The Prize of Gallet, an interesting game that gives a small bonus to the player going second in that they get to choose which of the five objectives on the board becomes scorable until they all are by round five. We did not get to round five.

Arron got the first turn because of his one-drop deployment and, after a cheeky mortal wound to my Lord from magic in the hero phase, surged up the board to claim the only active objective and put his Blood Knights in range to charge my Theridons. Fortune smiled on me however, and the knights failed their charge even after rerolls. My turn. The Theridons and Prince moved up to be in position to surround the knights during the charge phase, while my Chosen moved up to be able to charge the skeletons sitting on the objective. All my charges were successful, and after some command ability mortal wounds to chip away the enemy, the massacre began.

I starting to suspect that the units in Slaves to Darkness may be undercosted as they are, because what followed was in no way fair to poor Arron. On the right, my Daemon Prince fought first because of his artefact and slew a blood knight; the Theridons followed up immediately afterwards to take out another three, leaving the Kastellan on his own. On the left, the Chosen took no damage from the skeletons before wiping them out. It was at this point that we both noticed the Chosen had charged in such a way to drag in both Belladamma and the other unit of skeletons into combat, and so declared that the Chosen would fight again at the end of the phase.

Belladamma had more success, taking a wound off one of the Chosen before she too was felled in one swoop. After I won the roll off for Round 2, the Chosen cleaned up the other unit of skeletons (again in one round of punching) and the Theridons cleaned up the Kastellan much easier than last turn once I realised I was using the wrong weapon profile. By the end of my turn all that Arron had left was Duvalle and the Crimson Court, who were slowly but surely losing a war of attrition with the Daemon Prince, so we called it.

Escalation League Round Two: Slaves to Darkness vs Ironjawz

Your eyes do not deceive you readers, that’s a Maw-krusha in a 750 point game. Matt assured me this was a meme list, but that big cabbage still had me afeared.

The battleplan for this second and last game of the day was Only the Worthy, wherein Galletian Champions trump all other units for holding objectives; given our armies however, holding objectives was never an option. I’ve encountered Ironjawz before, and they quite frankly terrify me, their combined speed and damage output can easily end a game as quickly as its begun and I was worried about the same happening here. And it did, kind of.

Matt got the first turn and moved up his army in the hero phase with a command ability before moving it a little bit more in the actual movement phase, making successful charges a certainty. The pigs rammed into my Theridons and scored a couple of mortal wounds, while the Maw-krusha landed next to my Daemon Prince for a titanic duel between monsters.

The Daemon Prince got to strike first, and actually did enough damage to bracket the Maw-Krusha, which meant that he survived the attacks back with one wound remaining! On the other side of the field, I activated the Theridons and, now that they were using the correct weapon profile, did fifteen damage to the Gore-Gruntas before they could attack, wiping them out. Back with the big guy, my Chosen were in engagement range and their disgusting damage kept on flowing as they finished off the Megaboss and his ride.

On my turn, with only the Shaman remaining in Matt’s army, my Lord and Chosen charged him and removed him from the field. All of that in one round. Honestly I felt a little bad for both my opponents, but they were good sports about the whole thing and everyone had some amount of fun. Next month our armies will be increasing to a nice, round 1000 points and you know what that means? A second unit of Chosen.

Did you enjoy this update on our escalation league? Let us know in the comments! If you want to support the site you could always tip us a bit of change to feed our plastic crack habit, or get some great deals on wargaming and table top gaming products through our Element Games referral link. They have great offers on Age of Sigmar and a wide range of other Warhammer and accessories if you want to start your own escalation league. Make sure you’re following us on Instagram to stay up to date and get involved in our community by sharing pictures of your projects with us!