Spearhead - The Taming of the Trees

The mortal humans were cutting down trees in a sacred grove without the Sylvaneth's consent. The Sylvaneth were, understandably, angered by this... and slaughtered the entire logging party. A force of Stormcast Eternals under Lord Vigilant Thadeos Doursoul was sent forth to impress upon the Sylvaneth that straight-up murdering the humans was just not cool... 

This past Wednesday, Amanda and I played a game of Spearhead. She took her usual Sylvaneth Bitterbark Copse spearhead force. I took the Anvils of the Heldenhammer - Viglant Brotherhood Spearhead. 

Sylvaneth and Stormcast eternals are both forces of Order and would normally be allies and NOT fight each other... but occasionally the Sylvaneth DO get particularly irate about humans cutting down trees in Ghyran, especially in an area that has not been agreed upon and their dispensing of justice can be swift and brutal! I thought it not entirely unlikely that a group of Stormcast Eternals be dispatched to treat with an enraged group of Sylvaneth and it coming to blows... 

I was the attacker... but, given the background we'd come up with, I probably should have let Amanda go first... angry Sylvaneth... Stormcast Eternals just defending themselves... 

Alas.. 

Words were clearly not getting across to the Sylvaneth, and so make their point perfectly clear, Lord Vigilant Thadeos Doursoul and the Pprosecutors moved left to strike the right end of the Sylvaneth line, hoping to avoid the Treelord and the Branchwych leading the group and seize what they thought might be a soulpod grove and shock the Sylvaneth into pausing and listening. 

The Tree-revenants fought bitterly, but were no match for the heavily armoured Stormcast and were nearly wiped out... 

The Liberators moved a little more slowly and took up a position opposite the middle of the Sylvaneth line. 

The Treelord steped behind the ruin in the wood and seemed to magically appear behind the Stormcast lines... it harried the Liberators with long roots, but did not charge into combat, as they expected it might! 

The Branchwych and Kurnoth Hunters moved to engage the Stormcast on their right. The Kurnoth Hunters great bows were deadly accurate and one of the prosecutors was cut down and another injured. 

The Branchwych led the Kurnoth in a charge to reclaim the grove... The Branchwych was incapacitated in the ensuing melee. 

The Liberators joined in and the last of the Tree-Revenants were taken out. The last of the Kurnothi would fight to the bitter end, refusing to listen to reason. They sold themselve dearly, and took down the last two Prosecutors. 

Lord-Veritant Shandra Moongheist took up a position behind the Lord Vigilant and the Prosecutors, keeping an eye out for flanking Sylvaneth. 

Reinforcements for the Sylvaneth arrived in the form of MORE Tree-Revenants behind the Stormcast lines... 

The Treelord lumbered through the woods circling in the distance. Seemingly ignoring the plight of the Kurnoth... 

Prosecutor reinforcements arrived and the Lord Vigilant lead the charge across the field of battle to deal with the Treelord... 

The Lord Vigilant and the Prosecutors attacked the mighty treelord from two sides... 

I had some just CrAzY rolls... because the Lord Vigilant used his "Plan the Attack" ability and designated the objective the Treelord was standing on as the target of the ability (+1 to hit any enemy contesting the objective for the rest of the turn), the Lord Vigilant was hitting on 2+... anything but a one would hit... also, because I'd selected Morda's Talon as my general's Enhancement, he also had Crit (mortals) - any six caused mortal wounds, no rolling for wounding, no saves... So that's two ones, and three sixes... two missed, three crit mortals dealing six damage!? 

After the Treelord was knocked to the ground and encouraged to not get up again, the Lord Vigilant charged off to secure another location of importance to the Sylvaneth and with units dominating the wood... they would HAVE to stop and heed the Stormcast warnings... 

Yikes... 

As a final gesture of defiance, the remaining group of Tree-Revenants sliped through the spirit paths to retake one of the groves... but the gesture was meaningless... the Stormcast had clearly exerted their mastery of the realm. Both the Lord Vigilant and Lord Veritant gave their oath that words would be had with the humans of the nearby settlements and it would be clearly explained which woods were allowed to be harvested (as long as the appropriate rites to Alarielle the Everqueen were preformed), and in turn, the Sylvaneth promised not to harm the humans anymore...

So I won my second game of Spearhead (out of TWENTY played...). The final score was 23-14 for the Stormcast Eternals. Taking out the Branchwych early in the game was pretty HUGE as she has a LOT of healing power that can bring back Kurnothi and heal the Treelord as it takes wounds keeping it around to deal so much damage... The 3+ save for ALL of the Stormcast sure helped!  

I'm going to try and finish up the Maggotkin of Nurgle Bleak Host before our next game, as that is a classic Age of Sigmar match-up, Sylvaneth and the servants of Nurgle fighting in Ghyran! 

I LOVE the new mat! I wish ALL of the spearhead battleboards were mats like this instead of the folding cardboard ones...