Waaaay back in the early 90s when Warhammer Fantasy Battle 4th edition (the best edition) came out, I got the boxed set, and like many people, played the scenario that came with it - the Battle for Maugthrond Pass. Also like many people, we (as my best friend Le Coq Fou mentioned) frantically glued all the plastic goblins and elves and had to use the cardboard cutout "standees" to represent the cool units and characters like High Elf Prince Eltharion on Stormwing, the repeater bolt thrower, the Orc shaman Blacktooth riding the Wyvern, the stone thrower, and of course, Grom the Paunch. With a bedsheet draped over some books for hills and a paper cutout template to represent the woods, we thought wargaming couldn't get any better.
Some 30+ years later, I realized that I now owned all of the actual miniatures for those cardboard standees and, even more surprising, I had finished painting them. The only thing left to paint was a few high elf archers and spearmen. All the goblins were painted, too (technically they were night goblins from the Skull Pass boxed set and a few oldhammer metal goblin archers, but good enough).
It was time to refight that scenario with fully painted armies on a real wargaming table.
Here's a summary of the refight and a photodump. The scenario was surprisingly balanced and a lot of fun. Staggering the elf reinforcement arrivals certainly helped, as did delaying Etharion's arrival until Turn 5. Any earlier and he probably would have wiped the field. For the sake of fun, we adjusted a few unfortunate early die rolls (like the stone thrower misfiring and destroying itself on turn 1!), and tweaked a few rules near the end to keep the cinematic effect going.
(Click the picture for larger image)
Overhead shot from a different angle than the map. Use the directional arrows to re-orient...
Thronduin's guard patrolling the village. They can't move until the warning beacon is lit. Neither can the elf archer reinforcements.
The goblin horde, led by Grom, emerge from the early morning mists of the forest.
The Orc Shaman Blacktooth managed to get some pretty good spells.
The main goblin spearmen unit ignore the watchtower and march as quickly as possible to the village before the warning beacon can be lit.
After the first elf was killed trying to light the beacon himself, 3 more elves ran down together
The orc stonethrower crew estimated the distance perfectly to nail the bolt thrower, but their accuracy was a little off....and instead had a direct hit on the goblin spearmen!
4 gobbos squashed by a stone. oops.
Blacktooth, after spending a turn to successfully extract the power of the magic Standing Stone and charge up the Black Amulet (victory points!), he cast Da Krunch, summoning Gork's foot (or was it Mork??) to flatten half of the elf archers. The promptly failed their panic check and fled.
By now, the warning beacon was lit, so the archer reinforcements began to enter the battlefield. But it was too late for the smaller spearmen guard unit. Grom charged the unit and wiped them out, then angled into the village to lend support to the goblin spearmen who had charged the larger guard unit (Thronduin's Guard). The supporting elf archer unit failed their panic check from the nearby destruction of the other spearmen unit had nowhere to go, boxed in by Blacktooth.
Turn 5, Eltharion has arrived to "save the day". He almost did...
This battle was epic. Eltharion charged, and the Sword of Teclis did it's damage - killing Blacktooth. But the Black Amulet was still able to bounce a few wounds back onto Eltharion, ALMOST killing him. On the next turn, Eltharion eliminated the wyvern who was loyally standing guard over the dead body of his master.
Meanwhile, Thronduin's guard routed the goblin spearmen, but didn't catch them - this left their rear flank exposed to a charge from Grom...who was also charged simultaneously by Eltharion (i forget how we got into this situation, but it was legit)
Anyway, for fun we decided to have the chariot attack (and the wolves) count against the high elf spearmen, but then have Grom and Eltharion fight each other as a challenge. We resolved everything simultaneously, and Grom managed to kill Eltharion (he only had one wound left...), and the chariot attack just murdered 75% of the elf spearmen unit, who was run down by the chariot after the fled.
The final overhead shot. We counted up the victory points, and the Goblins won 25-11! A resounding victory.
My son and I had a blast playing this scenario. It definitely helped that we tried to make decisions in keeping with the "narrative play" instead of the absolute best tactical/game rules decision. For example, with only 1 wound left, risking 10 victory points by having Eltharion charge Grom was not the best idea (it basically won the game for the Goblins), but there was no way that Eltharion was passing up a chance to battle his arch enemy and try to repel the Goblin lord. Plus, this is Herohammer - the characters are destined to fight each other!
Hope to have some more refights over the remaining holidays of 2023.
