Battle Report: The Death of Gnarlok

This weekend, I played another narrative battle using my "Stuff of Legends" battleplan.  I played Nurgle, taking my new Epidemius counts-as, "Larvulous", for a spin.  My brother brought his Brayherds, as per usual (although this time, he was using these fun fan-made Brayherd allegiance abilities).

In this battle, we rolled a 6 for our Objective, so since we're both Chaos, we had an altar at the center of the battlefield that was damned terrain.  Nurgle's motivation was to scout the altar (move near it and roll well), while the Brayherds decided to attempt to Raze the altar, which is normally Destruction's motivation, but when you roll a 6, you can choose any motivation appropriate to your army, the faction tags aren't restrictions so much as guidelines (it's your story!).

We decided that Gorfax (the Beastlord on Chariot, also general) was still working towards his goal of becoming the Everbray, but this time, he needed to stop Larvulous from doing a nasty ritual that would spoil his chances.  Funny enough, Gorfax wasn't the one who made off with the Relics in the last battle (Rise of the Everbray).  Gnarlok the Flenser, lowly Wargor Battle Standard Bearer, is the Neville to Gorfax's Harry.  Gnarlok is the true chosen one, not that Gorfax needed to know that.

In this battle, the Honor and Glory dice played a huge part.  It was once again a low objective battle (we have not had more than 2 objectives on the battlefield yet out of 3 games), so Victory Dice were a hot commodity.  On the bottom of Turn 1, Nurgle offered the Brayherds 2 Honor and Glory dice to not charge.  The Brayherds took the offer, putting them 2 dice up on turn 1.

During the battle, Nurgle managed to scout the altar on 3 of 4 turns, while systematically wiping out all of the Herd's units.  The Plague Drones are really nasty when they're within range of a Nurgle Hero.  The Brayherds only managed to set the altar ablaze on Turn 2, and when it guttered out on Turn 3, it was never re-lit.

At the end of the battle, when Nurglings managed to charge seven inches to Gnarlok, and inflict seven wounds, Nurgle decided that this was an auspicious day, and awarded the third Honor and Glory dice.  Gnarlok was slain by the Nurglings, and we both agreed that the battle was over.  When we rolled our Victory Dice (both of us had a total of 4), the Brayherd was victorious.  It turned out that this was Gnarlok's plan all along.  Gnarlok had learned that to become the Everbray, he needed to be slain so that he could be reborn in his new form.  So I think next time we battle, we'll have to find some way to work in his resurrection and ascension.