Exploring Warhammer Legendary Battles

Given my terrain work lately I thought it would be a good time to explore the Warhammer Legendary Battles rules which came in out in White Dwarf 339. The rules look pretty good but really seemed designed for games even bigger that we are going to attempt. We'll be following the basic rules for Army selection, allies and deployment. It will also be an objective based game rather than one based on standard victory points. We won't be using massed batteries or desperation tokens, as we are all capable of doing 3000 point per team member so it will be 6K per side so those things wont be neccessary. Each players army will follow the 3K Army Organization Chart and there are some special rules for allied armies including you still only get 2 magic dice for the combined army so you need to budget your magic slightly better and one player's lord must be nominated as the "Army General" and his leadership will effect everyone on the allied team and will count as the Army General for objective scoring

The table layout is 4x8 and 4x4 connected by a bridge. (which isn't in the photo's I am currently working on it) we will seperate the tables into three sections. The Village, The Forests, and The Wastes., each section is a 4x4 section of play space. The Forces of Good, in our case it will be the Empire and The Wood Elves. Will deploy in the Village section, While the Forces of Evil will deploy in the Wastes and not within 8 inches of the bridge. So far it looks the Evil forces will be the Vampire Counts and either Chaos Mortals or Orcs and Goblins.


( The 4 X 8 Section of table, the Forest area is in the foreground, the Village in the rear, the Wastes are to the left, the bridge will be dead center connecting the two tables the gap between tables will be about 6 inches.)

The bridge only allows 20mm sized figures to be in a unit 4 wide as they cross it, meaning most infantry units are going to have reform, cross and reform again. While crossing the bridge will slow down units moving into the forest area coming from the wastes. It will also be easier to defend the bridge as units fighting on the bridge will not get their rank bonus and thus single characters will be capable of defending or holding the bridge alone. I feel the bridge as set up is balanced obstacle for both sides.

The Forest Area is neutral territory the Watchtower is capturable and one of the games minor objectives. Each player will be allowed to keep 250 points of units in reserve and reserve units are deployed anywhere in your home quarter per standard rules of a unit coming in from "off the table" Capturing the watchtower is also crucial to using your reserves as once you capture the Watchtower, you can deploy your reserves from anywhere from inside or within 6 inches of the Watchtower.


( The Wastes section of the table and where the forces of Evil will deploy, the craters will be difficult terrain and the crater interiors are treated exactly like forests for line of sight and cover purposes)

Scouts can deploy anywhere in the enemy's or your own deployment zone, and must follow standard deployment rules for scouts. Line of sight for shooting and magic is limited to seeing thru all three sections of the table, so you cannot shoot over the table edge into either the village or wastes without going thru a forest edge. Flyers on the other hand can go direct edge to edge from the Village or Wastes fly off the table into the opposing quarter as long as they have the move.

The games objectives will be as follows, rules for controlling a feature as per the rulebook

Major Objectives-
(you have controlled this feature for 2 consective turns or at the end of the game)

Capture the Village Center, Destroy the Tavern - 4 points (Evil objective)

Capture and Destroy the Obelisk- 4 points (Good objective)

Minor Objectives

Control the Watchtower at the end of the game- 2 points

Control the Bridge at the end of the game- 2 points

Captured enemy table quarters in either the Village or the Wastes 1 point each (4 per side)


Battle Objectives-

Enemy General Slain- 3 points
most expensive enemy unit is destroyed or fleeing at the end of the game- 2 points
Captured Enemy Banners- 1 point each


The are a good amount of objective points available so it should be a fun and flexible game, The games length will be either the first team to score at least 10 objective points within 6 fulls turns or go to 8 turns and call the game with whatever points are scored. Given the numerous objectives and the need to both attack your enemies and defend your own deployments zones, this looks game looks to be very tactically challenging. I am really looking forward to this and we are tentatively scheduled for either May 24th or 31st. Everyone playing is fielding mostly painted armies, so look forward to a massive battle reports with tons of great pics when this is done.