Stomping All-Comers! (Sons of Behemat vs. Forces of Order AOS Battle Report)

Blackhole Wargamers, 04 June 2022

3,000pt Age of Sigmar game

Dan – Sons of Behemat, Stomper Tribe

vs.

Tris (Idoneth Deepkin), Tom (Stormcast Eternals) & Phil (Kharadron Overlords and Gotrek Gurnisson)

Battleplan – Feral Foray (General’s Handbook 2021)

Previous - Stormcast Eternals try to stop Mighty Magbragog!

 

It is almost exactly one year (to the day!) that the giants last stomped forth to battle the Stormcast Eternals. I'm not sure what they've been doing in the interlude, but the Tribe's ranks have swelled - doubled in size, in fact! 

We decided it would be fun to put a load of giants on the table (3,000 pts worth) and see if a combined force of 3 players could take them out... so far, the Sons of Behemat, led my Warstomper Magbragog Maneater, have stomped all before them - starting with some Kharadron Overlords in their flying machines, followed up by tasty Beastmen snacks, and most recently the Stormcast Eternals. They seem to be fairly unstoppable, but I'm sure they will come up against something that will test them. One day. For this game, Phil had said that he would bring Gotrek Gurnisson - he actually claimed that Gotrek could take all the giants on single-handed, but just in case they decided to bring some back-up. You know, in case Gotrek was a bit hungover or something. 

I brought along everything from the tribe that was assembled - unfortunately not all painted. I do have a Bonegrinder and one more Mancrusher to assemble, which will bring the entire tribe up to around 3,600 points... a real trouble-causing tribe of enormous monsters to make the ground tremble! For now, we kept it to 3,000 points, which would hopefully be manageable on a Saturday morning. 

I also brought along my temple terrain to give us something exciting to fight over, as bringing that many giants clearly wasn't enough to carry! I also had one of my Deep Cut Studios gaming mats to play on - this one is generic enough to work for a whole bunch of game systems, I really like them. Element Games stocks these mats (check them out here), which is good as the shipping from Europe can be a bit expensive buying them direct.     

Magbragog’s Stomper Tribe (2,905 pts)

Footsloggers Core Battalion  

Magbragog Maneater

(Warstomper Mega-Gargant, General, Monstrously Tough & Ironweld Cestus – 470pts)

The Stompy Brothers – Fat Glurg, Dronk Stonty-Stomper & Grumbog Aleguzzler

(Mancrusher Gargants, Battleline – 475pts)

Wanderers of Albion – Bruinen the Wise, Cachtorr & Bologs One-eye

(Mancrusher Gargants, Battleline – 475pts)

Bosses of the Stomp Core Battalion  

Tarbag Dragon-Smasher

(Gatebreaker Mega-Gargant – 525pts)

Odler the Colossus

(Kraken-Eater Mega-Gargant, The Arcane Tome – 490pts)

Hrothgar Icebreath

(Warstomper Mega-Gargant – 470pts) 

Prelude 

Magbragog bellowed at the tribe, getting them moving forwards. The flashy lightning king and his merry followers had been taking far too many liberties, encroaching on territory that by rights belonged to the Sons of Behemat and scaring off the beasts that he and his brethren fed on. This would not stand. Magbragog Maneater was a mighty Warstomper, a Mega-Gargant of incredible size and voracious appetite. He would lead the other gargants in an orgy of slaughter and take back their land from the occupiers. He licked his lips as he saw the opposing army. Fortunately, this time it wasn't just Stormcast - that was good news, there wasn't any proper eating in those tin cans. He saw some armoured stunties and some pointy eared elves riding on fish. Odler the Colossus, the Kraken-Eater who had recently joined the tribe, stank of fish. It wasn't most appealing to Magbragog, but he would make do with a seafood meal this time. 

The Battle

The Battleplan 'Feral Foray' encourages moving up to destroy the opponent's objectives, while protecting your own from their attempts to take them. Moving forwards to smash things? Yes, that feels right. Hanging back to protect parts of the battlefield from the pipsqueaks? Not so much. But, with a huge wall of flesh stomping forwards, I was fairly confident that the combined forces of Order would struggle to get past my lads to cause trouble anyway. Besides, my Sons of Behemat were far more concerned with pulping the enemy than doing anything so pedestrian as 'tactics'. 

The opposing forces of Order and Destruction

The Sons of Behemat deployed as far forwards
as possible, eager to get to grips with their
lunch. I mean, opposition 

Magbragog and Bruinen looking across the battlefield

The Idoneth deploy behind some standing
stones - like that's going to protect them! 

Calm before the storm

The game was a lot of fun. I didn't manage to record a blow-by-blow account as there were too many giants with too many things to hit, I couldn't keep up! On the left flank, the three towering Mega Gargants (Tarbag, Odler and Hrothgar) were too much for the Kharadron to deal with, but they ended up in a titanic battle with Gotrek, son of Gurni, famed slayer from the World That Was. He really was a total beast in combat (rightly so!). Ultimately, he couldn't stand up to three enormous giants, but he gave it a good shot - it would have been an epic Doom to record, if only Felix Jaegar was still around to do so.  

On the other flank, Magbragog led his Mancrushers against the Idoneth Deepkin and Stormcast Eternals. The Stormcast had some success with their big burly hammer boys, but ultimately they couldn't do enough damage to take the giants down before they were jumping up and down all over their bloodied corpses. Sheer brutality and strength won the day. The gargants probably took some of the objectives too, but that was almost as an afterthought! 

Aftermath

Magbragog pulled another spear from his side, wincing as he did so. Those little pipsqueaks had poked and prodded him relentlessly - it had really started to get irritating. He glared down at the mashed armour of a Stormcast Eternal on the ground beside him and pummelled it with the flat of his hand a few times, grinding it into the dirt for good measure before picking the corpse up and flinging it away into the distance. That made him feel a bit more cheerful. 

Dronk Stunty-Stomper was still moaning about not being able to fight the flying stunties because Odler, Tarbag and Hrothgar had already killed them all. 

"Shut up wiv your belly-aching!" yelled Magbragog as he shoved the smaller giant backwards, causing him to fall into one of the ancient pillars and knock it to the ground where it smashed into rubble. Dronk picked himself up as the other Mancrushers guffawed loudly. 

It had been a pretty good fight, and at least now there was plenty to eat. Odler was stuffing his face with the fishy mounts the pale elves had been riding on, the Kraken Eater clearly enjoying himself. Magbragog was more keen on the taste of dwarf, so stomped over to where Tarbag and Hrothgar were poking through the ruins of the Kharadron Skyfleet. It turned out they were looking for a little orange haired pipsqueak who had caused them all sorts of trouble with his magic axe, but they couldn't find his body anywhere. Magbragog had heard Odler complaining about how painful that axe had been, between mouthfuls of elvish calamari, so he was interested in seeing this dwarf as well. But he was nowhere to be found. Strange. Surely he couldn't have survived all three gargants jumping on him? Well, if he had, it would certainly be interesting to find him again, maybe he would be able to give Magbragog a good fight one of these days. For now, he let the Tribe pick over the spoils of battle. There would be more pipsqueaks to fight another day. There always were.