ME Campaign 2 - Turn 5 - Dark elves vs Vampire counts

This is a Battle for the pass scenario, hence the narrow battlefield. Luckily it is only a 2000 points battle so both armies should have enough space to manouver.

Deployment - Dark elves

This is the dark elves' right flank. There is a huge spearman unit and a cold one chariot. We also wanted to give some credit to our tape measure, without its help all of this would all be very messed up hobby.

The center and left flank of the dark elf army consists of a unit of cold one knights, a manticore with some sinister guy atop of it, some witch elves, a unit of warriors that seem to have repeater crossbows, but judging from the deep formation they're deployed in, they probably are just substitutes for spearmen.

Deployment - Vampires

From right to left: Fell bats, black knights, Varghulkfhhh, skeleton warriors, big horde of grave guard and a smaller horde of ghouls.

...and a neat picture of the whole battlefield. I have absolutely no idea what the bright light in the middle of the table is. Probably some magical kind of terrain.

Turn 1

The cold ones fail their stupidity test and the rest of the army slows down to let them keep up. The manticore skips around the back of the field, waiting for something to happen.

The Varghuplfdg probably gets dance macabre:d and manages to get a charge off on the chariot (or he might have done it all by himself, he's pretty forta bilar), and scares it away. The rest of the undead lumbers forward, as they usually do.

Turn 2

The dark elves don't seem to care that they are marching into charge range of the undead. Or they might all just have failed their charges.

A view of the other side of the table. The crossbowmen have killed a lot of ghouls but the witch elves might be in for some trouble.

Turn 3

Where did all the elves go? The witch elves cut up some grave guard but got run down. The large spearman unit met the same fate (got chased away by the fell bats and black knights it seems) and the few remaining cold one knights are running for their lives. The chariot and manticore have dealt with the Varghurylfg at least, so from now on my spelling will be flawless.

In the meantime the crossbowmen have stomped the ghoul unit into the ground. Might not be enough to win this battle though.

The rest

The dark elves are not giving up, charging the manticore into the grave guard. It eats quite a few of them but gets counter-charged by the skeleton warriors. The crossbowmen somehow managed to sneak up behind the undead. The cold ones are preoccupied fighting a very annoying and lonely fell bat.

In the last round the grave guard have been severly decimated, caught between manticore, crossbowmen, knights and chariot. in 7th edition of Warhammer this would have meant a lot of victory points for the elves, but in 8th it means nothing unless the whole unit is dead. Meanwhile the crossbowmen have broken and run off and the black knights have arrived to finish the job. An obvious massacre win for the Vampire counts.