Tales of the Arabyan Nights Part II

Chris has offered not to play for a bit, but as someone said recently, we really aren't about the win/loss record. Especially since all we have is a loss record
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The Ancient Battlefield
Leaving the carnage of the Blood Shrine leads the warbands directly to a site of ancient slaughter.  As night falls, the sound of eerie chanting blends with what sound like the screams of thousands...

[Jim L rolled a 2, which is 'your choice of scenarios 3-11".  He was hoping to mine experience by taking down lowly skeletons...the best laid plans "gang aft agley."]

It is a cold dark night in the Great Desert.  The Nomads have brought a torch to light their way.  The flickering light reveals two guardians...




Fortunately for the Nomads, the Red Warlock III and the Turjuk have other fish to fry. No arrows fly out the dark to seek the torch-lit Nomads.

Mad Hassan draws the attention of 2 guardians...


The Purple One begins his own 'mining' expedition by munching down the bones of a swordsman...




The Nomads charge!


The Ghostly Beastmen and the Magister destroy another archer


And the Winged Terror gets in on the fun.


Somewhere in here Jim L's choice of scenario is vindicated as a skeleton takes a Kult minion out of action!  (Something the Arabyans haven't done for a couple of games...)

The Kult is sending 6 models to deal with the Turjuk, (really just the Purple One).




The Nomad version of the Glorious Charge!  Again with the rubber weapons...


The Glorious Charge is supported by at least 5 BS4 archers and one mage.  Note the lack of casualties being removed...


Nomads fall to the counter-charge


The Purple One reaches the Turjuk


The Turjuk are battling skeletons and the Purple Prince...


Skeletons ambush the minions


And attack the Magister


The Purple one is temporarily checked by failure to roll a 3...




More Nomads pile on


In real life, the hour grows late... The Nomads have lost enough warriors to flee, so they do.

The Turjuk have bled heroes as usual.  Mad Hassan falls before a skeleton swordsman. The Turjuk flee!

The Killer Kult win again, though there is no treasure, just the satisfaction of a job well done.

The Nomads flee into the desert.  Khalid and Daoud appear to be near death, but the Nomads arrive at the Oasis of the Djinn in exploration.  The healing waters revive the warriors.  Replenished the Nomads continue on to Al Haikk to trade.  The Nomads gain +2 underdog bonus.

The Turjuk may have survived with no deaths, or I may just have missed the roll.  Either way Mad Hassan is robbed by the spirits of the Ancient Battlefield!  Fortunately he has remounts as the Turjuk have 3 or 4 extra horses, though his paper armor and rubber sword are lost.  The Turjuk gain another +3 underdog bonus or so.

None of the Kult die, but at least a few were out of action...  The Kult withdraw to the back alleys of Al Haikk to plot more devilment...

As noted above the campaign has gotten to be a contest for which Possessed can put the most models out of action.  We are going to play on for the last weeks of July at least.  A new campaign cycle in Mordheim will start up after GenCon.

The games continue to be a visual treat. GREAT STUFF!

I agree, the close up of the Nomad charge especially reveals a lovely looking warband! It seems I've fallen a few reports behind, time to catch up.

Thank you very much for the kind comments.
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Tales of the Arabyan Nights--A Riot in the Thieves Quarter

The temples have been denouncing the infidel. They are called unbelievers, usurers, sorcerers, defilers of virgins.  All men are encouraged to scourge the filth from the town.  Already a huge crowd has gathered to see what the Faithful do to punish the heathen. The residents of the area are fled or barricaded in their homes...

The warbands are drawn to a ferangi neighborhood of the Thieves Quarter.  The Arabyans come to cleanse and purge.  The Kult, to loot.

[Once again we are play testing a new scenario.  The idea is to move the scenario Wyrdstone Hunt to an urban area.  The cover of a riot allows the warbands to indulge in looting, mayhem and arson.]

The Turjuk win the right to set up first.  


The Nomads occupied the south side of the neighborhood.


The Kult set up last.  However the section they set up on is the best for exploiting the loot available...


The Kult set up last, but won the initiative.  The Kult's archers may be less skilled, but the arrows panic the 'invisible crowd' that had gathered to watch the infidel suffer.

The Turjuk are inconvenienced by the rampaging crowd


Immediately newly promoted mamluk Ismail IV and one of his comrades begin to beat down the door of one of the hovels.


The beginning of the second turn.  The Kult claim glowy green loot!




The Nomads prepare to deploy rubber arrows and bullets.  The Nomad scout thinks there is something interesting about that barrel by the building...





Khalid and Daoud continue to live dangerously.  They are attempting to batter down that invisible door...


The street is ripe for conflict






Jamal II has learned to ride just in time...


The Battle of the Stair


The foul Magister is out of action!


Elsewhere, Ismail IV bursts into the hovel to find it is occupied!




Back to the Battle on the Stair




The crowd has fled, so the Nomads redeploy.  Rubber bullets and arrows continue to fly


Salla and Abu the Monkey man are trying to force those open shutters...open


The Red Warlock III is keeping the Nomad warband at bay...


A fight between Kult Beasts and  Turjuk townsmen...




Meanwhile Khalid and Daoud break into a hovel and discover hidden Imperial soldiers!








Fewer mounted Turjuk heroes


A sniper of dubious loyalty.  The mamluk on the roof kept giving in to the Lure of Chaos


Meanwhile this BS5 guy is firing rubber arrows into Ghostly Beasts


And so is this guy, the Turjuk Emir...


The Scholar has brought his magic flaming sword to subdue WS2 townsmen...




But the Pouting Girl kills Ismail IV


Fewer mounted Turjuks on The Stair


The Townsmens' last charge


To the last horsman




The Turjuks FLEEE!!! With 4 heroes out of action as usual.
The Kult had been broken for a couple of turns, but the evil ones were not bothered by mere leadership tests.

The entire Nomad warband has fought the Red Warlock III and 2 brethren.  Now the rest of the story...




The Freelance Knight is fighting the Purple One (on the Nomad flank...)


The swordsman failed a fear test


So they broke the shutters, but could not climb in the window...


The lads on the roof were 'helping' the freelance knight


The battle would end when all warbands but one routed or if the Caliph's army arrived to restore order.  On turn 6 the soldiers arrived and drove the warbands from the field.  The Killer Kult win by virtue of all the treasure they looted.

The Turjuk flee with 4 heroes and 3 townsmen out of action.  LGT mamluk Ismail IV was killed by the Pouting Girl in his first battle. Askar 'Mad' Hassan was killed by the Winged Terror on The Stair.


Jamal II has to miss the next game due to being hacked up by mutants (also on The Stair).  The Pouting Girl defended her treasure to the end, thus the Turjuk gain no extra income.  The Turjuk gain +4 underdog bonus. If we see the Turjuk again, they will have only 8 warriors (4 heroes)...

The Nomads gained one treasure.   Daoud III is killed by the Freelance Knight.  The Nomads make a lucky find in exploration and the Lamp of the Djinn provides the Djinn Binder a Genie Hired Sword.  The Nomads gain +3 underdog bonus.

The Killer Kult gain 4 of the 8 possible treasures.  One brethren dies out of the 8 or 9 warriors out of action.  The Magister fights a Pit Fight.

That was a confusing, but attractive game. GOOD STUFF!

Thank you Al!
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Tales of the Arabyan Nights--To Catch a Thief

We took the week of Gen Con off.  So we met this past Thursday to playtest another multi-player scenario:  this one based on The Heist.

Rumors have spread throughout Al Haikk that a thief has obtained a magical artifact from the very treasure room of the Caliph. Now everyone is chasing after rumors of the villain hoping to gain the artifact or the reward for its return.

The Killer Kult lurks in the north west (near the Nomads).


The Nomads prepared to receive the Kult


It is busy day in the Thieves Quarter of Al Haikk.  To avoid the invisible crowd, the Nomads occupy this ruin.


The treacherous Turjuk spread their 8 warriors out along the east edge


This git shoots and kills Arim VI on the first turn...


Leading to the second turn


The Kult appears!
The Nomads had 4 S3 bow shots, 3 handguns and 1 crossbow with poisoned bolts waiting.  3 BS5 warriors, 4 BS4 warriors.  Total shots: 9. Hits 2.  Wounds: none.


The Kult in the center


At some point some Kult archers shot at Nomads and panicked the invisible crowd. Many warriors were trampled, including these gits


Take that Mumlak!


Death by Kult begins




The Kult moves through the center unopposed




The Purple One was wounded once by the archers before they fell


Turjuks are still being trampled by the crowd


The Turjuk Scholar searches a building


These gits prepare to search (this building will become the 'final' hideout of the thief because someone kept forgetting to search it...)


The Nomad heroes preparing for a final stand


The Winged Terror is down!  The Nomad Scout is doomed




Shore Patrol! A squad of Nordland Marines march on to the field


The Winged Terror is shot by Babiars the unfocused


In an attempt to be relevant, the Pit Fighter, Mir Sher and the Djinni Binder challenge the Center Kult. (Mir Sher finds 4 gc--a clue that the thief has been here).


The Djinni Binder finds that, no, he can not receive a charge from a henchman...


An unposed photo of Mir Sher fighting the Mutant with 3 Attacks and a brethren.


The Pit Fighter's charge is also unsuccessful.  He will die...again.


Sweet Baboo III falls before the Purple One in one round.


The Nomads flee with 3 henchmen, 3 hired swords and the Djinni Binder out of action.

The 8 Turjuk prepare to receive the wrath of the Shore Patrol and the Kult.  Here the Emir and a townsman mug a Ghostly Beast.


Look who's coming


The Thief attempts to flee the scene


The Shore Patrol are near


The Turjuk flee with their Emir, an Askar, a mamluk and a townsman out of action (4 out of .

The Shore Patrol tangle with the Kult


Just to give the Kult more experience, the Shore Patrol fought to the last man.  They did take down the 4 Attack Mutant though...

The Kult catch the thief!  They recover The Staff of the Sandstorm (which is the artifact Chris always rolls in our Arabyan campaigns...)

The Nomads fled first.  Arim VI was killed by a Turjuk.  Sweet Baboo III was murdered by the Purple One.  The Third Pit Fighter died to a brethren after missing or failing to wound 8 times... The Djinni Binder fully recovered.  The Nomads find a horse trader, but have no money to buy any horses.

The Turjuk fled.  Alas the Emir took a deep wound and will miss the final battles of the campaign.  The Askar also rolled a miss a game injury. The Turjuk hire a new Askar to replace one killed last game and will have the services of the recovering Jamal II.

The Kult had TWO heroes out of action, along with some brethren and a beast.  The warband was broken for several turns but refused to rout, despite being given many opportunities to do so. Both heroes rolled full recovery...The beast recovered, the brethren recovered... An Ogre returns a favor.  More joy.

That was YET ANOTHER SPLENDID battle report. I think the Kult has siphoned off what should have been Jim's good luck.

Very nice indeed! The Kult does seem awfully strong... And I don't care if he dies, that is a sweet looking pit fighter!

Thanks for the comments gents!

@MedMos--He is a Reaper gladiator mini that I picked up a few years ago. (I think the original comes with an axe, but I have lots of bitz.)
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Tales of the Arabyan Nights--Raid the Caravan

Another instalment of our end the campaign with playtesting series. This week I have formalized a scenario that we used in Big Toof III. A re-write of the ever unpopular but oh so flavorful Mule Train:

The warbands haunt the caravan routes in hopes of catching a vulnerable target.

The Muzil (a rival tribe of both the Nomads and the Turjuk) try to get a caravan through... There are 9 guards total. The equal of the Turjuk arrayed against them. (The Kult outnumber the Muzil 2 to 1)




The Turjuk lurk in the northwest. Hoping to steal scraps from the wealthier tables


The Killer Kult in the southwest (they move first, of course)


The Nomads occupy the southeast. Babiars has perched on a towering boulder with a flat top.


The boulder crumbles during the Rock Fall event! The Witch and Assam II are killed. Half of the other warriors and the Genie are knocked down or stunned. The Nomads are less of a threat...


The Turjuk attack! Sort of...they try 'the ride around the caravan yelling' approach to attacking


The missile troops try to hit and wound with rubber arrows


Turn 2 the Kult charges....
actually some of the Arab missiles did damage








The survivors attempt to "circle the camels!"


The Kult overwhelms the defense




One survivor attempts to escape with a camel. (He won't.)


The Turjuk go into "Custer mode" themselves




Only in this version, maybe Major Reno rides to the rescue!


I forget this warrior's name, but he has just recovered from missing 3 games...


This is why Reno stayed on his hill








The Winged Terror swoops down on The Scholar




The Nomads fire an amazing amount of rubber bullets and arrows into the Kult. The barrage does even less than usual... DRAW THE RUBBER SWORDS!


The Nomads sing their death chants, again...




Things go as usual...


The Nomads flee before Shufti can be taken out of action.
They lose:
Roxanne the Witch and Assam II to the rockfall on the first turn.
Malik the Genie is killed by the Mutant with the Sword.
The Pitfighter IV is killed by the ogre...

The Nomads lose the camel they had captured. The Nomads do gain the safety of Al Haikk to trade. They gain a Potion of Fortitude from the Lamp. They gain one treasure from a chance meeting with friendly pilgrims.

The Turjuk flee with one hero remaining out of the four they began the ambush with. They did take 2 brethren and a Ghostly Beast out of action, even with rubber swords and arrows. No hero dies, although a Chest Wound is suffered by the newest martyr in training.

The Killer Kult released the only camel they captured when it became unruly. They do feast on the bodies of the fallen camels to reduce their upkeep costs. And some friendly chaos cultists give them a treasure. No one dies, of course.

Coming soonish--Arab Civil War, the Nomads versus the Turjuk

Amazing board, and fantastic action as always!

A SPLENDID LOOKING game as always. The Kult won: WHAT A SURPRISE!
Considering they are all malformed, monstrous beings, does the Kult suffer any negative effects trading for goods?

@Mr Ree--Hey Tomo, how you doing?  Thanks for taking time to comment.
@Al--They can have trading restrictions, but we are just playing these days, so we ignored all of those rules (otherwise Jim L would roll 'lost in the desert' every game. I rolled to see where I traded, because I wrote the rules) Also, Chris would have to need to buy something to be affected...
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Raid the Caravan

Chris decided to call it a night.  He has offered to do this on other occasions, but usually we can convince him to beat us up again.  So Jim and I replayed the scenario with just Arabs.

We ended up in the same deployment zones... But this time there are 10 Turjuk (with 5 heroes!)


With largely the same tactics...


Except the rock did not fall this time.


The middle camel died on the same turn, even, (although the Scholar killed it this time).


The Turjuk cavalry charge was more successful


The guy with the big sword had a good day


So did these guys


Meanwhile the Nomads are destroying the head of the column


The chaos of battle


Shufti attacks the Camel Drover (Mule Skinner Hired Sword)


The last moments for the caravan guards


Oops! The Nomads lose their Nomad Scout


The caravan's Nomad Scout lost his horse


The loose horse is immediately captured


Capturing camels


Trying to break the Turjuk


This guy just put one of the Nomad archers out of action.  He will be shot down by Achmed for his trouble


When not being attacked by big purple things or Winged Terrors, the Scholar is kind of tough


Since the Arabyan warbands were fighting each other, the game ended in a draw by store closing.

The Turjuk had two heroes out of action as usual.  Unusually, neither died.  The Turjuk captured a camel and horse.  The Turjuk gained a pretty good haul from just one camel.

The Nomads captured 2 camels! Khalid was killed by the Scholar.  Yegu IV (the Nomad Scout) was killed by a caravan guard.  The Nomads gain all kinds of wealth from the captured camels and find the Cave of Thieves in exploration (MORE stuff!)

Next week the re-fitted Arabs will fight the Kult one last time!

HOORAY FOR BOTH SIDES! Perhaps you will fare better against the Kult next time out...or not.

Thanks Al!  Or not...
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Tales of the Arabyan Nights---Endgame:  The Mummy Walks!

Since the Kult was so overpowering, we did not bother with completeing the usual campaign arc, which is for the warbands to start in Al Haikk, travel to Khemri and then 'discover' the Mummy's tomb.  Instead I decided to end with a special scenario from Al Haikk based on The Mummy by Rob Houdek from TC #15.  (I tweek it a bit...)

The battle took place in the Thieves Quarter of Al Haikk.  The warbands are searching for the hidden entrance to an ancient treasure trove from the days of the Priest Kings. The Turjuk occupied the north


The Kult occupy the east. They set up last.




The Nomads have the south, they will move last


The Turjuk move first.  The first entrance they encounter is the hidden door to the treasure chamber!


The skull counter is a trap


The Mummy KaHotep and his guardians rise to defend their treasure.  Except they appear at entrance #1 right in the middle of the Nomads! (As far from entrance #6 as they can be!)


The Kult pounce on the poor townsman who discovered the entrance


The Nomads lose Babiars of the Three Wounds and Two Blessed Waters to KaHotep's wrath.  Woe!


Meanwhile the plucky townsman kills the first of the Ghostly Beasts to reach him with a lucky slash of his dagger.  Go townsman!


He then dies horribly. Torn apart by one of the Mutant twins



Meanwhile Al Bobo leads a counter charge against KaHotep and his minions


More of KaHoteps minions arrive from the hidden treasure room.  They attack the vulnerable ogre and Beast


Go Minions!


KaHotep is being whittled down even as his loyal minions protect his treasure room




The Monster falls.  But his misguided attack on the Nomads has assured that the Kult will reach the treasure.  (And eliminated Babiars and my surviving archers...)

The Purple one appears


Meanwhile an Ushabti appears to defend the Door


And disappears in a cloud of ancient dust


But more minions overwhelm the Ghostly Beast hero.




And the original killers fight on


The Kults' revenge!






Note the Turjuks massing to the north.

In the south things are going, well south.  The Purple One murders Sweet Baboo V...


Then the Djinni of the Lamp falls


The Turjuk attack!


The Kult counter


More minions appear! (The Liche Priest regenerated)


The Nomads fail a rout test and flee the Purple Prince!

The Kult tire of hacking down the waves of guardians and flee as well.

The guardians mass to attack the surviving Turjuk


In true Turjuk fashion, Jim L fails a rout test!  The Guardians WIN!

Thus ends our adventures in Araby.  And I am afraid my adventures on this forum.  The forum has been reading as NOT SECURE for several months, but I have continued posting.  Alas the library system is upping its security controls and I have received notice that I may no longer login to unsecure websites.  Happy trails and thanks for watching.

Jim S

You ended the campaign in FINE FORM. The photos are GLORIOUS! It was a WONDERFULLY entertaining series of games.  

A fine finish & farewell there...

Jim is having trouble signing on the forum using his library access. Hopefully he will soon find a solution.

a magical campaign - and what these games should be all about from my point of view (inc. scenery and painting etc).

odd re: site not being secure - I do get warnings about various places, but never this one up 'till now (win. 7 64, firefox usually) ....

I guess the answer's obvious, but it's not practical for Jim to post from home from what's said above?
Hope very much you can sort things out.