Blood in the Canals - Trench Crusade Battle Report

 Hello again everyone, after a long hiatus! I've come back to writing to put my thoughts out there again, starting with a battle report of a game I had last night of Trench Crusade

Battle lines drawn up, using my new Venice terrain and the heretic submarine from Diceverse. Reading the Trench Crusade lore and seeing Venice is newly taken by the forces of hell, and building up a table to play Carnevale (more on that later) I decided to make a heretical dockyard table, with the submarine being an amazing centrepiece

I brought along my Defenders of the Iron Wall to play against Andrew's Highland Wolves Assault Cadre, with the forces of the Kingdom of Alba bringing a lot of Machine Armour and some heavy-duty weaponry. A significant part of my forces were invested into the Captain and the Brazen Bull, both of which I wanted to try out some of the recent rule changes to see how they went. I have a notoriously bad track record with Sultanate outside of Assassins, but I really love the idea behind Defenders so I keep trying to make them work for me. 

Firing positions secured, the Sniper Priest looks from his rooftop perch while across the battlefield, a Siege Jezzail team mobilises

Something very representative of this game- we both failed almost every single dash attempt!

Round 1 and 2 was mostly advancing, with some pot shots made across the table plinking off each other's heavy armour (Andrew's Machine Armour and my Captain and Mamluk all in -3 armour). The Scots did manage to get into quite an advantageous position on top of the submarine though, and that MG on top of the sub had a great firing spot to rain hell onto my poor Azebs. The Janissaries took more punishment, but the MG still got one of them before the game was up.

In some incredibly bad luck (and sensationally poor tactics on my part, but also cinematic) my Captain shot into a combat between the Scottish Lieutenant and my Brazen Bull, both of which had already lost tough, and managed to kill my own Bull before not doing any further damage the rest of the game. The Bull's tough got stripped by a brave Shocktrooper, who unfortunately managed to scatter his own Satchel Charge onto himself and was slain in the process, but hurting the beast was a worthy sacrifice. 

The game devolved at this point into a scrum at the edge of the canal, with 2 Mechanised Heavy Infantry jumping into the Captain (one with a diving charge off the submarine!) and none of them doing any damage whatsoever. There were a lot of 11s rolled, but with -3 armour and not a single 12 to be seen nobody actually died here. However, the rest of the Scots managed to thin me down to 3 models by the end of the game with the only casualty their brave Shocktrooper, making it a fairly decisive victory for the forces of New Antioch. Not enough to reclaim Venice it seems, but the loss for the Sultanate will surely be felt.