First Fantastic Battles game of the campaign.

Herewith first game of the clubs slow grow Fantastic Battles 500 point game. Next game will be 750 points. 

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Played against a barbarian army called the Shatered Totem. My army proved victorious. 

I will be writing up a battle report. A funny moment was when a company of my pike got to attack hist bare bottomed from the rear with pikes. Fair to say it was a good rogering. They don't like it up 'em...

Here bit background to my pike.

The Argonian Guildsmen Pike

A Unit History for Fantastic Battles and the Army known as Brett’s Brettonians

In the river-bound city of Argonia, between the mountains of Golgoth and the woods of Thrankendolg, where tall guild halls cast long shadows over cobbled streets and banners of commerce flew as proudly as banners of war, there lives a brotherhood unlike any other. They are not nobles, nor knights sworn to crowns. They are craftsmen, merchants, smiths, and sailors, the Argonian Guildsmen Pike, the most disciplined infantry in all the southern realms. But their story did not begin in glory.

The Siege of Ash and Iron

Many years before the Guildsmen Pike existed, Argonia stood on the brink of ruin. From the black mountains beyond Golgoth from the eastern marshes came a horde of orcs, foul and relentless. Their war-drums echoed for days before they arrived, and their banners, stitched from the hides of beasts and worse, blotted out the sunrise. At their head marched two towering trolls, creatures of brute muscle and dim, terrible hunger.

Argonia’s lords were unprepared. The standing guard was small, scattered across the walls, and ill-equipped to break a siege. Panic rippled through the city like wildfire. But Argonia was not merely a city of nobles, it was a city of guilds… The Blacksmiths’ Guild, the Masons’ Union, the Dockworkers’ Collective, and even the Silk Traders’ Consortium gathered in emergency council. They knew one truth plainly: if the gates fell, all would be lost. Trade, wealth, legacy would all be gone in a single night of fire and blood.

So it was that they armed themselves. Smiths handed out unfinished spearheads. Carpenters ripped beams from workshops to fashion rough shafts. Fishermen brought harpoons, bakers wielded iron paddles, and sailors came bearing long boathooks. None were trained soldiers, but all were Argonian.

When the gates were struck, it was not soldiers who stood before them. It was the people.

The Stand of the Twin Trolls

The orcs surged forward in waves, smashing against the eastern gate. Arrows fell, oil burned, and still the city trembled. At last, with a cracking roar, the gate splintered. Through the breach lumbered the trolls.

They were monstrous, each as tall as the gatehouse towers, with skin like stone and teeth like broken spears. One smashed aside defenders with casual swipes; the other tore apart the gate remnants to widen the breach… and for a moment, despair took hold.

Then a voice rang out, a smith named Garrfel, known more for forging horseshoes than heroics. “Hold the line! Spears forward! Together, not alone!”

It was simple. It was desperate… and it worked…

The guildsmen locked shoulder to shoulder, forming a jagged wall of pointed steel and sharpened wood. When the trolls charged, they did not meet scattered resistance, rather they met a forest of thrusting pikes.

Again and again the trolls struck. Again and again they were repelled. Where one man fell, another stepped forward. Where a spear broke, two more replaced it. The narrow breach constrained the beasts, and the unity of the defenders became their greatest weapon.

At last, bleeding from a hundred wounds, the first troll collapsed. The second roared in fury, but even it could not push through the wall. When it fell, impaled by dozens of makeshift pikes, the orcs wavered. When dawn broke, it was the orcs who fled. Argonia had survived.

The Birth of the Guildsmen Pike

In the weeks that followed, the city rebuilt, but it did not forget. The guild masters convened once more, not in fear, but in purpose. They agreed that never again would Argonia rely solely on noble banners for its defence. The strength of the city lay in its people and that strength must be forged, honed, and disciplined. Thus was founded the Argonian Guildsmen Pike.

Each guild pledged coin, supplies, and recruits. Smiths forged standardised pike heads of hardened steel. Carpenters crafted uniform shafts of ash wood, strong and flexible. Tailors produced armoured gambesons in the yellows and reds of the kingdom. Even merchants contributed, funding training grounds and barracks within the city.

But more important than equipment was discipline. To create disciple was drill and the memory of the defeated trolls and heroism of Garrfel. 

The Guildsmen Pike drilled relentlessly. They learned to march as one, pivot as one, strike as one. Their formations became legendary, tight ranks of bristling pikes that no cavalry dared charge and no brute could easily break.

They preserved the tactic born in desperation in the gloom of the Gate Wall, a formation designed to hold narrow spaces against overwhelming force. It became their symbol and their pride.

Renown Across the Realms

Years passed, and the Guildsmen Pike earned their name in battle after battle.

They defended caravans against raiders, stood firm against marauding beasts, and even marched alongside allied armies when Argonia’s trade routes were threatened. In every conflict, their reputation grew. Unbreakable in formation, unyielding under pressure and loyal not to kings, but to city, guild and each other. 

Other realms scoffed at first… a militia of craftsmen, they called them. That is until they saw them fight. There were tales of cavalry charges shattering on their pike lines like waves against cliffs. Of monstrous creatures brought low not by heroes, but by disciplined ranks. Of banners that never fell because the line behind them never broke.

The Legacy of the Gate

Even now, generations later, every recruit of the Argonian Guildsmen Pike is brought to the eastern gate on their first day of service. There, carved into the stone, are the names of those who stood during the siege. Not nobles. Not knights. Just names. A reminder.

The captains tell them the story, not as legend, but as duty. 

“You hold this line not because you were born to it,” they say, “but because others stood before you when they did not have to.”

Then each recruit plants their pike, just as the first defenders did and for a moment, in the quiet beneath the towering walls, it is said you can almost hear the echo of that ancient cry:

“Spears forward! Together, not alone!”

And so it is that the Guildsmen Pike endure, not as an army of conquest, but as a living testament to what a city can become when its people stand as one.

Here is my opponents reflections on the battle.

Hear now the song of the Slaughter at the Jagged Pass—where the free fell, but did not break!

The Red Rain and the Sacred Totem

Before the iron-shod boots could trample the sacred moss, the Archers of the Seeing Eye took their breath upon the high, jagged crags. They crouched unseen among the pine boughs, bows of dark yew bent to the cheek, waiting for the trap to spring.

As the vanguard of the iron clad entered the choked throat of the valley, the sky darkened with a sudden, whistling hail of ash-wood shafts. The heavy black arrows found the gaps in the iron armor—piercing throats and pinning iron-clad thighs to their war-horses. As the invaders lay writhing, the archers descended like crows, gathering the crimson life-stream of the fallen into vessels of horn and clay.

They poured the warm tithe over the Shattered Totem, which they had carried secretly into the crags. The ancient wood drank deeply, its splintered runes glowing with an ominous, low heat. Though the day would turn grim, the archers secured the now-engorged totem and slipped back into the mists. A blood feast had been enjoyed, and a sacred, as-yet-unknown reward now slept within the wood, waiting to be bestowed upon the tribes in their darkest hour.

The Fury of the Shard-Banner

At the center of the tempest stood Wolfgar Shard-Banner, refusing to yield an inch of the red mud. Above him flapped the tattered crow-skin of his standard; around him fought his Chosen Men, a ring of iron-willed brothers who stood as a bulwark against the slaughter of their people.

Wolfgar’s great axe, Iron-Biter, swung in arcs of silver light. Every stroke split helmets; every back-swing shattered breastplates. The men clad in iron came on in endless waves, a grey tide of metal and greed, but Wolfgar was a rock in the midst of the torrent.

Hundreds of the iron clad fell before his boots, their armor trampled into the bloody mud. The heap of the slain rose so high that Wolfgar stood upon a mound of the dead to strike at the living. And as he wiped the hot gore from his eyes, looking out over the sea of bristling spears and iron helms, a grim smile split his bearded face.

He did not think that was too many.

Defeated but Unbowed

Yet, even the fury of the Shard-Banner could not turn back the weight of an empire. The iron clad pressed on, their numbers vast, their discipline relentless. Around Wolfgar, the sky-clad warriors lay in heaps, their blue-painted skin pale in the falling snow.

Seeing the ruin of his host, Aelfmear Bone-Seer raised his gnarled hands, his voice cutting through the din of iron.

"Retreat to the deep woods! The snows claim the valley, but the mountains are still ours!"

With heavy hearts and bleeding wounds, the remnants of the tribes fell back into the shadows of the peaks. They left the field to the iron clad, but they left it with heads held high. They were defeated, but unbowed—their spirits unbroken, their hatred rekindled.

The men of iron held the valley, but in the deep woods, the Archers of the Seeing Eye guarded the awakened totem. The blood feast was done, and when the unknown power within the wood finally stirred, the iron clad would learn what it meant to wake the wrath of the North.

The Sound in the Dark

The night fell heavy and black upon the mountain ridges, and the wind howled a dirge for the fallen.

Deep within the frosted pines, a single campfire cracked and hissed against the descending blizzard. Around its meager warmth sat Wolfgar Shard-Banner and the surviving few of his Chosen Men. Their wounds were bound in frozen rags; their breaths came in white plumes. Wolfgar sat in silence, staring into the embers, slowly honing the nicked and blackened edge of Iron-Biter with a whetstone. Near him, propped against a dead pine, the Shattered Totem pulsed with that same low, secret heat, humming a faint vibration that only the spirits could hear.

Suddenly, the whetstone stopped.

Wolfgar raised his head, his frost-rimed beard stiffening. Beside him, his men froze, their hands drifting silently to the hilts of their weapons.

Through the howling gale and the thick veil of falling snow, a sound came drifting from the pitch-black woods. It was the heavy, rhythmic thud of iron-shod hooves striking frozen earth. A single rider, or perhaps a host, approaching through the dark where no sane man should ride.

Wolfgar stood up, the great axe balanced lightly in his calloused grip, his eyes piercing the gloom. The battle was over, but the saga was not done.