In order to get to grips with the rules for Warhammer Fantasy Battle 4th Edition, I decided to play a very quick game using the High Elf and Night Goblin armies I bulit for it as a one-off battle before the Aggression Campaign starts off in earnest:

Order of Battle and Deployment

Elfarion’s Seerhost of archers, spearmen, bolt throwers and a retinue of Silver Helms come across a migratory band of Night Goblins on the border of the Fungal Groves.

Battle Report

Turn 1

The Goblins are obliged to surge forward, being outranged by the Elven archers and bolt throwers. The Elves move their spear elves forward but otherwise hold the line, their Bolt Throwers kill a few wolfriders. The winds of magic blow strongly, but no spells are unleashed – Elfarion almost manages to pluck ‘Eadbutt’ out of Makarev‘s mind with a Destroy Magic card.

Turn 2

The elves mostly hold ground and unleash bowshot, doing no casualties at all, but the Silver Helms move up adjacent the Spearmen. Animosity breaks out among four out of the five goblin units, and then Makarev fails his Eadbanger check – luckily only being transfixed in a drooling daze for the turn. Elfarion casts Glamour of Teclis on the Giant, which essentially means he can control the Giant‘s movement

Turn 3

The Wolf Riders on the Goblin left flank surge forward, forcing the Elves there to either counter-charge or risk losing their bolt thrower. It is at this point I realise that I didn’t actually pay for the Chariots in the army list for the Elves, so are removed from the table. The Spear goblins fail their animosity again, but surge forward with ‘Get ’em!’ as a result. Elfarion casts Glamour of Teclis on the Spear goblins placing their movement under his control, and Makarev casts Hand of Gork to shove the bemused trolls 18″ across the table into combat with the Silver Helms.

Eschewing their multiple attacks for an auto-hitting vomit attack, the Trolls cause 2 casualties against the Silver Helms and take none in return – since they cause Fear the Silver Helms auto-break and flee, and their rout causes the adjacent spearment to panic and rout too. The Trolls pursue, colliding with the fleeing spearmen and wiping them out.

The Elves concede.

Aftermath

I realise in retrospect the Trolls (with 3 models) did not actually outnumber the Silver Helms, so they wouldn’t have auto-broken them due to fear. On the other hand, the Silver Helms also did not test for fear when they were pseudo-charged by the Trolls.

The rules around pursuit/panic and auto-destroy are a little muddled, but as I understand it, a unit is auto-destroyed if fleeing:

• From a combat and contacted by pursuers (no extra dice roll for flee move)
• And is charged, gets an additional 2/3d6″ movement and if still contacted.

There’s no specific caveat for when a fleeing unit is pursued into, but given they already had 2d6″ movement that turn for their initial flee I’m assuming they don’t immediately get another.