My apologies for the lack of pictures right off the bat. We were halfway into the game before I even remembered my phone to take snapshots. After the previous week's battle, I was able to relax my points strictures slightly with the addition of a second cannon. To change things up, I also smashed my hammerers into my GW Warriors unit to create a horde that I am now in love with. My list worked out as follows:

Lord on SB w/GW and Ro Preservation (I was expecting wights and ghouls galore!)

Runesmith w/ GW and MRo Balance

Thane BSB w/ Ro Fire, Ro Stone, and Ro Preservation

30 Longbeards w/ FC and HW/Sh
20 Quarreler Rangers w/ FC
45 Warriors w/ FC and GW

15 Miners w/ FC, Steam Drill, and Blasting Charges
GT w/ Eng
Cannon w/ Eng + Ro Burning
Cannon w/ Eng

Gyro
OG

All in all I considered it a well rounded list. I still couldn't go over 300 on lords, heroes, or rares. Nor could I go over 625 on specials. My rune cap of 100 still felt stifling, but I felt I made the best of my limitations.

His list consisted of (roughly):

A Choppy Vampire lord (he claimed he had 8 attacks)
A Wight King with a 5+ killing blow sword.
Necromancer on a corpse cart.

2 x Big blocks of 30ish Skellies with spears
30ish block of Ghouls
25-30ish block of Grave guard
4 Spirit host bases
2 x 10 strong units of wolves
6 cairn wraiths

His list was pretty close to what I expected. Wight king in with the GG to eat any characters. Vamp in with the ghouls to just throw a sick number of attacks.

We roll for our scenario and get.....the Archway to victory mission again! Pretty much a standard battle, but after deployment, each player places a 12" wide goalpost exit point in their opponent's deployment zone. Anything that makes it through, gives double its experience points to the controlling player. Sadly, flyers and ambush/underground advance cannot benefit from this.

Our terrain consisted of mostly forests with 2 mist wreathed swamps on my left hand side of the board and another marsh in his deployment zone on my right that is dangerous terrain bu yields poisoned attacks for the turn. As it turned out, the entire left hand side of the board was jam packed with terrain leaving the right half fairly open.

Deployment looked like this:

................Skelly.....................Cart....................Wraiths
...........Wolves................Skelly...ghouls...GG...Sp Host...Wolves..
..........................................................................
..........................................................................
..........................................................................
...Gyro........................................GW Warrior Horde.......LB..
.....GT...Cannon..........................OG.....................Cannon...

Next, I place my rangers in a 5x4 formation facing the skelly flank 12" away and out of sight of the wolves and skellies.

I win first turn!

Dwarf turn 1:

Movement phase has me marching the horde and LB up the field. I was careful to keep them in close support in order to refuse a flank and make him slog the distance to me piecemeal. The Gyro swooped 20" forward to hide in between the woods and swamp on my left flank. The GT missed. The flaming Cannon scored a direct hit on the corpse cart with necro and sent them back to the underworld in a flaming heap. The other bounced through the space where the vamp lord was standing, but hit four ghouls instead. Organ gun was, of course, out of range. At this point I realize that I had forgotten to move my rangers forward as I had planned. Instead I shot at the Skelly flank knocking down 5 and stripping a rank.

Vamp turn 1:

He reforms his Skellies to face my rangers and advances with pretty much everything. His Spirit host waft out in front of his battle line ensuring that I would not get a clean charge on the wolves on the far right flank. His cairn wraiths were also ominously moaning even with the wolves in a straight line. During his magic phase, we ended up with 8 dice each. I managed to shut down most of his magic. In the end, he only raised the four ghouls back, and killed a single GW warrior with a magic missile.

Dwarf turn 2:

I move my battle line slightly forward and angle the units to recieve charges to the front. I was confident that the death star warrior block would weather the worst as long as I didn't get any wraiths in the flank of my 30 strong LB unit. I roll for the miners who (as usual) fail to arrive on turn 2 even with the re-roll. I move the gyro up into position to minigun the left flank wolf pack. The rangers, having attracted the attention of the skellies, were still further out than I would have liked for a charge. So, they cranked back the cables for another volley of crossbow bolts. The grudge thrower lobs a rune carved grudge off into the middle of nowhere, yet again. The flaming cannon takes a nice flank shot at the neatly lined up spirit host killing off 2 bases. The other cannon bounces again through the ranks of the ghouls killing another four after another successful LoS! The Gyro guns down 5 of the wolves and the OG gunned down the rest on the left flank. The rangers manage to strip off another rank of skellies.

Vamps turn 2:

He declares charges with the GG, Ghouls and Skellies at my horde. The spirit host charge at the LB. All of the chargers make it into combat except the ghouls. This would end up costing him the game. He chooses not to charge with the skellies at the rangers fearing the stand and shoot reaction. He then proceeds to walk towards the rangers as he was way out of range of any vampire to motivate them to move any faster. His wolves on the right flank and cairn wraiths move into an orderly line again. In close combat, the Dwarves fear nothing. The spirit host end up losing by 2 and drop down to 1 base. The wight king challenges someone and recieves a face full of champion. The Wight king slays the champion with a killing blow and reveals his magic weapon. The GG manage to kill 4 GW warriors and the skellies fail to kill any. The return attacks from the warriors utterly smash the undead lines causing a huge crumble from combat resolution but still leaving them at half strength each.

Dwarf turn 3:

I move the gyro up to position for a strafing run on the ghouls. The rangers seize the initiative and charge into the sorely depleted Skelly unit. The miners finally arrive and walk in from my goal post area. I start off my shooting phase with the GT, who as per usual decided to misfire. I roll a 1 for the misfire result and utilize the engineer which results in the death of a crew member instead of the whole machine. The cannon with flaming launches a ball into the neat line of cairn wraiths and roasts two of them. The other cannon bounces another cannon ball through the vampire lord who fails his LoS! The cannonball vaporizes the general. At the end of the phase, half of the vampire army crumbles to dust. Out of morbid curiosity, we play on. The Wight King challenges another which my Lord accepts. The WK gleefully rolls to hit and then scores two killing blows. I then reveal the master rune of preservation and easily make the armor saves much to the chagrin of the wight king. The lord then pounds him back into dust with a great weapon. The horde likewise returns the rest of their foes to dust. The spirit host mournfully evaporates having failed to do anything. The rangers kill a few skellies.

Vampire turn 3: The End of the line

Almost the entire undead army collapses in on it's self. The wraiths poof. The Skellies crumble. The ghouls slink away leaving only 10 left. The wolves fall apart. In fact, all that remains of his force is the 10 ghouls. In an impressive show of defiance, he charges the ghouls into the horde of warriors to make even a slayer grumble with respect. They, of course, are pounded into paste.

Observations:

I really think blocking himself with the spirit host hurt him a lot. His failure to get his general into combat hurt, but it would have been just as painful when the great weapons pounded him into paste had he made it into combat with them. GW warriors in a horde are amazing! Yeah, 45 is a little large, but they are almost unstoppable. I played a pick up game against Skaven afterward using the same troop make up with just a couple rune tweaks to a similar result. The horde broke through a 50 strong plague monk unit with a furnace after three rounds of combat. When I finally killed off the furnace, they broke and allowed me to pursue into his clanrats and mangle them as well!

We rolled for our new territories and each received a wizards tower which allowed us the choice of a 50pt magic item (or rune), an additional magic lore, or an additional ethereal unit. He ended up selecting a banner of the barrows for his magic item, and I selected my MR of Balance. Next week will at least allow me to have some more runic freedom.