Border Princes 2026: Zikkit’s Fortified Road Falls to Alberic’s Errant Crusaders
Another Border Princes clash, this time on the Western Road
We had another Border Princes 2026 skirmish, and this one was a proper little tragedy for the Skaven side and a glorious charge-filled success for Bretonnia. The setting was the western road cutting through the northern mountains, fortified by General Zikkit Zap-Zap of Skrikkvolt. Into that position came Alberic’s Errant Crusaders, with support from 200 points of Louen’s Riders from a nearby field.
From the very beginning, this had all the ingredients we love in Warhammer: The Old World: praying knights, overconfident rats, weapon teams doing ridiculous things, panic chains, and one side suddenly discovering that the entire battle line has evaporated.
The armies
Zikkit Fortified
Characters
- Zikkit Zap-Zap, Warlock Engineer
Core
- 20 Clanrats with Doom-flayer
- 30 Giant Rats
- 20 Clanrats with Ratling Gun
Special
- 10 Poisoned Wind Globadiers
- 6 Warplock Jezzails
- 6 Warplock Jezzails
Alberic’s Errant Crusaders
Characters
- Paladin BSB on horse
- Paladin General on foot
Core
- 14 Knights of the Realm on Foot
- 13 Knights Errant
Special
- 37 Men-at-Arms
- 14 Peasant Bowmen
Turn one: the prayer, the advance, and the first self-inflicted disaster
The Bretonnian knights opened exactly as expected: they prayed, giving the first move away to the Skaven.
On the eastern flank, the Doom-flayer rolled forward toward the mounted knight block, with clanrats and globadiers following behind. In the center-left, the Giant Rats pushed up toward the forest, screened from the west by the second clanrat block. Meanwhile, both Jezzail batteries opened fire and immediately started paying for themselves: one archer and two knights went down.
Then came the first properly Skaven moment of the game.
Zikkit tried to throw a Fireball and miscast. The explosion killed three clanrats, while the warlock himself walked away unharmed. Very Skaven command style. He recovered quickly enough to fire his warplock musket into the knight unit and drop one more.
The Doom-flayer does its job… and then everything collapses
The knights charged the Doom-flayer, which answered with a counter-charge. It actually did exactly what a Skaven player dreams of in that moment: one knight died to impact hits, and another was dragged down in the fighting before the machine gave its life.
But that was only the setup.
The surviving 8 knights plus the paladin overran straight into the clanrat unit led by Zikkit, already weakened by the earlier miscast. The paladin himself didn’t do much here — none of his attacks found their mark — but the young hot-blooded knights absolutely did. Five rats died, the remaining thirteen couldn’t hold formation, and the whole unit fled.
The Bretonnians caught them easily, wiping out the entire unit together with the general, taking the banner and triggering panic nearby. That one breakthrough effectively tore the Skaven position open:
- 10 Globadiers fled off the table
- one Jezzail battery ran from the hill
That was the decisive moment of the battle.
A brief Skaven recovery
To their credit, the fleeing Jezzail team did rally just behind the hill. For a moment, it looked like the rats might still scrape together some kind of last stand.
The Master Moulder drove the Giant Rats up to the edge of the forest where the foot knights were hiding. The Ratling Gun, in a truly historic event, did not miscast on its first volley and pumped 14 shots into the enemy, killing 4 peasants. The remaining clanrats moved up the center toward the Bretonnian line.
Shooting continued to chip away: the eastern Jezzails dropped one mounted knight, while the western battery killed two more peasants.
The forest fight and the second collapse
Then the foot knights burst out of the woods and charged the Giant Rats, supported by the remaining mounted knights. The rats were simply crushed. Hit in the flank, they had no chance to keep their rank bonus, tried to flee, and even Scurry Away wasn’t enough to save them. They rolled only 4 inches, were caught, and destroyed.
The bowmen managed to put one wound on a Jezzail battery, but at this point the Bretonnian pressure was everywhere.
The remaining clanrats charged the foot knights, trying to salvage something in the center. The Ratling Gun then suffered a partial misfire, barely managing to spit out 4 shots, killing one peasant. Jezzails removed another mounted knight, and the other battery picked off two more peasants.
But none of that changed the combat result. The knights smashed the clanrats completely, ran them down, and claimed a second banner.
The Ratling Gun’s last stand
The peasants then decided to charge the now-isolated Ratling Gun. It answered with Stand & Shoot, unleashing 18 shots and cutting down several of them on the way in. In close combat, the peasants only managed one wound on the weapon team while taking a few more casualties themselves.
But numbers are numbers. By that point they were down by 16 models, yet 21 surviving peasants were still more than enough to overwhelm a lone Skaven team. The fight ended the way these things usually do: the Ratling Gun broke, was caught, and removed.
At the same time, the mounted knights charged one Jezzail battery and reduced it to dust.
The last hill
That left the western hill as the final lonely holdout — as Michal put it, something like the last Gallic village in the Roman Empire, only sadly without a Skaven Panoramix on top.
The last surviving Jezzail battery received the charge of 21 peasants and 7 mounted knights.
It died, and with it the game ended.
Result
1050:0 for Bretonnia.
A complete wipeout, powered by one devastating overrun into Zikkit’s unit, followed by cascading panic and relentless Bretonnian pressure across the board.
Final thoughts
This sounds like it was an absolutely fantastic game — the kind of battle report we love because it tells a full story in just a few turns. The Skaven had some genuinely fun moments:
- the Doom-flayer trading up,
- the Jezzails doing real work early,
- the Ratling Gun briefly behaving itself,
- and one battery even rallying after fleeing.
But once Zikkit and his clanrats got run down, the whole fortified road started unraveling at terrifying speed. On the Bretonnian side, this was a classic demonstration of what happens when the charge lands exactly where it needs to.
In short: wonderful game, catastrophic for the rats, glorious for the crusade.