The daemon, realizing that the success of his little invasion was resting solely on his gigantic shoulder, decided to increase his potential yet again by casting "Mark of Chaos" yet again.  He uttered the magic words and felt the power coursing through his fiery veins.  However, instead of causing new limbs to sprout or more muscle mass or thicker skin, the power coursed out of control.  The daemon threw back his head and let out a final howl. . .

BOOM!

The daemon went up in a ball of fire and sulfur.  The blast not only took out the daemon, all the remaining berserkers, some of the royal samurai, and several heroes that were unlucky enough to be standing nearby.

With the self-immolation of their motivating force, the rest of the Barbarians turned tail and ran for the beach, attempting to swim out to their transports and home.

The Samurai Lord finally allowed himself to breath a sigh of relief.  Another foreign invasion attempt had been turned aside.  Now all that was left was to view the heads. . .

Believing that credit should be given where due, here are those who should receive credit (or blame, as it were) for the battle.  The gentlemen to the left were in charge of the Barbarian horde.  They put up a brave fight, but when your daemon explodes, there's little you can do to rectify the situation.

The gentleman (term loosely used) to the right is Steve McCormick, owner of McCormick's Hobbies, etc., who was kind enough to let us use his game store for the demo and to further our plans for world domination.  We are trying to get Steve to carry fun games, but instead he insists on stocking stuff that sells, so you can still see Evil Empire (tm) products on his shelves.  It's okay Steve, we forgive you.  ;)

This was our first stab at playing Armies of Arcana, and I have to admit that I am very pleased with the game overall.  It has everything that makes a wargame good, and we could find nothing to not recommend it to our friends and other wargamers in general.  We were also pleased with the speed at which it plays, especially considering that none of us knew the rules previously and there were over 300 individually based figures on the board.  It took us around four hours to play from beginning to end, and a good time was had by all.