Hammered!

Enjoying reading this so far! Good battle reports.

This is astonishingly bad rolling!

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Even with ruler of the night in effect on the horrors they suffered 25 unsaved mortal wounds!

The maximum is 36 if all 12 dice were 5s and 6s, before one third of them get saved by ward saves. The average pre ward saves is only 24, so you should have taken 16. Ouch!!!!

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Throughout the game we each held onto the flanking places of power, and the game was lost for me when Andy finally controlled the centre objective with his Stormfiends. 

Presumably you mean this loosely - they were blocking off your heroes from the centre objective or protecting his hero as he scored on it.

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I decided to go first & began my Hero phase before realising too late that objectives were only scored on turn two onwards.

This was Border War right? You were right the first time (I'm 95% sure). You do score from Batteround One (in each player's turn) in Border War (or more correctly in Ghoul Patrol). It's Escalation where you don't score in Battleround One! I think a tick box chart for each battleplan is a good idea.