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[Zarimus]

Have you witnessed epic battles in your DF game? I just witnessed my first.

I had started a new fortress (THIS time it will be the one!) and had my first Dwarf merchants arrive. I set the bins of cheap mugs ("World's Best Miner!" "I   :mad: Magma!" etc.) to be hauled to the trade depot and then promptly forgot about them as a section of my grand dining room collapsed because I can no longer count as I age, or something.

Anyway I remembered about them after a longish bit and zipped back to view the depot which was... empty. A quick "Q" gave me the "There are no merchants" message. What the heck? I missed them? Scroll through the announcements, nothing. Suddenly off to the left of the screen I see a charging "E" headed for my bridge, PAUSE and... oh heck, smushed merchants. Blood everywhere. Yep, my dwarves are happily looting everything the merchants brought and had already taken the time to toss one merchant's bloody remains into my graveyard. So I supposed this is the rogue elephant that killed them and is coming to ravage my fortress.

But wait, what is that dark blue smudge behind the "E"? It's the @ of an axedwarf! Vabôk Fikodidräth, lone survivor of the merchant caravan is chasing down a fleeing elephant. These two must have been duking it out for several minutes.

Rapt with attention, fortress forgotten, I watch Vabôk chase that elephant up and down the screen, back and forth. At one point a giant leopard takes up the chase after the axedwarf but can't stand the pace and drops out.

Finally Vabôk stuns it or something because the elephant stops running and IT'S ON! Well you can't really see much, I admit, but as the little letters bumped back and forth imagined the epic battle, a berzerk dwarf hacking at a rearing and trumpeting beast that towered over him.

Suddenly the blue @ of the axedwarf started moving around the E and back, again and again. This was likely random battle movements but as he kept moving over a schist rock square in my mind Vabôk was running up a large rock and launching himself repeatedly at his larger foe. Smears of blood began to spray around the battleground.

Without warning, maybe sensing defeat, the E took off northwards. Vabôk must have been surprised because the elephant had a five space lead on him before he took up the chase again. The E reached the northwest corner of the map screen and dogged right a bit, only to be blocked by a lake. And then as the mad axedwarf closed in... they both left the map.

Bummer.

I returned to my fortress and the dwarfs happily looting the merchant's remains with a cheery whistle and a song in their hearts. There would be cow cheese for dinner tonight, and today's rum ration would be drunk in honor of the mad axedwarf, Vabôk Fikodidräth, and his one-dwarf elephant revenge rampage.

[Xotes]

I had a fun time with one hammerdwarf who got ambushed by three jaguars. He managed to crush the first one's skull, but he got forced to the ground and was severed in two.

[Lightning4]

I loved that "Commando Leader" battle I had in the adventurer succession game.

Axedwarf (me), Axedwarf, Axedwarf, Swordsdwarf, Marksdwarf.

Combine that with the type of ruin the civilization leader typically sends you to. You know, those kinds with about 150 skeletons, 100 zombies, and 50 weaponmasters.

We had an epic battle. We were fighting off countless skeletons and zombies. The sworsdwarf was the first to get injured, and went into pretty bad shape. He got disconnected from the rest of the group.
Then one of my axedwarves got his throat bit off by a skeleton. What was awesome is with his dying strength, he smashed the thing 10 tiles away.
So it was just me, an axedwarf, and the marksdwarf left. Marksdwarf was already pretty injured and we were all on the verge of over-exertion.
We made our final stand together. I got strangled to death really quickly, the marksdwarf went down pretty fast, but the last axedwarf took like five hours to kill. What a brutal way to go though, he had every bone in his broken at least twice.
That missing swordsdwarf never did turn up.

I've also had several occasions where some poor dwarf gets ambushed by about ten ratmen and gets completely surrounded... but with some not-so-swift reaction from the miltiary, their mangled ass gets saved.

Sadly, I haven't had too many other truly epic battles. But with the new version comes new stories to tell!