Post by chad on Nov 19, 2015 12:08:48 GMT
Sorry for the length of this post. Last paragraph or two should do as a TL:DR.
1000 points of Wood Elves vs. 1000 points of High Elves.
Army composition:
I’d gone for a rank and file heavy Woody army, with seven units – 3 lots of light armoured archers, two close combat foot units and two light cavalry units. I had a Warchief with command level 2, and two Battle leaders with Command level 1. The Warchief was with the close combat foot, the archers were another command under a battle leader, and the cavalry were another command with the remaining battle leader.
The High Elves were more command and hero oriented, with only four units of infantry – two units of archers and two of spears. They also had a Warchief with command level 4, a battle leader with command level 4, a hero and a scout. The archers were one command and the spears formed another.
So one army heavy on rank and file but with poorer C&C, versus one with less rank and file but much better potential for C&C, and with a hero that could be devastating in close combat.
I had thought that two units of veteran cavalry as my scout force would be ample to out-scout those plodding High Elves, but they had a scout, plus a much better battle leader in charge of their scouting command, so I was the one out-scouted! However, although out-scouted, my scouting command was enough to stop me from being outmanoeuvred, so these were not completely wasted assets, although the scouting commands were now with ‘hold’ orders and would need reactivating to get them into the battle.
Being out-scouted meant the High Elves got to choose and position the terrain – two swamps down the middle of my deployment area, a wood on each flank, and a hill dead centre plus another on my right. As I hadn’t been outmanoeuvred I was able to dice to remove/reposition these (on a 5 or 6 for each piece), so the central hill was taken off. Had I been outmanoeuvred I wouldn’t have had the option to remove anything.
First move I lost initiative, due to my cheap and nasty C&C. Both of us had to reactivate our scouting commands (unless we just wanted them to stand there all battle). Both started as disorganised (as do any units who scouted), however this seemed moot given that they were on hold orders and therefore couldn’t move, and not moving means you recover from disorder. Maybe I’ve misunderstood that… The fact I didn’t want my light cavalry standing on the table edge all battle affected my deployment plan – I had to put my Warchief next to the cavalry command so he’d be close enough reach it to issue new orders. Had I splashed out on a courier this would have been less of an issue.
We both issued oppose orders to our commands – this allows you to move your units pretty much as you want, except you can’t move into contact with enemy. The High Elves had a much better chance for their orders to succeed, since they had +4 to their dice roll, needing a 6 for the order to be received and interpreted ok. I only had +1 to the orders roll, but lucked out by rolling high. If I'd rolled just averagely there could have been confusion, disorder and delay. If I'd rolled low I might have lost the troops or my Warchief! Oppose orders were fine for my archers. For my close combat troops attack orders would be necessary, but not straight away, as troops under attack orders will mindlessly move towards the nearest visible enemy. So for now everything was under oppose orders until the crucial moment…
Once everything had 'oppose' orders all the jostling started. I had my light cav on the far left, the close combat foot on the centre-left, the archers next to them but on the other side of the swamp. The high Elves deployed everything on my right behind the hill, facing my archers.
There was a general advance by the woodies, the High Elves' archers peeled off to their right to face the flanking Wood Elf cavalry and close combat foot, the High Elf spears sent for the hill in front of them.
There was some tentative bowfire with just a volley each, where I found out how useful light armour is against arrows, i.e. not at all, and how useful heavy armour is against bows, which is quite a lot... I lost 6 archers, the High Elves one or two, so next turn I decided to pour a few volleys in before I lost them all! Rate of fire started to win out against the High Elf armour but of course I was using up all my ammo.
In the meantime the High Elves had changed their spearmen's orders to 'Attack', but a poor roll meant that although they accepted the order, but were disorganised. The attack order sent them yomping up over the hill against a lone unit of my archers hiding in a wood beyond the hill. After loosing off as many volleys as they could (they weren't going to get a chance to fire any more) they cut down half the High Elf spear unit sent against them, but the spears passed their morale check and crashed into the archers, sweeping them away in one round of combat.
By this time my cavalry and close combat foot had managed to get into striking range of the High Elf right flank, but I needed to change their orders so they could actually do something. For my close combat troops, not a problem as they were directly controlled by the Warchief, so the orders were changed automatically. However, my cavalry needed an order to be sent from the Warchief. As I didn't have any couriers I had to send a rank and file warrior to deliver the message. It took him two turns to reach the cavalry command's battle leader, and when he got there I needed to roll high (again, due to my cheap as chips C&C). Well, fortune favours the brave, and I rolled a 6, so the cavalry duly changed to 'attack' orders, and could now charge gleefully into the badly shot up High Elf archers to chop them up. However, odds were it should have taken me much longer with my poor C&C to get the orders changed - I was bloody lucky basically, and getting that '6' was critical in the end.
My archers had been all but destroyed - only a single archer remained on the field - he had not routed but was shaken. I thought about trying to rally him, but after consulting the tables decided that my crappy leadership was not going to result in a happy outcome, and could in fact have lead to commands in my army breaking. So I sent him off to get a nice cup of tea. The High Elf spears were now moving over to relieve their archers, and my close combat foot moved up to meet them. My 2 handed weapon unit chopped up his spears that had previously been shot up by my archers, but his fresh spear unit, plus a hero and a Warchief totally annihilated a unit of Wood Elf swordsmen.
So the end point was a single unit of High Elf spears were on a hill surrounded by a unit of Wood Elf 2 handers, and two units of cavalry. They were duly finished off in a couple of turns, but the High Elves did have the chance to kill my Warchief, which could have resulted in an army morale check for the Woodies and victory to the High Elves. As it was my luck held and the Woodies won a hard fought and very Pyrrhic victory.
I think my increased numbers of units helped me a lot in allowing me to win the war of attrition, plus the fact that my luck mitigated the rather poor investment I'd made in C&C.
Issues I know I ballsed up:
1) I thought Wood Elves were not affected by woody terrain under these rules. I thought this was stated on the army list sheet I’d neglected to bring, but post-hoc I was unable to find any reference. Therefore any movement through those woods should have been at half speed, or disorder would have ensued! This would have made my light cavalry flanking manoeuvre a little slower than it was. Sorry for being a cheating backstard.
2) The saving throw is supposed to exceed the save value, whereas I was under the impression it was equal or greater than. I’m not sure if this would have made any difference to the game we played as only a few saving throws were made.
Observations:
1) Spears seem to be pretty rubbish. Although you can fight in two ranks you are penalised to hit doing so, and the kill roll is quite poor against the majority of armoured types. They might be useful where you have quality troops fighting poorer lightly armoured enemies (e.g. goblins or rats), but other than that, plain old hand weapons seems like a better bet. One thing we weren’t clear on was whether spear armed models can be deemed to use their hand weapons instead of spears.
2) Having said all in 1) above, I liked the different weapon categories and their interactions/effects on different armour types - it tickled my geek-bone nicely.
3) Cavalry seem very tough, and I think a bit overpowered. Fantasy rulesets always seem to make cavalry more resilient to bowfire than foot – I’m not sure if this is quite right!
4) I like the decisions you have to make when building your army about how easy you make it to control versus its size. I rode my luck with bargain basement command and control, if the dice rolls had been different for my orders changes, the battle could have swung very differently. Also, if you have a critical command, you may wish to have your Warchief in charge of it to improve C&C, or pay some points for decent command values for your commanders!
5) The initiative in the movement phase was quite interesting - again I frequently lost this due to the crap C&C I'd bought. As shooting comes first in the turn, and movement second, this meant missile troops could shoot and then move out of charge range IF you had the initiative - if your opponent had it then they'd be on you, and this happened to me! In this game we just had one initiative roll for each army, but there is the option to do this by commands, which could provide a bit of a twist.
6) Missile fire was similarly quite interesting, deciding whether you wanted to conserve your ammo, or loose it all off to devastate a key enemy unit. It seemed to me a waste that my Wood Elf archers were getting picked off and thereby my volley (ammo) counters were being effectively wasted, so I shot as fast as I could before they were all lost! If the enemy wasn't also missile armed I'd maybe have done things differently. I'm not sure if it's too powerful, but with only one game under my belt....
7) I have an undead army but the rules look very complex and I can't summon up the energy to read all that stuff,
Anyhow, that's the end of my rambling. All in all I found it enjoyable and reasonably intuitive, and there wasn't too much messing around looking stuff up, which was pretty good for a first game. I'd like to try this ruleset out again - I wonder how magic affects things, and also what a horde type army is like to face up to? Anyone got any rats?
1000 points of Wood Elves vs. 1000 points of High Elves.
Army composition:
I’d gone for a rank and file heavy Woody army, with seven units – 3 lots of light armoured archers, two close combat foot units and two light cavalry units. I had a Warchief with command level 2, and two Battle leaders with Command level 1. The Warchief was with the close combat foot, the archers were another command under a battle leader, and the cavalry were another command with the remaining battle leader.
The High Elves were more command and hero oriented, with only four units of infantry – two units of archers and two of spears. They also had a Warchief with command level 4, a battle leader with command level 4, a hero and a scout. The archers were one command and the spears formed another.
So one army heavy on rank and file but with poorer C&C, versus one with less rank and file but much better potential for C&C, and with a hero that could be devastating in close combat.
I had thought that two units of veteran cavalry as my scout force would be ample to out-scout those plodding High Elves, but they had a scout, plus a much better battle leader in charge of their scouting command, so I was the one out-scouted! However, although out-scouted, my scouting command was enough to stop me from being outmanoeuvred, so these were not completely wasted assets, although the scouting commands were now with ‘hold’ orders and would need reactivating to get them into the battle.
Being out-scouted meant the High Elves got to choose and position the terrain – two swamps down the middle of my deployment area, a wood on each flank, and a hill dead centre plus another on my right. As I hadn’t been outmanoeuvred I was able to dice to remove/reposition these (on a 5 or 6 for each piece), so the central hill was taken off. Had I been outmanoeuvred I wouldn’t have had the option to remove anything.
First move I lost initiative, due to my cheap and nasty C&C. Both of us had to reactivate our scouting commands (unless we just wanted them to stand there all battle). Both started as disorganised (as do any units who scouted), however this seemed moot given that they were on hold orders and therefore couldn’t move, and not moving means you recover from disorder. Maybe I’ve misunderstood that… The fact I didn’t want my light cavalry standing on the table edge all battle affected my deployment plan – I had to put my Warchief next to the cavalry command so he’d be close enough reach it to issue new orders. Had I splashed out on a courier this would have been less of an issue.
We both issued oppose orders to our commands – this allows you to move your units pretty much as you want, except you can’t move into contact with enemy. The High Elves had a much better chance for their orders to succeed, since they had +4 to their dice roll, needing a 6 for the order to be received and interpreted ok. I only had +1 to the orders roll, but lucked out by rolling high. If I'd rolled just averagely there could have been confusion, disorder and delay. If I'd rolled low I might have lost the troops or my Warchief! Oppose orders were fine for my archers. For my close combat troops attack orders would be necessary, but not straight away, as troops under attack orders will mindlessly move towards the nearest visible enemy. So for now everything was under oppose orders until the crucial moment…
Once everything had 'oppose' orders all the jostling started. I had my light cav on the far left, the close combat foot on the centre-left, the archers next to them but on the other side of the swamp. The high Elves deployed everything on my right behind the hill, facing my archers.
There was a general advance by the woodies, the High Elves' archers peeled off to their right to face the flanking Wood Elf cavalry and close combat foot, the High Elf spears sent for the hill in front of them.
There was some tentative bowfire with just a volley each, where I found out how useful light armour is against arrows, i.e. not at all, and how useful heavy armour is against bows, which is quite a lot... I lost 6 archers, the High Elves one or two, so next turn I decided to pour a few volleys in before I lost them all! Rate of fire started to win out against the High Elf armour but of course I was using up all my ammo.
In the meantime the High Elves had changed their spearmen's orders to 'Attack', but a poor roll meant that although they accepted the order, but were disorganised. The attack order sent them yomping up over the hill against a lone unit of my archers hiding in a wood beyond the hill. After loosing off as many volleys as they could (they weren't going to get a chance to fire any more) they cut down half the High Elf spear unit sent against them, but the spears passed their morale check and crashed into the archers, sweeping them away in one round of combat.
By this time my cavalry and close combat foot had managed to get into striking range of the High Elf right flank, but I needed to change their orders so they could actually do something. For my close combat troops, not a problem as they were directly controlled by the Warchief, so the orders were changed automatically. However, my cavalry needed an order to be sent from the Warchief. As I didn't have any couriers I had to send a rank and file warrior to deliver the message. It took him two turns to reach the cavalry command's battle leader, and when he got there I needed to roll high (again, due to my cheap as chips C&C). Well, fortune favours the brave, and I rolled a 6, so the cavalry duly changed to 'attack' orders, and could now charge gleefully into the badly shot up High Elf archers to chop them up. However, odds were it should have taken me much longer with my poor C&C to get the orders changed - I was bloody lucky basically, and getting that '6' was critical in the end.
My archers had been all but destroyed - only a single archer remained on the field - he had not routed but was shaken. I thought about trying to rally him, but after consulting the tables decided that my crappy leadership was not going to result in a happy outcome, and could in fact have lead to commands in my army breaking. So I sent him off to get a nice cup of tea. The High Elf spears were now moving over to relieve their archers, and my close combat foot moved up to meet them. My 2 handed weapon unit chopped up his spears that had previously been shot up by my archers, but his fresh spear unit, plus a hero and a Warchief totally annihilated a unit of Wood Elf swordsmen.
So the end point was a single unit of High Elf spears were on a hill surrounded by a unit of Wood Elf 2 handers, and two units of cavalry. They were duly finished off in a couple of turns, but the High Elves did have the chance to kill my Warchief, which could have resulted in an army morale check for the Woodies and victory to the High Elves. As it was my luck held and the Woodies won a hard fought and very Pyrrhic victory.
I think my increased numbers of units helped me a lot in allowing me to win the war of attrition, plus the fact that my luck mitigated the rather poor investment I'd made in C&C.
Issues I know I ballsed up:
1) I thought Wood Elves were not affected by woody terrain under these rules. I thought this was stated on the army list sheet I’d neglected to bring, but post-hoc I was unable to find any reference. Therefore any movement through those woods should have been at half speed, or disorder would have ensued! This would have made my light cavalry flanking manoeuvre a little slower than it was. Sorry for being a cheating backstard.
2) The saving throw is supposed to exceed the save value, whereas I was under the impression it was equal or greater than. I’m not sure if this would have made any difference to the game we played as only a few saving throws were made.
Observations:
1) Spears seem to be pretty rubbish. Although you can fight in two ranks you are penalised to hit doing so, and the kill roll is quite poor against the majority of armoured types. They might be useful where you have quality troops fighting poorer lightly armoured enemies (e.g. goblins or rats), but other than that, plain old hand weapons seems like a better bet. One thing we weren’t clear on was whether spear armed models can be deemed to use their hand weapons instead of spears.
2) Having said all in 1) above, I liked the different weapon categories and their interactions/effects on different armour types - it tickled my geek-bone nicely.
3) Cavalry seem very tough, and I think a bit overpowered. Fantasy rulesets always seem to make cavalry more resilient to bowfire than foot – I’m not sure if this is quite right!
4) I like the decisions you have to make when building your army about how easy you make it to control versus its size. I rode my luck with bargain basement command and control, if the dice rolls had been different for my orders changes, the battle could have swung very differently. Also, if you have a critical command, you may wish to have your Warchief in charge of it to improve C&C, or pay some points for decent command values for your commanders!
5) The initiative in the movement phase was quite interesting - again I frequently lost this due to the crap C&C I'd bought. As shooting comes first in the turn, and movement second, this meant missile troops could shoot and then move out of charge range IF you had the initiative - if your opponent had it then they'd be on you, and this happened to me! In this game we just had one initiative roll for each army, but there is the option to do this by commands, which could provide a bit of a twist.
6) Missile fire was similarly quite interesting, deciding whether you wanted to conserve your ammo, or loose it all off to devastate a key enemy unit. It seemed to me a waste that my Wood Elf archers were getting picked off and thereby my volley (ammo) counters were being effectively wasted, so I shot as fast as I could before they were all lost! If the enemy wasn't also missile armed I'd maybe have done things differently. I'm not sure if it's too powerful, but with only one game under my belt....
7) I have an undead army but the rules look very complex and I can't summon up the energy to read all that stuff,
Anyhow, that's the end of my rambling. All in all I found it enjoyable and reasonably intuitive, and there wasn't too much messing around looking stuff up, which was pretty good for a first game. I'd like to try this ruleset out again - I wonder how magic affects things, and also what a horde type army is like to face up to? Anyone got any rats?