Orcs v. M&Ms

[gull2112]

Lazyj and I threw down last night and though we took three pictures it is beyond my timely ken to load them onto the site. I can do the fotobucket thing, but first I got to shrink the foto down to something less than four terabytes and that will take more time than I have right now.

I also thought I had written down the scenario specifics, but I guess not. We played "ticking clock" which gives points for occupying the "A" terrain and for having units in the enemie's deployment zone as well as points for destroyed and damaged units. Lazyj played M&M, which was a new primary faction for either of us to play, and I tried my latest iteration of the orc build outlined here http://yourmovegames.com/forum/index.php/topic,1570.0.html
 The set up looked like this in text speak:
                                                                 Healer Mage
 Wildmen Ogres       Hydra Earthy                     half orc Wildmen

  Small Woods

                               Small Hill

                                                       Small Woods

Trolls  CG                 Wolf Riders        Goblin sp  Marauders Goblin sp
  CG   CG                     Gobbows                                    Goblin sp
  CG   CG


The smal Hill had a Die on it set to four. Every time you were in sole possession of the hill you could advance or reduce the die. When the die reached one the game was over unless one side was totally wiped before then.
PREGAME NOTES: as is my usual style, two units into the setup I realized I should have set up totally different. The Marauders and their cohorts should have been in the center and the Wolf riders et al off to the right. I decided to press on any way.

Turn two (or turn one if you don't count the set up partial turns) saw utter shock on the orc commander's face as he saw the huge MC's of the hydra and Earthy(elemental) coming charging over the hill! The hydra charged the wolf riders who routed and were killed in the rout combat phase. Meanwhile, the goblin bowment kept plinking the hydra for one damage and allowing it to heal and gain (+1)-/-. The Marauders and escort went wide around the woods and met their opposites beside the same woods. Lazyj advanced the die to three.

Turn three had the Crazed Goblins charge the earth elemental since it became the closest unit. The Trolls followed along out of curiosity and also charged the elemental for a pinch. The elemental doesn't take morale checks so no worries there. The hydra pursues the gobbows who run like bunnies. The M&M faction fails to do any significant damage against the marauders and friends. They cleverly attacked the two flanking spearmen and ignored the marauders hoping to finish them off quickly and defest the marauders in detail, THAT plan was thwarted.

Turn four saw one more Crazed Goblin go for a triple pinch on the Elemental and the ogres charged the Trolls in the rear. The trolls held and ignored the ogres while laying the smack down on Earthy. One Crazed Goblin charged the hydra in the flank and pinned it there. As the orcs controlled the hill they advanced the die to Two.

Turn five saw the destruction of the earth elemental and the hydra get pinched by another Crazed goblin as the wildmen who were coming straight across the board were engaged by the remaining Crazed goblin. The earth elemental gone the ogres and trolls focused on each other and successfully routed each other! The half orcs played the "ordered retreat" card and survived amongst rules confusion which I will post in the "Rules" section. The Hydra was getting its clawsx all gummy with goblins, but couldn't quite eliminate them (one was untouched while the other was hanging on with one red box.

In the Orc turn the orcs advanced the die to one and ended the scenario. When all the points were added up and divided the ratio was 1.05 which meant draw in Kingdoms terms, but the score was 1118 - 1066 M&M so James won in tournament rules.

MVP Orcs - Has to be those Crazed Goblins, pinchy pinchy pinchy, and never take morale checks. Can't play command cards on them so they aren't a drain on your resources. Held up what they couldn't kill. Nice.

LVP Orcs - That's gotta be me for sending the wolf riders to their certain death.

MVP & LVP M&M -IMHO the whole army was solid and was just oozing mediocrity in the outcome department. The Hydra would be my next choice, but after the intial burst of speed and death it was completely stymied by the Crazed Goblins.
APPEND - The Half Orcs on the M&M left that did the fighting retreat and stuffed it to the gobbos while keeping the Marauders at arms length.

         

[ZiNOS]

I love the fact that you keep using default army lists of your making despite the scenario and prove that they are actually competitive and win although this was really close and you drew or lost, your choice. A balanced default army list for the Orcs (should i say goblins?) that works.

Cheers!

[RushAss]

The Flood of Fun rides!

Cool report.  The Crazed Goblins are always a good buy against large/fearsome dudes.  They are like a fearless swarm of ants.  Hey, that could be a new term!  Any unit that never rolls for courage or fear checks should be called fearless.  It can say it right in the card instead of all of the extra text describing it.

[lazyj]

It was good to shake off the rust and play after several months on hiatus! Kudos to Mike for a good game, and we even finished by 9pm which is becoming distressingly important for me as I get older. So lame!!! 

I know I broke a lot of best practices with my build, but it was fun to play. Hydra + Earth Elemental works really well. I had a feeling that Mike was going to dump a bunch of Crazed Goblins on me, and my original plan was to just point my Hyda at them and let it deal with the whole mob. By the time it ate them all it would be basically untouched and powered up something fierce!    To my mind the Hydra is the perfect counter to those wussy Crazed Goblins. It might take a bit of a beating if it got tangled up with all of them, but I think with minimal support it would crush them and become ferocious in the process.

Instead the Hydra only factored in as a push for Mike to end the game earlier than he might have liked - before my Hydra (+3 attacks and fully healed) ran amok among his remaining troops. Though it did run down his Wolf Riders and chew them up completely. Hilarity! 

The Earth Elemental was supposed to be sitting on top of the hill when he started engaging people, gaining him a critical +1 to his offensive skill (high ground bonus) and making him an actual threat to do damage while securing the terrain objective and the Hydra flank. Instead he kind of filled a good role by being a huge magnet for Mike's entire Goblin wing. They all turned to run at him, which left them wide open for me to pounce. He was a little pricey for that, and I was just a hair short of him getting high ground when he finally engaged. Sigh. Triple-pinching plus nasty Orc green cards on Trolls is going to carve anyone up pretty good.

Let me just say here that M&M command cards are amazing. Better than High Elves in my opinion. I went a *little* too far with Spoils, and regret not drawing more.

The only other problem with this build is that I didn't maximize the healer advantage, letting both my units get damaged on the same turn so I could only heal one. Whoops. Not really used to how they work. If I had to play this again I would have said forget it and added more troops as I was pretty thin.

But I also have to say that facing down four units with my two (plus healer mage) *almost* worked. My Wildmen Swords had a great card to boost my attack and lower the opponent courage. All I needed to do was score four hits on those Gobbos and they'd be routing for sure... or so I thought. Turns out in both cases I could only come up with 3 of the 4 hits in the first round, which let his Marauders come barreling in. Ick.

I was also disappointed with my Ogres. They charged into the rear of the Trolls and barely kept up with the return damage. Even with the spoils mark, they routed when the Trolls did. It was frustrating to not get more out of them, but they did manage to tie up a really expensive unit pretty much the whole game. Too bad they ain't cheap themselves.

I definitely want to play M&M again sometime, as I haven't even begun to try things like flying or mounted archer shenanigans.

[gull2112]

One unique thing about this session was no one had the dice. I would say that the dice were pretty random and gave neither of us the edge. I also would like to mention that I pretty much got three if not four cards every turn and played all of them. This means the Trolls almost always had a card attacking or defending and the goblin spearmen were well supplied, if some of the narration sounds fishy that's what was going on; furious card play.

[gull2112]

Hey, that could be a new term!  Any unit that never rolls for courage or fear checks should be called fearless.  It can say it right in the card instead of all of the extra text describing it.

That is a good idea Marcus, so I copied it and called attention to it here. Fearless is definitely a power that should be used very sparingly. If too many new factions have units with Fearless then the old factions will start looking dated. This is why I keep trying to face new factions with the orcs, I want to make sure they aren't getting relegated to the scrap heap. To YMG's credit, at this point they are still quite viable.

[RushAss]

Thanks Mike!  I should post that idea in the rules thread as well.

[gull2112]

James, I think I cheated this time. Aren't Trolls stupid? Doesn't that mean you have to discard a card to play a card on them? Whoops!

[RushAss]

No, it means that you need to spend 2 command actions to rally them or change their standing orders.  You can play command cards on them as per normal units.

[gull2112]

Oh, well in that case I didn't cheat, because they only broke on the last turn (along with the ogres they were fighting) so I never got to rally them, and I never changed their SO. Actually, I didn't win anyway, so the point is moot.

[gull2112]

"What you own is your own kingdom - What you do is your own glory
What you love is your own power - What you live is your own story "

-Rush, Something for Nothing

"What we play is a game called kingdoms, What we do you'd think is boring,
What we crave is our own gameroom, what we have is just some flooring"

[lazyj]

Is the Stupid part a recent addition? Because I don't remember seeing that keyword on their card. Course I don't usually look, to be honest. But I could have sworn Trolls are not stupid - just Ogres.

[ajax98]

James, I think I cheated this time. Aren't Trolls stupid? Doesn't that mean you have to discard a card to play a card on them? Whoops!

"Stupid" as a Keyword came in with M&M; thus not there for the Orc Faction.
Trolls are not only not "Stupid", but do not require extra Cmd Cards to play a CC on.
Ogre's are "Stupid", thus Trolls R smarter because they Regenerate.

[RushAss]

Nice one Mike!

And I had Ogres on the brain when you said "Trolls" for some reason.  Yeah, Ogres and RushAss are stupid while Trolls are not.

Sheesh.

[lazyj]

I didn't figure we played it that wrong for so long. But I couldn't be sure, since I always call them "those stupid #*$&% trolls", that maybe I had actually been on to something.