This was our second game of the evening after the Lizard Men Fury-test game. We went old school for this one and it doesn’t get any more old school than this match up.
My Hawkshold DudesFront rank left to right:
Militia, Militia, Heavy Infantry, Heavy Infantry, Militia, Militia
Back rank left to right:
Knights, Peasant Mob, Peasant Mob, Knights
Brook’s Undead DudesFront rank left to right:
Skeleton Trolls, Ghoul Pack, Zombie Trolls, Zombie Trolls, Sleleton Trolls, Skeleton Trolls
Back rank left to right:
Ghoul Pack, Skeleton Bowmen, Skeleton Bowmen
Apparently there was a surplus of Dead Trolls laying around. Perhaps an Orc army attempted a recent siege on the Necromancer’s castle and failed?
I wanted to field an army that could hold a full line so that the 2 Knights could run amok. I thought I did an OK job here, but I was losing points in the center because my Heavy Infantry would be tying up equally tanky Zombie Trolls that cost a combined 100 points less than my guys.
Brook targeted his archery on the Militia unit immediately to the right of my Heavy Infantry. I applied Bravery to both Militia units on the right hand side and later to the other 2 Militia units. At some point both Peasant Mobs got it as well.
The beads on the units are pending fear checks.
On the left, Brook direct controlled his Zombie Trolls to slide them out to engage the Knights head on. He then had the Ghoul pack that had started in the second rank turn in towards the center of the map. He also swung out the Skeli Trolls on my right side to avoid evil Knight flanking, but this turned out to be a mistake since it allowed me to pinch the outer-most one, giving the Knights a devastating attack. The pinching Militia unit was immediately pinched itself by the other Skeli Troll, but I considered this to be quite the fair deal.
On the left the Ghoul Packs did their expected dance of take light damage and then run for their (un)lives. The Knights on that side got bogged down with the Skeleton Trolls and would eventually go down as they under performed a bit IIRC. With the Ghouls running for it, I was able to get one of my Militia to pinch one of the Zombie Trolls in the center while a Peasant Mob (the one with the pen on it in the pic) was able to do the same to the other Zombie Troll unit later on. Without those pinches, the Heavy Infantry would still be slugging it out with those guys as I type this. To the right the Skeleton Bowmen nuked the Militia unit they where targeting. The Skeleton Troll that was initially pinched went down and my Knights where then able to flank the other Skeleton Trolls, which decided to attack to their flank and managed to inflict enough damage to put the Knights into the yellow. These Trolls didn’t last long either and props to that Militia unit for hanging in there for help! As great as this was, disaster occurred on the next Undead turn when the Skeleton Archers where re-targeted to the Knights and they did 2 damage, forcing a route check that the Knights failed! I applied Bravery to them once reformed. I didn’t kick myself for not applying it sooner because the failing roll was an 18 anyways. Still, things still looked OK for me up to this point. That would change…
OK, so a lot has happened since the last pic was taken. My Knights to the left went down, leaving the Skeleton Trolls with 2-3 red boxes. The Ghoul Packs rallied and then proceeded to beat the Snot out of the Militia and Peasant Mob over there. A failed courage check by the Peasants sped that along despite Bravery. The Zombie Trolls in the middle went down, but this was balanced out by the fact that the Skeleton Bowmen did another 2 damage to the Knights, killing them. Then we had a bizarre situation arise where a Militia and Peasant Mob (both with Bravery and in the yellow) charged the retrograding Skeleton Bowmen. These Bowmen hung in there for a few turns. The Militia had to burn its Bravery when it almost blew a courage check, but the Peasant Mob failed theirs outright and the Bowmen they where facing actually killed them with 1 red box remaining! The Militia eventually cleaned both of them up, but died in the process. The game then degenerated into a series of turns where Brook would direct control his units to have them available to flank or pinch my 2 Heavy Infantry units unless I direct controlled them in turn to prevent this. The Undead units where also kept just out of the final rushing range of the sluggish Hawk Infantry. All the time this was happening Brook would heal the odd point of damage on one of his units. I surrendered at this point because I was unable to engage and he would eventually have his surviving units (1 Skeleton Troll and 2 Ghoul Packs) near to full health. Once that happened one of my Heavy Infantry would go down in a pinch while the other was held up by a near full strength Ghoul Pack.
ThoughtsWe both had decent deployments based upon the units we had. Brook played it poorly on my right by angling his 2 Skeleton Trolls like that, but he made up for it with the skillful positioning of his Skeleton Trolls to my left. He certainly got his points worth out of the Skeleton bowmen, that’s for sure! My Heavy Infantry where awesome and took next to no damage, but their slow speed proved to be my undoing in the end game. Even with bravery, I still failed 4 courage checks and I had to re-apply bravery in a couple of instances where a unit would have failed the courage check had I not had it on the unit. This was slightly balanced out by the fact that I don’t recall failing any fear checks, even when a Wave of Terror was played.
Good old fashioned fun!
