Little General's Club: May 2012

This is a bit late, but due to a variety of circumstances, I just couldn't be bothered to post this battle report until now.

The May club game was a continuation of the previous Warmaster Ancients/Fantasy game that we played previously. This time, though, the forces of evil were ambushing the forces of good as they advanced deeper into the Witch King's domains.

The table was about 15' in length, depicting a road within a heavily wooded area.

The forces of good opted to set up in the center sections of their deployment area; setup was double blind using maps and then once sorted, figures were placed. The forces of good were placed as shown, but the forces of evil had to roll dice to see if they got misdirected in the woods or were extra frothy and got an additional move before the first turn. For me, I had 2 units misdirected, one of which couldn't move the first turn, and a brigade of light horse got an extra move forward.

Unfortunately, due to a snafu between the umpire and the commanders for the forces of good, the "Good" side had about 15% more troops on the table than they were supposed to and they had better quality than what they were paying for. A simple communication error led to the mistake, but when we evil blokes looked at the table the first time, we were thinking "wtf! @&$%, not again!"

Our first glimpse of the ambush-ees. The big problem that these guys had was that on the first turn, they could not really move, but merely turn to face, provided they passed a command die roll. If they failed, then they automatically rolled on the catastrophic failure table, with the understanding that their reaction to the ambush would be variable per unit. This proved a very big bone of contention for one of the commanders of good and he refused to move the first turn (and he eventually packed off. not appreciating the scenario, a rarity in our group, but some folks don't react as we would want them to)...which could have caused the forces of good to lose the game, but as the report shows, the good forces were able to recover.

 The forces of evil, well most of them. The other shot of the far end (top of frame) was blurry an unusable). My troops are on the left.

Which we see here. The large infantry brigade of slow movers in the left foreground are, of course, the force which was so lost that it did not get to move the first turn...and was limited to 10cm movements per command roll after that...which they promptly failed during their first move of the second turn.

 

Oh yes, I did have some elephants, not that they won me the game or anything...instead, they became pincushions. The two infantry units on the right foreground are mediums and lights in that order.

 

 More shots, a couple of turns into the game. My die rolling was par, thus terrible. The above shot is from the other side of the road, from the Witch King's position. His heavy troops were just getting into the action.

Meanwhile, my medium infantry failed 2 successive movement rolls and ended up backing off the trailing elements off the table edge, which caused me to lose 4 stands right there....they haven't even seen the enemy yet!

My units finally getting stuck in...after receiving two turns of archery fire...notice the gap in the line of elephants...yeah, I lost two to archers. The forest really interfered with my ability to get close enough to see the enemy at the beginning of my move, to where I could charge them. 

 Same turn, my right flank. The way the rules were working, I would shoot the light infantry, who then fled through their entire force, who, on their turn, would rally and then race back to the same position where they originally stood. I meaning, I ended up taking more loses than they did and I could not follow up...I suggested to the umpire a rule change for the next time this comes up...if the enemy is asshole to bellybutton in a road column (charlie foxtrot!), then lights cannot move through them, as there is not room to do so. Had this been the case, their lights would have been decimated early on.

 My far right, as the enemy comes off the road towards me, with medium and heavy infantry and cavalry.

The head of the forces of good road column...not doing as badly as their now absent commander had anticipated they would. His error, aside from packing it in on the second turn, was placing his elephants within his column instead of at the head of it. As it is, this force was able to break through our blocking force by the end of the time limit.

My lads meet the meatgrinder once again. Except, I found out after the game, that their forces were using base 4 attacks, 4 wounds, and 4+ armor save, when they should have been 3/ 3/ 5. This meant that they would have been down instead of even and up against me, so the match ups, even with the elephants, were in their favor....all in ERROR! (censored censored censored).

The situation just before we picked up the figures. I had finally gotten my surviving elephants to the edge of the road, in a reasonably supported manner....but the Witch King's own forces were getting hammered and just could not break through. 

A frustrating result, but I did get to push pewter/lead and roll dice...