This week’s Old World night was a bit light on players. It was just me and a buddy of mine that had not been able to make it for some time. He is still trying to figure out the Wood Elves in this version of the rules. So, he like me, needed the practice! Since it was just me, I got a chance to field my Dwarves again. Now that I finished painting my Troll Hide Torpedoes, I would be able to see how they worked in practice!
My army contained a General and BSB on War Thrones, an Anvil, two units of Longbeards, two units of Iron Drakes, one of rangers. Everything was fully runed! The Wood Elves had a General on a Dragon, a 4Lvl Mage, one unit of Glade Guard, two units of Scouts, a unit of Glade Riders, a unit of Wild Riders, a Treeman, an Eagle and a unit of War Dancers. The units had a selection of different arrows and the general had max magic items with an Ogre Blade.
We just played the base battle line scenario. We designated all the woods and ruins as dangerous terrain. We rolled for sides and the Elves won and chose. We then set up our troops and the Elves won the roll to go first.
The first turn was just the Elves advancing and throwing up blocking vortexes to limit my shooting. I took some pot shots and fireballed the Wild Riders down to one model. The Elven shooting was not very effective, as they rolled poorly on their wounds. I did get a hit on the Treeman with the Trollhammer and got him down to half wounds!
he The Elves casted all their spells, as my Anvil was out of range. The remaining Wild Rider charged the flank of one of my Iron Drakes (I was not careful in my movement). I chose to flee, as I did not want the unit getting hit in the flank and I figured it was a good way to get it to my right flank faster. The dragon charged my Anvil, but failed by one inch! The elves just pushed forward and kept their arrow flying. Another Iron Drake went down and they managed to get three wounds on my toughness eight Anvil (I failed every save this turn). I think I would have been better off, if the Dragon had made the charge!
On the next turn, the Dragon made the charge into my Anvil. All the other Elves just advance forward, with the Eagle trying to march block my General’s unit. The shooting took my rangers down to three models. Now that the elven troops were in range, I was able to go onto the offensive! My Rangers charged the Eagle (to get out of the way). Unfortunately, they actually made the charge… This allowed my left hand Longboard unit to kick in the drill rule widen and charge the Treeman. I did the same with the General’s unit into the Eagle. However, with the Rangers in the way, I had some limitations on how I could charge and had to thin the unit will drilled to make contact. I should have charged with this unit first… My Iron Drakes moved sideways to get into position to charge the flank of the Dragon that was locked into a fight with my Anvil. The Treeman was taken out (barely, as it made six of nine saves) and the Eagle went down. I then pursued forward into the War Dancers. My earlier mistake made this charge harder than it should have been, but I was saved by Drilled again! The Anvil and Dragon locked in again after the second round of combat. I charged the Iron Drakes into the flank to get combat res and try to get the dragon off my Anvil. This worked and the Dragon fell back two inches. I followed up and the Dragon ate my champion.
The Elves positioned most of their free troops to take shots at my Iron Drakes, taking them out (I once again failed every armor save). Then it was just a case of the two fights. The initial dragon Anvil strike was a tie again. The longboards defeated the war dancers. I made a critical mistake here. I should have reformed with the Longbeards towards the Dragon. That was my intent when I charged, but in the excitement of getting rid of the War Dancers, I said I was following up and my opponent had rolled the dice. This allowed the Elves to charge the Anvil and get the last wound off. I was out of position, so was unable to get an end of game revenge attack.
We tallied up the points and it ended up being a tie. The turn six not to reform was the critical mistake (asuming my Rune of Smiting General would have won the fight). Lesson learned!
- Manteuffel