Friday, July 2, 2010

Thursday Night Song of Blades and Heroes

I had to travel for work this league night and wasn't able to make it.  It also look like life conspired against several others and only Steve and Eric made it out to play.  Much sadness. :(

Here is the report from Steve, hopefully Eric can describe his band of Orcs a bit.

John,

Ended up being just Eric and I for the league and so we only played one game.

Eric decided to retire his previous war band as they had gotten pretty banged up over the weeks and brought in a new one - Grut's Orcs led by Grut himself.  I'm afraid you'll have to get in touch with Eric to get the details, but they were eight strong and scrapping for a fight.

It seems that this orc war band decided they wanted to take a walk through the escaped gladiator's lands - break through scenario to be precise.  Well Hunk and his gladiators weren't about to let the orcs get a free pass and decided to intercept them.  So four gladiators marched out and things started out slow for both sides - each approaching cautiously (i.e. only one activation on each side before turning over the turn) before the violence broke out.  Hunk went charging in as is his way and soon ran into his orc equivalent.  Unfortunately for him, Hunk's charge fell short and after butting heads with the orc berserker, Hunk was soon out of the fight and Celeris who was flanking Hunk broke off at speed.  Maximus and Tyranus on the other flank engaged and brought down an orc beast rider.  Flushed with his success, Max came around the hill to prep for the berserker's charge whom Celeris was leading right to him when orc archers fired from the woods in ambush.  While he shrugged off most of the arrows, one did graze him, stunning him temporarily which was all the opening the orc leader needed.  Charging down the hill, Grut ran Max through and Tyranus and Celeris opted to withdraw from the field.

From some reports, the orc beast rider made a full recovery.  Meanwhile, Hunk shrugged off his wounds, but Maximus did not recover and joined the ranks of the dead.

Both war bands made their way home through a haunted forest without event.

With that the gladiators opted to part ways as trying to hold their territory had become far too costly.

-------------------------

While I was badly out numbered, my guys were pretty good quality by comparison, but Eric's dice warmed up where I never really got going.  Eric taking out my two strongest models - particularly Hunk in the early part of the game - pretty well decided the scenario.  My major mistake was letting Max get into short range of the archers Eric ran into the woods.  He got 3 shots at me at a 4 v 5 combat and I was just asking to be knocked down with one of them.  

With the gladiators now worth only 277 points and having lost their 2nd best guy, I think they're down and out.  In the process of putting together a new band for next session.  Could go either undead war band or maybe samurai/ninja.  I'll be playing with options and looking at models so we'll see.

Steve
 Thanks for the update Steve!  Looking forward to some good Race and Agricola on Sunday!

jp

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Steve, if you do go with the Samauri/Ninja route, I have some old Legend of the Five Rings samurai that you can have.

Zarzthor said...

I decided to disband my original band was due to the fact that I'd lost several guys and 3 of the 5 left were up to a 5+ quality for the game. The only person that wasn't injured in some way was the concubine. Not a trooper to rely on when the fighting gets thick.

I built a Orc band using the Hero Scape guys I'd picked up. Have a 8 strong band with Grut a combat master, gang fighting, leader. Syco the savage berserker, Tw'n Sord the dual wielding fighter (ghost blade), and Slick the shield wielding fighter (free disengage) as the infantry. For support I have Pin, Poke, and Arc the skirmishing archers (mountaineer, forester, shooter medium). To round things out I have Spe'ar the beast rider (heavy armor, mounted, savage, tailslap).

I have around average quality and combat guys. Grut, Syco, and Spe'ar are 3-4, Tw'n and Slick are 4-4, with the archers at 4-3.

In the game with Steve I think the biggest effect on the game, besides my dice warming up and Steve's not, was Hunk's charge failing and Celris getting triple activation failure. That allowed me to get two charges off on Hunk with Syco to take him out. That allowed me to concentrate on going for the scenario win. Steve brought Maximus in just a little to close to the archers trying to bait Syco in. This let me get my archers into Ambush and get three shots at him. When a shot knocked Maximus down that gave a big opening for Grut to charge down the hill to try and take him out. Even if Grut had failed, I still had Tw'n and Syco in range to attack as well as long as they got two activations.

It was a good game that even with the numbers difference should have been close. As it all too often turns out, the dice had a big impact on the game.

Daimyo said...

Eric,

Oh yeah, forgot about the triple 1's I rolled for Celeris' activation. I remember us talking after the fight that even had I opted to try Hunk first to get the charge in, even he would fail with that roll.

Yeah, the only thing I had control over as far as outcome for this game was Max moving in too close to your archers. Let's just say I really respect the power of the aimed shot+ambush effect after that fight.

Unknown said...

Eric - Thanks for the update! Sounds like the Orcs are going to be tough!

Steve - So is Lord Daimyo making an appearance soon? Poor Hunk-ra, has he survived yet? :) Like Eric I have some L4R figs that can be utilized, but require some time to be put together and painted.