Game 3 of 3-Greenies on Green.

Game 3 of 3. Woodies vs Orcs: Watch Tower.

Sadly my camera battery decided to die, so only managed to take three pics. Even more unfortunate as I think it was the most interesting game of the three...though I would say that given that the woodies are my favourite army to use (yes, I'm a sucker for "bad" armies-sold my Ogres the second the new book came out).

Anywho the list I was using:

lvl4: scroll, ICI, beasts (flock of doom, amber spear, wild form, curse)

BSB: abane, HODA

18 GGuard: FC-flame

14 GGuard: M, SB (learnt from tournament to have more banners!)

3x10 GGuard: M

3x8 Dryads

5 Wildriders: (m)

2x5 wardancers

Treeman

2x5 waywatchers

Eagle

Still a bowline of sorts (72 shots/turn+ characters and strangle root), but now has some combat punch from the treeman, and wardancers to control character buses.

Ben rolled up watch tower, so we mixed up the terrain a bit. By that I mean took off the dread keep thing, shuffled the forest by it to balance terrain, and put Skele weathervane tower (minus weathervane) in the centre of board. House rule-ignore the steps for impassable. Tower gives 600VPs, but still play variable length to keep it interesting.

I get control of the Tower and make the mistake (hindsight) of putting a unit of dryads in the tower. My thinking was that the Savages were going to take the tower, but I wanted to force his hand to get them in there fast (and therefore out of the way). Thinking back, I had nothing that could shift them, so would have plonked themselves in the tower without the added incentive. Oh well. I was pretty confident that I could handle the rest of his army comfortably anyway.

So Deployment:

The rest of my deploying (moving left from pic): The 1/2 unit is a unit of 10 archers, next is 5 wardancers (looking directly at tower), then the 18 GGuard + lvl4 and BSB (eagle behind), then unit of 10 archers, then finally Treeman behind fence next to the house squaring off with Ronald.

I wont give a turn by turn  break down as no pics to make it fun (and very conscious of TL, DR).

Basically Turn 1 the Savages charge the tower. I let re-roll to hit though to stop foot. Dryads managed ONE FRICKIN wound from 16 attacks, and are deleted. Savages+naked black Orc stay in the tower all game. This was forced a little by me as I kept my bowline close to the tower to remove any favourable positions to jump out to + the options for stuff to stay in the tower = naked black orc (dead to shooting), or the trolls (dead to shooting), and there was never anywhere good to put them. DDiver kills 2 Wildriders.

My turn 1 is awesome! flock of doom takes 2 wounds from the Lobba (that then explodes and dies) and I IF (surprise surprise) Amber spear taking a massive 6 wounds from Ronald. I then take another wound from shooting (HODA). My waywatchers march up to say hello to the rock lobba. The wildriders race up as well into the forest (normal) to also threaten the weak flank. my shooting manages to kill the right Mangler (good), but only get 1 wound on the left Mangler (oh no).

Ronald runs away...but not far enough as Mr Treeman wanders over and 10 s4 strangleroot later = Ronald is finally killed having survived the MANtillery, and dodged the Axes of the Whitelions.  

On the right flank up in the Orc Deployment zone things are looking scary for me. One waywatcher unit charges the lobba and acts as bait for the chariots (the trap being a unit of dryads ready to pounce). The wildriders are charged by the spider riders,  and the Mangler moves a merciful 5 inches missing the wildriders. However it does mean it is now JUST in the forest = another -1 to hit (and all glade guard at long range...). Spider rider vs wildrider combat is defined by out of nowhere super Spider rider armour. I hold the charge and kill in my turn with one remaining wild rider who hides for rest of game. Shooting at Mangler only takes 1 fustrating wound. Then chariot box cars the waywatchers (charged by dryads and killed easily) and Mangler goes through other waywatcher unit (2 dead) and the other unit of dryads (5 dead). remaining dryads then jump on the mangler as my shooting was needed elsewhere.

Centre of the board was defined by trolls hiding from flaming archers. the solo troll got a charge on the centre wardancer unit, broke them for the over run (to get shot to bits as ended up in front of flaming archers). My other unit of wardancers moved to the right to keep check on the Orc bus-always staying at 15/16 inches. I eventually got 5 of my flaming archers with LOS on the trolls, but with -2 to hit. 1 wound later = everything opens up (conveniently most of it at short range) and all but 2 trolls are killed. I get the curse on the bus.

Things now looking not so good, so the bus marches up (under curse) to get some points from something. 7 die from the Dangerous Terrain test, and warboss takes a wound. Bit of a mistake (looking back) as it meant my bow curve came into play. wardancers threaten flank charge, dryads threaten rear charge. Archers open up in close range, eagle moves to block the charge (and dies nobly) 2 rounds of shooting = all Orcs dead, warboss KB'ed from waywatchers (not so satisfying as was on 1 wound), and BSB and lvl4 on 1 wound each.

In other news I left the Treeman to clean up the Trolls. Reasonably confident of this. In previous games I have put treeman into units of 6 trolls and held/ran them down. Not this time. 2 rounds of fluffed attacks + lvl4 dead from sniper spell (burned scroll turn 2 to stop same thing) = of course treeman fails stubborn test (my fault as forgot to reform archers to bring BSB into range) and is run down. 

Game ends turn 5.

On points the Orcs win by less than the value of the Treeman (taking into account 600VPS for watchtower), meaning that if my BSB had been in range (of course I passed the theoretical re-roll) it would have been a draw. If dryads had not been in tower (and on left flank to support Treeman) I would have won and possibly also taken the troll points. Would've, should've, could've. Also if had a 6th turn I would have easily killed the BSB and lvl4, which would have brought it back to a draw slightly in my favour.

END RESULT OF DAY:

The Orcs take it 2-1. But the 2 wins were not walk overs and could have easily swung the other way. I was very happy with how everything performed and I can't see any obvious list changes. The High Elf list will be going to Call to Arms and the Empire to Skitterleap so watch out! A great last day of gaming with Ben. In fact, this blog was created to catalogue our games, so a sad day for that as well. Fear not though, I have a wedding to attend in Melbourne early next year, so Ben will feature again! (though I will have to swallow my principles and use one of his "bad guy" armies as I dont think my partner will let me pack an army for the trip.)