MAP BASED CAMPAIGN ROUNDS 3 & 4
Free Folk have become our archenemies in the campaign... as you can see from the map our provinces are adjacent to theirs in many places and on Round 2. they defeated my Bannerman Atte and snatched a province from us. And yes, they've been leading the campaign for couple of rounds... our brave Tully faction hanging close behind on second place. So dared ourselves to seek vengeance and on round 3. we chose a Campaign Event to be able to challenge them, even if they had already been challenged. This battle was solved as a large (+50p.) team game. On round 4. I continued our mission to try an beat them and challenged them again. This blogpost presents these two battles... brace yourself!
Game of Thrones
As this was the battle between two factions leading the campaign, we wanted to make it special and set it up as a team game. All players brought 25p. lists with their own commanders and tactics decks, only one Tactics Board was used.
Our faction made the following simple plan (assuming, that there would be objectives to score points from): make sure to score 2+2 points with commanders sitting on objectives and kill one of the enemy commanders, while not losing too many of our own units. This followed the simple logic: we could not win insignificant FF horde by trying to kill them all. Hence we chose Rodrik Cassel on Stark Bowmen and Eddard Stark on Stormcrow Dervishes to be our commanders; Rodrik could rain arrows at the enemy very effectively, while sitting on an objective and Stormcrows could hit and run aka retreating back to the objective after attacking an enemy. Stormcrow Dervishes are currently one of my favourite units and Eddard's cards (and Stark cards in general) can really make them shine.
Our lists were as follows:
RODRIK 25
Faction: House Stark
Commander: Rodrik Cassel – Master–at–Arms
Points: 25 (4 Neutral)
Combat Units:
• Stark Bowmen (6)
with Rodrik Cassel – Master–at–Arms (0)
• Stark Sworn Swords (5)
with Bran and Hodor – Protector and Ward (2)
• Summer (0)
• House Umber Berserkers (7)
with Meera Reed - Cunning Trapper (1)
Non-Combat Units:
• catelyn (4)
Free Folk Horde
Harma had been wounded in a previous campaign game this round, so the FF hordes were lead by Rattleshirt in the Followers of Bone and Tormund in humble FF Raiders. Besides Followers they had 3 giants, that were not insignificant. Rest of the horde were Raiders and Trappers and a Skinchanger with a bear. As NCUs they brought Ygritte, Styr and Mance.
Deployment
Atte and myself took clear field responsibilities: I took our left flank and Atte took the left. One Wolf and one unit of Sworn Swords hang a bit closer to centre, but we were not really planning to take centre objective, but rather just contest it, hoping we would get Rodrik's cards that shut down giants.
Free Folk were so numerous, that they covered their entire deployment zone with their commanders in flanks as well. I was a bit worried as there were two giants looming opposite to my detachment!
Battle begins
After first moves centre objective certainly looked very hard to even contest! For some weird reason the giant had decided to move behind the palisade though...
Wildlings co-operating to manoeuvre, while Atte observes...
Battle lines at the end of Round 1.
Round 2. Action begins!
At Round start I had 4 free charges / attacks in my hand!
I was thinking "there's no way I can lose with this hand" and aimed my "sights" to Tormund's unit with Eddard. Only issue was the Palisade preventing that charge...
First Sudden Charge used was on our right flank, where Bran-Berserkers charged at the Trappers, blocking enemy access to an objective too! Risky, but potentially a game winning move... unfortunately Ygritte was disturbing Bran and we didn't het the free D3 hits... and 3 Trappers were left standing... Well the Berserkers were yet to activate!
I was smiling when Wildlings struck at the Berserkers, making them even angrier, as that allowed me to play "Fury for the fallen" with Eddard. I used the free attack to destroy the Palisade and then activated Stormcrows and charged at Raiders lead by Tormund. I could see sweat starting to form on the foreheads of the FF players... even played Northern Ferocity to gain Sundering.
My opponent Leo is known for his good luck with the dice and out of the six hits
I scored, he went on to save 4 by rolling 4 sixes!!!
FF played Swift Advance on Styr fuelled Raiders and charged our Berserkers into their flank.
This unfortunately destroyed Berserkers, but gave Eddard another free charge at Tormund, this time with Critical Blow. Still those pesky Raiders refused to die and were left standing with Tormund and two Raiders. As a giant was too close for comfort, Eddard's unit free retreated back to an objective, scoring two points, but failing in destroying an enemy commander, damn it!
In the middle Wildling forces had scattered and we had the opportunity to claim the centre objective, while also bashing a raider unit at our leisure. Somehow those Wildlings still managed to contest the objective.
At the end of Round 2. we scored 4 points from 2 objectives, both controlled by our commanders.
Free Folk scored 3 from objectives and had destroyed Berserkers, so the score was even at 4-4.
Round 3.
Now the fight for the centre objective started at earnest. We played another Sudden Charge and
charged contesting Trappers in the rear. One Trapper was standing after melee attacks and Leo’s fortune
with dice continued as succeeded a panic test at 10!!!
One frozen giant had turned it’s attention back to centre... oh ou...
Luckily FF gave us time to finish those Trappers and even charge the giant before it did.
It didn’t die, but at least our other Sworn Swords unit now controlled the centre objective.
On Round 3. We scored 5 points from objectives against 4 scored by FF. As this was +50p. game one side needed to score 12 points to win. With 2 commanders sitting on objectives, we knew, that fourth round would quite certainly be the last...
Final Round
On my flank my units were all still alive. Eddard's Stormcrows had taken some Styr fuelled arrows from Trappers and unwanted attention from Mance NCU. In order to secure those 2 VPs Rickon and Bowmen charged the giant to block it's path to his father. They simply blocked and chose not to strike at all. Shaggydog stayed frozen as Trappers were within 12".
In our right flank Raiders and Trappers were threatening Rodrik and his Bowmen, who's famous shooting had let us down this time. Summer was also frozen from the same reason as Shaggydog. Our two points here were severely threatened. Every VP would now count!
Eddard even went to fail a panic test, even with +3 from Direwolf's Fervor! But still they survived!
In the middle one of our Sworn Swordsmen charged with Devastating Impact and took
down the Giant with ease as we were holding the Horse zone and scored 2 auto wounds on that charge.
1 more VP for us - first gained by destroying enemy units!
But it was too late for sending reinforcements to help Rodrik out! He succumbed to the onslaught from Wildlings (another Swift Advance helped here). This swinged 3 VP: 2 VP away from us and two for FF (unit + objective)!
After the giant had activated Rickon & co. retreated (I guess they did it with the Horse ZOne) and let fly with desperate attempt to take the giant down with one volley and and a failed panic test. They managed 3 wounds with attacks, not enough and the following panic test was also passed.
So the Final Round was at it's end and it was time to count the VPs...
We had killed a giant (1VP) and were holding 2 objectives (one with Eddard Commander) gaining us 4 more VP and landing us at 12 total VP.
Free Folk had destroyed one unit (luckily we didn't try anything desperate with our Wolves) and scored 4 VP from objectives, landing them at 13 total VP.
In our campaign scoring, 1 VP difference still counts as a DRAW, which obviously was far better than losing - our arch enemy was not allowed to seize any provinces from us... but of course we were not satisfied with this result... we would come back with a vengeance!
Conclusions
Well, we had a good plan, but only managed to execute half of it; both enemy commanders were still alive and we had lost one of ours. Still we had scored 11 of our 12 VPs from objectives in three rounds.
This large battle was surprisingly low on the kill count: we destroyed 3 enemy units (one returned with Endless Horde) and we lost only two units, which helped us to secure the draw. Losing more units would have made it impossible to win.
Units painted for the game
Stark Attachments
"Team Pepsi" aka House Tully Sworn Swords
Awesome Stormcrow Dervishes - awesome to paint AND play
Map at the end of Round 3.
Free Folk still leading, but with just a thin margin to us...
Fighting Free Folk 2. - Round 4. of our Campaign
Honed and Ready
Report is WIP - stay tuned!
My Army
As a campaign event I had chosen "Plentiful leadership" and hence I could take two commanders in my list (only one of them acting as THE commander on the field), so an easy choice was to take Howland Reed as the second commander. Eddard lead the fight on the field. Knowing that my opponent Leo plays the typical insignificant / Trapper spam, I had honed my list to deal with that s
**t
Leo chose to play with the list with two NCUs and 2 Trappers
My Battle plan
My plan was as before: win points from objectives, while denying them from FF and at least from their commander. Berserkers, Bowmen and Meera were on the list to handle Giants if needed and the Stark Outriders were there to have the mobility.
Ready for the fight!
Deployment
My left flank: Bowmen at extreme left, Shaggydog, Berserkers Sworn Swords (centre)My right flank: Commander Eddard with SC Dervishes in the end of my battle line with Outriders next to them
Free folk: almost end to end battle line with both giants in the middle and Harma in Trappers in extreme right
Opening moves
Leo started the game and went for the Letters-zone. This suited me fine as my opening hand included both "Swift Advance" and "Devastating Impact", so I was more than happy to claim the Horses-zone and move my Berserkers 6" forward... laying the trap: my Berserkers would than wait until my last activation and then have a guaranteed 7"+7"+6" = 20 inch charge making 2 auto wounds... which is pretty silly, I know!
Leo partially expected some movement shenanigans and had placed weaken token on my Berserkers as well as Ygritte, stopping me from playing Catelyn Stark on them. Still my 20" hike across the board came as a nasty surprise, but with 2 auto wounds and 8 weakened strikes I could not one shot the Rider unit.
BUT I reached my first goal: Berserkers were sitting on an objective on the enemy side and blocking Harma's access to it AND potentially threatening Harma too.
My other units approached objectives more cautiously and my Bowmen moved on top one, also positioned to support Berserkes in their suicide attack...
Round 2 was all about the bight fight around my Berserkers; I duly started with claiming the Combat Zone with Catelyn, made the Raiders Vulnerable and made short work of them with my Berserkers. Leo played some Counter charge card (or maybe the second Raiders had already charged on R1) and held my Bs in place with Harma right in front of them! My Bowmen took aim...
And they surely did! Couple more fell to traps, but my 10 attacks + panic test killed 9 Trappers and still I was fulfilling my plan beautifully!
Eddard was sitting on an objective too as well as Outriders, whom had snatched one objective in front of the enemy battle line in my right flank: they had charged a Raider unit, blocking the objective and as the enemy attacked them, they duly Swift retreated just few inches, staying on the objective. Shaggydog also made a dash to the centre objective, which was not taken over by the giants for some reason - Leo probably needed them to go killing Starks!
Obviously I had not scored any points from killing two insignificant Wildlings, but scored a whopping 5 VPs from objectives in the end of Round 2! Best thing was, that Free Folk didn't score any!
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