ASOIAF: How to destroy a 50p. Lannister army in just three rounds?

 Brutal efficiency, fire and blood

In our Map based campaign For the Throne my southern domain had, inconveniently for a Lannister player, expanded to his borders and he declared a challenge to me. It was duly accepted!

Tailor Made

I think a key feature of our campaign is, that you know the faction you will be playing against and you can customise your army against that enemy, or actually two lists as scenario are chosen randomly. So, as a NW player, what do you take against Lannisters...

• Robust moral values
• Weapons to punch through their armour (great swords, crossbows, war machines...)
• Attachments that boost your morale (Alliser, Jeor)
• Units, that can counter enemy strengths / best units, like KoCR or Poor Fellows

So I made and played with this 50 points list:

• Commander Jon Snow with Vets
• Ghost
• Ranger Trackers X 2
• Stone Thrower
• Crossbows with Othell
• NCU's
• Qhorin (to boost my crossbows and to freeze KotCR if needed)
• Maester Aemon (to heal obviously)
• Petyr Baelish (to deny the Crown zone from Lannisters)

I also had an Othell Yarwick list, should a scenario favouring NCU commanders been rolled, but I really wanted to try the Stone Thrower + Othell spotter combo. 

Scenario: Fire and Blood

Deployment

As his Campaign Event my opponent had chosen "Scouts", which gave him this advantage:

"The opponent sets up his entire army first, and you get to choose whether or not you take the first turn, even if you've chosen the side of the table"

This didn't really bother me, because I had planned my game plan and deployed accordingly: stone thrower in a corner, crossbows with Othell in from of it and Veterans with Jon in front of them. My fast flankers were deployed to the left from this "fire base", ready to flank shoot / charge any flanking threats from the enemy. My Crossbows and one of the Ranger Trackers got marked by my opponent - huge mistake to mark ranged units, if you ask me! Then again there are no good choices when choosing NW units to mark!

First moves by NW made, Vets ready to take the inevitable charge...

My opponent then deployed his army to face mine. He had 2 crossbow (one with Tyrion and one with Guard Captain) units behind his battle line of 2 Lannisters Guards (One with Hound and one with Guard Captain) and a unit of Poor Fellows. His Knights deployed to a flanking position... slightly too far, if you ask me. His NCUs were Tywin, Cersei and Pycelle.

Deployment is a mighty 18" on this scenario, I did not deploy to max, but Lnnisters did.

Round 1.

Lannister battle line pushed forward and so a situation arose; a unit of Lannister Guardsmen had marched too close for their safety and my combined arms tactics went live, first they were hit by my stone thrower (yes they were within long from Othell the spotter) and 6 wounds were caused, then my Jon led Vets charged them and helped by a vulnerable token managed to take them out! I just had to take the Guard Captain with "Take the Black". With surge forth my Vets advanced to the rear, trying to stay away from two units of crossbows!

Round 2.

Next in line were Poor Fellows, my marked Ranger Trackers with "Swords" they poured 9 shots to their flank and six of them fell!

Lannisters pushed closer and closer and Pasi and Tyrion canceled practically all my relevant TCs! None the less my marked Crossbows took out the rest of the Poor fellows, scoring me a ton of VPs. Still there was no charge from the knights of CR - they were being harassed by my second unit of Ranger Trackers.

A huge mistake by me! The game was really going my way, my second stone thrower shot + failed panic test had killed 11 dudes from Tyrion's Crossbows and two Lannister units were already killed. My Crossbows had taken hit from Lanni Crossbows and from a Cersei Bomb... in my blood lust I went in and shot at a LG unit with a marked,  Cersei influenced crossbows... few Guardsmen fell, but then my Crossbows exploded to a -4 panic test, donating 3 VP to Pasi, oh dear, what stupidity!!! Losing Othell was the greatest loss here, as he would have to pass next campaign round!

 

As a revenge Ghost ate Tyrion and positioned itself to nice monitoring spot!  

Round three

Othell was dead, so I actually needed to roll 3+ with just 1 die! Well I did and then proceeded to roll a 6+3 for wounds and a fourth Lannister unit was no more... my marked Ranger Trackers proceeded to destroy the remaining Lanni Crossbow unit and the other RTs charged KotCR in the rear - only Lannister unit remaining in the battlefield... Game was SO IN THE BAG...

Pasi then took the "Horses" and retreated the knights to a position, where they could charge my Jon Snow Vets to flank. I had to make a choice - risk losing Jon for next campaign round or... 

So Qhorin laid his life for the Watch - RIP!

As Round 3. ended, results was brutally clear: 12-3 to Nightswatch. A decisive victory, but not without a cost: losing both Othell and Qhorin was a big blow, especially I did expect to face a bigger challenge in the next round...

Final positions

Conclusions

So, 12 VP in 3 rounds... how did that come to happen?

• Stone Thrower hit 3/3 shots and I rolled well for wounds: 3-6-6 
• It forced Lannisters to push forward as fast as they could, which then allowed to charge them
• I had two marked ranged units, which helped me to shoot the hell out of Lannisters before finishing them of with charges
• After two rounds I had killed both marked Lannister marked units (to which I had added more points with Jon), this rapidly increased my toll of VPs
• Pasi fed his infantry to me as piece meals, while KotCR did nothing for first two rounds really and then Qhorin froze them. 
• Tailoring a NW army to a certain enemy faction really makes them formidable

Aftermath

After arriving home, I took a pint of black to honour fallen Tyrion, Qhorin and Othell

While also working on a special banner for Jon Snow's unit!