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Can't Catch Me!

Posted November 4th, 2020 at 12:27 PM by Sylvano the Wasabus
My son has just designed his first virtual army in our email Sylvano-scape game. He lives in a small apartment and doesn’t have a lot of stuff. He has no miniatures with him. In the past he’s moved a bit and cut his belongings down accordingly.

When we started playing email games I’d send him faction lists so he could pick his armies. Growing up he spent years making custom figures with me and knows a lot of our pointing formulas by heart. So he sat down and whipped up a mercenary army- The Red Company- to play in our game.

I highly approve. I love the heroes and the implied back stories. He did some interesting things. The Red Company archers have seven range and five move, making them top of the line human ranged fighters. But my son also gave them melee penalty one and setup. The melee penalty robs them of an attack and defense dice in hand to hand. Setup means it takes them a full attack turn to prepare to fire after moving, so when they move they can’t fire until next turn.

Setup and melee penalty one may seem like big disadvantages but I know they’re not really. He had pikemen and swordsmen that he would pile in front while the archers setup. I’d get bogged down fighting his armour while his bowmen punched arrows into my forces. Setup and melee penalty one also count as a point cost reduction; so they were even cheaper.

I’m researching The War of The Roses right now for a writing project and I really liked that the Red Company Archers seemed so real. They were going to be really deadly, and it was going to take a cavalry charge to break them up, just like it would in real life. I found the idea really appealing.

I have been playing our Templar faction lately so I decided to go with an all mounted knight army. Six Templar Cavalry, Sir Dupuis and Sir Cuthburt, a custom hero. Our Templar Cavalry is a little different than yours; units have Racer (+2 D if unengaged) and they also have 2 lives. Everything is expensive though and I only had 8 figures against my son’s 21.

The game scenario was messenger- you can win by having a figure cross the map to the other player’s starting zone or by killing all enemy figures. The Red Company came out strong and formed a knot in the lower middle of map.

My cavalry glided down. I didn’t want his archers and crossbows to setup and shoot at me. The crossbows have only 5 range but 3 attack. So I used the fact that they had setup to foil them. I kept just out of range, forcing him to move every turn- so his ranged units couldn’t fire. Then I’d move to the side, forcing him to shift his entire force again.

He’d tried to keep the cost of his virtual army down by giving everyone but the archers only 4 move, and I used that against him. He was afraid my army- all with 8 move – would just try to ride past, especially Dupuis with tactical disengage 7. I know he must have been frustrated with the first bunch of turns because all I did was move out of range.

We both lead busy lives so an email game might take us three weeks or more to play. I’ve found that I really look forward to coming home and seeing if he’s moved yet. It’s exciting. I did feel bad for only moving my knights around. But I lost the last two games and I fully intended to win this one.

I got him to move most of his army to the East side of the map and so on my next turn the cavalry went West. He tried to counter, opening up a hole on the East as well and I engaged the edges and sent other knights running down both sides. I killed some of the crossbows too. He couldn’t catch me and could only hope to shoot me, but the Racer special made that unlikely.

He conceded and I won. It was sweet because for me I had used my cavalry well, outmaneuvering his foot troops and deeking out their formation. I’m sure he’ll want vengeance and I look forward to our next game!
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flameslayer93's Avatar
Well played! Sometimes its even more thematic to not charge straight into enemy forces because they have a special task to complete.
Posted November 7th, 2020 at 01:20 PM by flameslayer93 flameslayer93 is offline
 
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