Thursday night battle

[deathinc]

Playing our regularly scheduled Thursday night HS battle, 1v1.

The map was a RotV + RttFF, with a road down the center of the map, horizontal to the starting zones, up two small hills, with a valley/pond in the center

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
HHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHH
HHHHHRRRRWWWRRRRRHHHH
rrrrrrrrrrRRRWGWRRRRrrrrrrrr
HHHHHRRRRWWWRRRHHHHHH
HHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHH
PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Not to scale, just general lay of the land. X was the starting zones, P were some plains leading to the hills, R was roads, H were hills, r were roads on a hill, W is water, G is a +1 attack Glyph. Should have taken a photo or gotten the name of the map

We played 2 games, both draft, 500 points.

my army:

2 Protectors, Atlaga, Raelin (RtoV), 2 Warriors of Ashra, 1 Otonashi (didn't move the whole game. Should have put her starting next to a Warrior, who are Tricky; duh)

opponent's army:

Nilfheim, Marcus, 2 Romans, Kumiko, Dumtef, Isamu

My order markers were on Protectors, Atlaga, Protectors for round 1. My opponent brought Nilf in and may have killed off one protector before they took him down in that first round (Atlaga's shot missed, but who cares). Afterwards he brought in the romans and the Protectors took out Marcus quite early. After that it was safe for Raelin to swoop into the center and take the +1 attack glyph (until she was killed later by Isamu who had a height advantaged 6 dice attack) and the Warriors were safe to come in and clean up the remaining enemy units. At the end of the game I had about 200 points of guys left.

I really enjoyed this army. A lot of punch to take out heros with the Protectors and Atlaga and the Warriors were a good cleanup group. I think I only had units in Raelin range twice (but they lived, so she could be given kudos there), and it was a surprise to my opponent to have her swoop across 7 spaces to take the center glyph from her starting point. I'd considered taking Minions of Utgar instead of the Warriors and Otonashi.

I may try a Atlaga, 2 Minions, 1 Protectors, 1 Raelin (or another 80 points worth of units, perhaps something with a special attack like the Wolves of Badru) in the future.

Thoughts?

The next game was much less one-sided. I took Nilf, Gilbert, and 3 knights. My Opponent took 2 Om-Repulsors, 3 Om-snipers, Isamu, AE. The AE dropped first round, but he didn't use the grenades first round (I had my knights as non-clustered as possible, but they were still in some clumps) They killed off 3 knights before Nilf took them down.

Using Jandar's Dispatch I was able to get 8 knights onto or close to the road, so the snipers were never able to get up onto the hills. Nilf was eventually taken down by sniper fire, but he definitely killed off more his points worth of figures (AE, at least a squad of snipers and some repulsors). I had a knight regularly on the +1 attack Glyph, even though this gave my opponent height with EVERYONE, but the 4 defense worked out many times, and my opponent had some pretty bad rolls at times (but regularly got double skulls with snipers )

It ended up coming down to Gilbert vs Isamu. It took about 9 order markers for Isamu to finally kill off Gilbert (who started the mortal kombat with 3 wounds already). At one point Gilbert managed to score 2 skulls, Isamu failed a vanish, but had height and rolled 2 shields

I was pretty sure the knights were going to be annihilated, but some good dispatch rolls (2 rolls of four, I think) helped out considerably in preventing the snipers hill height. In retrospect I may not have been doing the 8 clear sight spaces when dispatching, but it was a pretty small map, so it probably didn't make that much of a difference.

This was also a fun army to play. The dispatch made things a lot more chaotic than I was expecting, as the knights could rush forward much faster than I expected. I had considered playing the MacDirks (have 2 squads of them) but now I am troubled by the question of when is the better time to play them instead of knights?