Ice for Blood
Deep in the bogs pits and long lost underground the dead rest. Their flesh long ago consumed by the Circle of Decomposition, reaching an end to their purpose in the world of living, the bony remains of the deceased are blissfully forgotten. However, there are those who would not let them rest – those liches and wights who constantly yearn for more fodder to bolster their undead armies. Those, who have no heart – those who have ice for blood.
Welcome back! I’m inviting you to have a read of another Herd game – the Buckmarsh is at it again! Enjoy the report, but stay until the concluding paragraphs, where we are discussing a trick to balance your casual games in the lack of tournament diversity.
Elves, right? With three games under my belt against a drakon, dragon and archer filled elf lists (scrounging a lucky victory [a draw in essence] from the latest game), I thought nothing could be worse to face when playing Herd in Kings of War – an army with woefully low defense and Nerve values. Even their high speed is countered by even longer threat distances of elven flying knights.
I was wondering how Herd would work in other match ups. Some of them are, after all, very skewed in the favor of the other army. God bless Finnish Midsummer and force majeur’d travel plans, with plenty of free time to fill with gaming – it was time for a gauntlet!
We planned on playing a total of four games in four days, me against three opponents. Life of course came in the way of best laid plans with a case of flu and such, but I eventually got two great practice games (elves and undead) and one fun “for s#!ts and giggles” battle (against dwarfs). The elf match up is something we’ve discussed already. What about undead?
I decided to try a more infantry based Herd list this time, changing Moonfang (I haven’t felt I have gotten enough out of him in the first games) and centaurs for a Great Chieftain with extra Wild Charge, and a spear horde. Ultimately the amount of drops and US remained the same, trading overall movement on two units for more charge range for the rest. It is debatable if it is a correct approach (maybe it isn’t), but at least I have test data on both now.
The undead list is a grindy one that one of our players has been refining over the past six months. It is an excellent toolbox with an answer to every situation. The problem can be, however, that it is only “an answer”, singular – you do not project multiple threats, or answer too well to multiples of threats. It is, however, a very solid list, and I have seen first hand how impactful Zuinok’s Stealth spell can be in an all-comers environment.
We landed our scenario at Dominate. The terrain generation offered us a dense wood in the middle, surrounded by a circle of blocking terrain.
Starting from the top, my harpies start their face off with ghouls that would last for essentially the end of the whole game. Neither could, or would, take a step forward – my charge would be served with a slapping from the second ghoul troop, and an undead forward march could allow me to fly behind them. I was happy to trade like this, as I lost one Unit Strength (US) to their two.
In the middle I was thinking if my elementals should serve as extra US in the back lines or work as thick chaff. I decided on the latter, even if it meant some of my movement and charges might be blocked off with them in the way.
The bottom part was what I worried the most. We both had long range threats, and I knew the vampasus could more or less wreck my whole army if it got to my rear early. Thankfully, I fielded similar threats in my Avatar. I felt time was not on my side here, since I needed to sweep the flank as soon as possible to get all the help I could to the center grind. I saw that as something I would lose in the long run.
As it turns out, sometimes all it takes is a lucky tailwind, or whatever it was that gave my Spirit Walkers such a boost. The wights were exactly within 18″ of them. I brought my Horn of Migration hero (who was just within 21″ of Spirit Walkers, sprinting 12″ across the board to get the extended Wild Charge aura within the required 9″) as close as I could, and rolled a full 3″ for a charge.
I was more than happy to take this, as they landed clearly out of sight from retaliation. I had to fly my harpies in to prevent a surge counter from the mummies, however.
In retaliation, the wights dish out as well as they receive – I knew Spirit Walkers would take a beating, but would hold to finish the job. The mummies, on the other hand, are much less effective in their counter charge and only manage a waver on the harpies. A rather terrible swing, slowing them down unneccessarily for a round. The zombie trolls take the initiative and decide to weaken the elementals as much as possible.
Most importantly, the vampasus finds a safe spot to land on. This is to be expected, since it is practically impossible to cover the whole ground of such a unit’s potential landing space. It’s a give-and-take situation, where you lose momentum somewhere (in the middle as we see here), but gain some elsewhere. I now have an open field to my pleasure. Time to make the most of it.
My answer to the vampasus threat is to turn the infantry to face him and bait them into charging my Phalanx. I should have enough goat power to grind even a vampasus to dust in a turn or two with his charges hindered by spears.
He refuses the bait and instead takes a sweep to threaten my flank again. I can see that, since I now have anything from four to six Unit Strength marching toward the center. With the bulk of my US already wounded, it is not unreasonable to think the Goreblight, vampasus and mummies might be able to clear the field and turn to bolster the middle from there.
This, however, leaves the bulk of my US – which is required to actually win the game – uncontested again.
After all, neither general is willing to step deeper into the mid field than necessary, until they have back up and know they would win the fight.
It is, however, not going as planned for the undead. Whatever fury Spirit Walkers mustered from their previous victories (and being shot off in a turn in three previous games against the elves) manifested into a hot charge that deleted the mummies in one, purposeful rampage.
Needless to say, this was devastating to the undead and basically crippled the whole flank, despite the fact that the Spirit Walkers still required a few turns to actually reach the middle through the houses.
The owlbears and Goreblight grind each other, and the Avatar contests the undead rear. He picks up speed from the ghoul troop, only to be surge-charged by the mummies. This is a desperate measure for the undead, since it takes the mummies further away from the middle, with no guarantees of killing the flying menace. But you can’t have a dragon in your rear uncontested either, can you?
After the last-ditch-effort charges on turn five for the undead fail marginally, and Zuinok fails to wound the wounded elementals to remove at least some US from the Buckmarsh side of the board, we duly leave it a that. Nothing substantial would happen at sixth or seventh.
So, what went wrong?
In theory that sort of grindy undead list should be strong against a Herd army, that I would call a “medium skirmish army” at best. It lacks, in retrospect, many elements that would make it a proper alpha strike army: while the threat projection is decent, the offensive output ranges from moderate to good.
- The undead failed to enter prolonged combats early.
- The vampasus did not get to enter meaningful combats.
- The scenario favored higher Unit Strength compositions.
Adding to these, I did get lucky with the Wild Charge roll on second turn. Granted, I told my opponent of my rules and charge ranges, and the decision was made to keep the high-roll option, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that threat projection still came from left field. I’m not sure I would’ve been able to foresee it.
It was, undeniably, a moment served with a slight hint of “gotcha”. And it turned my way big time.
However, I do think that when things go terribly wrong, you have to start taking aggressive risks. It is a game of dice and sometimes even the worst situations happen to roll your way. The vampasus could’ve, for example, taken to the rear side of my army instead of contesting the flank that might’ve been bogged down enough by ghouls and the Goreblight. And that was before the mummies got devastated by a lucky charge. Undoubtedly that would’ve required some luck, but it could’ve been a way out.
Furthermore, that undead army is designed to perform in a tight little cube where none of it’s units are isolated, and for various reasons that did not manifest this time. In many ways the army played suboptimally from deployment, compared to how it is designed to.
If we had time for another game, it would’ve of course been a new scenario with new terrain layout. One game is only one game. This lead way to an interesting discussion on a few points: match-up skew, game length and scenario selection.
It is undeniable that some match-ups are skewed. They are highly tinted toward either army. Say, the army I’ve played against now a few times (elves with drakons, dragons and archer hordes) is not only strong, but very strong against Herd (or so it feels). On the other hand, I wouldn’t give a second thought if I could choose my dwarfs to face them. Defense six and healing render even elven shooting redundant and all I should concentrate on is dealing with the fliers.
This disparance is of course somewhat mitigated in tournaments by having four to six games, all against different opponents. From looking at tournament lists, it is practically impossible to face the same army twice, as no army even appears in a tournament enivirnoment twice (in the exact form). You could see variations of a similar core, but even that is unlikely. Even highly competitive events see much variation in the armies (if not builds within them), as discussed in episode 637 of Counter Charge.
We did discuss this though, and for some scenarios and match-ups even a difference of one or two points of Unit Strength can make a difference between a playable duel, and an uphill battle. When both players are in a similarly competitive mind set, and try to avoid clear mistakes, the game could be over in deployment, my opponent lamented, and not without merit.
An option to battle this and give more player options and weight to pick-em-up games, where you only have time for one game (at most two) and you might not be able to find time to play weekly to get a sufficient pool of data to establish patterns is the one great thing about Middle Earth Battle Game I really enjoy: scenario drafting.
Essentially scenarios are either pooled beforehand, or randomised on the spot, to offer three options of scenarios to choose from. Players then roll off to see which vetoes one out, and then the other decides which scenario is being played. In effect you choose, together, one of three options that should even out the imbalance.
This should of course be done after the terrain is set up. When playing a match up of Defense 6 Dwarfs versus horde heavy Orcs, it is very much dependent on the terrain in the center of the field if either player would prefer playing Dominate or not.
Some scenarios, with some terrain layouts, in tandem with certain match-ups result in situations where it can feel like the game has been “solved” in deployment. This of course requires the players to have roughly similar ideas of the game, a similar competitive mind set (this is actually really important, and the spectrum has a wide range of different mindscapes from clinically victory oriented to “dice rolls go brrrr”, and anything in between – it is never either or) and an equal understanding of the rules and the nuances.
This can be either a good or a bad thing, depending on who you’re asking. On the other hand it can feel demoralising to some. Others apprieciate the challenge of trying to force the train off their tracks. On one side such games take less time and effort to play through – you identify where you can make a difference, concentrate there and save some cognitive capacity from other parts of the battlefield. You just might find you have time for another game that evening.
None of these aspects make a game better or worse. When game systems are consistent within themselves and have enough following to be considered baseline games of the genre, it boils down to user preference.
And that is why we have Kings of War coexisting with other miniature games, anything from Infinity to 40k and historicals.
I am, however, of the opinion that no game is ever “finished” – or it would be a rare case at that. Some argue MESBG is nearly completed and could just exist as is ad infinitum. Probably – it feels like it’s in a really good place. It just might not be the equal game for me personally.
But to make that informed decision, the more experience of different systems you have, the better.
THE GAROU RIM GAZETTE 