Call to arms

The second practice game for the Nemesis Crown didn't go so well as the first.

1,000 points against an Ogre Kingdom army, played by someone who had never played at all. So, tactically speaking, fairly evenly matched!

My army is modelled on the Empire Gun Line, that is there are guns. Lots of guns. The army is designed to be more balanced than this - the larger army I have planned has half as many foot troops again, but no additional guns. However at this point there are the cannon, volley gun, Outriders and two units of hand gunners.

The game started well; I had a good terrain set up that included a hill to deploy some of the fire power on. The foot troops held position and waited for the ogres to move forward. As planned, the ranged weapons gave me several turns of fire before anyone was able to charge me. This wasn't as effective as I would have hoped; the cannon missed on the first turn, then jammed requiring two turns to fix. The volley gun was more use and was able to rout one unit of ogres. The hand gunners were also useful, hitting and wounding far more than I would have expected. However with each ogre having three wounds, they were only whittling away at the edges.

The wizard was more successful than in the previous game. He joined the spearmen for a little more protection, and was able to annihilate most of one unit of Ogres single handedly. Again, I had no magical opposition, so I'm still unsure how effective he might be against serious magic users with dispels.

I remembered a tactic from a battle report to prevent the ogres getting their bull charge. Basically, the sheer mass of the charging ogre causes impact hits - but only if they charge more than a certain distance. Advance your unit closer than this and you're only getting the normal combat.

I say normal combat, but Ogres are tough. Very tough. And strong. In addition to rolling badly and scoring no hits in almost every combat, the ogres were much luckier and tore through the spearmen and halberdiers. I won the combat through rank bonuses only; however the ogre general charged in on the following turn alongside the gnoblars(sp?). The general killed the entire halberd unit himself, and with the Gnoblars adding their rank bonus the spearmen broke and ran from the field.

On the other side, the lead belchers finally came into range, and blew away the outriders before charging the hand gunners. The ogre unit on this side, down to one ogre only after all the firing, charged the swordsmen. They lost the combat, and were cut down as they routed. The hand gunners met the same fate, leaving only my artillery left in the game after the final turn!

So...the empire gun line is a good, solid tactic, if a little unimaginative. Concentrating fire is a must, and deciding how many shots to commit to each target is going to be a necessary skill to acquire. The second cannon/volley gun plan is till sound, especially with the ever-present misfire rolls. I need to think about how to use the gunners I have; whether to continue to use them as two smaller detachments or to combine them into one unit on their own.

I can see that relying on the gun line to work on it's own is a recipe for disaster - unless the terrain set up is in my favour, the guns are going to have limited fields of fire past other units. Also, taking too many guns will limit the number of units that can then fight once whatever is left of the enemy reaches my lines.

The spearmen are a good solid unit. Perhaps increasing the unit size to 30 at some point down the line, instead of having two smaller units as I had planned. The swordsmen were again pretty useless, however they are still only 16 strong and need a little help in staying power. Keeping the core units closer together will be necessary, as the improved leadership from the general will be useful.

What I am missing is a hard hitting unit that can deal out some serious damage to tough targets. Just as well that I have the Knights then I guess! These will be equipped with cavalry hammers, giving them a higher strength; plus they have better armour than any of my other troops. If I had been able to charge an ogre unit with these, I am convinced they would have won the combat.

Word has it that there will be a General Meeting to be held at an inn somewhere in the Great Forest next week...these things have a habit of turning into a large brawl. Next on the "To Paint" list is the spearmen unit's champion, who will stand in as my general-on-foot, as the Griffon won't be allowed inside ;)