Original air date: March 10, 2011
We've already had a battle between Dwarves and Wood Elves in this blog and today, my friend Gaius is back for some punishment as he takes on my Dwarves with my Goblins. The combatants are listed below.
Army of Erebor: 252 points
Balin, son of Fundin - 95 points
8 Dwarf Warriors with shields - 72 points
5 Dwarf Warriors with Dwarf Bows - 45 points
5 Dwarf Warriors with two-handed weapons - 40 points
19 units, 5 bows, 1 hero
Host of Moria: 251 points
Durburz, Goblin King of Moria - 60 points
Cave Troll with troll chain, spear - 86 points
8 Moria Goblin Warriors with shields - 40 points
8 Moria Goblin Warriors with spears - 40 points
5 Moria Goblin Warriors with Orc bows - 25 points
23 units, 5 bows + troll chain, 1 hero
This scenario is a basic Domination game, with three objectives placed on a board that is 24" long by 24" wide. The map will allow the armies to fight immediately and is laid out as seen below:
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There are three objectives: the Dwarves begin with the circular defensive wall at the bottom left (South Objective). The Goblins begin with the rock formations at the top left (North Objective). The final objective is the center bridge (Central Objective, not the one on the far left or the hallway on the far right). In this objective game, you will score 1 point if you have the only units within the objective (inside the wall, on the bridge, or on the rocks) or if you started with the objective at the beginning of the game but have no units there (because the fighting is elsewhere). You will score .5 points if you have the majority of units in any given objective. Objectives which hold an equal number of units will score no points.
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If there is a tie in points for objectives (lets say that both sides hold their beginning objectives - 1 point each - and the center objective has an even number of units), then we will look at how many points worth of units were killed by each side (units who flee from combat do not count). Whoever has the higher number here wins the game. If this is also a tie, we will call the game a draw.
Each side will roll a dice at the start of the game: the team that wins may choose to either select their side of the board first or to have priority on the first turn. The loser accepts what the other decides. Today I'm playing with my good friend Gaius, who loves to use my Goblins. I'll be using the Dwarves (and we'll see how they do).
We rolled to see who would place first, and the Dwarves win. They choose to place first and cede priority to the Goblins.
The Goblins:
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The Goblin's Right flank. The Goblin archer with the piece of paper on his base is filling in for my Goblin King, who is still in the mail coming to me. With him is a Goblin with shield and two Goblins with spears. Three Goblin archers will be supporting the charge and a Cave Troll gets ready for some action.
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The Goblin center. The three Goblins with shields and two with spears will be attacking in the center causeway, buying time for the rest of the army. The archer that you see is from the last formation.
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The Goblin left formation. Two archers on the rocks will be shooting at the Dwarves and later joining the melee. While they capitalize on the vantage point, eight Goblins (four with shields and four with spears) will charge down the hallway towards the Dwarves, relying on larger quantities of dice while on the defensive.
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The Dwarves:
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The Dwarf right formation. These Dwarves are prepared to charge down the hallway towards the Goblin formation. The archers will be looking at taking out swordsmen at the beginning and the spearmen after the melee begins.
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The Dwarf center. Balin (in front on the left) will be leading the charge and hopes to carve through the Goblins that stand in his way. His loyal companions will assist in clearing out the enemy while Balin concentrates on limited numbers of enemies. The two-handed axes will be ready to swing to the other two points of tension as needed.
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These Dwarves compose the Dwarf left flank. These brave Dwarves will be challenging the might of Moria, seeking to buy time while the rest of the Dwarves sweep the other objectives.
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Supporting the Dwarves listed above is a small band of archers who will use their crouched position to gain valuable defensive bonuses for "in-the-way" rolls. Hopefully their bows will slay a few Goblins.
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Turn 1: The Armies Advance (Priority - Goblins)
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The Goblins began with priority. Both armies move closer together, but neither is close enough to engage the other. A few archers are in range, though.
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A Goblin archer picks off a Dwarf archer who is conspicuously not covered by the shield-bearing Dwarves in front of him...bummer.
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Turn 2: The Sound of Arms (P - Goblins)
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Units finally engage each other in battle and we have some Fight phase combats. The Goblins successfully wound a two-handed axeman (rolling a 5 to hit and a 6 to wound). Impressive little buggers, aren't they? My impressive archers didn't hit anyone, but Balin throws an axe and kills a Goblin warrior with shield.
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The Goblin King takes a vision test and is able to charge a Dwarf warrior with shield, assisting the Troll in making a strong battle line.The Goblin king then calls a heroic combat and wins the fight, but fails to roll the needed 6 to kill his opponent. He's bummed, but I'm happy. The Troll wastes no time in winning his fight and kills one of the two Dwarves he is fighting. So far, the kill count is Goblins 3, Dwarves 1.
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Turn 3: Goblins, Goblins Everywhere! (P - Goblins)
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The Goblins win priority yet again and charge everywhere, repositioning some of their archers to fire on the Dwarf ranks. The Dwarves respond by charging the troll with a two-handed axeman (but are otherwise unable to act, as most of their units were engaged in battle).
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In a systematic way, all of the Dwarves on the left flank won their fights (after shielding) and pushed their opponents back. Way to go, boys, but we really need to kill units, because at the end of this round the scores are Goblins 6, Dwarves 3...and my team is 4 units away from breaking.
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In the Fight phase, both the Goblin King and Balin called heroic combats. Balin resolved his first and easily killed the spearman he was fighting and engages two Goblins on the bridge (the two who were not fighting his Dwarf warrior comrade). His comrade dies to his opponent, while Balin killed the spearman he was fighting (the shield unit got away).
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Pardon the blurriness. The Goblin King ties with the Dwarf he is facing and the Dwarf wins the roll off (bummer #2 for the Goblin King), as he is forced to retreat from the Dwarf. Though he could have used his Might point to win, the last turn's failure to wound made him a bit more cautious...perhaps to his detriment. In the fight between the shield Dwarf and the two Goblins near the Goblin King, the Goblins win the fight and successfully kill the Dwarf (rolled 2 6s to wound). The Cave Troll wins his fight against the two-handed Dwarf (who to his credit used his hand weapon and rolled a 6, but the Troll tied the roll and won because of the higher Fight value). The Dwarf was killed soon after losing the fight.
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Turn 4: Closing in for the Kill (P - Goblins)
Seeing as my bridge can't hold units fighting on its slope (need to fix that), I've moved the cave troll down to fight his targets, who are actually trapping the Dwarf with shield on the slope. Things aren't looking good on that flank. For that matter, they're not looking good on the other flank either, but this one is particularly bad.
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Balin calls a heroic combat and kills the Goblin he is fighting (but he needs to pay his last Might point to do it). Balin then charged one of the archers at the top right of the picture and killed him. The two-handed axeman who was near Balin defeats the Goblin he's fighting, but fails to kill him (bummer).
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The Cave troll succeeds in killing one of the two-handed axemen he was fighting, but the other falls to the ground safely (huge sigh of relief). The Goblin king fails to defeat the Dwarf warrior with shield on the bridge (again) and is really upset.
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On the Dwarf right flank, the Goblins succeed in killing 1 of the Dwarves (the one closest to the camera), but fail to wound the others. This is looking bad for the Dwarves, as the kill count is Goblins 8, Dwarves 5 - two Dwarves away from breaking with a perfectly healthy Cave Troll and Goblin King.
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Turn 5: Spirits Fall (P - Goblins)
The Goblins succeed in engaging most of the Dwarves, leaving them in bad positions all over. In the Shoot phase, a Dwarf archer is able to kill a Goblin archer, but nothing else happens.
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With the Cave troll trapping a Dwarf with two-handed weapon, there is little doubt that the bearded fellow would die...he did. The Goblin King won a roll-off between him and his Dwarf nemesis and paid his last Might point to wound the Dwarf...he is finally happy. At this point, the Dwarf force has been broken.
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Balin loses an embarrasing fight with a Goblin archer, while the two-handed weapon Dwarf on the bridge loses to his combatant. Neither are wounded, thankfully. This only underscores the fact that not only is the Dwarf force broken, but their one hope of winning this game is losing fights to individual Goblins.
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Though the left flank was in dire straights, none of the Dwarves died and they all won their fights. Now if they will only stay to fight their foes! Kill count: Goblins 10, Dwarves 6.
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Turn 6: Rallying to the King (P - Dwarves, finally!)
At the beginning of the game, we determined that once a force is broken, we would roll a dice. During this turn, the roll of a 6 wound be needed (we rolled a 1 this turn). Next turn, we'll need to roll a 5, etc. Once the required roll is met, the game will end after that turn. Balin passes his courage test and rallies one Dwarf to his aid. All of the other Dwarves, save one archer, pass their courage tests and begin to move closer to Balin.
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The Cave Troll hits Balin with a rock, but Balin saves the wound with his Fate point. A Dwarf archer also killed a Goblin, bringing the Goblins 5 units away from being broken!
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On the far end, the top Dwarf loses his fight but lives, the middle Dwarf wins his fight and his opponents back up, and the Dwarf at the bottom loses and is killed. Kill count currently Goblins 11-1 flee, Dwarves 7.
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Turn 7: A Little too Late (P - Dwarves again!)
The roll at the beginning of this round was a 5, so the game will end after this round. Bummer for the Dwarves because unless the Cave troll dies, they're not making up enough points to win (forget the objectives for now). Currently, though, they control two of the objectives, though both are contested. It is likely, though, that the Goblin King will make short work of one of the defending Dwarves, so we'll see how the round goes. Another Dwarf ran away, by the way, so the number of Dwarves on the field is now very small (read 6 units).
Balin passes his courage test and kills the last Goblin on the bridge with his throwing axe. He then moves his full distance and calls a stand fast, covering not only the Dwarf near him, but also the two archers in the objective location. Two of the remaining three Dwarves on the left flank stay to fight and run their maximum distance towards Balin, hoping to not be caught (only the swordsman is).
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The Dwarf archer kills a supporting spearman in the fight with his friend (one of 3 kills by the archers in this battle). His friend would end up losing his fight but not dying.
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The two Dwarf archers in the objective rush to the wall to ensure that their Goblin adversaries will need to engage and kill them in order to get units into their objective. The Goblins (read Goblin King and Cave Troll) engage these Dwarves and manage to kill one of them. The other archer wins his fight, but fails to wound his target.
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Conclusion:
The game has ended and we look to the objectives. The North objective was held at the beginning of the game by the Goblins. It was uncontested and scores a point for the Goblins. The South objective has 1 Dwarf unit and 1 Goblin unit (the Goblin King) in it, meaning that it scores no point for either side. The Central objective has 2 Dwarves on it and 1 Goblin, meaning that it is a contested objective and gives the Dwarves .5 points.
The final score, then, is Goblins 1, Dwarves .5, meaning that the Goblins win the game. Even if the score had been tied, the Goblins were leading 104 points to 50 (with the Goblins putting 18 more points to flight during the game).
Tiberius's assessment: my archers did little to nothing and both of the wing formations fell apart or did nothing. Balin had a tough time running through units and at the end of the day, I couldn't wound the troll, which is a major shortcoming, since he gives 86 points, which can really favor one side in an objectives match. All told, we'll see how the next game goes and see what sort of game it is (perhaps a contest of champions would be better...). If I had pressed towards the Goblin objective, the troll probably would have come to the center, taking that objective from me, but unless I pulled Balin, there were no units that were close enough to the enemy objective to claim it (and I really needed Balin near my troops). At the end of the day, I'm disappointed with the way the Dwarves performed, but in future games, I can only do better, right?
Gaius's assessment: well, I won. :-) 'Nough said. The Goblins did well pressing all sides and slowing down the Dwarves in the center (which I hoped they would). The archers for the Goblins took down a few Dwarves, which was absolutely great (since there's statistically a less than 6% chance of that happening once, but I had it happen twice). The troll didn't meet Balin in the middle (which was a gamble but made me feel great, since trolls can have problems against heroes), and so he was able to pummel through the Dwarf lines on the far end. The Goblin King was a bit of a disappointment, but if my force had been broken, his stand fast would have been worth 4 captains (and for much cheaper). Both sides had things they could have improved on, but all told, I liked it.
ALSO, major benefit that this style of game provided as opposed to the last battle report: this game took 30 minutes to play (including time to stop for pictures and record what was happening), which was great since the game started late. I'm really happy with the new rules that we've made for keeping games short, even though they can work towards the Goblin's advantage (since they spam a lot of units and each unit you kill only gives you half the points of a different unit).
Most effective Goblin Warrior unit: Archers
Ok, the swordsmen and spearmen did alright, but cumulatively, they only contributed to two total kills...between 16 units. The archers, on the other hand, not only killed two Dwarves before combat began, but one archer beat Balin in a fight and the other archers distracted the fire of Dwarf archers from the other, more useful units. Though the kill-count for units that were not the troll were very low, the Goblins made a good showing for themselves (and certainly more than I had ever thought they would). The Troll of course was the big killer in this game for the Goblins, raking up 5 kills (including one of the archers on the other side of the wall) and taking out Balin's Fate point with a thrown rock.
Most effective Dwarf Warrior unit: Good question
The Dwarf archers successfully killed two units, which is not only pathetic, but also speaks volumes about the other Dwarf units. Due to the waves of Goblins they were facing, the Dwarves with shields spent most of their time struggling to stay alive, which means they killed nobody (and the turns they weren't shielding they were losing badly). All told, the only really good player in this game was Balin, but even he had some bad moments (like not killing all his opponents or losing to the Goblin archer).
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