Memoirs of a Dead General – A Ninth Age Battle Report

I promised a rundown of my last game. Now I didn’t take notes so I won’t be able to give a full breakdown of every interaction but I did take a couple of photos so I can cover the broad strokes and the lessons I learnt.

Speaking of the photos – apologies also for the proxied models. My opponent was keen to try out VC and so all manner of unpainted rats and elves played the part of the undead!

Lists:

Highborn Elves:

Vampire Covenant:

Deployment:

We set up a symmetrical board with rivers blocking off diagonally opposite corners, a couple of pieces of impassable and two forests (represented by tiles in the photos).

We rolled for deployment type and got the battle line – or whatever it’s called now. We rolled for secondary objectives and got the one where we had to choose and kill three of each others’ scoring units. Neither of us actually had many more scoring units so there wasn’t much choice.

I deployed my army almost entirely behind the river with a refused flank. I reasoned that this would give me an extra turn or so to shoot at him and would hopefully force him to be in the river and lose rank bonuses when our infantry blocks inevitably clashed. My BSB was in with the Sword Masters and my Queen’s Companion led the Queen’s Guard.

My opponent lined up along the 12″ line and prepared to steam ahead. His necromancer in with the zombies, his vampire count with the barrow guard and the vampire courtier with the other barrow guard.

We took it in turns to vanguard. I moved one unit of reavers out on the flank and he moved his wolves straight ahead – preventing my second unit of reavers from moving.

I should also mention that I deployed almost my entire army before he deployed, giving me +5 to my roll to go first (ensuring that I did). I reasoned that I wasn’t going to out deploy him, as he had too many big, slow blocks, and I would like to have a turn of shooting.

Battle:

In my first turn, I fired loads of shots but without much to show for it. I killed the Dire Wolves and a handful of barrow guard. I moved my Fire Phoenix (being played by a Frost Phoenix) up – preparing  to use its sweeping attack.

On his first turn, his battle line advanced up to behind some impassable and then got off the Dance Macabre to move through it. This was not a play that I pre-empted and suffice it to say, it got me. It felt like he was on top of me in no time.

Over the next couple of turns, my shooting continued to be underwhelming. In T9A, the rules for line of sight are based on drawing arcs of sight and seeing what is intervening. If there are models in the way, it’s hard cover. This is all calculated based on unit footprints also. This is very different to 8th edition and I found that most of my shooting was at -2 to hit for the entire game. If my archers bolt throwers had been on a hill, things would likely have been a bit different.

All too soon, his battle line was upon me. In what I think was an error in judgement, my Sword Masters charged the unit in front of them, the barrow guard with his BSB. On the other side of the board, his Shrieking Horror screamed off my unit of Reavers.

The combat in the river between the Barrow Guard and the Sword Masters was interesting. In the first round, I fluffed a lot of attacks and so the combat was quite close. I can’t remember who won but either he didn’t lose many models to unstable or I didn’t flee. On the next turn, he got two flank charges in – one with the Zombies with his necromancer and one with the unit of Ghasts. My Swordmasters went supersaiyan here and did enough wounds to win the combat fairly convincingly. When we calculated combat resolution and my opponent was down by half a dozen wounds he asked “Which unit crumbles?” – He was not particularly happy when I said “All of them.”

I was feeling pretty good about the game at this stage. I had just won a massive combat without having lost many of my own troops – and one that I didn’t expect to win after the first round went so poorly.

Around the middle of the game, I decided to charge my Prince on his dragon into his Vampire in the Barrow Guard. The second of what I think were my two big mistakes in the game. I wasn’t punished after the first one. Would I be this time? Yes. Yes, I would.

In deciding to save this combat for last, I resolved another one first which allowed an overrun into the flank of my general. This was very stupid of me and certainly a sign of my rustiness.

He counted up his static resolution and had 3 (Ranks) + 1 (Standard) + 1 (War Standard) + 1 (Flank) + 1(Charge) = 7. and so it became clear that if he challenged with his unit champion, I could only get 1 (Charge) + 1 (Wound) +3 (Overkill) and it would be a loss for me. I quickly read the challenge rules and saw that Leadership went to 0 but I didn’t see the bit that said that you could also not attacked. So I declined the challenge. His Vampire popped his potion of swiftness and attacked my Prince. Luckily it didn’t kill him and I swung back. I think we did two wounds to each other. I still had my Dragon’s attacks, breath weapon and stomp (D6) though. I laid all of those into the unit for some much needed combat resolution. I won the combat relatively convincingly but the Vampire was real threat and he was very much still alive.

On the next turn his Vampire Lord killed my Prince and the rest of the game was basically him playing cleanup. My Sword Masters were alive and not in too bad shape but after he broke through my dragon, he was able to destroy all of my shooting. This meant that I was unable to effectively deal with the Shrieking Horror or whittle his units before engaging them. I went for the Hail Mary charge into his remaining Barrow Guard and Vampire Count and he swept the board.

I believe it was a 17-3 in his favour.

Parting Thoughts:

Gallery:

Ninth Age Battle Report – Highborn Elves VS Vampire Covenant