Kings of Spring – Game 3 vs Undead

I was still on table 1 after game 2, and was up against Fred of Giant Dwarf fame in pillage. Fred had won against one of the players that usually compete for the top spots in his previous game.

He was playing undead, with an original list:
Revenant King on Giant Wyrm, griffon banner
Revenant King on Giant Wyrm
Liche king, swap surge for heal, heal item, blizzard
Revenant King, mount, bane chant, critters call
Skeleton horde, giant rats, iron resolve item
Ghoul horde
2x Mummie regiment
1x Wight horde
2x Soul reaver infantry troops

The list has very little surge, which was a nice change from the usual undead lists. It meant I could take much more advantage of my movement, were I had a fairly dominating advantage. It is a fairly elite army, so I had an advantage with the scenario being pillage with 7 tokens. The army has pretty good staying and hitting power however, and was coming off two victories as the only one in the tourney, so I did not believe it was weak. Rhordia has pretty poor nerve for the points, especially the cavalry, so I could easily bounce off his defence and end up in a loosing grinding match. There were two objectives deep on my board edge which I felt fairly confident that the undead would struggle to take. There were three in the middle as well, and two on the undead side. However, one of the objectives on the undead side was in the bottom corner, so it was far from everything else. Either something substantial would have to sit out the game watching it, or I could send something do take out any isolated unit down there.

The undead decided to ignore the bottom objective, and went for the three in the middle, massing up with infantry in the middle, mummies and wights holding the bottom flank and with the big wurms and mummies on the top flank.

I intended to sweep through the bottom flank and roll up the line while my center slowed down his army and weakened it with shooting. As such, I swooped forwards on the bottom flank, pretty much pinning that flank in. However, I mistakingly thought the wights had speed 7, so I was way too careful, which delayed my attack for at least two turns while I tried to edge around what I thought was a 14″ threat range. In the middle, Orlaf was ported into his army and started hunting down his characters. I also used hex a lot in this game, hexing one of his casters 3 out of 4 of the first rounds. The prime moment with hex in this game was when the revenant cast Critters Call, hitting 4 times, giving him 4 wounds, and then he failed to wound me, losing the spell with no effect.

The undead actually diverted an entire horde of ghouls to stop Orlaf. Because my flyers and knights were a bit cautious in the middle, the ghouls could turn around without fear of reprisal. It did however slow the undead down to a crawl in the middle.

The two Wyrms and a regiment of mummies on the top flank was everything that moved up. I used the lack of surge to annoy them with my griffon, jumping around threatening flank and rear charges. I did almost get caught off guard by critters call though, which would have grounded my griffon and screwed it over, but Fred was just out of range.

My horde of city militia turned to guard the passage around the rock, while my knights threatened the other way. Fred played cautiously, which allowed me to slowly wittle away at his forces, starting to add on quite a few wounds on the wyrms.

Since I was already on the objectives, had total ranged dominance, and had longer charge range, I felt I could play defensively and not commit before I had to or I got an opening. My volley guns shot away one of his troops of soul reavers.

Orlaf managed to take out the revenant king, but I failed my overrun into the skeletons. The ghouls kept charging Orlaf, hindered again. They had however managed to put 7-8 wounds on Orlaf, and the tourney had a house rule that you got your unit strength as brutal against individuals, so Orlaf bit the dust. The ghoul rearguard actually complicated my life in other ways as well, as it stopped any attempts to get a flyer in behind his lines.

When I finally figured out that wights are only speed 6, I went in on the bottom flank. My honour guard spotted a nimble charge around his lines into the soul reavers. I took the charge, wiping the soul reavers and putting my massive unit in a perfect position behind his lines. My winged lancers charged in at the same time, but unfortunately failed to rout the wights, even with help from ungols charging the flank.

On the top flank, one of the wyrms had managed to present a flank to my winged lancers, so I killed it off. Unfortunately, I did not manage to back up far enough to not be seen by the mummies, and I got charged back.

The attacks triggered the undead, and they charged forward on all flanks, forcing the engagement. On the top flank, my lancers and griffon both ended up biting the dust, but not before taking out the mummies. On the bottom flank, the lancers were flanked by mummies and were wiped out before the honour guard took revenge and wiped out the wights. It was all a bit too late however, as we were coming up on the end of the game.

The undead held two objectives, one with the skeletons and one with the ghouls. I had one with my city militia horde, one with my militia regiment, one with my ungols and one with my wizard, leaving me at 4-2 in turn 6. In my turn 6, I charged the mummies with Tzarina, and moved the city militia regiment at the top of the scoring zone, making sure I had US advantage over there and that the mummies could not possibly get into my zone.

The game ended in turn 6, and I got a 4-2 win on objectives. I had also killed significantly more, so I got something like a 16-5 win, which was enough to give me 1st place ahead of the herd player from game 2.