Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Fought this battle on Tuesday.

My Army:
Lvl 2 Sorceress: Darkstar Cloak, Dispel Scroll
Master (General): Sword of Might, Seal of Ghrond, Hvy Armor, Shield

2 x 10 Executioners w/Champ

24 Corsairs w/ Full Command

12 Repeater Crossbowmen

2 Bolt Throwers

6 Dark Riders w/RXBs, Musician

20 Warriors w/shields, full cmd, War Banner

His army was practically a mirror of my own, except he took 1 block of 15 Executioners instead of 2x10, and Cold One Knights instead of Dark Riders. Our armies were so close in nature I expected this to come down to skill....and we seemed similarly matched there as well. This was his fourth game of Fantasy, and my 2nd game of 7th edition after a long 4-5 year break.

Deployment & Strategy (pic)
As you can see from the image, he pretty much split his line and held the flanks. My plan was to exploit the gap in the center to envelop his stronger left flank and destroy it in detail. By pulling the fight to the other side of the board, his Executioners should spend the whole game running around trying to get to the battle, hopefully showing up too late to make a difference.

For our spells, I got lucky and rolled both Soul Stealer and Black Horror, while he rolled Doombolt and switched something else for Chillwind.

Turn 1
He advances along the flanks, as expected. He gets off a pretty nasty magic phase, blasting my right Executioners (Exec-R) with Doombolt killing 4 and the RXBs with Chillwind killing 6. Shooting wasn't too bad, he fired solid shots with both Reaper Bolt Throwers, with only one hitting to kill 3 corsairs.

I moved my Dark Riders to hide behind the building on my left flank, concealing them from his RXBs. This set them up for a charge against his warmachines on the next turn. My infantry advance towards his warrior block, trying to gang up on them.
(Turn 1 pic)

Turn 2
He realizes that his COKs won't fit through the narrow gap between a building and the table edge, so he wheels to advance between the two buildings. The rest of his forces inch forwards. Again my Corsairs eat some bolts, but I think he switched to multi-shot from this turn on.

My Dark Riders charge his closest RBT. Then I made a huge gamble: trying to get a combined charge on his Warriors with Exec-R and my Corsairs. The Executioners could reach, but I wasn't certain about the Corsairs. Turns out the Corsairs are about 1/2" too far. I had planned that in the event of a failure, my sorceress would just blast the unit with spells to try to even the odds for my understrength Executioners. One of the veteran gamers watching us play told me a wizard in a failed charge can't cast.* This is where not knowing the rules or bothering to bring the book can be a real handicap. I didn't know this (*=see Rules Gaffs in final comments), but if I had I would NOT have bothered charging with either unit. (movement pic)

Predictably, the Executioners lose. Having the previously-hidden assassin jump out into the combat didn't help, of course. My vaunted ability to roll low on Leadership tests fails me, and they flee. The "vets" say that my Corsairs need to take a Panic test*, which again I somehow fail. The vets say my other Executioner unit (Exec-L) also needs a test now, seemingly induced by the fleeing Corsairs as I don't think they were within 6" of Exec-R.* THEY fail. So instead of dogpiling his warriors I'm now ending the turn with 3 of my 4 infantry units running away. "No plan survives contact with the enemy" indeed.

The good news is that Dark Riders kill the RBT and overrun into the 2nd one.
(Turn 2 pic)

Turn 3
His assassin leaves the warrior block to make his own charge against my RXBs. He moves his Knights down the "street", but he positions them so their flank is entirely open to my warriors. The vets see this as well, and we just silently glance at each other wondering what he was thinking. He forgets to move his corsairs. His Executioners continue to creep up my left/his right and move towards the center of the table. He may have zapped my Corsairs with some spells. In combat, his RBT loses and my Dark Riders run off the board. His assassin munches through my RXBs, runs them down, and overruns into my own RBT.

My corsairs rally and a reform them to face his Warriors, confident his Executioners are too far away for a rear charge. Exec-L continues to flee towards his table edge. Exec-R rallies. I charge his COKs in the flank with my own Warriors. My Dark Riders come back on the board. (Turn 3 movement pic)
Neither the Knights nor my Warriors cause any casualties but he loses through CR and flees. His assassin kills my RBT, overruns into my other RBT.

Turn 4
His COKs continue to run, pretty much right towards my Dark Riders. His assassin kills my last RBT and is now somewhere by himself in the far side of my deployment zone.

Exec-L rallies but they are half-inside a forest at the edge of the board. A vet recommends leaving them there to contest the table quarter (his RXBs were on the other side of the forest). I try for another dogpile, this time hitting his Warriors with both my own Warriors and my (shot-up, understrength) Corsairs. His RXBs have been picking at them the past few turns and with a few spells it's added up. My Dark Riders charge his COKs, who don't flee far enough and get run down. There was some confusion over whether the Dark Riders came on-board this turn or not, which would have prevented them from charging, but we straightened that out. (Turn 4 movement pic)

I win the combat against his Warriors, running them down with my Warrior block and killing his Sorceress. At least now I can blast his army with damn near no interference.

Turn 5
His Executioners finally get into the fight, flank-charging my Corsairs. His Corsairs also try to make their presence known and set up for a charge. His assassin comes running back to do the same.(Turn 5 movement pic)
The combat goes in his favor but my Corsairs stand their ground.

I shift my Dark Riders around to set up a flank charge on the Executioners. My Warriors reform to face all the fighting. I charge Exec-R into the Corsairs hoping to slow them down and keep them from rear-charging my own Corsairs. My Magic phase goes well: I hit his Corsairs with Soul Stealer and kill half of the unit! The combats are largely inconclusive, with everyone staying stuck in.

Turn 6
His assassin rear-charges my Corsairs. I don't recall the specifics of this combat but I somehow ended up with a Killing Blow from his Assassin that one of my characters needed to eat. I may have challenged him with my Sorceress, hoping this would free up my Master to munch through his rank&file and balance the combat. This turned out to be a bad idea, as my Sorceress' FOUR (due to Soul Stealer) wounds tipped the combat resolution pretty heavily in his favor and he won the combat, running down my Corsairs. (Turn 6 movement pic)

My Dark Riders flank his Executioners, who either overran into my Warriors, or were charged by them. Unfortunately his Executioners were packing the Standard of Hag Graef* so these combats weren't going anywhere near as well as they probably should have. The fight was pretty inconclusive. I think his Corsairs killed or ran down Exec-R. Either way, things looked like this: (Endgame pic)

We declared the game a draw, with the vets suggesting it was slightly in my favor with a table quarter and probably more points still on the table.

Final Comments
*Rules Gaffs
1. Wizards in a failed charge CAN still cast spells.
2. Units only cause a panic test for breaking from combat if they are unit strength 5 or higher. My Executioners only had 4 models survive the combat.
3. Another unit panicking does not induce a panic test. I think in older versions you could have these "chained" Panics that would cause an entire battle-line to flee, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
4. Standard of Hag Graef is 35pts, and Executioners can only take standards up to 25pts. He whipped up his army list at the last minute before the game so I think this was an oversight rather than duplicity. He seemed confused over which banner was where, as he may have had one on his COKs as well.

Army Observations
1. Dark Riders are awesome. Huge charge range and decent shooting. I might convert a 2nd unit from Glade Riders, as I hear these guys now cost an arm& a leg (I bought mine around 2001).
2. Assassin are nasty. I think his assassin killed more stuff than the rest of his army combined (2 RBTs, RXB unit, Sorceress, some of my Corsairs). God-like close combat characters that don't eat up Hero slots? If I was TFG I would put one of these in EVERY infantry block.
3. Dispel Power of Darkness whenever possible. Otherwise you run the risk of your opponent casting just a few spells with such a high casting value that you can forget about dispelling them with dice.
4. If you are taking MSU Elite infantry, you need to take efforts to protect them from shooting and magic. I think the DE list has some magic items that are useful for this....

Generalship Observations
1. Know the rules! I think not being familiar with the rules may have cost me the game. I would have been able to magic his Warrior block with my Sorceress, perhaps killing a rank (or more) and keeping my Executioners in combat, who, even if they fled, wouldn't have cost me roughly two turns of rallying and reforming my infantry.
2. Don't divide your forces without a good reason, and don't use an elite infantry block to hold your extreme flank. As I predicted, his Executioners didn't get into combat until Turn 5.
3. Don't expose your heavy cavalry to a flank charge without a good reason, even if it's to an anvil unit like Warriors. Static combat res can ruin your day.
4. Assassin giving you grief? Magic him. While using two big spells like Soul Stealer and Black Horror on a single model may sound excessive, it probably would have saved me in the long run. I certainly wasn't killing this guy in close combat.
5. Don't forget to move your units. If his Corsairs had gotten into the fight a turn earlier, they may have broken my Corsair/Master/Sorceress unit a turn earlier, possibly with few casualties, and would have been too strong for my otherwise-depleted infantry to deal with.

At any rate, it was a wild, swirling game and very exciting.

Thanks for the report. I am learning Fantasy and happen to be doing Dark Elves.

- Blackbone

Good report. The wrap-up with thoughts on Rules, Army and Generalship are great to read...

RZ

Excellent batrep. The pictures could have been a bit clearer, particularly the last one, but I managed to get the gist of it. I'm starting Dark Elves myself in preparation for the next WHFB tourney, and this has given me some valuble information on the value of Dark Riders. I hear lots of good things about them, but they didn't look very useful on paper. I was, of course, not thinking about where they're supposed to be fighting, as I'm not used to all these fancy manuvering rules in WHFB.

Thanks for the report, well done and quite clear. The pics were nice to have too

Pity about the rules mess-ups, but aye, you live and learn and remember for next time. More of a pity are the vets getting their editions mixed up and chain panicing your army away ... Though as to panicing from a broken combat, I had thought that it's the US going into the combat that matters - i.e. you'd need to have 4 execs start the combat and run / be destroyed for it not to matter. If 4 are left but there were 5+ to begin and then they break, I think friends within 6" still test.

2. Assassin are nasty. I think his assassin killed more stuff than the rest of his army combined (2 RBTs, RXB unit, Sorceress, some of my Corsairs). God-like close combat characters that don't eat up Hero slots? If I was TFG I would put one of these in EVERY infantry block.

In fact, my Hate List when it comes to DE (and everyone has one when it comes to DE) starts with the hydra (woefully undercosted, 7 attaks with hatred, impossible to kill) and assassins come in at #2. One of those bastards can kill my ENTIRE ogre army by itself, and it's not because it's ogres, but because I have to fight it in combat ...

- Salvage