Game 1 - vs Hunnic Types
The first game saw me facing off against another relative newcomer with a Hunnic-type army. From memory it had:
- 8 units of 2 attack/6 save skirmish cavalry
- 2 units of 1 attack, no save skirmish cavalry
- 3 units of archers
- 6-8 units of warband
- Some other stuff maybe
The Huns lined up with the cavalry split on both flanks, and the warband lurking at the back as the archers pushed forwards. There were three blobs of terrain - which is impenetrable to mounted troops in Warhamster - one on each flank and one centrally.
I was rather unsure what to do, as I knew that archers are pretty tasty and I didn’t fancy my cavalry or elephants against them - and the warband were out of reach. So, I sort of sat back and waited for the Huns to make the first more and come out of their terrain silos, and commenced with a lot of fencing on my right, as my light horse extended themselves in a line to threaten the flanks of the Huns if they came out of the terrain.
At this point the WMA multiple move system bit me for the first time, as the Huns rolled good command pips to allow them to ride out of the terrain, ignore the threat of my line, ride round the side of it and totally encircle my Numidians at the end of the line!
The Huns also pushed forwards out of the terrain gap on their right, and advanced their bowmen into the woods in the middle of the table.
On my right the initial round of shooting decimated my end of line unit, but then the battle disintegrated into a series of one on one unit actions as the various units of light horse charged each other in flanks - adding +1 attack dice for charging makes quite a difference when you both start on 1 or 2 dice per base, and there was a general - yet rather inconclusive melee whilst we fought for control of the hill - which was tipped decisively by some good dice from my 2 attack cavalry who gained advantage of the hill - to see them then obliterate the Hunnic skirmishers…. some made it away, but the rest were surrounded
This attack should have opened up the route to the lurking warband, who started to shuffle out of the way as they saw what was coming!
By this time on the left my elite spearmen had pushed up and were threatening to do something - not sure what - to the bowmen, which caused the Hun cavalry to come out and screen them. This gave my spearmen an opportunity to get in some of the successive multi-unit charges which are needed to catch skirmishers in WMA, and they managed to destroy a couple of units of light horse who were unable to escape.
This then triggered a series of follow-on charges as my spearmen attempted top storm the bowmen on the hill - with limited success. My shock cavalry and elephants were now also making tracks towards the warband, but having to navigate past the bowmen rather hampered their command and control and so they failed to get into contact decisively by the time the game ended. Due to the domino-like successive combats (up to 4 in one turn!!) and the need to pay attention to what was happening I was unable to take any photos, but it was brutal and harsh!
So - an interesting first game, as the terrain had hampered the skirmishing Huns but I had been unable to get past the expendable light horse and into the main meat of the army in time to do anything significant. Lots of dead units racked up lots of points for me - but the end result was not that decisive.
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