PC: Issac, Redcorn, Teutch, Nekane
Hench: Sebastian, Luther, Kyte
I am not a tabletop wargamer. While in principle I appreciate what my figure-painting, terrain-building, ruler-wielding brethren do, in practice I have little experience with doing it on a table and for a long time had little interest in it. In general, I had found video games more entertaining for that type of conflict as the video game takes care of the parts that I find tedious.
That being said, we had come to the biggest battle in Oberholt thus far. Lord Issac had been gathering his forces and recruiting allies, including Teutch the Alchemist, Nekane the Great, and even appealing to the Baron in Bellport for support. This coalition was formed and based out of a forward operating base along the Yellow River. North, near the source of the river, was a location scouted by the PCs during session play. Various other bits of information gathered by various sources had been put together to lead the coalition to the belief that: 1) This site was related to the Dark Hymn which had been affecting the realm for months, 2) It is also a holy site for beastmen as they search for a relic called the Untersgrabben.
When scouted by PCs previously they determined that the many companies of beastmen were above their pay grade and passed that info off to Issac. Today was the day that weeks of preparation were coming to a head. For the enemy’s part, they were led by a Fire Giant named Vulrag who had been watching the humans approach but had such a massively superior force that he simply wasn’t bothered by it. “Let them come,” he allegedly said on the numerous occasions that he was warned about their approach.
If you’re new here, we play ACKS ‘round these parts. Up to this point we’ve been satisfied with the abstracted mass combat rules in Domains at War: Campaigns to resolve the few real battles that we’ve had and to adjudicate the Patrons doing Patron things during downtime. It works well and most importantly for this smooth-brained DM it’s easy and quick. However, for something of great significance to the campaign, we decided to break out the Domains at War: Battles rules and take a run at them.
Unfortunately we decided this only a day or two before D-Day and I had barely ever opened the book. So we all did a little study, as best we could, and I did some arts and crafts to get some unit chits that would fit on my 1 in. hex mat. The system is robust and really interesting. It recommends at the beginning of the book to run some test battles with a preset scenario, also offered in the book, so you can wrap your head around what’s going on. We failed to do so considering the timeline and suffered a bit because of that.
Arts and Crafts with Brigadine (and wife on the scissors)
Issac (Patron Paladin) has been a benevolent source of missions, healing, and other resources for the PCs. He’s also hanged and flogged an entire party of them. For the purposes of this battle, he and his coalition of forces will be called the Good. His allies were a mixed bag of even more colorful types, including Teutch the Alchemist (Patron Mage), Nekane the Great (Patron Vaultguard), and even Redcorn the Cleric of Ehlonna (PC Cleric) who had been flogged and maimed for his part in the Wounded Ear fiasco. The Dark Hymn has been enough of a problem that these guys put aside all their past issues to come together in common cause. Brings a tear to the eye.
They brought to the battle six divisions of troops with an unusually high ratio of cavalry to infantry. They had solid leadership with high morale and a sprinkling of Lieutenants, but a question mark in the four companies of conscripts that came with Marshal Kyte the Seer (NPC) as part of the reinforcements from Bellport. They also intended to lean heavily on Teutch and his cadre of mages for artillery and disruption.
The Bad
They’re beastmen. They’re the Bad. Led by Vulrag the Fire Giant, they were a mishmash of randomly rolled units off of the unit tables in D@W:C when the PCs first interacted with them. Those random rolls were not kind. Vulrag commanded four divisions of troops, with a staggeringly stout center of ogre heavy infantry supported by bugbears, lizardmen, hobgoblins, and goblins. They were not particularly well led and had very little cavalry, only some hobgoblin horse archers, but the discrepancy between humans and the more formidable beastmen had me questioning whether or not I was about to lose a PC and every active Patron in my game.
The Opening Moves
The Battle
We learned right off the rip that my mat was too big and the hexes were oriented with their points to the lengthwise rather than widthwise as indicated in the documentation, making for a longer narrower battlefield. I made the deployment zones much deeper to cut the approach time down but probably could have gone more extreme there. I’m sure those with more experience can share other tips for gettin’ the battlefield arrayed better but we powered through. We randomly generated terrain and placed our troops. The Good had infantry center with heavy flanks of cavalry, the Bad had Ogres and Bugbears center, with a couple hob horse archers on each flank supported by bugbears and lizardmen left and right respectively.
The Approach
Terrain was not hugely impactful, mostly affecting the Good both positively and negatively. They got a little disordered moving around some broken ground and were able to utilize a cliff with an approach on their side for some high ground shots for some horse archers.
Took us a while to close distance, again because I think the mat was too large but maybe there’s supposed to be a big lead up in positioning. The Good were concentrated a little more than the Bad, who were strung out in one big line. I have a tendency to overthink in tactical situations but I had determined early that the Bad were not particularly bright. With a bunch of irregular foot they weren’t disciplined. They were going to close and get busy ASAP. The only units on the board that I intended to play with any cleverness were the hob horse archers, who coincidentally got the opening blow of our opening game of Battles.
We clashed on the flanks first, with the hobs scoring some disruptive hits against light cavalry that were able to Withdraw to prevent the damage. The Disorder mechanic is to me the second most important thing about Battles, right behind Morale. Granted this is after one contest but I stand by it until I learn differently. It’s so expensive in action economy to overcome dinks to your forces, especially when outnumbered and out-led.
The Engagement
Once the centers met it became apparent pretty quickly that this fight was not to be won by sluggin’ it out. The Good was just woefully overmatched in that department, with the ogres and bugbears laying lumber nearly at will.
This is why Morale is the most important thing, imo. The questionable conscripts weathered blows, the light infantry weathered blows. Sometimes they recoiled or retreated, but only one unit actually routed. Most of the losses suffered by the Good were through elimination, not from flight. It allowed the center to hold long enough for the flanks to open up, spells to land, and the first break point to be reached for the Bad.
When a break point is reached, morale is checked for the entire side. That’s huge for an army with few real leaders and none of them with significant morale bonuses to write home about. The Good determined that targeting the goblins and hobgoblins was going to be their best bet to reach that break point fastest, and despite some miraculous rolls for the Bad’s shock rolls, they did eventually force that break. A charge from Issac’s personal unit of heavy cavalry as a gamble, outranging the rest of his division, paid off with a destroyed unit and spells from Redcorn, Sebastian, and Teutch’s wizards forced the final shock rolls.
As expected, the Bad did not fare well in the first morale rolls and started a cascade of flight from the battlefield. The Good harried them off the field, claiming additional casualties in pursuit, and the Bad’s forces scattered. The day was won by Morale, but at significant cost.
The End
Musings:
I am not a tabletop wargamer. But I could be. This was fun, albeit a little slow to run due to our lack of familiarity with the rules and getting our legs under us. Looking back we missed some things, but it’s comforting to know what I missed and where and how to correct for it. A big rule is the loose units being able to withdraw to avoid damage, or withdraw after a shot. We remembered sometimes, forgot sometimes, but it’s a neat mechanic.
The biggest obstacle I think was remembering which units were Disordered and when. My plan was to use little dots as tokens for it, but in practice it was not feasible. I brought dice to place on the units for various things and even had them sitting in front of me, but forgot about them and never utilized them. I think that would have probably made more sense.
Next time, we’ll need a little better organization for actually running the battle. It turned into managing it off of a spreadsheet and due to time constraints got a little rushed, leading to some more missed triggers, if you’ll forgive a MtG reference.
All in all, I recommend the Battles system. It makes sense, allows you to do the things that you think you should be able to do, and explains how to achieve those things mechanically. It was great fun, Good ran the Bad off of the point of interest, and now a light shines on one of the bigger hooks in the campaign’s history, the Butzkrag, the Dark Hymn, and the Untersgrabben.
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