After Action Report
I got my third game (and first at 2000 points) in and it was also a win. I am happier with this win too, because I feel like it was not all dumb luck. I think I had a better plan for deployment and strategy for winning. It was another kill mission (I need to get away from those) and my opponent was ogres with a smattering of Forces of the Abyss. I was an infantry heavy elf list with a fast contingent (chariot regiment, gladestalkers, and a dragon lord). I also had chaff stuff that I had not had previously – two troops each of archers and tallspears.
I knew going in that I wanted my bolt throwers to shoot the ogre shooters. I hadn’t been expecting the abyssal though (an efreet, a troop of hellhounds and a horde of tortured souls), and the named ogre character was new. He seemed kinda scary. I had planned to park my infantry on one side and support it with the fast movers on a flank. So I knew my fast movers were going to be my last deployments. The new elements changed my planning a bit. I wanted the Hellhounds gone – with their speed they could match my fast stuff. I also wanted the tortured souls gone – again because they were fast and tough (I underestimated their durability) but not as much as the hounds because he had no surge and they could only move 10 until they could charge. I also wanted to avoid his uber-ogre and the efreet, hopefully making them walk all along the board to get to me.
He went first and placed his efreet behind some cover on the far right (for left/right I’m always going to mean *my* left or right). That suited me fine. I placed an archer troop dead center to keep my intentions disguised. I don’t recall the remainder of the deployments, but I basically dropped a spear troop and a bolt thrower centrally to join the archers while he dropped the uber ogre with the efreet on the far right and spread some warriors in his center. At that point I knew I was going heavy on the left side. I placed another spear troop and archer on my left. And he mirrored that with his ogre shooters and some more warriors on the left, keeping them out of LOS of the central bolt thrower. So I put my sea guard horde to the left along with my other bolt thrower and two units of palace guard. His last deployments were the tortured souls and the hellhounds which he deployed on the far right. That actually changed my deployment for my last three units (when he finished deploying, I still had the dragon, the gladestalkers, and the chariots to deploy). I had been planning to put them centrally with a left leaning line of advance. However, the speedy hitters on the right, made me rethink that. Those things could get around the corner very fast and would chew through two troops and a war machine in no time, turning my flank. So I placed my gladestalkers and my chariots facing to the right. This did two things. First, it meant he couldn’t cut the corner unless he wanted to put his stuff in the open with three shooting units and a bolt thrower sitting there; he had to run down the short right side to have cover and only then turn to come at me. It reduced the turns I could shoot at him by one, but made it take a turn longer to be able to charge me. Second, it gave me something to hit him with when he emerged though it meant my fast units would be largely stationary. The dragon stayed with the original plan. So basically, he ended up deployed in three groups with both flanks weighted and the right flank containing his fast stuff. I was in a tight deployment to the left knowing that he would have to come to me given the mission… and I had shooting. I did not vanguard.
I got first turn and opened fire with limited effect and advanced my left slightly. As the game developed, my plan generally unfolded as anticipated. I had superior weight on the left and he ended up coming in piecemeal, allowing me to tackle his stuff en echelon. By turn two or three, I was able to remove some troops with shooting too, a warrior troop in the center and the left and the hellhounds on the right. I also was able to have a regiment of palace guard charge a horde of ogre warriors on the left, creating a bit of a bottleneck for him when they wavered. In the next turn, the palace guard routed the previously wavered ogres.
I also made a big mistake in turn 1 by flying my dragon straight at the shooters. I made sure I was behind a hill that was the same size as the ogre shooters, but forgot that the dragon is height 4. The shooters shot the dragon (and wouldn’t you?), but I got lucky and he only scored 4 wounds with his elite ogre shooter horde. It still left me in a tough spot though because I couldn’t turn and scurry home either, not without being charged in the rear. I decided in for a penny, in for a pound and flew behind the shooters to flame them. Then I got shot by the efreet, but for only two more damage. I flank charged a warrior horde but it stayed tough and then got flank charged myself by the shooters. They were hindered though and didn’t do much. That was the worst of it though. From there, I was able to fly out of range or LOS of all his stuff and flame the shooters to death and then charge past the uber ogre to charge and rout the efreet. I then spent the rest of the game chasing the uber ogre with my flames and two regiments of palace guard, but I rolled quite poorly and never routed him. So that mistake ended up working in my favor.
My other big mistake cost me though. I had my army standard bearer standing next to a bolt thrower crew, and he kind of got shuffled in with them and I forgot about him for at least 4 turns. Meanwhile the tortured souls, a warrior horde, and a warrior regiment were bearing down on my right flank (in the center of the board). There was some shooting, charging, and counter charging during which I learned how annoyingly tough the tortured souls are (plus their lifeleech). He rolled an 11 on the nerve check when he counter charged my chariots (which had managed 8 wounds on him the turn before), routing them at which point my ASB was sipping coffee with the artillery crew instead of having hustled over to get within inspiring range on my right, where I was clearly going to need him. That left the gladestalkers who simply could not hold a horde and a regiment of ogre warriors and the tortured souls; they went down on his next turn, followed finally by the tortured souls who got pincushioned by the sea guard horde. By this point though, he only had the uber ogre, and the injured warrior horde and regiment and the game was ending. I won by just over 600 points.
The victory came primarily because I got him to spread out his deployment while I was able to concentrate. This is especially true of his power – I made his uber ogre and efreet non-entities for several turns as they walked the length of the table from right to left. His efreet got one turn of shooting off and the uber ogre was never able to attack anything. He said, he never expected elves to castle, but then castling was never my plan. I was going for refused flank except two things happened. I ended up placing my right side infantry where I later realized I wanted my fast flanking force (and by then it was too late)and then, to counter his speed on the right, I had to park my flankers to face them instead of flanking.
A couple other things stuck out in my mind. I need to better visualize the final positions of things. At one point I had planned to have my gladestalkers shoot the rear of an ogre warrior troop that was traversing the field from right to left. However, when I charged my chariots into the tortured souls, they ended up blocking the gladestalkers line of sight. I should have seen that would occur. The gladestalkers ended up not being able to do anything that round except wait to try to charge the tortured souls the next round.
At one point late in the game, he was advancing the troop of ogre warriors across the table from right to left (from east to west) (same ones I had planned to shoot with the gladestalkers). , and he was coming up on a troop of archers from the flank. I turned the archers to face him and shot ineffectively at him. He had charge range, but I had a horde of sea guard sitting on the archer’s flank facing “north” that he couldn’t see because of blocking terrain. He was sufficiently afraid of the horde of sea guard, even if he could have turned to face them after having finished off the archers, that he chose not to charge the archers and just held position. I shot at him again and routed him. He may have been right about the end result, but I’d have gone after the archers figuring it is better to kill the archers and move the sea guard before dying than just hold still and die.
It will be interesting to see what the next matchup is like.
I knew going in that I wanted my bolt throwers to shoot the ogre shooters. I hadn’t been expecting the abyssal though (an efreet, a troop of hellhounds and a horde of tortured souls), and the named ogre character was new. He seemed kinda scary. I had planned to park my infantry on one side and support it with the fast movers on a flank. So I knew my fast movers were going to be my last deployments. The new elements changed my planning a bit. I wanted the Hellhounds gone – with their speed they could match my fast stuff. I also wanted the tortured souls gone – again because they were fast and tough (I underestimated their durability) but not as much as the hounds because he had no surge and they could only move 10 until they could charge. I also wanted to avoid his uber-ogre and the efreet, hopefully making them walk all along the board to get to me.
He went first and placed his efreet behind some cover on the far right (for left/right I’m always going to mean *my* left or right). That suited me fine. I placed an archer troop dead center to keep my intentions disguised. I don’t recall the remainder of the deployments, but I basically dropped a spear troop and a bolt thrower centrally to join the archers while he dropped the uber ogre with the efreet on the far right and spread some warriors in his center. At that point I knew I was going heavy on the left side. I placed another spear troop and archer on my left. And he mirrored that with his ogre shooters and some more warriors on the left, keeping them out of LOS of the central bolt thrower. So I put my sea guard horde to the left along with my other bolt thrower and two units of palace guard. His last deployments were the tortured souls and the hellhounds which he deployed on the far right. That actually changed my deployment for my last three units (when he finished deploying, I still had the dragon, the gladestalkers, and the chariots to deploy). I had been planning to put them centrally with a left leaning line of advance. However, the speedy hitters on the right, made me rethink that. Those things could get around the corner very fast and would chew through two troops and a war machine in no time, turning my flank. So I placed my gladestalkers and my chariots facing to the right. This did two things. First, it meant he couldn’t cut the corner unless he wanted to put his stuff in the open with three shooting units and a bolt thrower sitting there; he had to run down the short right side to have cover and only then turn to come at me. It reduced the turns I could shoot at him by one, but made it take a turn longer to be able to charge me. Second, it gave me something to hit him with when he emerged though it meant my fast units would be largely stationary. The dragon stayed with the original plan. So basically, he ended up deployed in three groups with both flanks weighted and the right flank containing his fast stuff. I was in a tight deployment to the left knowing that he would have to come to me given the mission… and I had shooting. I did not vanguard.
I got first turn and opened fire with limited effect and advanced my left slightly. As the game developed, my plan generally unfolded as anticipated. I had superior weight on the left and he ended up coming in piecemeal, allowing me to tackle his stuff en echelon. By turn two or three, I was able to remove some troops with shooting too, a warrior troop in the center and the left and the hellhounds on the right. I also was able to have a regiment of palace guard charge a horde of ogre warriors on the left, creating a bit of a bottleneck for him when they wavered. In the next turn, the palace guard routed the previously wavered ogres.
I also made a big mistake in turn 1 by flying my dragon straight at the shooters. I made sure I was behind a hill that was the same size as the ogre shooters, but forgot that the dragon is height 4. The shooters shot the dragon (and wouldn’t you?), but I got lucky and he only scored 4 wounds with his elite ogre shooter horde. It still left me in a tough spot though because I couldn’t turn and scurry home either, not without being charged in the rear. I decided in for a penny, in for a pound and flew behind the shooters to flame them. Then I got shot by the efreet, but for only two more damage. I flank charged a warrior horde but it stayed tough and then got flank charged myself by the shooters. They were hindered though and didn’t do much. That was the worst of it though. From there, I was able to fly out of range or LOS of all his stuff and flame the shooters to death and then charge past the uber ogre to charge and rout the efreet. I then spent the rest of the game chasing the uber ogre with my flames and two regiments of palace guard, but I rolled quite poorly and never routed him. So that mistake ended up working in my favor.
My other big mistake cost me though. I had my army standard bearer standing next to a bolt thrower crew, and he kind of got shuffled in with them and I forgot about him for at least 4 turns. Meanwhile the tortured souls, a warrior horde, and a warrior regiment were bearing down on my right flank (in the center of the board). There was some shooting, charging, and counter charging during which I learned how annoyingly tough the tortured souls are (plus their lifeleech). He rolled an 11 on the nerve check when he counter charged my chariots (which had managed 8 wounds on him the turn before), routing them at which point my ASB was sipping coffee with the artillery crew instead of having hustled over to get within inspiring range on my right, where I was clearly going to need him. That left the gladestalkers who simply could not hold a horde and a regiment of ogre warriors and the tortured souls; they went down on his next turn, followed finally by the tortured souls who got pincushioned by the sea guard horde. By this point though, he only had the uber ogre, and the injured warrior horde and regiment and the game was ending. I won by just over 600 points.
The victory came primarily because I got him to spread out his deployment while I was able to concentrate. This is especially true of his power – I made his uber ogre and efreet non-entities for several turns as they walked the length of the table from right to left. His efreet got one turn of shooting off and the uber ogre was never able to attack anything. He said, he never expected elves to castle, but then castling was never my plan. I was going for refused flank except two things happened. I ended up placing my right side infantry where I later realized I wanted my fast flanking force (and by then it was too late)and then, to counter his speed on the right, I had to park my flankers to face them instead of flanking.
A couple other things stuck out in my mind. I need to better visualize the final positions of things. At one point I had planned to have my gladestalkers shoot the rear of an ogre warrior troop that was traversing the field from right to left. However, when I charged my chariots into the tortured souls, they ended up blocking the gladestalkers line of sight. I should have seen that would occur. The gladestalkers ended up not being able to do anything that round except wait to try to charge the tortured souls the next round.
At one point late in the game, he was advancing the troop of ogre warriors across the table from right to left (from east to west) (same ones I had planned to shoot with the gladestalkers). , and he was coming up on a troop of archers from the flank. I turned the archers to face him and shot ineffectively at him. He had charge range, but I had a horde of sea guard sitting on the archer’s flank facing “north” that he couldn’t see because of blocking terrain. He was sufficiently afraid of the horde of sea guard, even if he could have turned to face them after having finished off the archers, that he chose not to charge the archers and just held position. I shot at him again and routed him. He may have been right about the end result, but I’d have gone after the archers figuring it is better to kill the archers and move the sea guard before dying than just hold still and die.
It will be interesting to see what the next matchup is like.
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