This battle report concerns an experiment with two new types of terrain created for the Scenario Designer. The scenario created with the new terrain types is The Hill in the Swamp. The two new terrain types are Mud, which severely hinders movement and has no effect on line of sight, and Swamp, which slightly hinders movement and blocks line of sight. That last makes it an entirely new thing: you can move through a swamp, but you can't shoot through it. Effectively, it's a hiding place.
These terrains hinder movement, so you are required to snap before entering. Mud slows you down by the number of pegs on the unit's largest figure. Thus, a Pitati Archers formation would have its movement reduced from 4 to 3, because all its figures are single-peg. The 7th Legion Heavy Riders, however, would be slowed from a speed of 7 to 3, because of the presence of the 4-peg Ursan Cataphract.
The Swamp is more complicated. Movement is always reduced by 2. Units that are in or overlapping the terrain cannot issue special orders because of the deleterious effects of swamp gas. In addition, any unit in, overlapping, or adjacent to the swamp takes one damage at the beginning of each turn. If the unit has no multi-peg figures to absorb the one point of damage, that means it will lose two figures per round, a serious penalty.
Nonetheless, as we shall see, for cavalry units with high movement speed and multi-peg figures on them, the cover provided by the swamp (which is blocking terrain as far as ranged combat is concerned) enables these units to threaten control terrain with the same impunity normally reserved for artillery units.
The Warriors of Legend is the most experimental unit in the army. Costing an unbelievable 2250 points, it attacks with 10 dice normally, and 11 if it has previously moved (thanks to Aggressive). Because it has the Deadly ability, it has a better than 50% chance of getting a critical hit, which will allow downing a target figure using Power at a Price.
The main artillery unit is Rain of Death. Because Amenhotep can heal his own unit as well as any adjacent unit with Regeneration, the Rain of Death is a genuine healing artillery unit. In addition to its healing ability, the unit has 5 defense dice, significantly higher than most other artillery units. It has Hail of Arrows, Precision, and two Fire Arrow icons, so in terms of ranged combat it pretty much does everything.
The experimental unit here is Flamma Agrippa. This unit has three Fireburst icons. Because it is a sortie with Marcus Agrippa, it has Calculating. The idea behind this combination is that the Fireburst can be used to deliver the killing blow to units on control terrain, accumulating additional victory points. Agrippa also has Leader of Men, but this in practice proved to be less useful.
The scenario is a King of the Hill setup with a single control terrain in the center. Mud terrains near the deployment zones provide a movement obstacle. There is also blocking terrain in the center, and of course the swamps to either side of the control terrain. This particular setup is a tiny bitt different from the current version of the scenario: the Swamp terrains were repositioned as a result of this play-test.
This particular configuration presented two clear paths to the central area: a wide swath on the left and a narrow corridor between the Mud and the Blocking terrain on the right. Nate deployed the Rain of Death on the near left with the undead sorties screening it. The Warriors of Legend were placed on the far left. In the narrow corridor he placed the Khet Elite with the Shields of Darius to screen it.
I put the Flamma Coniciens and the Gauls in the narrow corridor. In the wide area, I placed my remaining units, with the Hammer of Titus on the far end and the two sorties (Flamma Agrippa and the Sagitarii Orum closer to the middle.
As usual, Nate won the dice-off and took the ambush turn.
The first few turns involved moving our forces up to bring them to bear on the control terrain.
I was the first to make a move on one of the swamps. This was a two-step process. First, I brought the Crone's Chargers into contact with the terrain, which forced a snap.
To get them inside, I had to push. Because I was starting this second action in contact with the swamp, my movement rate was reduced from 7 to 5. This, however, was more than enough to get fully inside the swamp.
It was likely I was going to swarm out of the Swamp and attack something next turn. To position for revenge, Nate moved the Warriors of Legend up and brought the Rain of Death into position to attack the Crone as soon as it emerged.
On my next turn I brought the Crone's Chargers out of the swamp to attack the Shields of Darius.
The Darius unit has 8 defense dice, and thanks to Hellenic Pride it attacks with 11. This makes it both dangerous and hard to kill, so it seemed reasonable to make a try for it. A direct attack would not, however, work, because the Crone's Chargers only have a maximum of 7 attack dice. Therefore, I started by using Death Touch to target a figure on the Shields of Darius that had 3 defense icons. I rolled a 3, downing the figure and reducing the Egyptian unit's defense to only 5. I then regrouped to maximize the Crone's attack dice. This left me with 4 order points for the turn.
The first attack roll included a critical hit, doing 7 damage.
This left Darius and the three defensive figures on the unit. I pushed to attack again, successfully killing the unit for 3 victory points. My turn, however, was over, and I did not have any points left I could use to reconfigure the Crone's Chargers from attack to defense.
Nate had two artillery units in range to attack the now-helpless Crone.
The first attack was from the nearby Khet Elite. Because of the double Fire Arrow, this did 8 damage.
I downed the three remaining horses on the unit and put two injury points on the Crone figure itself. Nate decided to try to finish the unit off using Shanyu's Dirk. This was a sortie, so the kill shot would only cost 1 order point. The sortie hadfour Sniper icons, but because the Crone is a commander figure, the Sniper power couldn't be used. Instead, Nate had to try a normal ranged attack. Shanyu's Dirk has two ranged dice icons, but the shot was through the base of the Khet Elite, so only one die was rolled. The Crone had no defense, so Nate only needed to roll a 3 or better. Instead, he rolled a 2.
The attempt to save an order point had failed. Nate then tried a normal ranged attack from the Rain of Death. This was an 8-die attack, and it did more than enough damage to kill the Crone. The game was now tied 3 victory points to 3.
Nate used the remaining 3 order points to move the Rain of Death and the Unliving Swords closer to the control point.
I decided I would try to take out the Rain of Death. I pushed my Gauls into base contact (2 order points). The Gauls have Hustle, giving them a total movement range of 12 when they push, so I was able to base the Rain of Death on a bad side, reducing its defense from 5 to 3. I made a close combat attack (which did not cost any order points because the Gauls have Charger), and did 5 damage.
Five damage is just an inconvenience to a unit with Lord of the Dead. I needed to finish it off. I moved up the Flamma Coniciens and then did a Fireburst attack to do three more damage. This splashed my Gauls, but it was necessary because it cut another die off the Rain of Death's defense.
I had 3 order points left. I was shooting through the Unliving Swords, so I attacked with only 5 dice. Even so, thanks to Fire Arrow, I had an expected damage of 3, and a 41% chance of delivering the 4 damage I needed to make the kill. Instead I did no damage at all.
With my last order point, I moved up the Sagitarii Orum so it could join the fight on the next turn.
Nate spent an order point to use Lord of the Dead to heal the Rain of Death, but he rolled poorly and only brought back one figure. With the Rain still badly weakened, he decided to use the Unliving Swords to cripple my archers. Using the unit's Hustle ability, he positioned so that it was adjacent to both the control terrain and the Flamma Coniciens.
The combination of Decidius Saxa, 7 mummies, and the Aggressive ability gives the Unliving Swords 10 attack dice. The Flamma Coniciens has only 3 defense. Nate's attack did 6 damage.
Nate had used 4 order points so far. He used one more to activate Decidius Saxa's Command Position power, increasing his victory points to 4. Next, he needed to get the Gauls away from the Rain of Death. This was accomplished with a ranged attack from the Khet Elite. Because the Khets don't have Precision, he took a 1-die penalty, attacking with 7 dice. The Gaul's lack of defense, however, combined with the double Fire Arrow gave him an 83% chance of making the kill. He did 7 damage (more than enough), and took an additional victory point, raising his score to 5 victory points against my 3. With his final order point, Nate moved his Dead Squad onto the control point, virtually assuring that he would get control terrain victory points next turn.
Decidius Saxa was not only hamstringing my archers, he was going to use Command Position to rack up extra victory points. I decided I had to kill him. I started by shooting with my Sagitarii Orum. This is a sortie unit with 6 range dice, and because it has Precision, it didn't take a penalty for shooting into melee combat. I had a 66% chance of scoring 3 hits, and I didn't get anything.
I pushed to shoot again, and did 2 damage.
The Unliving Swords had 6 hit points left. I had used 2 order points, but I had pushed my one free ranged unit. To kill the sortie I had to use my two Fireburst attacks. This was unfortunate, because it meant I would be doing two points of splash damage to the Flamma Coniciens. I attacked with the flame priestesses on the Flamma Coniciens first, then used the Flamma Agrippa. Because Flamma Agrippa has Calculating and it was responsible for the kill, I got 3 victory points and was now in the lead, 6 victory points to 3.
When I was doing my Fireburst attacks, I had removed flame priestesses from the Flamma Coniciens so that I would be able to shoot the Rain of Death after the Unliving Swords were killed. I regrouped the Flammas for shooting. The Unliving Swords were no longer blocking line of sight, so I could attack with a full 6 dice. The Rain of Death had 5 defense, but I had Fire Arrow to boost my damage. I had a 64% chance of doing 3 damage, which would drop the Rain of Death down to only two hit points. I got nothing.
I didn't have enough order points to shoot again, so I regrouped the Flammas for defense.
Nate took 3 control terrain victory points, making the score 8 to 6 in his favor. He used 1 order point to invoke Lord of the Dead, rolling a 5 and healing the Rain of Death back to 9 hit points. At that strength, he could shoot the Flamma Coniciens at full power, 8 dice to 3 with two Fire Arrows. The Flamma Coniciens died instantly, and Nate collected two victory points, raising the score to 10-6 in his favor.
With his remaining order points, he moved the Khet Elite forward, allowing Shanyu's Dirk to follow. Both units were out of direct range of my Sagitarii Orum, but the theory was they'd be able to move and kill that unit on Nate's next turn.
I wanted to get the Dead Squad off the control terrain. I shot them with the Sagitarii Orum and rolled a critical hit, doing 7 damage.
This was not enough to kill the unit, but I could Fireburst them with the Flamma Agrippa. Thanks to Calculating, I got two victory points, making the score 10-8 in Nate's favor.
My Sagitarii Orum was not long for this world, so I moved it forward and pushed it to shoot the Khet Elite. The attack was 6 dice to 3, and did 2 damage.
With my remaining 4 order points, I brought my two infantry formations forward so they could join in the fray.
Nate now regrouped the Khet Elite to get their full range potential (8 dice) and shot my Sagitarii Orum, killing it instantly and increasing his victory points to 11. He then used 4 order points to get the Warriors of Legend into the left side swamp.
I was in a bit of a pickle here. If I moved the Line of Steel onto the control point, it could shrug off attacks from the two artillery units, but the Warriors of Legend was a different story.
The Line of Steel has 11 defense dice against ranged attacks. The 8-dice attacks from the two Egyptian archers would have no effect 55% of the time. 70% of the time they would only down one figure, and the Line of Steel can heal itself with Artificer. By the time the Line of Steel had been killed, I would have racked up a considerable number of victory points, and in the meantime my other two units would have taken out the Khet Elite.
The insanely expensive cavalry unit in the swamp changed this equation considerably, however. The expected damage from a single attack by the Warriors of Legend is 6, and this is exacerbated by the fact that it has a 56% chance of invoking Power with a Price to down an additional figure. It was guaranteed death in a single turn.
I needed to get my close combat units into the fight, and I needed to get my flaming sortie out of range of the archers. I therefore used my turn to move my units around the far side of the right-hand swamp. I tried to position the sortie so that the Khet Elite couldn't get a line of sight.
Unfortunately, I had miscalculated. Nate was able to move the Khets just enough to get a shot.
Thanks to the damage they'd taken, the Khets were down to 7 dice, but this was more than enough to make the kill.
The 2 victory points from killing Marcus Agrippa's sortie put Nate ahead at 13 to 8. With my Fireburst capability removed, he could safely move the Warriors of Legend out of the swamp and onto the control point. Then he spent an order point on Lord of the Dead and brought back all the white-circle figures on the Rain of Death.
The Khet Elite had moved close to my Hammer of Titus in order to make the kill shot. I decided this was a chance to take out the Khet and hopefully gain some breathing space. I spent four order points to push the Hammer into position, and one order point to regroup for attack. The attack was 9 dice to 1, and I did 7 damage.
Another order point for Armored Rush took the Khets down to a single figure. I then regrouped for defense to protect the Hammer from the Rain of Death.
Nate accumulated 3 more control terrain victory points, brining his total to 16 against my 8. What happened next was incredible. Rather than attack Titus, Nate pushed the Warriors of Legend to attack the Line of Steel from the rear.
The combination of Aggressive and attacking through a bad side yielded a contest of 11 dice to 4.
The attack hit with 8 dice. Because of Deadly it was a critical hit, increasing the damage to 9. Thanks to Power with a Price, Nate was allowed to down a figure before applying damage, and he chose one of the two-hit golems. That brought the total to 11 damage, killing the unit in a single attack.
The score was now 19 to 8. With his last two order points, Nate moved Shanyu's Dirk onto the control point.
I had to keep Nate from getting those last 3 points. I used Armored Rush to kill the Khet Elite, then pushed to move the Hammer of Titus onto the control point to contest it.
The score was now 19 to 10. Nate needed 2 points to win, and killing Titus would do it. A direct attack by the Rain of Death would be expected to do 3 damage-- not enough to kill even with pushing. Nate therefore decided to do a Sniper attack against the legionary figure possessing Wall of Shields. Since Wall of Shields defends the unit, not the figure, the snipe would have 3 blue dice and 2 white dice, a situation with a 75% success rate. Luck was with me, however, and Nate missed.
My luck did not last long. Nate went ahead and attacked with the Rain of Death and did six damage.
I took the 6 damage, reducing my defense against ranged attacks from 9 to 8. Nate pushed to attack again, and once again did six damage.
The Hammer was dead, and Nate had won, 22 to 10.
The idea behind the swamp was to provide a situation where cavalry had an advantage in a 7000-point game. In this respect, the trial was successful. The orientation of the swamps, however, was less than optimal, because when I needed cover they were too narrow. For this reason, I will be adjusting the scenario to turn them parallel to the other blocking terrains.
I had designed the Flamma Agrippa to take advantage of the Calculating ability, and in this sense it was successful, but it was probably a mistake to have it in an army with so many other high-cost units, since it left me with a limited number of options for attacking when my forces ran low. Nonetheless, my dominant memory of this game will not be my ambivalence about that particular experimental unit, but my complete inability to hit the Rain of Death even when the odds were heavily in my favor. That's just not right.