It’s been a while since we ran a Hordes & Heroes fantasy game at the club so as a change from our recent ancient and medieval games we pitted a Barbarian army against a High Elf army. In order to have sum fun I, maximized the ‘fantasy’ elements of each army. Both armies had a wizard able to evoke elementals. The Barbarians had units of mammoths, rhino pulled chariots, giants and 3 units of winged birdmen flyers. The High Elves had a unit of flying dragons and giant eagles, plus giants and a unit of slow moving treemen. The dice rolls gave Tim and Chris the high Elves and Tony and I the Barbarians.
This scenario was deliberately created as a ‘fun’ game designed for entertainment rather than a contest of generalship and tactical excellence. And so, neither side wasted any time in throwing units forward into a confrontation, which can be aptly described as organised chaos. The wizards of both sides soon demonstrated their incompetence, as despite numerous attempts they failed to evoke elementals. The armies had already engaged in hand-to-hand combat on the wings before fire elementals were successfully evoked, which in all honesty provided more of an irritation than inflicting any real damage.
Tony had generalship of the Barbarian left and I the right, and so my units were primarily engaged with Chris’s and his with Tim’s with plenty of cross-over in the middle. Chris used his eagles, dragons and giants to attack my units of warriors, mammoths and giants on the extreme right of our line. Things went pear shaped quickly for my barbarians, and my giants and mammoth units were soon dispatched to the casualty tray after a very brief appearance on the table. Meanwhile, in the centre and left, Tony and Tim had so far played a more ‘cat and mouse’ game with neither committing large numbers into an attack. Instead the incompetent wizards continued to fail to evoke anything in the gap between the armies.
Tony’s 3 barbarian cavalry units on our far left tied a flanking move which was quickly countered by Tim’s High Elf spear units. This was a miss-match in which the ‘A’ class High Elves would certainly demolish the barbarian cavalry if only they could catch these slippery suckers who could evade away from contact.
The High Elf archers were concentrated in the middle of the field and to avoid what would have been an unfair missile fight I kept 3 units of the 5 barbarian shooters behind a hill on my left wing. Unfortunately they were within charge range of the High Elf cavalry units who charged across the hill and demolished all 3 in a single combat phase. Tony moved our last 2 remaining units of barbarian archers into the central wood for protection. The High Elf eagles and Dragons defeated my birdmen pursuing one unit to my table edge. With my left wing virtually demolished I pulled back my remaining warrior hordes into forming a defensive line in the centre backed up by a unit of ballista.
Meanwhile, Tony had committed the barbarian chariot units into an all or nothing assault on the High Elf centre. Thankfully the High Elf archers missed their targets and were rolled over by these barbarian ‘tanks.’ The combat dice played to our barbarians in this central attack and a big hole appeared in the High Elf centre. Our wizard had become isolated behind our advancing centre and was simultaneously swooped upon by a unit of giant eagles and dragons. However, our 2 remaining barbarian archer units in the wood shot well and sent the dragons fleeing. This just left the giant eagles in hand-to-hand combat with our wizard. With an excellent double D6 score he sent the eagles fleeing too!
Despite all the early set-backs and a very full casualty tray our barbarians had by luck as much as good management staged a comeback. Chris’s High Elf cavalry charged my last line of warriors in the centre at the same time that Tony finally sent his 3 units of barbarian horsemen to attack the High Elf spear units with the help of a general. The hand-to-hand combat results were so one-sided in favour of the barbarians that the prayers to the dice gods had truly been answered. My warriors finally inflicted a defeat on the High Elf cavalry. The barbarian cavalry defeated the High Elf spears and the barbarian chariots which had broken through the centre trapped them in a pincer movement.
Chris and Tim took stock of the situation and gave the win to the barbarians. However, a quick look at the barbarian over-filled casualty trays demonstrated that this was at best a pyrrhic victory.
Game Analysis
This game was best described as semi-organised chaos in which the roll of the dice pushed and pulled the fortunes of both sides in all directions throughout. A barbarian victory? Erm, I don’t think either side had more than a third of their army on the table at the conclusion of the game, but it was certainly entertaining!
Report written by Paul K.
