Cats and Elves

This week’s wargaming at FWGS was a game of Dragon Rampant. This is the fantasy version of Osprey’s *Rampant series of wargames. It’s very similar to the historically focused Lion Rampant, with a few tweaks to support fantastic creatures and units.

I used the opportunity to bring out my seldom used Wargods of Ægyptus army of Bast – consisting of feline warriors and their crocodile worshipping friends.

They were up against some Elves and Ents. Some of the Elves were of an ancient lineage, possibly going all the way back to the legendary regiment of renown led by Skarloc. I actually remember these figures, since they were amongst some of the first Warhammer figures I bought back in the 1980s. Along with Harboth’s Orc Archers and the Nightmare Legion. I’ve still got some of them kicking around. Since they’re slot bases, they’ve been harder to rebase to fit in with my existing armies.

We went for a 24 point game, with the Elves fielding:

• 3 units of light missiles – Elven archers
• 1 unit of greater warbeasts – a unit of Ents
• 1 unit of elite cavalry – Elven leader

The Basti fielded:

• 1 unit of Light Missiles (sharp shooters) – Basti Archers
• 1 unit of Light Foot (offensive, venomous) – Basti Skirmishers
• 1 unit of Lesser Warbeasts – Sebeki
• 1 unit of Elite Foot – Basti Hero

We didn’t complicate things with leader traits or glory quests, since we were trying to learn the basics of the game. I didn’t take many notes for this game, or as it turned out many photos.

The Elves went first, moving their ents forward to just outside of feline bow range, whilst their archers took up positions in the woods on their side of the table.

I kept my archers where they were, waiting for the Ents to come into range, and then started an attack on my right flank. My Sebeki were leading the assault, crawling up the edge of the board towards a unit of elves out in the open.

The Sebeki took on the elves, and after several rounds of combat routed them. The Sebeki took hits, but the Elves were squishier and kept on falling back, needing to rally, and then got wild charged by the Sebeki again until there were no more elves.

On the other flank, my archers were forced forward in order to engage the Ents, and started whittling them down with bow shots. They in turn were being shot at by the elves hiding in the woods, but Basti archers (with their sharpshooter advantage) were more capable (and also luckier on the dice).

The Basti female skirmishers ran around the hill, and engaged the Ents in melee, wiping them out, but being weakened themselves. At this point my smaller number of units was beginning to be a disadvantage. I don’t remember what wiped out the Sebeki (it may have been the Ents before my Basti got to them), but the Basti skirmishers were in turn routed by the Elven warlord.

This left me with my hero who was crawling her way across the hill (it was rough ground, and she only had a base movement of 6″, halved to 3″) and my archers. I wanted to engage the Elven leader with my own hero, but by the time she got close to the edge of the hill she had already begun to take missile fire and was down a couple of hits.

My archers chased the Elven leader around the hill, but he kept on running away. With just two units left, versus three units of Elves, I decided to give victory to the Elves.

Trying to crawl across the rough ground was a mistake, since it made it impossible for me to deploy that unit. I hadn’t realised how slow the unit was going to be. Apart from that, the game felt relatively balanced, and I think we mostly got the rules right.

A few that I missed:

• Units can see 3″ into cover, rather than the 2″ that I misremembered
• I should have made a courage test when half my army was destroyed
• I think we missed an extra -1 to courage tests if half or more of a unit was destroyed

It may make sense to allow the particular hill terrain I used to also count as cover, due to the irregular shape of it.

It was a good game though, and a learning experience for both of us. I’ve played it a few times before, but not enough for the rules to be fully ingrained in my head just yet.