Wizards, Lizards and Moles

This week’s wargaming was a game of Dragon Rampant, playing the Sacred Mole of Ukkert scenario, which I’ve played before as a 4 player game. This time it was just two players, and I was up against the Wizards and Lizards army which I’d encountered before. Though I’d technically won that game, my army had been completely destroyed by the enemy. So this time I was somewhat apprehensive about a rematch.

My own army were my Knights of Furyondy, a mostly human force that for this game was limited to just humans. With only 24 points to play with, I didn’t have too many options so opted not to take any mythical beasts. My roster looked like this:

• My Leader was a unit of Heavy Riders (Knights)
• Two units of Elite Riders (Knights on barded horses)
• A unit of Heavy Foot (Heavy Knights)
• A unit of Heavy Missile (Crossbowmen)

We both rolled for a Leader trait, and both got a bonus on our roll to see who was the attacker.

I was the attacker, so had just raided the town and stolen the Sacred Mole. The game started with me leaving the town gates and heading for the opposite corner of the table.

I rolled to activate my crossbowmen, in order to get them to the hill. They didn’t want to move, so that was the end of my first turn.

The Lizard army had more luck, and started charging up the table. Their Lesser War Beasts (half a dozen smaller raptors) charged by the table, unaffected by terrain. The rest of their army moved slower, but it did move.

Then it was back around to me, and my Crossbowmen actually moved this time, making it to the edge of the hill. My heavy foot were ordered to follow, and they just stood there. Another failed activation.

For the Lizard’s turn, their raptors were within wild charge range of my crossbowmen, so they charged. I had wanted to move my heavy foot up to be in the way, but that plan had failed. I lost four crossbowmen to teeth and claws, and only one lizard went down.

My crossbowmen then failed to rally, falling back further and losing another man. But my elite knights made their wild charge attempt – charging the raptors and killing two of them in exchange for a knight. Nobody else activated though.

The raptors rallied, and the other Lizards moved up, with the Wizards taking up a sheltered position ready for fire bolts of fire at anyone who came within range.

My crossbowmen then failed their rally check again, and fled from the board. They hadn’t fired a single shot, but had at least done something in melee. My unit of Elite Riders did a wild charge at the remaining raptors, wiping them out without any losses themselves. Finally, my leader unit was able to move out of the gate with the sacred mole in their possession.

My Elite Riders were then wild charged by one of the giant lizards. We counter-charged back at them, getting two ‘kills’ on them, but losing 3 knights ourselves. The wizards took a shot at the knights, but failed to hit anything.

The following turn, my knights failed to wild charge back at the lizard, and though my leader was able to move, nobody else did. My unit of Elite Riders were charged by the lizard and wiped out.

Our situation at this point was that the Wizards had two giant Lizards still under their control. Only one Lizard was really threatening us though, the other was pulling back to try and (I assume) cut off my leader (a unit of heavy riders) with the mole who was trying to sneak down around the edge of the table.

I had a unit of heavy foot still left, who were forming up with a wall of spears, plus one remaining unit of elite riders. I was hoping to keep the lizard occupied since it had wild charge, so would have to keep attacking my spear protected foot knights.

My foot knights did good work, but were battered and pushed back, leaving it to my elite riders to finish off the giant lizard. I’d been keeping my leader back for a bit waiting for support, and we were both down to two units by the time time my leader decided to make another attempt at getting across the board.

By now, my leader was being blocked by the wizards and the last remaining lizard though, so decided to charge the wizards directly so they couldn’t be attacked from the side by the lizard. I hoped to bring up my elite riders as well, but they just sat there doing nothing.

My first charge at the wizards didn’t go well, with some poor dice rolls. However, the squishy wizards took more casualties so fell back up against their lizard. Trapped, they needed to make another morale check and passed. At this point I did a little bits of rules lawyering, to check exactly what the rules were when you couldn’t fall directly back. Given how big a difference there was to me whether the wizards just moved ‘back and sideways’ to an empty space, or fell back against their own unit, I felt justified.

The Lizards failed their activation check, so it was me again and another charge. I got three kills and routed the wizards, but I also failed a morale check and fell back, dropping the sacred mole.

Finally, my Elite Riders managed to move, and started to head in to support.

Over the next few turns, we had several failed activations, and also failure for my leader to rally. He was charged whilst still battered, which didn’t help, and then finally failed one too many rally checks and routed from the table.

This left the Lizard to grab the sacred mole (in it’s two little claws?) and try and get around the table back to the town. Finally though, my elite riders passed a wild charge check, and charged the lizard. We got two hits on it, and it fell back – off the table and was routed!

So I was left with a single unit of Elite Riders, and no opposition. We considered the game a very close win for the Knights of Furyondy, though losses were extravagant.

This was a particularly close game. I thought I was doing badly at the start, since so many of my units failed to activate. I never got my crossbowmen to shoot anything, and my elite riders just sat around a lot of the time doing nothing. Elite Riders need to roll 7+ to move, which makes them very difficult to get into a good position.

The Lizards weren’t quite as dangerous as last time. I had heavier units (I think I had heavy riders last time, rather than elite) but with a chance of wild charging. My foot knights were also very good at pinning down the Lizards’ wild charging units.

With a requirement to be 3″ from other units, the table was tight. We used a smaller table this time (90x120cm), which probably needs a 1″ unit distance instead. Or maybe we should have had less terrain.

I would have preferred to make my leader unit a bit tougher, but with only 24 points to play with, and 12 of them tied up in the two elite rider units, I didn’t have the points available.

But things worked out well for the Knights, and I think my tactics with them were improved over previous games as well. I just needed some better dice rolls. Having said that, my failed activations tended to be at the start of the game, whereas the Lizards’ were at the end of the game where things were potentially more critical.

But it was a good game.