Battle Report 2 - Beasts vs Bretonnians

John verses Noel in the battle for the bits of The Isle of Mists that Paul does not control.

The Bretonnian fielded a force of 9 grail knights, 4 Pegasus knights, one unit of 9 knights of the realm and another unit of the same with 6 knights, battle standard bearer and level 2 damsel. The ranged part of the army was 2 trebuchets and 30 peasant bowmen.

The Beastmen went with 2 chariots, a jabberslythe, a large-ish unit of gors with a level 4 shaman and a unit of bigger gors with their general and battle standard bearer. 

The terrain had no real bearing on the game. Nor did magic, luckily for me.

Noel goes first and just barely comes out of his deployment zone with everything but the jabberslythe. That monster stopped just in front of my slightly cloistered battle line. It used it's special ability to make me roll against my leadership on both KotR units and the P. knight unit. The grail knights were immune to its power as they are ItP. The p.knights took one wound and i think the jabberslythe took a kotr withs its tongue attack. The magic phase was short. 4 power dice for Noel with me getting 2 dispel dice. Noel successly chanels and decides to try to summon another jabberscythe which forces me to dispel scroll it. This was the thing of note that happened in any magic phase in the game.

My first turn, I charge his unit of I think bestigors with both the grail knights and the unit with my general in it. I needed 8+ on both charge rolls with three dice. I made both much to Noels disgust. (This is the second battle in a row against Noel where i got lucky with my charging rolls. He hates me for it.) I position the other unit of kotr to charge the jabberslythe next turn. I totally forgot to move my p. knights. I need that app Craig.  My magic phase, I roll 4 power dice with Noel getting 3 dispel dice. I fail to cast some spell so on to the shooting phase. The 30 bowmen take out a chariot. One trebuchet kills a gor and the other miss fires taking it out for next turn. This was my best shooting phase of the game. I rolled above average for the bowmen to kill the chariot with a few wounds to spare. I was pleased to find that the peasants have longbows. The combat with the bestigors went well for me also. I screwed up at the start by issuing a challenge with the grail knights instead of my tooled up general. Forgot about the rule of only one challenge per combat. Hows that app coming Craig? With the bestigors great weapons allowing my to get all my attacks off first i managed to inflict double digit casualties while only losing 3 kotr in reply. I made lots of armour saves and a few ward saves to boot. Noel was not happy. His general ran but i could not catch him with my grail knights. Another rules based fuck up by me here. Noels unit was below 25% of its starting size so could not rally. There was no point in trying to run it down. I should have reformed with the grail knights instead. I also forgot to make his other units take a panic test for them fleeing combat within 6 inches of them. The generals unit withheld pursuit and reformed to face his unit of gors, leaving its flank open to being charged by the remaining chariot. 

On Noel's turn, he went on the defensive a bit to much imo. He charged with his chariot but not with his remaining unit of gors. His reasoning was that as they lacked great weapons they would be unable to do much damage to my knights with their 2+ armour save. That is a fair point but i was very worried about them charging. The extra bonus a ranked unit would have given him to CR had me sweating it. I probably would have held against the charge, with me general taking the +1ld bonus and the unit he is with having stubborn and the battle standard bearer as well making any break test on a 10 or less rerollable. The knights and the jabberslythe both did some damaged to each other but the knights managed to win on CR and broke the beast. They failed to run it down tho, with it stopping just in front of my archers. The magic phases was a wash again. As was the chariot attack with the knights killing it out right before CR. 

My turn was pretty uneventful. I forgot my magic phase entirely (app please) but remembered to move my p knights this time. They went flying behind the unit of gors. I reformed the grail knights so that the gors could not charge my generals unit next time with out hit the grail knights first. In the shooting phase, the bowmen killed one gor and my working trebuchet killed 2 p knights. With three of my knight units surrounded his unit of gors Noel was surprised that I took the shot. It was overaggressive to be sure, but this was the first time i had used them and i wanted them to have done something. Some people can't be told i guess. Anyway I charged and kill his jabberslythe, just so I would not have to type that word any more.

In his go, Noel was of the opinion that it is better to charge then to be charged. He went for my grail knights, who it turn out can actually take a charge. They routed the gors who fled into the p knights and died. Game over.