Book of War: The Battle of Throggs Neck

The Blurry Monsters:
6 Archers
12 Goblins
7 Medium Infantry
1 Purple Worm
10 Stirge
263 Points

The In Focus Humans:
5 Archers
7 Heavy Infantry
5 Longbowmen
7 Medium Infantry
10 Pikemen
233 Points

The Battle of Throggs Neck was the first battle that I played that had an objective. Throggs Neck is a trading post and some monsters and some bandits wanted to attack it. The human forces wanted to drive the monsters off. Fortunately, for the humans the monsters approached from the other side of the river Throgg.

The battle started with the two sides facing each other as in the pictures above. The humans seized the initiative and attacked.

The humans rush forward. It is their time to be blurry.

Instead of adopting a defensive posture the humans to send their pikemen across the bridge 10 men abreast (it's a wide bridge) directly into the goblin infantry supported by archers. The human forces wipe out half the goblins and rout them. A strong start for the humans but no the pikemen are alone surrounded by the forces of chaos.

The goblins flee

Here are the longbowmen fleeing so as to not seem biased.
This happened 2 turns later though.

The goblins run away from the battle field but the rest of the monster army mounts a counter attack. The bandit archers climb the hill they were hiding behind and fire at the enemy archers. The purple worm also burrows towards the archers busts out of the ground and swallows ten of them or maybe a few of them escape crawling on the ground missing limbs, screaming. The stirge fly to the back lines and set upon the longbowmen. whatever malignant intelligence is controlling the monsters is apparently concerned primarily with eliminating support for the human infantry. 

The Purple worm neutralizes the human archers but is too close their medium infantry

The stirge set upon the longbowmen and ultimately destroy them. 

The medium infantry move up to slay the purple worm

Over the course of the next few turns. The monsters are able to eliminate the ranged support of the human army but it costs them the purple worm. The humans left  enough infantry to dispatch it. The bandit archers are having a great time  poking at the humans across the river from on top of their hill. The human pikemen maybe get a little luck against the medium infantry for the monsters and really start to whittle them down.

After disposing of the longbowmen it is time for the
stirge to make a tactical retreat.

The pikemen that wouldn't die blocking the mercenaries of the monster
army from aiding the archers

The heavy infantry for the humans are having trouble fording the river. They desperately want to get to the mercenary archers and stop them from killing everything.

The fight with the pikemen degenerates into a confusing mass of death

Things start to look bad for the monsters because the pikemen refuse to die or run. They keep the medium infantry from intercepting the heavy infantry and in a desperate attempt to eliminate them the stirge fly over. The pikemen are routed but surrounded so they cannot flee. This was a huge tactical blunder. They continue to fight on further delaying the infantry support for the archers.

The mercenary archers last stand at the top of the hill

This allows the human heavy infantry to summit the hill under arrow fire and engage the archers in melee. The human medium infantry now take the opportunity to clean up what the pikemen could not.  The heavy infantry quickly scatter the archers. They have taken the hill and defended the trading post.


This game lasted a lot longer than the last one as the forces were much bigger and the terrain was more complicated. The bridge and the river made movement a lot more complicated and cumbersome. There were also more strategic decisions to be made. This battle took about 2 hours and 8 turns for each side. It felt fast paced the entire time though.

The Kobold King

"I'm like a kobold but with four hit dice"

The kobold king wears a crown. That is how you know he is the kobold king.

Every kobold is female around the kobold king and can lay eggs (It's like The Left Hand of Darkness, but with kobolds). The kobold king's favorite activity is to fertilize eggs. He wants for them to come out and then he moves on them like a fish, rubbing against them and fertilizing them.

Three days later baby kobolds come out.

Two days after that the babies are adults.

The kobold king just loves to reproduce.  Are you an adventurer? He wants your eggs. You better come up with something or he will attack you. He does not care if you are a 'man'; he is convinced hat you can lay eggs if you are in his presence.

The kobold king will fertilize any other eggs he can find, chicken eggs, fish eggs, lizard man eggs, owl bear eggs, whatever. Sometimes it even works.

After the kobold king is killed the next who finds a funny hat to wear becomes the next kobold king.

More Kobold Stuff.

Book of War Battle Report: The Battle of Trying to get all the Rules Down

The Human army is ready to fight.

Baron Thickstone has sent a regiment into a neighboring hex to subdue whatever monsters are there and win more arable land from the wilderness. His regiment sensed the foul smell of monsters and quickly organized.

On the other side the indigenous monsters joined together to repel the outsiders and maintain their chaotic way of life.

 Army Lists

Human Army
6	Archers	42 points
7	Heavy Infantry	63 points
10	Pikemen	50 points
Total Army Cost:		155 points

Monster Army
12	Goblins	36 points
10	Stirge	80 points
1	Purple Worm	60 points
Total Army Cost:		186 points

The Monster army

Rules Mistakes:

·      I thought heavy infantry had a move rate of 9” not 6”.

·      I didn’t see that archers that stand still have a rate of fire of 2 per turn. I was giving them 1 shot per turn and then only have the unit would manage to get a shot off if they moved.

·      I thought that the purple worm got multiple attacks but it doesn’t.

·      These are just the mistakes that I’ve caught so far so who knows how badly I am messing this up.

THE BATTLE

Humans win initiative.

Human Turn 1

Movement:

Humans move up the archers stay behind the heavy infantry to provide support and the pikemen rush towards the forest to prevent the goblins from fortifying it.

I feel bad. My blurry camera really doesn't capture how epic
these miniatures look as they march into battle.

Monsters Turn 1

Movement:

·      The Stirge fly towards the heavy infantry and intercept them.

·      The goblins advance and the purple warm advances.

Combat:

The stirge attack the Heavy Infantry. I used the normal rules for combat. Movement stops when the bases touch. But I think in the future I will allow all stirge figures that can move into contact with an enemy unit to attack. Then when an enemy unit is killed replace it with a stirge figure from the back ranks to create the impression of the enemy unit getting swarmed from above and eaten up.

Anyway the stirge only manage to kill 1 soldier.

Once again my camera is really preventing you from taking in all the detail
as the stirge try to prevent the humans from taking the hill.

Humans Turn 2

Movement:

·      The Heavy infantry wraps around the stirge unit.

·      The pikemen advance forward cutting the goblins off from the forest.

Combat:

·      The archers fire killing 1 stirge.

·      The pikemen manage to kill 1 goblin using their ability to attack from 1” away.

·      The Heavy Infantry get really lucky and kill 5 stirge. Ouch!

Morale:

The stirge have lost over half their numbers this turn. If they were being controlled by the stirge mask the would not need to check morale, but here they do. They fail and rout.

This is when things really went wrong for the monsters.

Monsters Turn 2:

Movement:

·      The Stirge run away.

·      The Goblins adjust and rush into the pikemen who are not on open ground and get no special bonus attack.

·      The purple worm burrows into the heavy infantry and erupts from the ground.

Combat:

·      The goblins kill 2 pikemen.

·      The purple worm only manages to kill one heavy infantry with its 3 attacks (it should only have gotten one).

Morale:

Although the pikemen and heavy infantry both took losses they pass their morale checks with ease.

This looks cool if you use your imagination and your camera stays in focus.

Humans Turn 3:

Movement: none

Combat:

·      The pikemen kill 6 goblins!

·      The Heavy Infantry make short work of the purple worm.

·      The archers have nothing in range to shoot at because the monsters are getting massacred so badly.

Morale:  

The goblins rout.

The Humans are again victorious. The goblins flee over the despoiled part of the vinyl mat.

Monsters Turn 3:

Movement: It is a resounding defeat for the monsters. They flee off into the sunset.

Conclusions:

1. Heavy infantry is really good.

2. Stirge might be too expensive.

3. Archers by the book might be a little too good.

4. Hero units are not impactful against a lot of heavily armed targets.

5. These small battles are over really fast. This took maybe 10 minutes.