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.