The Siege of Witherhelm

I finally had my D&D group play the siege I have been planning at posting about for months. I used Book of War by Delta. I took some advice from the internet and I ignored some probably very good advice from the internet. Everything worked out though.... sort of. 

Dave hard at work setting up the evil army

The campaign is in shambles but in a good way I wanted to have a meaningful battle where the objectives were determined by things that mattered in the large framework of the world and not just objective markers. This made the game more like a real war in that there were no winners. The high level 'good' NPC was devoured by a purple worm in the basement and the high level magic user was blasted out of the sky by a fireball after he got overconfident. That means that all known cities of the world are without leadership and in a state of anarchy.

I look on with no idea that half a continent is about to be thrown
into anarchy.

Setting up took a long time. I was ready to use chgowiz's Fellowship Supplement for Book of War but the part spent the whole time hidden in the inn. They weren't discovered until the guy playing the evil army lifted up the inn as a joke and saw them in there. By that time it was too late; he couldn't get any troops over there and his wizard had been fried.

There is ivy growing on the keep because I screwed up making it
 and had to cover up my mistakes.

This picture is blurry due to the heat from the fireball that is rushing towards
the evil wizard. His last stand was on top of a beer.

The goal of the evil army was to capture a very important wraith trapped at the top of
Witherhelm stronghold or barring that free the wraith and destroy Brock Thickstone.

Brock Thickstone's goal was to inflict as much damage as possible to the evil army before retreating so that it could not attack his home territory a few hexes away. Both sides failed spectacularly.

Here is a synopsis that one of my players wrote (I bribed him with xp):

Alright so I will take a wack at this as I am I dire need for the xp and there is a sick amount of it.  

Witherhelm keep sat at the center of the board topped by a pyramid and encircled by a series of obelisks.  The rest of the land was covered by farms, a pub and a pair of hills and a pair of forests.
Clargarser’s army attacked on 4 fronts having first strike:
1.  Pikemen and medium infantry from the castle front which was actual north in Philadelphia so I will call that north in Witherhelm.  
2.  Cover of forest at the southwest for pikemen and heavy infantry
3. The primary front from the Southeast by cover of forest which included cavalry, archers, Raglom and Clargarser
4. Purple worm

Witherhelm defended with our rabble group under the concealment of the pub, with proximity to the front from the north, taking opportunity to hide the stirge in a wheat field.  Their front was also aided by archer cavalry.  This front was successfully defended.

The southwest front was taken by surprise by a unit of pikemen utilizing a spell “tree form” meaning concealment by fake forest.  The pikemen rocked the infantry and then came to successfully defend from the pikemen offensive by Clargarser.  

The southeast front remained hidden in the forest, facing combat late in the game and then retreating, but not before a flurry of events transpired.

First, the purple worm emerged in the basement of the stronghold. Thickstone ventured to the basement to inspect the racket.  Severely injuring the worm before being eaten whole.  Brock was gone in the first round of play.  Fortunately the units were unaware of this or else morale would have plummeted.  

Next Raglom tried some fancy shit while flying and was blown out of the sky by Xylarthen’s fireball wand.  

So then the purple worm re-emerged to destroy one of the obelisks.  This was sad news for the band of longbonermen taking to the roof of the keep. This action released the wraith, who proceeded to make these archers wraiths as well.  Scary stuff.  

Fortunately Xylarthen was able to levitate and use his fireball wand to knock these wraiths off before they ran amok.That plot line was brewing since Naked and afraid day 1.  

The stirge returned to the keep full and Clargarser left town.  Glad we took out the catapult factory.  Thanks Nupo the Gnome.  We love you.  

This is the first turn of the game

A short time later

The battle reminded me of the Anabasis, which is ridiculous. this was much sillier.  A lot of people died though.

I made a hard to read chart (I suck at Information Design):

You can see the initial army list with a mostly accurate point value for the armies. I multiplied by ten to get the cost of the armies in gold pieces. Brock Thickstone didn't care that he lost a lot of money on the battle because he died.

Host of Clargarser		pts	Defenders of Thickstone			pts
10 pikemen		50	16 pikemen			80
14 medium infantry		70
10 heavy infantry		90
6 archers		42	5 archers			35
			6 longbowmen			60
			10 horse archers			130
10 medium cavalry		120
			10 stirge			80
1 purple worm		60
			1 PC party			???
Raglom		80	Xylarthen			80
Clargarser		65	Brock Thickstone			65
Total		577				530 + ???
Remains at the end of the battle
				9 pikemen	45
10 heavy infantry	90
				4 archers	28
				3 longbowmen	30
				5 horse archers	65
5 medium cavalry	60
				1 PC party	???
				Xylarthen	80
Clargarser	65
Total	215				248
Difference	362				282
Loss percentage	62.7				53.2
Host of Clargarser was 8.9 % bigger