Ruination - Empire vs Orcses

Another game of WHFB on the cards and with the general success of the last couple of games using scenario's as the basis, we had decided for this week's game to follow ion that vane and play another scenario.

Ian had suggested playing the 'Ruination of Glumhof' scenario from the WHFB rule book with the scenario being a good one to try, and one which would be fun to try reversing the roles of attackers and defenders, so the game was duly set up with this time the traditional Empire defending against the Orc hordes, (next time the Orcs defending and Empire hordes attacking).

The hordes line up prior to attack

The scenario is pretty straight forward one, the defender gets 75% of the points of the attacker and tries to defend the settlement where he gets a number of buildings to defend including a 'strong point' in the form of a watchtower and a number of barricades and walls to defend behind. The attackers aim is to occupy or destroy as many of the buildings as possible (the watchtower counting double) in the time allowed, stated in the rules as 7 turns. Who ever has the most buildings occupied or controlled at the end of time allowed wins.

The horde closes for the kill

Ian had gone for a pretty 'horded up' horde so lots of numbers totaling 2400pts and I had hoped that his numbers might impede his progress slightly, units getting in the way of each other, which they did a bit. My 1800pt army list was probably a bit too shooty but I had gone for a bit of an army list experiment having only core troops plus artillery and warrior priest to see how the list played as a bit of fun.

As a list in it's self it was fine but probably not the list for the scenario as the forward position of much of the troops meant they really didn't have enough time to cause casualties on the approaching horde to make a difference.

As it was Ian had also experimented a bit with his list and was using two units of squig hoppers as cannon killers and these two units launched themselves at my two great cannons with 50% success rate easily taking out one in short order but the other got a severe bloody nose and was repulsed. It did eventually re-appear to annoy me later as alone squig.

The game then boiled down to the horde advancing and pouring over the less well defended of the sections of the town defences and the Empire troops causing casualties on the way but not nearly enough or in the right places.

The squigs did get their comeuppance getiing cut down by a hail of fire near the end of the game. 

In the end, the game was over by the end of round 4 as we ran out of time, but with the orcs in possession of 4 of the available 5 points a definite victory. Even if we had had more time the numbers in play meant that even though the larger part of my army was largely un-hurt, I was not in position to dislodge the orcses from their new homes.

A poor deployment on my part to start and with nothing tough enough to stand up to the rampaging large Orc numbers for more than a turn meant the Empire had another poor result, though it had to be said was largely still intact at the end of the game, which is for me is a result. 

Another interesting a pretty enjoyable game with the vision of a unit of six trolls being air-lifted by the Hand of Gork behind the Empire lines to seal the victory (and incidentily avoid the combat with 30 hate-ridden halberdiers with a Warrior Priest aflame) was a quite memorable mental image.

A fair enough scenario in the grand tradition of such things and all in all fun, the only quibble being that both Ian and I thought that the extended 7 turns timescale didn't make sense was by far too generous for the outnumbering attacker, and very likely not needed by just about any Warhammer force (except possibly Dwarves) with a more interesting 5 turns limit probably producing a more nail biting game.

Next time, we'll try a reversal of the attacker/defender and see how the troops fair, though I think the Orc Toughness 4 might make them a bit more of a tougher defending proposition than the Empire are. Should be entertaining in any event.