Battle Report: March 11th

This week's game was short but, climactic. It was a continuation of the previous week's game between Jfburrell and me.

Last Session in DR my side, the player-named "Trollish Khaganate," was smarting from a few one-sided battles in Northern Pon and the plunder of its capital to the west. Jared has the advantage in troop strength but, the "Dwarven Clearwater Revival" and the Khaganate are about even in number of allies. At the start of this session, the positions were the same as in the above image, what follows are the highlights. 

The Trollish royal Army makes it's way west to unite with the Rombuni fleet and perhaps take some targets of opportunity. However, the Revival had just finished consolidating their forces on the plains of Muetar. so any such plans had to be put on hold. As the newly formed "doom" stack was too strong for the Khaganate at present.

Meanwhile, the Dwarves had managed to activate Elfland which would allow them to actually move their army from Aws Noir without taking a diplomatic penalty on Elfland. The Khaganate also acquired Hothior as an ally around the same time. 

The retreating Troll forces managed to catch a Miviorine Expeditionary force midway through traveling through the Shucassamite royal road in the Wastes of Vah-Ka-Ka. The army was annihilated and Archon Nualt died in Battle, throwing Mivior into confusion and dropping them from the Dwarven alliance. Not to be outdone, the Revival is able to convince Rombune to leave the Khaganate's alliance soon after.

While defeating the smaller enemy force would have been advantageous in the long run, it allowed the Dwarven doom stack plenty of time to make it's way to Shucassam. Despite the obvious disparity in strength here, Jared only had a relatively slight edge(+1 combat modifier) to the combat dice rolls. So when the Troll's human allies failed the retreat roll, the decision was made to stand and fight. As opposed to suffering a slower death waiting out a siege in a Shucassamite fortress. 

This combat actually went on for about two of the game's twenty turns about four-fifths of an in game month. Both sides took losses and then the pivotal moment came. 

One of my leader's failed a hero fate roll and died in battle against the Dwarves. This was my in-game avatar, the Troll King Skoagg. 

:(

GAME! SET! MATCH!

Jared Wins.

The final score was 100 Victory Points for the "Dwarven Clearwater Revival" and, 35VPs for the "Trollish Khaganate."

Notes

For only being a few turns, some really pivotal moments happened in this game. This includes my defeat. What I find most interesting though, was how the aforementioned defeat was never a foregone conclusion. Leaving aside the possible foolishness of bringing your PC-monarch along(~33% of adverse effects with a hero fate roll), if the turn chits had just came out in a different order that game turn, the above never would have had a chance to happen. Heck I had actually just pulled ahead in victory points before the epic battle of the Vah-Ka-ka wastes. The unpredictability that I've mentioned makes for some very entertaining tension during the game.

Besides my favorite feature(even if it works against me, alas), I think Jared's thoughts on DR strategy from the last Battle report are important to note:

"I'm still working out a strategy. At the moment I would have most of what's I'm doing tactics. But I feel reasonable certain that your most important resource is positioning. It's interesting because if you move your army towards one position, you move it away from another, so all moves are value neutral minus context. I'm not the end this means the order in which you add allies is very important because the last thing you want to do is have to backtrack your armies to cover your flanks." -Jared Burrell, Comment March 6th 2017, "Battle Report: March 3rd."

The importance of movement and positioning in game is borne out by the fact that, most if not all bonuses to units in game are based around their movement through different terrain. Having realized this vital aspect of gameplay more completely than me gave Jared a decided advantage.

My foolishly aggressive fast and loose approach to this game may have cost me victory, this time. There's a lot to improve on for next weekend's game strategy wise, because after all: it's not over yet.