Wednesday 10 June 2020

Torquas vs Lothar

I played another game of Dragon Rampant this evening, using my Barsoomian armies once more. This time the Green Martians (representing the horde of Torquas) took on the enigmatic White Martians of Lothar. No spoilers as to the true nature of the latter, since it has no material effect on the game as I set it up. Just accept that they are uncanningly accurate and deadly archers and there's a lot of them given that they're a supposedly extinct race.

Torquas - 4 x Heavy Riders (including the leader) and 2 x Offensive Heavy Foot.

Lothar - 3 x Light Missile Sharpshooters (including the leader) and 3 x Lesser Warbeasts (Banths). 

The scenario was the basic Gory Bloodbath and the randomised terrain placed two rock outcrops and a wood on the board's centerline, splitting each warband into two halves.


Banths, the fearsome Martian equivalent of the earth lion but with more teeth. And legs.


The Green Martians massed their riders on one flank, leaving the other to their slow-moving foot.


The Green Martians charged, looking to ride down the Lotharian banths.


But with their wild charge the banths got in the first strike, straight at the Torquasian leader.


Charge and countercharge saw the Torquasian leader drawn away from the rest of his troops and mobbed by banths. They took casualties, but the leader's unit wasn't looking too happy either.


The rest of the Torquasians got their act together and rode down the banths, who are much better on the attack than the defence.


The Green Martian wave swept forward, threatening a single unit of Lotharian bowmen. Their fire was ineffective ...


... and they were ridden down.

Things weren't looking good for Lothar with three of their six units gone. But the Torquasians had taken plenty of hits on their riders, and weren't as strong as they might look.


They moved across to the other flank, at which point their activations failed them. The two units of bowmen on the other side of the outcrops kept up a steady fire on Green Martians that simply wouldn't move. 


The Green Martian foot had moved slowly forward but they too faltered; fatally since they were well within effective range of the bowmen.



A final banth teased some Green Martians trying to pass behind the outcrop into the Lotharian rear. It saw off two units of riders who, again, failed to charge it.


The arrows of Lothar rained down, and the Green Martians fell. Their leader made one last bold attack, but was cut-down.


This left one unit of Green Martian foot who, wisely, withdrew.


After a shaky start Lothar won a decisive victory*, due to the Green Martian's control failing them at the height of the battle leaving the sitting ducks for the better-led Lotharians. The Lotharian leader could reroll one failed activation each turn, whilst the Torquasian chief had a bonus that was irrelevant to this particular game. 

To be fair when these armies are used for HOTT the battles are often one-sided, with the Green Martian knights being shot down by the White Martian archers. Lots of planets have a Crecy.

*5 Glory for the win, plus 4 more for completed quests. The Green Martians failed two of their three quests for a net -1 Glory.

2 comments:

  1. I love your reports, they're clear and easy to read, always interesting and on top of that very inspiring!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you. I enjoy putting the reports together and, let's face it, there are never enough game-report blog posts :)

    ReplyDelete

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