Dragon Rampant - Ents vs Orcs

After my game of HOTT the other day I was reminded that I hadn't had Dragon Rampant out on the table in ages. It's easy enough to repurpose HOTT armies into a warband, and I thought that it would be fun to give the Ents another outing on the table, albeit with a different set of rules.

I opposed them with some Orcs.

The two warbands were as follows (both 30 pts)

Ents

Ent Leader - Offensive Heavy Foot

2 x Big Ents - Offensive Heavy Foot

2 x Smaller Ents - Heavy Foot

2 x Woodmen - Scouts

Orcs

Nazgul Leader - Elite Rider with Level-Headed and Fear

2 x Wolf-Riders - Heavy Riders

4 x Orc Warriors - Light Foot

I rolled the Blood Feud scenario from Lion Rampant. The Orcs were looking to kill the Ent Leader, whilst the Ents had to try and destroy the Orc warband. The random terrain gave a battlefield with just three hills on it.

In terms of Quests, both warbands declared that they would never have more than one battered unit on the table, whilst the Ents declared that they would destroy the Nazgul and the Orcs that they would destroy half of the Ents' units.

The Ents formed a cordon around their leader.

Early moves. The Orcs moved their wolf-riders on the left to attack and harry the Ents there and maybe open up a route for the Orc leader to break through and attack their Ent counterpart. The Ents made for teh long ridge. Holding this with the Woodmen and smaller Ents would create a nice road-block and prevent the Orcs from bringing a large force to bear on the Ent leader.

Wolf-riders caught some Woodmen in the open and easily routed them.

Ents counter-attacked.

Another overview. Both warbands were advancing slowly.

The Ents now had some of their force on the hill, though, and shooting from the Woodmen inflicted hits on one of the groups of Orc foot. The Orcs then charged and caught the Woodmen on the hop, routing them.

Over on the flank, one of the groups of wolf-riders had routed, but a larger Ent had also fallen back battered and seemed incapable of rallying. Some smaller Ents were still fighting the other group of wolf-riders, with little success. At some point two lots of Ents were battered, causing them to fail one of their quests. And then the group of small Ents routed.

Some Ents stood firm on the hill. A group of Orcs charged them, lost the fight and immediately routed. Other groups moved to attack from the flanks.

A large Ent retreated off the table. This now left the Orcs only having to destroy one more Ent unit to complete their quest to destroy half of the opposing force.

They redoubled their efforts on the Ents on the hill, hoping that a steady chipping away would cause a rout. To be honest the Orc foot came off worse as the Ents forced up close and fended off all of their attacks.

The Orc leader was now working his way around the flank

Whilst Orc foot kept one large Ent busy, the Nazgul charged the Ent leader, driving it back.

Ents held firm on the hill.

The Ent leader counter-attached, and managed to catch the Nazgul on the halt (it failed to countercharge). But the Ent failed to inflict any casualties, took some hits in return and retreated, battered.

The Ents on the hill charged the Orcs opposing them. Both units routed.

This meant that the Ents had taken half losses and had to test morale. They passed. They were also down to two units, and the Orcs were down to three, so the end-game results were triggered Each side would have to dice on their turn to see if the game ended After three turns of relatively little action, it did. 

Neither side had achieved their scenario victory conditions; the Orcs had not been destroyed and the Ent leader was still alive. So the Glory went down to Quests alone. The Ents failed both of theirs so scored -2 Glory. The Orcs achieved both of theirs; they had destroyed half of the Ent warband and never had more than a single battered unit in play (because their troops simply routed whenever things went wrong). This gave them 5 Glory. So the Orcs picked up a convincing win.

I was surprised at how quickly Dragon Rampant came back to me, since it's been a good couple of years since I played any game of this type. It's the first time I've played the game using either of these armies; I might tweak both warbands a little before I field them again; the Orcs could be interesting with light missile weapons for their foot for example.

52 Games - Game 50