After five battles in this knockout campaign, no army has been knocked out. And every battle has featured Prester John, who has defended his lands twice and been the attacker three times.
So this is still the position at the start of Season Six:
Season Six
The cubes of fate were thrown and ...
Elves: 1
Inca: 2+1=3
Prester John: 6-1=5 (4)
Fishmen 4+1=5(3)
Swiss: 2-1=1
Amazingly Prester John was on the attack once more! Having failed in an extended campaign to take the lands of the Fishmen he found himself having to fight his way through the lands of the Confederation in a reversal of the opening action of the campaign.
The Swiss were content to sit in their line, making use of the hill on their right. Both armies shuffled troops around to improve the matchups.
The Swiss attacked when Prester John's army got close enough. One column swept down the hill, pushing back some archers.
Prester John's archers suffered quite badly, but their troops did less well elsewhere and a gap opened up in their line as Prester John's knights broke through.
Some of the knights went for the stronghold, whilst some turned on the Swiss commander.
Prester John destroyed his opposite number to gain a convincing win.
Prester John achieved a 10g-2 victory.
More importantly, he conquered the lands of the Confederation. The Swiss were out of the campaign.
Season Seven
Only four nations got to roll this time:
Elves: 4 (6)
Inca: 2+1=3
Prester John 4 (4)
Fishmen: 2+1=3
Once again Prester John rolled high, but this time the Elves beat him on the tie-break to make their campaign debut. And the lowest-scoring army were the Fishmen. The Elves headed south-eat on their first campaign of the war.
Both armies set up in marshes. The Elves had their backs to the sea.
The Fishmen opened the battle with a lurker. It was driven off, but broke up the end of the Elven line.
Like the Swiss in the previous battle the Fishmen decided to sit tight, partially to buy time for their god to appear. The Elves advanced, slowed by poor PIPs, the terrain and the presence of magicians in their army.
The Fishmen added to their discomfort with artillery. The Elves waited to attack - poor PIPs meant that a coordinated charge on the marsh in front of their right wasn't possible.
On their right the Fishmen advanced, taking the fight to the Elven archers.
The Elves finally charged.
The Fishmen fell back and one of their spear elements was destroyed.
Meanwhile the Fishmen were overwhelming the Elven archers.
Whilst the bulk of the Elven warband mopped up the Fishman warriors in the marsh, some turned on the main Fishman line.
The Fishman line was collapsing, although they were making short work of the archers on the Elven left.
Elves charged the Fishman general, but were destroyed.
Meanwhile the Fishmen surrounded and killed one of the Elven magicians.
The Elves consolidated their position, pushing hard to not only destroy the last enemy unit in the marsh, but to also put the Fishman general under pressure.
The general was destroyed, but the Fishman losses were still not quite equal to those of the Elves (thanks to the loss of that magician earlier). The Fishmen would keep fighting.
With a PIP roll of 6 the Fishmen took a gamble, and brought on their god; it was a risky move, but offered a chance to take out the Elven general.
But the Elves were unstoppable now, and their attack destroyed the enemy artillery. This was enough to win the battle.
The final score was 12g-10 to the Elves, so a close and bloody battle.
And another nation had fallen; the Fishmen were no more.
Is the campaign entering its closing stages? Find out in the next part!
Rivetting stuff 🙂👍🏼👍🏼… Did the arrival of the fishmen’s god leave the elves with a little time to clinch a win before he could act? Touch and go, by the sound of it….🙂
ReplyDeleteThe Fishmen got the 6 PIPs but had nothing they could bring up that bound to defend the artillery that was the obvious next target. So I decided that the god was a reasonable gamble; if the artillery could survive one round of combat (it was a 50/50) then the god could slip in and do a risky, but possibly lethal, attack on the Elven magician general, which would have actually won the battle for the Fishmen.
DeleteThe artillery lost the close-combat, though, and that was it.
I'm really enjoying this campaign! Saddened a bit by the loss of the Fishmen - I was rooting for them. I love your map by the way, simple but effective.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, this is my third attempt at a comment - Google has eaten the last two attempts before I finished typing. Apologies if you get multiples!
I was sad to see the Fishmen go as well. But they were a victim of their main weakness; they are slow, so can't move quickly to respond to a crisis where their troops aren't.
DeleteMind you, having a god as part of their makeup was something of a gamble.
Q. Do you use an accumulation of +1 and -1 to aggressions for all battles won/lost, or just a modifier for ‘most recent season’?
ReplyDeleteIt accumulates. So the Swiss were at -1 from the first season onwards, because they lost one battle as invader. The Inca have been on +1 since Game Two, but haven't managed to convert it to being the aggressor yet :)
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