Mordhiem Part 2: Into the City

Game day!

The orcs had a rough start but came out on top.

The first fight saw them up against a dwarf warband, playing the breakthrough scenario. I just needed to get a few of my boys to the other side of the table. It should have been easy enough, but it did not go well.

I set up first, and decided to split the boys up and try to sneak through. The dwarfs set up with snipers on the roofs and ambushes prepared at both of the two points the scenery funnelled towards. They were ready for me, but my warband was mostly interested in fighting themselves. The animosity rule made for a delayed start, with three turns passing before I could start moving the bulk of my boys towards the action. I messed up by splitting the group. And by not playing the orcs very well.

My archers didn't have the skills needed to pick off his snipers. They were picked off themselves.

My shaman wasn't suited to making a diving charge in to hand to hand combat from a story above in a ruined building. He fell to his death.

And by splitting up, my boys weren't strong enough to break through the dwarf ambushes.

I chose not to route and flee as soon as I had the opportunity.

In the post battle sequence, the damage I had done to the dwarfs turned out to be severe though. I had knocked out his warband's leader permanently. My opponent decided that the hit was too much this early in the campaign and scrapped his warband all together. My boys got away with just cuts and bruises.

My second battle was more successful, and also resulted in the permanent death of another warband leader!

I was up against Marienburg Mercenaries, who had two games’ worth of experience more than me. We played the surprise attack scenario and I was the one to be surprised. Through some unlikely dice rolls, I only fielded one henchman.

In his log of the battle, my opponent wrote:

It all started when we spotted a lone orc looting through a building, figuring to kill him and maybe get the drop on some of his associates we proceeded to spread out in to ready a proper ambush. Alas his mates were closer than we expected. we didn’t set a proper rearguard and before we know it Darrius was being brought down by two orc brutes, barely seconds later Jack was down under the axe of the first orc charging down at him. I charged in to help the boys now fighting alone and managed to down one of the brutes, but not before they had dropped both Rico and Elliott. 

As I understand it the rest of the crew faired quite well pin cushioning squigs and orcs as they arrived, but with most of the officers down in a bloody heap I decided to grab who we could and make out while we could before any more of the beasts arrived.  

His warband leader went out of action and was sent to the arena to be clobbered to death by a pit fighter. I left the day 39 gold crowns and two warp shards richer. I'm going to use it to properly equip my heroes, and put some aside to save up for a troll.