One of the things I was curious about with this scenario is the quantity vs quality question in the Chaos Wars rules. Lord Haverlith was a rank 4 champion, he had 5 units of humans on foot, four of which were knights, one of which was yeomen. The knights all had upgraded weapons two had swords, one had polearms, and one had axes. The yeomen were armed with common bows and swords. An additional unit of dwarves showed up because you know orcs, dwarves. The dwarves were yoemen class but had dwarvish armer which made them defend like knights. So while the Haverliths only had 6 units, they were all buffed up in one way or another.
The non- humans had more units, one unit of yeomen trolls with a +1 attack, one unit of goblin yeomen with common bows, one unit of yeomen centaurs with a +1 to attack as mounted, two units of yeomen goblin wolf riders with a +1 to attack, one unit of goblin yeomen, one unit of orc yeomen, one unit of ratling yeomen, one unit of goblin imp peasants, a rank 2 ratling champion, a rank 2 orc champion, and a wyvern-a rank two common dragon. So 12 units vs 7 units. I didn’t actually point the forces out, so I’m not wasn't sure,by the rules, how unbalanced they were.
Archery again proved somewhat pointless. The goblin and human troops each only got off one shot.
The humans were engaged by the wolf riders the next turn. The goblins stayed unengaged, but all
enemy units were in combat and they had no targets.
This could be an issue from playing across the narrow side of the table.
You can see from the red casualty markers that the first round of melee was brutal.
The axes and polarms bonus of reducing the opponents armor class was particularly effective as both the trolls and one unit of wolf riders suffered heavy damage. The trolls with the non human army leader attached did decent damage back on the knights, but the goblin peasants attacking on the flank also scored two hits.
The orc leader and the friendly unit attacking from the flank kept the trolls from failing their moral check. Eventually, the wyvern joining the frey from the rear caused the knights to route. Lord Haverlith fighting alone threw down the remaining trolls in a mighty round of melee. But was eventually brought down by the orc leader. The wyvern pretty much just managed to flail wildly and miss most of he battle.
On the humans left, the knights with polearms easily dispatched the wolf riders and then the centaurs with some flanking help from a unit of knights armed with swords. On the far end of the battle (top of the photo below) a unit of goblins attacked the unit of dwarves. Both being yeomen the moral roll was fairly easy for both units to make and they just slowly beat each other down through out the length of the game.
The ratings with their leader engaged a unit of knights with swords and in an unlucky roll failed a moral check and retreated. The leader retreated with them and at the end of the following turn they were able to rally and return as an effective fighting force. The goblin archers entered the fray as a regular foot unit and were able to cause the knights with halbards to fail a moral check.
On the far right, the human archers dispatched the second wolf rider unit, but the orcs attacking from the flank caused the weakened unit to fail a moral check. While the orcs could have followed at that point the battle was still a toss up so they headed towards some of the stronger knight units fighting on the left.
On the left, the dwarves finally failed a moral check, not being part of Lord Haverlith's forces I decided that they assessed the situation and decided they had had enough for the day. The remaining goblins flank attack was enough to get the last unit of knights to fail a moral check as well. The orcs marching in from the other side mainly did mop up work on disrupted units, causing them to loose more troops and rout further away. As the knights could only move 6 inched and the orc troops could all move eight this continued until I called the game. The remaining human archers lived to spread the tale. Likely the only humans to leave the battle field alive.
The remaining non-human victors celebrated.
You can see that they took a beating, three full units were lost, two have less than 1/3 remaining, while the goblin imps and the orcs are still at full strength.
After the fact, the point totals were 242 for the humans vs 288 for the non-humans. So not quite as overwhelming from a points standpoint as the results may have indicated. Its probably even a bit closer as I didn't count the ratings as beast men and use their enemy moral roll modifying so I likely overpaid for them, and I didn't give the wolf riders an armor bonus for being mounted. The take away is that if I'm designing a convention game in particular, it's really about more than just the points. The humans had a harder time getting flank and rear attack bonuses, and the dwarves and the archers fighting alone didn't get the friendly unit in combat moral modifiers as well - something that really helped keep weakened non-human forces in the battles. But all in all a fun day and it got me to add something to the Sign of the Gryphon blog as well.