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Armies of Arcana

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Thane Morgan11 Jun 2005 11:29 p.m. PST

We played a 30,000 point per side battle today. I believe this is the largest AoA game played. It took about an hour to set up (we had a last second cancellation, and had to scamble to make up the troops), 5 hours to play, and an hour pack up. I pulled out my roman temples from two years of storage, and set up on a 10' wide X 6' deep table.
It was a 15mm game:

Evil ~600 figures
Micah Lelugas - Undead
Brett Manus - Demons

Good- ~600 figures
Robert Eskridge - High Elves
Henry McHarney - Halflings/Centaurs
Thane Morgan - Sylvan Elves

Evil was supposed to get a Wolfen Contingent, but a player couldn't make it. Micah and Brett increased their armies by the extra points.

We played for 4 of 6 objectives. Two temples on the side of the battlefield were selected as common objectives. Evil also had to capture (defile) two statues of gods in a courtyard in front of our third temple, take two forests flanking it, and kill a massive (for them) unit of halflings. Good had to capture a forest on a hill on the other side of the table, and kill large units of Fire Demons, Demon Knight infantry, and skeletal lancers with Reapers on nightmares leading them.

I'm working with the pictures to get a full report done. For now:

The crack pipes were burning freely during army construction! Micah had 3 units of twenty cavalry, plus a massive 24 lancer unit led by two Great Reapers on Nightmares. He also threw in a single unit of 72 skeletons, and 5 Skeletal Giants (cleverly made with Mage Knight figures). Brett brought two units of 50 imps, two units of 20 demon knight cavalry, a thirty man demon knight infantry unit, and two 18 figure hell hound units. He fielded 7 spell casters.

Henry put 50 halfing crewmen with his 4 slings, and had a unit of 60 halfling spearmen. He also had a massive 30 centaur unit along with two other centaur units. The Elves brought at least four lords on unicorns leading various cavalry units, and one on a giant eagle. There were 40 Wood Elf Bowmen (in two units), plus a unit of 24 scouts with bows (infiltrating (and very poorly, I might add)) and 14 more horse archers, for a whopping 78 skill 4 bow shots a turn (except the scouts quickly lost all of their targets....)

We set up roughly 6 at a time. The Wood elves placed to face the demons, since their bows wouldn't do much to the undead (though I bought them with life mages to Bless them if push came to shove). We waited to place the high elf cavalry last, as the two noble cav units are especially powerful. We thought we saw a weak center that our 2 sylvan elf cav units and three centaur units could exploit, and Rob transferred a unit of noble cav over to me there to help exploit it more. Unfortunately, their center quickly got filled in with undead chariots, archers and the skeletal lancer unit, plus a demon knight cavalry unit as back up.

On my flank (our left), I placed a unit of owlbears on the outside with units of tree spirits and feral elves to take the temple. They were supported by a unit of archers, and could get extra help from the horse archers. In the center, Henry vowed to prevent the statues from being defiled, and set up the halflings along the wide road leading out under an arch. The High elves had the right flank,with a unit of acolytes on a hill to help control the temple on that side. there were three more cavalry units there, plus a big unit of unicorns and some infantry.

The demons set up very heavy on our left flank. We were going to be hard pressed to control that temple (and flank)if our cavalry up the center attack failed. They had a heavy infantry center with the demon knights and massive skeleton unit, with lots of archers to help out. Against the high elves were the three undead cavalry units, 5 undead giants, several units of Reapers, and vampires supported by fel vultures.

In the air over the center of the table were masses of flyers. Evil Brought two elder dragons and ten Avara demons, while we had two units of 3 air elementals, with a lord on an eagle and a pair of Oriental Dragons.

Battle quickly joined on turn two on the flanks, with both sides surging forward. My sylvans quickly realized they were overmatch and over massed, and settled on delaying tactics over the temple until the cavalry could come help. The scouts deployed in the back of the demons on the first turn, nearly killing a cacodemon wizard and his bodyguards on the first voley. Unfortunately, the demons shrugged and quickly advanced out of their effective range and behind a forest, so the 1500 point unit managed to kill about 300 points for the whole game.

In the center, we also sought to delay the powerful enemy flying units. A unit of Air elementals each attacked the avara demons and one of the elder dragons, while the oriental dragons attacked the other elder dragon. These battles persisted with ineffective attacks on both sides for three rounds of melee, and were only decided by the sylvan elf archers firing into the melees with the arrow immune air elementals for several turns. However, the loss of the powerful flyers gave us a clear advantage with the cavalry attack in the center. With some bowfire assistance and enchanted weapons on the Noble Cav, they broke the two hellhound units, a howler unit, and drove into the fire demon objective unit, eventually destroying it.

In the center, the huge unit of skeletons marched up towards the arch and the courtyard. Though the halflings mercenary minotaurs made short work of the icedemons protecting the skeleton's flanks, they were in turn driven off by the demon knight infantry unit. The skeletal march was halted by a summoned forest that was marched into them, where they were ambushed by the mass of artillery crewmen and the oriental dragons who eventually had killed the elder dragon they were facing.

Micah drove his skeletal lancer unit up inside of this advance, essentially trying to shoot the gap where our cavlary moved out towards the left. the centaurs turned to deal with this threat before it could crush the archers on our hill. They used a wave tactic to delay the advance: the first centaur unit engaged as was broken back through the second unit, then rallied to cover the flight of the second unit on the next turn, which then rallied to cover the flight of the first unit again on the third turn. By this point, they got assistance from a unit of High elf sunblades, and finally cut that skeletal victory unit apart.

On the far side, a death howl gambit failed twice to break a big unit of high elf cavalry (love the elf lord morale), and allowed the high elves to blunt the charge of all that skelatal cavalry. I did not see a lot of the action on that flank, but the high elves drove much of skeletal force back, though one unit of cavalry stubbornly refused to die (again) and it prevented an organized pursuit into the back of the skeletal line. One Elf pike unit secured the temple objective on that side of the table.

At this point (Turn 5) The elves and halflings had take three of the four objectives, and were in a strong position to take two of the three other in another turn or two. The delaying tactic on the left (sylvan) flank had worked as well as it could have, and the demons were left with one good imp unit and two damaged demon knigh cavlary units, though they did have a good number of spell casters left. They had to face the scouts who were moving up behind them, a fairly intact tree spirit unit (which is great against demons), and three full units of archers. Though they could probably have taken the one forest objective, they were unlikey to be able to hold it against the combined shooting of all those archers. Evil Surrendered, three objectives to zero.

It was an exceptionally fun game - everyone played well, and no one made any critical maneuver mistakes. Mich did forget to deploy a unit of ghost infiltrators, but they would have had a hard time finding a relevant place to appear due to the number of units on the tables. I dropped my infiltrators just for that reason on the first turn, fearing it would be several turns before I'd have the chance again. The game was definitely tilting in our favor on turn 4, and we had a pretty solid lock on turn 5.

Oddly, it wasn't until the last turn that anyone lost any mages. Usually they are priority targets, but both sides did a good job of protecting them.

I will be putting pictures up of this soon. I want to try a slideshow format to preserve bandwidth, but need to figure out how to make it work.

jizbrand12 Jun 2005 5:33 a.m. PST

I'm just now starting an AoA force. My group has 4-5 regular players and we play for about 4 hours once a week on a 5'x8' table.

What is the largest (points-wise) battle that we could accomodate once we get some familiarity with the rules? I'm guessing my full-up army will run to around 6K, and my main opponent will have almost 200 barbarians (that run to 2K in WAB).

Thane Morgan12 Jun 2005 8:37 a.m. PST

Are you playing 15mm or 28mm? The larger figures take up more space, so generally playing larger games with them with them starts to limit maneuver.

6000 points won't be a problem on that board at either scale, though. 5' x 8' is a good size, I say you could go up to 8K in 28mm without feeling cramped at all. We've had a 15K 28mm battle on a 6X8' board and still had a fair amount of maneuver room.

mweaver12 Jun 2005 8:57 a.m. PST

I was skimming past the threads and saw the title of this one as "Submissive Armies of Arcana Game". THat would have been a whole different game, I think.

I enjoyed the battle report.

jizbrand12 Jun 2005 10:58 a.m. PST

Thanks, Thane. We're playing in 28mm. So, table size is okay, then. What about playing time? 3-4 hours for 5-6000 points a side?

Thane Morgan12 Jun 2005 3:20 p.m. PST

After a few games, 6000 points will probably take ~2 hours.

"Submissive Armies of Arcana Game".

"Ok, I'll let you have this objective unit. But please don't take this other one, ok? I mean, unless you really need it or something"

Hundvig Fezian13 Jun 2005 4:58 p.m. PST

You have to admire a rules system that can handle this sort of thing. Not just the size, but the sheer variety of troop types, from halflings to elder dragons...

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