FANTASY MASS-COMBAT VOTING RESULTS:
Favorite Rules - Armies of Arcana

My orcs were holding their own against the hordes of Chaos in front of them when my General and his Boar Boyz decided to turn tail and were cut down by some plaguebearers, with that the rest of my army freaked out and headed for the hills, another loss by the massively cowardly orcs and gobbos. [23 Sep 1999]

9-09-99: played armies of arcana, i have a devastating SAMURAI army. the battle was SAMURAI vs arabian 6,000pts per side. I skirmished my entire army to better utilize my SAMURAI's first strike capabilities by wrapping around my opponants large block units. i was greatly outnumbered and this almost proved to be my undoing, as it was mandatory to take leadership test after every mele turn. Though my SAMURAI are a fearless unit because of dice rolls i still had to kill an extra man or two every turn. by the end of the game my opponent only had scattered rements of troops while i onlt had one archer unit left that had been untouched the entire game but had delivered devastating fire. we still called it a draw. thanks [11 Sep 1999]

I played a 6000pt game of Armies of Arcana. I played dwarves while my husband played Arabian knights. I defeated the Arabians in 8 turns by using 4 blocks of 25 pike men to disrupt his fast calvalry and carpet riders. I out maneuvered his units and destroyed his two thirty men archer units and captured his two victory hill objectives. I recommend to any player of Armies of Arcana to use large pikemen blocks with heroes to stop the maneuverabiltiy of the fast arbabian calvalry who move at 18 inches plus a turn.

I have only played Armies of Arcana twice but I enjoy it more than Warhammer fantasy battle because it is played till victory objectices are captured instead of the 4 to 6 turn style of Warhammer game. THis allows more manueverablilty on the board and the army lists are more competitively matched in Armies of Arcana. [05 Sep 1999]

Last Tuesday I played a 6000pt game of Armies of Arcana with Chris Henning. He played dwarves and I played orks. His dwarven infantry blocks of pikemen held up my units of scorpian riders and chariots. I mismanaged using my infantry to check his infantry and he out manuevered me by keeping his bear riders on the flanks of my engaged units. He defeated me hands down by tieing my units up with his infantry while his cannons and cross bow men tore me to pieces. Next time I will bring more infantry units so that I can pin his units and outnumber them. Game was played for seven turns and resulted in a decisive dwarven victory as all my units bounced off of his army. [27 Aug 1999]

On the weekend of August 14, 1999 I played a game of Armies of Arcana with a man named Pat. We played at a store called Active Imagination in Albuquerque NM that is also owned by War Games West. We played a game of 4000pts a side. I played the Arabian knights while Pat played the Human Medievals. We played about a 6 turn game and the result was a close Arabian victory.

My army list included: 22 carpet riders with a Sultan and a Air Wizard also on carpets, 3 units of about either 13 or 14 Calvalry with lances, two units of 20 eunuchs each with a sultan each, a Titan, and a Archer unit of about 20 to 30 models. I deployed the Arabian forces with a strong left flank while the medievals deployed evenly across the board with his wizard and artillery facing my strong left. This resulted in his heavy infantry being placed out of the game for the first few turns.

The First turn I advanced down the left while he maneuvered his forces to my side of the board. My archer unit was destroyed from his archers and ballista fire. His flying demon advanced straight of the middle towards my army. The second turn my lancers adopted a skirmish formation and manuevered between some mediavel villages to destroy his wizard and artillery on that side of the board. In addition my 22 carpet riders and two characters on carpets engaged the demon resulting in a draw. The medievals manuevered a mounted bow unit to face my advance and maneuvered his Paladins and heavy mounted knights within a counter charge distance in case his mounted archers were charged. The next turn the Arabians won initiative. The Arabian Lancers charged the Medieval mounted archers that were in rank and file on his right flank resulting in his unit being hit hard and broken in the hand to hand phase. Unfortunately his Mounted Paladins and Heavy Calvalry hit my lancers that flanked his archers. Two units of my lancers were broken in this combat and his follow up to my rout resulted in all three of my lancer units being broken. Fortunately the Paladin follow up move landed them in hand to hand combat with my Eunuchs and my titan.

This turn my carpet riders killed the demon. The next turn my carpets engaged his paladin unit which resulted in the Paladins beign surrounded from all three sides. In addition his heavy calvalry unit was moving at full speed to catch my routed lancer units but my other unit of eunuchs who covered my lancer retreat. In this combat phase the Paladins held their own against my three units but suffered heavy losses. My eunuchs that covered the lancer retreat stalemated with the heavy calvary but did significant casualites to each side. While this was occuring The medievals was maneuvering his infantry, archers, and heavy cannon onto the left side of the board where the action was. The last step of the moral turn resulted in two lancer units not rallying but with one rallied by the eunuch/Medieval heavy calvalry engagement.

The next turn two broken lancer units ran off the board. My third rallied lancer unit joined the eunuch/heavy calvalry fight. This turn resulted in The medievals firing their archers into hand to hand combat. The combat results for this round were a success for the Arabians. The Titan, carpet riders, and eunuchs destroying the Paladins, which was tough since they kept making their morale rolls and resulted in me having to kill every single one of them. Unfortunately I took heavy casualties from the Paladins. The other engagement of enuchs/lancers against the Medieval Heavy calvalry resulted in a rout and destruction of the Medieval Calvalry. The end of this turn left the Medievals with a Heavy Pikeman unit, Heavy footman unit, a longbow archer unit, and a heavy cannon. The arabians had about a total of 12 eunuchs between two units and their sultans, about 15 carpet riders with their sultan and wizard, a wounded titan at half strength, and a lancer unit of about 8 guys.

The rest of the game was me using my wizard flying between scenery casting offensive spells on the units while my titan through lightening bolts at them. From this experience I recommend using the Air wizard first level spell spark to attack enemy cannons not there crew. After destroying the cannon, I used the Lightening Storm Level 3 Air spell to attack the Heavy infantry while the eunuchs, lancers, and titan engaged the pike men.

Even at this time I still almost lost the game when the medieval bowmen broke my wizard and carpet riders unit from bow fire. This resulted in me suiciding the remains of the lancers unit to draw their fire so that I could rally my Carpet riders. If the carpets were not rallied it was sure to be a medieval victory.

The final outcome was a rallying of the carpet riders, and the destruction of the cannon, pikemen, and a unit of bowmen, and pike men at half strength. The medieval player finally conceded after my lightning strom broke his heavy infantry and the bow men.

Overall, Because the medieval player was inexperienced against my army, this allowed my troops to maneuver into fights of multiple units against one to my advantage. His Calvalry is superior to mine, which is obvious to how much attacks his Paladins absorbed. So next time I'm scared because he knows what to expect from me.

The word of advice to any one wanting to play an arabian knights army is to out maneuver your opponent because the majority of your troop costs are spent on movement. If you go for straight up engagements with the enemy in an attrition style game you will definately lose. If anyone is up for a Armies of Arcana game in the Albuquerque NM area please leave a message at Wargames West or Active Imagination the only game stores in Albuquerque for either Guy Benson or Thane Morgan.

PS I highly recommend Armies of Arcana to anyone who has played Warhammer Fantasy Battle regardless if you have a positive or negative opinion of that game. Armies of Arcana is definately good if you want to run a Fantasy miniature game that uses over 200 to 400 figures a side. Furthermore, each model actually represents one individual man. [20 Aug 1999]

A simple meeting engagement using AoA, Orcs vs. Dwarves. The Orcs came on strong on the right flank with Wolfriders easily slicing through the unlucky xbows facing them. The center was much nicer for the Dwarves; the two-axe troops made mincemeat of the orc spears sent to try and take them. Left flank was a muddle; some Orc big-uns tangled with the elite Dwarves on bears and tigers and neither seemed to be making headway. The game ended quickly when the cursed Wolfriders (may they thrice be damned) managed to take the terrain objective the Orcs were after (mineshaft) and then on the next turn kill the Dwarven general. Uhh...is that enough? [10 May 99]

armies of arcana: my medieval army was slaughtered by the wily samurai and their magical flaming arrows, argh. [9 May 99]

A real beauty, wood elves verse a combined orc\gobblin contingent. The "woodies" prevailed this time, certainly not due to my generalship, but rather enemic consistent die rolls from my opponenet. Let me say this, for a quick, precise, extremely well thought out set of rules, I highly endorse Armies of Arcana. It's absolutely the best out there in my opinion. It's Warhammer, without all the cheese. [5 May 99]

My last battle was a small Human (Medieval) versus Orc Armies of Arcana battle. Humanity was victorious! [3 May 99]

Dwarf vs Undead in 15mm

Play AOA! [9 Apr 99]

I got whipped at Armies of Arcana. Just after losing a game to another player. Very sad, since I wrote the game.

The last game was undead vs my golins. The undead set up on a hill surounded by forests about 6 -10" out. I thought I'd be clever and come through the trees, where his damned bows would only get to shoot at me once. Unfortunately, he managed to get his chariots around my firewalls, and scared me into launching the assault peicemeal. Which is a very good term for how my poor greenskins looked after 3 turns of throwing themselves into the meat grinder. There should be a small battlereport about it at www.thanesgames.com on thursday. [3 Mar 99]

A friend and I played a 3000 point game of Armies of Arcana. I played Dwarves, he played Lizardmen.

The game came down to one unit left on each side-- fortunately, I had the dragon, while he had infantry. :-)

My dice luck with missile attacks was astounding-- I killed a giant in one turn from a unit of 24 crossbows, and my Dragon incinerated a unit of cavalry in a single shot (11 of 12 possible wounds!). [11 Feb 99]