Man the Barricades

This week we tried out the Man the Barricades scenario which I created for the Raiding Season campaign. It is the optional season finale for the raiders in which they can try to pick up some extra Prestige Points.

Man the Barricades:
The raiders are starting to slip away as the defenders have finally built up enough of a force to assault the camp, will the defenders manage to overrun the rear guard and exact revenge ?

Setup: The raider sets up two buildings within L of their table edge and also has 4 M length walls they can deploy. The raider cannot deploy any other terrain but the assaulting army can deploy terrain as per normal and the raider can roll to affect one piece as per C&C rules. Walls count as low, solid cover against shooting for units with over half their models touching the wall. Moving over a wall incurs one fatigue but does not slow you down. Units touching the wall that shoot do not count their target as in cover even if the target is also touching the wall. The buildings count as Ruins as per page 48 of the Saga v2 rules.

The raider starts the fight with 4 points from their Warband and sets up with L of their table edge. The assaulter starts with their full 6 point army and sets up within L of their table edge after the raider has finished deploying. The assaulter has an Endless Warband, use the C&C rules on page 108.

Victory Conditions: The assaulter wins if they wipe out the raiders before the end of turn 6 or occupy both buildings. The Raider wins if they kill the assaulters Warlord, otherwise the raiders get a bonus PP for each turn after the sixth the battle continues.

Length: Endless or until one of the victory conditions is met.

The Normans decided to play the attacker so my 4 points of Pagan Rus setup in the cover and awaited the Norman onslaught. The Normans started positively by moving quickly to the defences and then settled into trying to shoot the Rus out of their positions.

Due to the extra defences offered by the cover this caused little damage to the Rus and the Normans did not decide to press on into melee so after 6 turns the Rus had only lost 2 Warriors.

I'm not sure the game really tested out the scenario but it did show that you would not win it by relying on shooting. It also made me realise that even with a bottomless warband the distance from the assaulters base edge to the buildings would mean that the assaulter would struggle to make use of the extra numbers. I think that rather than entering from the assaulters base edge the reinforcing units should also be able to enter from either side upto halfway from the assaulters base edge.

We also rolled off to see who would be taking which role in the first Raiding Season with Mick winning and deciding to be the raider first. We then assigned the scenarios via die roll to the map.

So we are all setup to start the campaign with the Normans needing to decide a direction they want to raid first and both sides needing to draw up 6 point lists.

This week I have also made some progress on my Giant Eagle Horde for The Herd with most of the painting being completed.

The models have had the Quickshade applied and then need to be varnished and arranged onto the base.