A Tale of Two Forts: Push

The second battle of the Tale of Two Forts campaign was a full size KoW battle at the 3000 points mark. In order to accommodate the extra forces I broke out the 2 foot extension so we played across a frontage of 8 feet. As I had won the previous encounter in the campaign I was able to field an additional infantry unit up to the value of 10% of the army, as the Spirit Walker Horde is the most expensive infantry unit the Herd have at 230 points I went with that.
The Salamander viewpoint is documented over on the Cirencester Wargames blog.

My force was pretty much all the Herd units I own with the inclusion of a Guardian Champion who was included to carry the tokens used in the scenario. With nimble, a decent nerve and good defence I thought he would be a good carrier  unit.

The Salamanders started in a clump formation with a few units on their extreme right slightly isolated by the impassable Ganesh statue. They also put on their tokens on one unit which was the Basilean allied Regiment representing the Vanguard force helping out in the big battle. They spent the whole battle giving moral support from the rear lines. In contrast my Nightstalker allied unit was free of such responsibilities and was able to join the main battle line.

The early moves saw the Salamanders hang back as they had the superiority in shooting and my Herd move cautiously forwards making sure I did not overcommit early on. Fortunately the Salamander shooting was spread across the whole front so they could not bring overwhelming firepower to bear on any one unit, this meant that my Shamans could cover most of the damage as it came in, some poor shooting dice from the Salamanders also helped.

It was also at this point that they made a mistake by pushing forwards just enough to move the Basileans up so their flank rested on the Ganesh statue. This meant that when the Salamanders realised they may not be able to push through the middle and carry their tokens across the halfway mark they also did not have enough time to swing out onto the flank and cross the over that way.

With the Salamanders hanging back I was also able to move forwards and seize the fourth token with my Guardian Champion and at this point I made what could have been a costly mistake. Not realising that I still scored 1 victory point per token in my half I pushed him forwards and he started to take fire from the Salamanders.

On the Herd right flank I had been edging forwards and around the refused flank and at the same time as committing in the centre I pushed forwards on the right to try and stop anything from moving over to the centre fight. This was reasonably successful though neither side managed to do much in the way of killing on that flank.

On my left flank the Chariot Horde had managed to lay down some effective fire and the other Salamander heavy cavalry Regiment was kept at arm's length the entire battle. In fact neither of the enemies big hitters were able to really get involved in the game.

The biggest disappointment for me was the Doppelgangers who managed to get tied up in a grind with an archer troop, they natively have a rubbish melee stats and could not steal a better one from the archers.

In the end the Salamanders conceded defeat as it was obvious that they would not be able to carry their tokens across the table and also could not kill my token carrier who had moved out of range, so a 4-3 victory for the Herd.

Next time out we will be playing Vanguard and the Melas Oneiros will be seeking to recapture some plans which have gone astray with the Argent Defenders trying to steal the plans for themselves.