Halpi's Rift: Push

 The next battle in our Halpi's Rift campaign saw the main armies gather for the Push scenario. This involved trying to carry loot tokens into the opposite half of the table, both sides start with the same number of tokens and an extra one (the green one) is placed in the centre of the board. The armies are setup before you roll for the number of tokens (we rolled 1 token) and carrying the token slows your unit down to speed 5.

The Kingdom of Men fielded the same army as last time

1 * Pole-Arms Horde

1 * Foot Guard Regiment

1 * Bowmen Troop

3 * Knight Regiment

1 * Mounted Scout Regiment

2 * Mounted Scout Troop

2 * General on Winged Beast

2 * Wizard on Horse

1 * The Captain

14 Units - 23 Unit Strength

With the Undead making a small change to bring in a Lykanis instead of the Goreblight

1 * Zombie Legion

1 * Revenant Inf Regiment

2 * Wraith Troop

2 * Zombie Troll Horde

1 * Revenant Cav Regiment

2 * Revenant Cav Troop

1 * Lykanis

2 * Revenant King

1 * Liche Queen

1 * Necromancer

14 Units - 21 Unit Strength

I like to have a fast nimble Hero with Unit Strength who can carry/capture tokens in the army for token based scenario's, though I have noticed in KoW v3 that you lose Nimble when carrying a token so they are slightly less useful than in v2.

Both armies placed their large infantry blocks opposite the bonus token in the centre of the table with the KoM placing their starting token on the Pole-Arms Horde and the Undead entrusting theirs to the Lykanis. The Undead won the roll for first turn and opted to move first, pushing up across the board.

Before the game started the KoM of the chance to move d3 units via the Captain's special rule and I think at this point they made a mistake, rolling a 3 meant they could have repositioned the Pole-Arms onto the Undead's left flank and had a pretty much uncontested route across the table to secure the victory points. They choose not to do this and instead moved a couple of units to allow a Wizard a clear shot.

The Men also pushed forwards and one the Generals on Flying Beasts took a bait charge into a Revenant Cav troop. In fairness to the Men the Gods of Dice where not with them and right from the first turn the shooting caused almost no damage and the General failed to rout the Revenant's when he should have done so, this rather set the tone for some below par rolling and the Undead retaining units they should have lost.

On Turn 2 the Undead took the charges that had been left by the Men and managed a flank surge/charge by the Revenant Cav Regiment into the General, this wiped him out. 

Elsewhere the Undead engaged the light cavalry of the Men and Mhorgana after missing entirely on her first turn of shooting managed a good Blizzard blast against the Bowmen Troop which helped wipe out the Zombie Legion in the last battle and routed them in one round of shooting.

In the Men's turn they fought back but a series of poor rolling which included causing only 1 damage to the Revenant Cav Regiment saw them only rout 1 Wraith Troop. The speed of the Undead advance had meant that many of the KoM units had to charge from out of hindering terrain so having to hit at +1 and also the Knight's losing 1 Thunderous Charge really helped mitigate the initial damage they normally rely on.

Turn 2 settled into a grind with both armies pretty much fully committed along the line and neither side able to break through.

One Regiment of Knights did get a good charge in against a Zombie Troll Horde but again fluffed the nerve check so they stayed on.

Turn 4 saw the Undead start to crack the KoM lines with the Revenant Cav killing off the Knight Regiment they faced and then turning in towards the flank of the Men's lines. The Zombie Trolls on the Undead left routed another Knight Regiment with the help of a Wraith Troop and some  good nerve dice.

In the centre the grind continued with the Men rolling double 1's to leave the Zombie Troll Horde on the table and thus being unable to make it fully across the middle of the board with their token.

The Captain did manage to finish off the other Zombie Troll Horde but he couldn't stop the Lykanis from fully crossing the half way mark.

With the KoM having no way of securing victory we opted not to play out the last turn and the Undead managed a 2-1 VP win.

The dice certainly didn't help the KoM during this battle but I think the initial decision not to move the token carrying unit to an unopposed position may have been the factor that put victory out of reach for them.