Summary of weekend BR

The game was a ton of fun, and I hope Shaun enjoyed it as well. The game pretty much just covered the left flank and center, while the right flank was pretty stagnent thanks to his spirit hosts which held up a unit of White Wolf knights the entire game. Add the other WW unit over there failed 5 charge attempts. 2 from fear and 3 from out of range, over 6 turns.

Things I learned about this army:
1. I hate fear.
2. It can be suseptable to high levels of magic. Ecspecially if I don't take out some wizards. I need to concentrate more on trying to get to them. As my priests will die during the games, of that I have no doubt. So I need to shut down his wizards as well.
3. Move of 14" is nice but not as nice as I'd like. But don't want to do Bretts or High elves. Have to learn to estimate better with them.
4. I think the DoW fast cav with bows was a good addition. It keeps my opponents thinking about where to put lone guys, and I can still charge in on cheap units. The 10 bow shots are fun, and I love being able to shoot even if I move 16". So I don't sacrifice movement for shots. It doesn't hurt anything for me to roll those 10 dice.
5. The hounds are good as bait and sweeping woods, but not much else.
6. If there is a house on the field, I can't touch any unit inside. So I need to stay away from houses and keep long range shooting units from entering. Like jezzails.
7. This army was built to handle the flee and charge type armies. It does not handle fear causing armies very well. But the fact that it didn't fall completely apart and still got a draw. A few rolls either way, could have changed things in both directions.
8. My main general's unit is totally awesome. Took on 3 units and almost won out. If it had gotten 1 more unit into help, it would have won. Damn fear tests.
9. I was debating taking the immune to panic or immune to fear and terror banner. I chose the panic thinking I'd face more panic than fear. I think I'll switch back. Fear and terror are too big a problem for this army.

7th ed rule changes that I learned from:
1. You have got to be aware, big time, where everyone is at, where your opponent is likely to be, where panic, and terror are coming from and what units this will affect and in which direction they will flee.
2. I did a no big deal charge from the hounds down into the ghouls, even though I figured this was a lost battle. By doing this, and then fighting that battle first, I cost myself a full unit of WW's and a priest.
3. I'm changing my default order of battles. Before I'd do the non-important ones first and then the important ones. I'm switching now to do the important ones first.
4. Unit maneuvering is very, very important in this game now. To get flank and rear bonuses, you have to actually maneuver your units around to grab those.
5. The additional BSB bonus is very, very sweet. You will see a lot of BSB's floating around.
6. The inability to wrap really hurts when fighting spirit hosts. I expect to see more of these on the field of battle.


Summary of the battle:
I think the battle hinged on just 3-4 dice rolls and a couple mistakes by me.
1. His black coach doing only 1 impact hit and crumbling fast. This gave me the early lead.
2. In his challenge, him doing 4 wounds on 5 str 5 attacks, needing 3+, 3+ and then me having a 4+ armor save. This sucked. As the great trap I setup totally backfired. It was like sacrificing a knight and a bishop to get his queen. And instead I lost both knights, both bishops and got nothing.
3. My huge mistake of having the dogs charge the ghouls unsupported. Then fighting that battle first setting up the ghouls to crossfire the fleeing WW's from the vamp count. And moving up my knights so the ghouls ran in behind the knights. I hit my unit, hop over and am killed. HUGE!!
4. The right flank knights failing 5 charges. 2 by 1/4". This was just my mistake, but failing 2 fear tests out of 5 on Ld 8 sucked. And the hounds failing 3 fear tests in a row on Ld 7 to charge the rear of the grave guard sucked as well.
5. Me failing to stop the grave guard from getting danced into the flank of my general's unit. I wasn't too worried about it, but should have been. Thought I could stop 2 spells, should have concentrated on just stopping that 1.

In the end, a great game, I learned a lot and will continue to learn as we play this new 7th ed. It does change the game a bit. Makes you think more about where things are, where they are in relation to each other, and where things will be the next turn.

Hope you enjoyed it.