BR: Summary and Lessons

Wow, what a great battle. Mario and I have played 3 times now and each and every game is a strugle to get any victory points at all. And every year he gets closer and closer to beating me. This year, if not for the big point objective, its a draw in his favor.

There were several clutch spots in the game that really hurt my opponent.
1. Insane courage from that one hound. If he breaks there and overruns, I cannot turn the Rat Ogres and chariot to deal with the Hammerers, I have to worry about the warriors.

2. Killing every last one of the Rat Ogres in the 2nd round of combat in turn 6. If he lets one live, I break, he gets his objective and its a draw.

3. The pursuit that only went 2" in turn 6. If he goes 4" I can't charge him and he wins the game as I don't get my objective, only half points for the hammerers and no points for the general. That 2" pursuit cost him almost 1100 vp. Ouch!

Things I learned.
1. When moving up on shooters, don't screw around, get up there and take them out.

2. When you have the chance to take out the cannon, do it. Don't go chasing off after gyrocopters.

3. Avoid Dwarf Lords if you can. Those guys are just mean as hell.

4. I killed everything but the warriors, 1 unit thunderers, long beards, bsb and runesmith. And I was still down on points. Ouch. And I still had Ratspawns body guard, 2 units of Rat ogres, 2 chariots, both heroes, half a herd and my furies.

5. Keep Ratspawn in the middle. I don't care what the objective is. I need that Ld 9 for both herds.

6. Don't count on dwarfs only overrunning 6-7". And they are nasty on the charge.

7. Keep in mind you can flee now from an overrun. Better to flee, rally and charge him, than let him have the charge.

8. Keep trying to setup those flank and rear charges.

Things I think he could have done to help him win.
1. The Long Beards were trapped in and couldn't get out from behind the Thunderers. I'm sure his plan was when I charged them, and broke, the Long beards would hold me up. I intentionally didn't charge them because of that.

2. I felt his whole right flank (my left) was too unprotected. He needed a block over there and the Long beards would have filled in nicely. Put him on the outer flank and I have to deal with them. Probably holding me up for another turn or 2, while the cannons, thunderers, crossbows and bolt throwers, continue to blast away.

3. Damn I hate cannons. He was dead on, only once missing. Rolled a couple of misfires, but forging let him re-roll those. And he wounded everytime and did 2.5 wounds on average. It was nasty. At least the bolt throwers were really pretty useless. But the volley gun was great. Getting 10 hits 2 times.

4. Keeping his on on the objective. I was keeping count, but he didn't seem to be worry about it. He felt he could never get it, but only because I made a ton of panic checks, that kept him from getting it. Then when he had a chance, he used a re-roll to wipe a unit out instead of just breaking it. Though he did spread the shooting around, which is counter intuitive, trying to break more units.

Well thats all for now. Like I said a simple roll of 5+ on the final puruit would have given him the 500+ point win and I'm trying to figure out what went wrong.

Until next time...