Armies of Arcana Battle Report
High Elves and Sylvan Elves
vs. Snakemen - 8000 points
Brett Manus and Trevor Self vs. Thane Morgan

Strangers again entered our lands! Our warnings went unheeded, so war it would be! Slipping along the forest floor by night, we met the enemy at their camp at daybreak.

Our wizards summoned a host of elementals, and the wyvern master arrived with a mother and two hatchlings. My plan was to approach the enemy with a small force from their front, while a second group infiltrated from a flank. Elves are nasty enemies, who often bring masses of archers and cavalry. A strong infiltrating flank could split their fire and put our forces into hand to hand combat in front of the archers.

But the elves did not bring cavalry - certainly revealing their plan to assault deep into our forest. They indeed brought many archers, undoubtably to defend from a position where their archers could weaken our forces as we approached. I set up our forces to take advantage of a wooded hill side for our approach and placed our own archers on a hill with a water elemental screen to protect them.

The enemy yielded that side of the field to us, choosing instead to defend from a single hillside. A small flanking horse-archer force was all that was left to guard that flank.

Our archers shot into the melee with the elementals, and assisted in breaking the spearmen, who fled the battle. The Mamba and Tree Spirits both recieved the Strength spell. The advancing Mamba took a few casaulties from missile fire, but not enough to break. Their bretheren again found their courage and reentered the fight.

The last unit of Pythons revealed themselves on the far left of the battlefield, in the forest near the High Elf Longbows.

The elves got the jump on our forces, so we were unable to press the advantage we had gained. The tree spirits overran the air elementals as they moved back to attack the Pythons, destroying them. The eagles decended to protect the acolytes, while the second unit of elf spearmen charged the Mamba.

We responded by sending the wyverns into the two small archer units, while the Wyvern Master earth wizard flew over the elven lines, ready to unleash the power he had been focusing.

The wizards now had a critical moment in the battle. The elves cast lightning strike on the wyvern, killing it. Our Wyvern Master cast mass petrify on the acolytes, but though it affected 10 of them, seven resisted. The elves then tried to cast Magic Shield on the spearmen, which would allow the acolytes to shoot into their combat with the mamba with little fear of hurting their own troops. This was fortunately dispelled by the nature mage with the Kaa Swordsmen. Our Water Mage dispelled the Strength on the Tree Spirits, making that a much more managable fight.

The Sylvan Horse Archers fired into the melee with the hatchling wyvern - their luck was unnatural, as they did not harm a single member of their archer unit, while the hatchling was slaughtered. The Kaa Archers fired into the melee with the tree spirits, killing several. The Longbows shot into the Pythons on their flank, killing many, but the Python morale held strong. The Acolytes fired into the melee, killing several Mamba and spearmen alike.

The Pythons killed many Treemen, who retreated behind the Horse Archers. However, they were also broken by the intense casualties they took. The Mamba killed the spearmen entirely, but were broken in return and fled back into the woods.

Our spearmen charged into the eagles protecting the accolytes, though they expected grevious damage from the acolytes in return. The Wyvern Master Wizard charged the Elven Eagle Wizard, who was still in the air. The water elementals moved foward to screen the advancing Kaa Swordsmen, while a unit of pythons advanced beside them. A second unit of Pythons crashed into the swordsmen guarding the flank of the High Elf Longbows. The Nyoka Bows began to advance, as the battle seemed to move out of their sight and range.

The Elven Horse Archers spread out to protect the fleeing treemen from missile fire, while the Elven infantry advanced towards the enemy on their flank. One unit of archers also retreated to avoid being shot by our Snake Archers.

The Wyvern Master Tried to petrify the Eagle Wizard, but failed to create a powerful enough spell. In return, he suffered several wounds from Strangling Thorns.

The acolytes killed many spearmen and an eagle firing into the combat. The Horse Archers and Sylvan Bows shot the Wyvern Master out of the sky, but with their unnaturally good luck failed to harm the mage at all. The Spearmen killed several more eagles, driving them off. This was almost a moment of great glory, as the Spearmen held their morale and should have been able to crash through the several skirmished Elf units in front of them during the pursuit, scattering them to the wind. However, the Elf Acolytes stood strong in front of our mass, and another opportunity was lost.

On the flank, the combination of lucky missile fire and skilled melee attacks wiped out the brave Python, with only one elf swordsman killed in return.

The Mamba and Python both regained their morale, as did the Tree Spirits.

Our historian was struck by evil elven magic at this time, and his chronical is incomplete. I have reconstructed this moment of the battle as best I could.

We were again forced to advance into the mass of the Elves missile fire. The elementals struck forward boldly - the only threat to them was at least tied up by the spearmen. The rest of the army advanced foward to be ready for combat.

The elementals were then attacked by the Tree Spirits and eagle wizard, while the elven pikes moved into the flanks of our spearmen.

Our spearmen were destroyed, but they at least broke the Acolytes. The water elementals held strong against the attacks of the tree spirits and wizard.

With our forces suffering grevious casualties, army morale was in danger of faltering. It speaks highly of our army's training that their spirits held, seeing a path to victory if they could hold out a bit longer. Though we were plainly in a dire position, the elves were also very vulnerable to defeat. Their army was on the edge of breaking, and had been for some time.

We moved to fully engage the elves that had advanced. Our combat power was still great, while most of the elven melee troops had been driven off. This would be the deciding moment of the battle.

The Elven Pikes charged into the few remaining Mamba and the fresh Kaa Swordsmen. The returning eagles moved to help destroy the elementals, but this allowed the slow Pythons to reach the combat.

Sensing that everything hinged on this moment, both sides again fired into melee. This killed many Kaa Swordsmen and Elven Pikes. The melee was brutal, with the elementals, eagles, pikes, Tree Spirits and Kaa Swordsmen all breaking or falling below a quarter strength. The Mamba were already below a quarter, leaving an elemental with one wound, the Pythons, and and the eagle wizard. Unfortunately, the acolytes returned to the fight, giving the elves a significant advantage in remaining troops.

Both armies had suffered significantly, but it was our morale that broke. The elves had won, but only with significant casualties that would prevent a further incursion into our lands.

Post Battle Analysis

Shooty armies are the worst for snakeman armies to face. They don't have cavalry options, so they have to advance in the face of achery for many turns if the enemy is hanging back. There are are many ways to deal with this - trying to outshoot the enemy (not possible with my army composition), bringing on monsters that overcome the speed deficiency, using arrow immune monsters to screen the advance, using spell casters to block the line of sight, and using the snake infiltration abilities to open up a new front or just get up in the face of the enemy quickly. Pythons are also great arrow absorbing troops, as their missile armor starts at 5.

The acolytes made an elemental screen impractical - they would simply get shot up by eldritch attacks and quickly loose the ability to block LOS. The hills on the flanks of the elf battleline made it unlikely that a screen would be very effective anyway.

Many people have wanted to see what a large infiltrating force could do - I believe this is the first time I infiltrated 4 units. Two of the python units and the snake archers performed very well, though it is not clear that the snake archers ultimately paid for themselves (they never shot very well, though they did do some damage that helped break several units). The last python unit was shot to pieces, with their armor barely mattering. They did take up two rounds of fire from the large long bow unit though, which was probably a good thing, and did keep the elven swordsmen away from the rest of the fight.

I should have started moving the water elementals up on turn 1 - there was never a threat from enemy archers that could have broken them. Had the horsearchers advanced to threaten the nyoka archers, they could have been dealt with by infiltrating units.

Turn 3 could have been decisive had the snakes won morale - the air elementals and pythons were both in a position to get into the elven archers, and the wyverns would likely have torn apart the eagles. The Mamba would have engaged the tree spirits, a fight that would heavily favor the Mamba and their mass of attacks.

As it was, it still could have been a win for the snakes, as the adult wyven had a good chance of breaking the archers, the treemen were still likely to be defeated (as were the Pythons they engaged), and there was a good chance that the earth wizard could break a unit with magic. In retrospect, he probably would have been better off trying the all or nothing Sinkhole spell instead of Mass Petrify, which was unlikely to harm enough acolytes to force a test. Or put the Mass Petrify down on one of the archer units - they were still 400 points each, and their loss would have forced an elven break test that turn.

Again on Turn 5 there was a good chance that the elven army could have been smashed by a pursuit move by the spears through two elven units. Unfortunately this did not happen, and the elves held out without a morale test again.

After that, the only real hope for the snakes was to cause enough casualties to make the elves test after the snakes passed their own test. They succeeded with the first test, but again barely failed to force the elves to test that turn. On turn 6 the snakes finally killed enough elves, but had to pass a 50% casualty test first. And did not.

It remained an exceptionally close fight throughout the battle. Every unit that had any opportunity to rally their morale did so, so there was the dynamic of newly broken units being offset by units returning to the fight. This is one of the most significan disadvantages of defending from the deployment zone - infantry that break end up off the board, where they cannot come back to the battle.

The biggest strike against the snakes in the battle though was the incredible luck of the elves when shooting into combat. There were many times they killed close to half of the snakes in combat while killing zero or one of their own. The slaughter of the Mamba that deployed to threaten the longbows exemplifies this - they lost half in one turn of shooting, and lost the other half in the next turn.

© 2007
Thane's Games