Shame on me! I must say that last saturday I played very porly the HE. After getting crushed in WHFB 12-1, I played a warmaster game with the same opponent. I elected to play HE and my opponent's choice was O&G. Both armies are well balanced and have their strenght and weakness. HE are fast but fragile. O&G are numerous but fragile.
My opponent had several units of goblins and orcs supported by stone thrower and few units of wolf riders and a giant of course. He took only one hero along with a gobo shaman. That was very unexpected 'cause that means only 2 Ld8 characters and one Ld6! He had 13 units or so. I posted earlier my HE army list but it consisted of 3 units of reavers, 2 spearelves, one archers, one giant eagles, a RBT, a hero on eagle, a mage and general. I have 8 units only so I rout on 4 units destroyed.
We deployed our small armies unit after unit, 80cm apart with 20cm deployement deep. He put the wolf riders with some orcs on my left, many gobos in the center and the giant with more orcs on my right. The orc hero was close to the wolf riders, the chaman close to gobs and the General with giant. I deployed my eagles on the right, 2 spearelves with archers in the middle and reavers on my right. My hero was close to eagles of course, my mage behind the 3 units brigade and my gemeral was leading the reavers.
I have first turn and I make my first mistake! Choising not to charge the stone thrower straight away, I move the eagles 60cm forward. This is far too much because they are in reach for wolf riders. Everything moves forward with the reavers moving twice.
My opponent moves successfully his wolf riders that shoot back my eagles and kill a base. All other orders fail!
I make my eagles "come back" before orders to the mounted hero but fail to make them charge into the stone thrower. I rolled 8 but since the eagles had lost a base, I had a -1 penalty. We forgot that they were less than 20cm from the wolf riders too and that I should have had a -2 penalty! Hopefully the rest of my army moved forward. This was my second mistake. Even with a 5+ save, my spearelves are not good enought to see combat without support. They were running strainght into the wall. My reavers proceded to face the orc army right flanck and shot them to death. They pushed back two units, destroying two bases in the process and sending out of the table. My RBT had no LOS.
The wolfriders destroyed the remaining eagles that foollishly stayed in front of them. The giant charged on on order the archers along with a unit of orcs and the orc general. I must have been on crack at that time to move my unit that can shoot at 30cm within 20cm of the enemy! (we forgot that my opponent had -1 to order (he rolled two 8s) charges because the reavers were less than 20cm away of the giant and orcs. If he wanted them to charge on intiative, they had to charge the reavers that were the closest unit). Stand and shoot and HtH wounded hevely the giant that dropped down to 4 attacks and 4 wounds. The archers unit was of course obliterate. The goblins moved forth (forgot the -1 penalty for enemies within 20cm) and shot at my spearelves pushing them back a bit.
My spearleves charged gobos, killing a unit but loosing some base. The stand and shoot is something very powerfull because the shots occur in the HtH phase, not in the moving (order) phase. I fail moving my reavers rolling 12!
Does not matter anyway for the shot and destroy 2 bases two bases from the orc unit that charged the archers. Revenge! RBT pushes back a little the giant.
My opponent reaction is fast, more gobos shot at spearelves, killing a few bases and pushing them back in the charge arc of the wolf riders that refused to move. I think that if I did not silly moved forward, my opponent would have never reached my line at the end of the 8th turn! With only two Ld8 characters, he can expect give only one successfull order to each unit at best.
The general failed to controll the giant that rushed forward 40cm and charged my RBT! I almost killed him (I did 6 wounds but he saved 3 on 5+!) with stand and shoot and 2 attacks. We realise that with this special rule that doubles the giant attacks, are the charging bonus and monster bonus also doubled? We played not so he had "only" 10 attacks! I think we played a 4th turn but I can't remember. At this time I had lost 4 units so I had to rout. I gave 300pts to 120pts! If only I had a little brain I could have won. Sitting back and shooting on everything that is coming close should have been my infantry role. The Eagles could have charged the Rock Lobba on turn two if I did not moved stupidly from the start. My reavers were perfect. Moving fast, pushing back everything in their way. If I did not failed that order to move the reavers on turn 3, I could have charged the giant with general and kill him (he was 4 wounds left only). Of course it is too late to say I should have done this or that but I learned few things. Reavers are great! Elves infantry must stay back and engaged only reduced opponent units. RBT is powerfull. Great army. I shall play 2000pts Chaos vs Empire this saturday. Time will tell if I learn from my mistakes!
Dalkwave The Foreigner