After the recent Isthak incursions into Elvish territory the Thanaril had taken to patrolling their borders more aggressively with local forces. However, so far they had not caught up again with the Isthaki invaders. Instead, the stupid humans had taken up arms and started causing trouble on the border! Athulain had hoped that this nonsense would stop after the inconclusive border skirmish he had fought with a local Empires contingent a few weeks ago.
But to his surprise the humans kept coming. In fact, they had dared send a motley collection of provincial troops into the Northern reaches of the Elf forests! He would teach them to stay home peacefully once and for all. And to humiliate them in their unbelievable carelessness (his scouts had advised him that the humans had neither brought any magic users nor any flyers to explore the battle field!) and preposterousness (they had even dared to bring a unit of dwarfs!) he would do it in style - just with a few local units of Thanaril and the support of a few Luthari archers. [As this was a learning game for the Elf player, we decided not to use the rules for magic and flyers to keep things simpler].
The Empire had ventured into Elvish territory with a local force of provincial pikemen and crossbow archers, a cannon, some mounted archers and a bull heard from the east and support from a unit of noble lancers under Jorghan the Paladin and some dwarf arquebusiers. They were commanded by Dar Kilmor.
The Elves countered this army with a Thanaril contingent of hunters, spear bearers and Thirgar lancers. They were led by Athulain with help from Imriel, and supported by a unit of badger people and some young treemen who started the battle hidden in the woods on one flank.
In classical fashion, both armies sent their right wings (full of cavalry) forward to charge the enemy.
The Empire charge was led by the bulls, who charged straight into the hunters and spears and kept them busy for (nearly) the rest of the battle. The noble lancers under Jorghan's command were not as lucky, as they were surprised by the hidden treemen before they could charge the Luthari or other targets. They spent a long time hacking away at the treemen, hardly doing any damage but suffering a slow death by attrition themselves. Later, the pikemen started to join the fray, and Jorghan got away from the futile engagement with the treemen and attacked the Luthari, too.
The Luthari archers were the only Elf unit that did not do much - they had set up too far behind the woods to get in much missile fire, and were caught in the flank later as they were trying to march to more open fields of fire behind the melee of the Thanaril on their side.
The melee on this flank continued almost through the end of the day. The Thanaril spearmen and hunters were nearly destroyed, and the badgers had a hard time surviving the crossbow fire and the threatening charge of the pikemen. But they held out more than long enough to see the battle decided on the other wing.
On the Elves' right the Thirgar lancers went charging straight ahead. They soon found themselves faced with a selection of targets (or threats, depending on your viewpoint): the mounted archers who had advanced to their right flank, the cannon that kept shooting at them (with little effect) and the hated Dwarves.
They decided to take the initiative and charge the most important threat first, the mounted archers [in this move, both armies had equal amounts of attack orders issued, but the Elves won the die roll to resolve the tie and opted (wisely) to move first.] They smashed right into the ranks of the archers and nearly annihilated the unit on first contact [including a couple of second attacks due to their higher initiative, the Thirgar performed 6 melee attacks on the archers and scored kills on all six of them - no die roll was higher than 6 in this first round of melee...].
This furious attack more or less decided the battle on the Empire's left flank, and it was then only a matter of time for the victorious Thirgar to ride down the cannon and the arquebusiers (who withdrew to the central hill before being charged), and then to threaten the rear of the remaining humans who were already involved in heavy fighting with the Thanaril infantry. The rest was mopping up and chasing the few remaining humans from the field.
Athulain was very satisfied how the day had gone. The Thanaril had lost a few valuable fighters, but they had utterly routed the human imbeciles who had dared invade the forests of Iconessa.
Copyright Notice: This report (C) Klaus Herrmanns 2003. All rights reserved. Please only pass this on to others for private, noncommercial use. Illustration created using the Powerpoint template from Christian 'Firehawk' Reznicek, used with permission (thanks Firehawk!). If you want to use this article elsewhere, let me know at koljag@SPAMBLOCKyahoo.com (remove the SPAMBLOCK before using the mail address). If you quote me as author and add a copyright notice like this, I'm perfectly happy to let you re-use this article.