997YK, Summer: Lharvion

Lharvion

Storm Lords

Although the Storm Lords won the Battle of Firebranch (previous post), they cannot easily grab the enemy capital. There are two passes leading up into Searing Heights (the drow homeland). One is held by the recently-repulsed drow army; due to their losses in the battle, SL banner 1 is now relatively weaker compared to the drow than it was before, so it would be risky to try another field battle. However the other pass (north-east) is an undefended village, and if it moves there then the drow would have a tough choice — if they attack and are repulsed again, the humans could press on and destroy the capital next turn. So the drow are more likely to play safe and defend their capital — that ties up their larger army in a defensive role.

The other banners continue scouting, including banner 5 scouting to the coast beside the Sulatar realm; it remains a threat to the Sulatar there. Banner 3 is also following the river up into the Dragon's Maw mountains, getting closer to the orcs. They gain three new villages and one village from the Sulatar for the turn.

White Fang Tribe

The orcs can see the Storm Lords' expedition approaching their territory now, and suspect that it might be larger than their scouting force. So they turn north, and discover the ruined Giantish city of Threnal in the mountains — currently occupied by Goblins.

A city in a strategic location — this discovery could become the focus of the remaining summer campaigning. There are Duergar and human banners within striking distance of this city.

Hammerhead Clan

Seeing a city pop up on the map not far from their banners marching down into the plain, the dwarves decide to target it — the orcs may struggle  to hold the city given their army is small and only half of it is close enough to make any defence this summer. Banner 6 scouts the intervening tile — and is blocked by an independent fortress, which is too expensive to assault just to get a passage. They will have to try another path next turn. Banner 1 moves up to join it though, forming a single strong banner for attacking. The dwarves scout two other villages this turn.

White Fang banner 2 discovers and occupies the city of Threnal, in the Dragon's Teeth mountains; three other banners converge on it.

Sulatar

By the rules as written, the Sulatar can attack the Storm Lords' banner 1 without making a test to find a path in difficult terrain — by the rules, you only ever test for terrain in your own tile, and you get placed once you move on the edge of the tile that you move into so do not have to test terrain in that tile. The way the tiles are laid, there are mountains on the south side of the tile with the SL army, but the drow army is in a tile with no mountains on the north side. So they could attack the still-outnumbered humans again. I am making up the battle rules as I go though, so I might give them a terrain hinderance in the resulting battle. Anyway that would be risky as noted earlier, so they retreat to the capital instead.

Start of turn 5, Barrakas.

But with that army in the capital, they are safe against an assault by the Storm Lords — so much so, that they decide to divide banner 1 back into two banners, as even with 500 points fewer defenders, they can still hold the city — in ME you get a 2x points modifier when defending a city tile. (In hindsight, they should not have combined into one banner last turn, so they could move independently this turn.) Banner 3 holds position to block the advancing banner 5 of the Storm Lords, and banner 5 moves into a barren tile in order to scout beyond the barren area around Searing Heights itself.