997YK, Winter End

Deployment

Winter is nearly over. Armies form and march to the frontiers, ready for another season of war.

White Fang Tribe: The strategic situation will be simple — lots of dwarves on the border, and little to prevent them just marching straight up to the capital. The orcs could just abandon the frontier and accept a siege, but they have a counteracting threat — if the duergar just march past their army heading for the capital, then the orcs can do the same — at Threnal they are only 4 tiles from the duergar capital. So, the orcs put around 1400 points in defensive positions, half in the capital, half in a fortress nearby. The rest are high in the Dragon's Teeth mountains at Threnal, hoping to hold that city.

Hammerhead Clan: The duergar hold a lot a fortress in the centre of the map that would be a shame to give up cheaply, so a garrison banner goes there. And another garrison banner for the fortress on the lake in the north-east, to fend off Sulatar scouts. They, like the White Fang, need a garrison and supporting armies to defend the capital, in case the orcs try to lunge past the armies on the front line. But the main concentration is in the village tile, in the plain below Threnal — banners 1 & 6 with nearly 3000 points.

Duergar and orc armies prepare to battle for control of the Dragon's Teeth mountains; human and orc spies try to investigate and sabotage the approaching army. A human army prepares to come in from the east.
Any battle here will be nearly twice as big as the battles in year 1, and we could see one very early.

Sulatar: The Storm Lords cannot afford to ignore the duergar, so probably the full force of their army is not going to hit the Sulatar this year. So I think they can risk sending off a scout army again; the duergar really do have a terrible terrain disadvantage in the north (their armies have no clear winter retreat path from much of this area) and if the Sulatar are going to catch up they need to claim that territory. Everything else will be in Searing Heights defending the capital.

Storm Lords: The human empire has the hardest deployment problem. If they let the duergar crush the orcs this year, they may get too far ahead for anyone to beat; so banner 5 with 700 points is heading for Threnal or the orc capital, depending what unfolds. They also have to defend  their capital, in case the Sulatar try to sneak an army past to deal a blow to the heart of the empire. And they have those two cities in the south centre to defend, so normally I would put 500 points there each at least — but that would leave only around 1800 points to face the Sulatar, which is not enough. Instead I go for: 800 points in banner 3 in one of those cities, hopefully able to shield the other as well; 700 points in banner 4 in the capital; and 2000 points in banners 1 and 2 ranged against the Sulatar. They are still outnumbered by the Sulatar, but the Sulatar are hampered by needing to shield their capital, and the other armies can come forward to help as the season progresses.

(top) Sulatar armies defending Searing Heights against the Storm Lords.
(bottom) Storm Lord agents try to intercept enemy spies and saboteurs.

Espionage

Now here is a fun, albeit not well thought out mini-game. Each side gets to buy agents and deploy them on the map, to carry out sabotage (to destroy enemy settlements/ships/supplies), spying (on enemy troop deployments), assassins, and agents to try to intercept enemy spies. I don't think it is very practical to show here exactly where every agent goes, but you can see where all the operatives are from the pictures above and I will just describe the results.

I am hacking this part of the game fairly heavily. But I don't mind that, as it never quite worked in the original game, although the concept is cool. In particular, I am reducing all troop losses from espionage by a factor of 10: in the rules as written, an assassin can kill 500 points of troops in an attack, which makes sense when Warhammer Fantasy Battle is your system (a hero can easily be 500 points), but in my campaign where 500 points is about 500 men, it would be silly. This does render assassins not worth the cost; I may try to rewrite the rules for them later. I am also playing all tiles face-up for this solo game, since there's no point hiding from myself and I want the images here to show what is going on.

Storm Lords: They play their agents at home first, and manage to round up all the enemy agents in Stormreach (2 saboteurs and two Sulatar spies). Sabotage works well against ships, and the ships are valuable. But their spying on the duergar gets nothing.

Hammerhead Clan: Spied the size of Storm Lords' banner 3, and White Fang banners 1 & 2 in Threnal and their banner 4. Their agent protecting their main army caught the most dangerous operative, a saboteur from the Storm Lords, but missed the 3 spies; however none of the spies manage to spy on their army there.

White Fang, Sulatar: I think the Sulatar caught one spy, but apart from that nothing worked for them.

The duergar just keep piling up advantages — now they know the sizes of all the opposing armies in the main theatre of war.

Spring Equinox

Another phase for big magic before the armies set off.

Storm Lords: Portents of Terror, and cast it on the west Sulatar army in Searing Heights (or rather on the tile that it occupies). The spell immobilises any army in that tile on a D6 roll of 1-3 each turn. That might mess with the Sulatar's defensive plans.

White Fang Tribe: Chaos Void. They use it on the barren tile adjacent to their own capital; chaos void consumes the tile in a malevolent darkness that consumes any army that tries to cross the tile. That will force the duergar to come at the capital via the adjacent city, which is more defensible.

Hammerhead Clan: Quake. Handy — this causes an earthquake which does so much damage to the walls of a city or fortress that it is useless for defence. Perfect to cast against Threnal; now the orcs have to fight in the open.

Sulatar: They roll Rot initially, which destroys all baggage in a tile — that can be a very handy spell, but the closest Storm Lord armies do not have much baggage, and the further ones are not really threatened by anything. So they reroll and get Quake: which they cast on Stormreach, hoping that it might force the humans to play more defensively.