Empire (Me) Vs Bretonnia (Kris S.)

Game Size: 1250 points

Scenario: Flank Attack

Restrictions: No Level 4 casters, no magic items over 50 points

Edition: Warhammer The Old World (Release Version)

Month and Year: Feb 2024

Event: One-off Gameday setup by Kris at Mighty Meeple

This battle against Kris was a great time - my first game of Old World and it was a complete blast.  I have had many games against Bretonnia in the past as the old gaming group in Winston featured (Justin N) who loved playing Bretonnians.

My list consisted of:

• General on foot with great weapon, full plate and pistol

• Battle Standard Bearer with Full Plate

• 23 Halberdiers (General and BSB in this unit)

• 10 Free Company Detachment

• 13 Greatswords

• Warrior Priest (accompanied Greatswords)

• 10 Handgunners with Champion with Long Rifle

• 5 Archers

• Cannon

• Helblaster

• Master Engineer with long rifle

Arrayed against me were roughly:

• Baron on Horse

• Paladin/BSB on Horse

• Level 2 Damsel

• 2x Blocks of 6 Knights of the Realms

• 1x Large Knights of the Realm Block

• 2x 10 Peasant Archers

• 15 Men at Arms

• Trebuchet

Deployment

The flank attack scenario is interesting in that each player selects a portion of their army that can deployed on the flanks - however this selection is secret so you don't have any idea whether your opponent is running his cav or something else - plus they have to choose the side they are flanking from before deployment (also done in secret).  I really enjoy this scenario and you can find the rules at: https://tow.whfb.app/warhammer-battles/flank-attack

In the end I choose my Inner Circle Knights to be the flanking force and Kris chose his shooting units - which turned out to be a genius play.

Early Turns

The below picture shows bottom of turn one of the game game (Kris elected to pray and go second) - I generally moved up and reshuffled my army to have a little better facing.  The Knights moved into position to flank Kris's right (our left) while I moved up bait units (Archers and Free Company) to muddy up the field and screen the rest of my army.  My shooting was completely ineffectual - I only killed a single Knight.  In return Kris's trebuchet destroyed my helblaster with a single shot!  This greatly reduced my control of the middle of field and placed me on my backfoot.  I was relying on the helblaster to force Kris's army to engage immediately but with it removed the "tempo" of the game slowled considerably as the shooting advantage was suddenly with the Bretonnians!

Mid Game

Ok mid game (bottom of turn two) is shown below - the flank combat on the left side went down in my favor - my counter charging Inner Circle Knights defeated the Bretonnian Lance on our left but the middle of the field was a complete disaster.  My right side was severely overmatched with a unit of Knights outflanking me and my Greatswords being blocked in by a Men at Arms unit in the midfield.  It was at this point that I thought the game was honestly out of reach but a few opportune dice rolls would end up turning this game around.

Late Game

It's around this time I forgot to take a ton of pictures - so this last picture encapsulates about 2-3 turns of gameplay.  To make this simpler I put in three callouts and I'll explain what happened in each section.

1. On the left flank my Inner Circle Knights defeated the Knights of the Realm, reformed and charged the Men of the Arms in the center of the board.  You'll notice they captured the banner of the Knights unit (by the little marker behind them).  This unit was really my MVP (most valuable player) and in a really odd display showed how Imperial Knights can outduel Bretonnian Knights - the ability to counter charge this edition makes Initiative in Knight on Knight combat super important and probably favors Elf and Chaos cavalry over most others.

2. The large halbedier unit was mercilessly dominated throughout much of the game - losing models to the trebuchet and the dual Bretonnian charge (both of the Knights units on the right side charged it - however when the unit FBIGO (fell back in good order) Kris only followed up with the smaller unit of the Knights of the Realm - this resulted in the Halberdiers winning the secondary combat and subsequently overrunning into Kris's back lines.  In all honestly this decision is probably what kept me in the game - when you have the enemy general on the ropes I think you have to follow up with everything into them.

3. Kris's large unit Knights of the Realm acquited themselves well - after beating the halberdiers that had both the BSB General he reformed charged in and destroyed the Stubborn Greatsword unit.  However some opportune shots from the cannon (Needs More Nails!) helped eliminate the unit resulting in only his three characters wandering around in my backfield.

Oh yeah - that damned trebuchet that killed 2 Knights, 7 Halberdiers, and my Helblaster - misfired and destroyed itself.

End Game and Summary

Overall the game was an awesome time - especially because Kris had his entire army already painted and rebased.  Kris thought I won the game although I thought it was draw; in the end we didn't bother tallying the scores as other players had been waiting around a while and we wanted to second game ASAP (some players had finished up an hour before us! in their lopsided games).

Final Tally

Empire VP: 3x Units of Knights of the Realm with their Commands; 1x trebuchet; 2x Banner Captures

Bretonnian VP: 1x Unit of Greatswords, 1x Warrior Priest, 1x unit of 5 archers, 1x unit of 10 Free Company, 1x Helblaster, 1x Banner Captured, and 25% of the Halberdiers (if you reduce an enemy to 25% of its starting strength you could 25% of its victory points even if they aren't dead/fleeing).

Lessons Learned

1. Old World is a ton fun!

2. War Machines that can indirect fire are pretty good - I had wished I had fielded some to eliminate and fire back at the trebuchet and enemy archers.

3. Ballistic shooting at BS3 . . . it is just not good - the handgunners did almost nothing the entire game.

4. Always follow up on the enemy general when you have them on the ropes - remember you score 100 extra victory points for him!

5. Cavalry on Cavalry combat is devastating - initiative is king in that scenario.

6. Bretonnian charges are still scary and only dedicated combat units (Greatswords, Knights) stand a chance.