Empire (Me) Vs High Elves (Chris R.)

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

I bet you are thinking . . . Empire vs High Elves . . .  what an interesting matchup.  Let me tell you right here this is the single gaming matchup that I have played the most of in my time of Warhammer across all game systems.  Both my buddy (Drew) and my pal (Chris) played High Elves growing up and I've got dozens of games against High Elves.  Tragically this doesn't mean I'm any good and probably lost 75% of my games against them in 5th and 7th edition.

6th edition was glorious though, mostly because the High Elf book was atrocious . . . anyways onto the game!

Deployment

Having won my last game - we elected to play something similar to cutthroat - I would stay on the same table, side, and scenario and Chris would deploy his army where Kris's army had deployed last game.  We again played flank attack - which has been quickly growing on me: https://tow.whfb.app/warhammer-battles/flank-attack

Having had a good time last game I elected to deploy in a very similar manner (game was both fun and competitive last time - why change it).  Knights flanking on the left while army was deployed centrally.  Chris deployed his White Lions in the flanking portion and maybe his Eagle also.  The rest of his foot slogging army deployed normally.

Early Turns

I'll describe the action that happened above in the first turn.  Based on my deployment I thought I had the game under control due to a few factors:

• I had Knights on the left flank unopposed

• Helblaster had a commanding view of battlefield against slow moving footsloggers

• My cannon destroyed Chris's bolt thrower on turn one for first blood

• I had strong matchups with stubborn Greatswords paired off against Swordmasters while the Knights flanked

• I had a clean plan to get the charge on the spearmen.

I believed Chris had the uphill battle and I settled into my advantageous position in turn 2.  In turn 3 the fighting started in earnest.

Mid Game

My plan to get off a charge relied on using my free company as bait on the right side of battlefield - getting the spearmen out of position and then charging and breaking or pushing back the enemy spearmen.  As you can see above the charge did go off however things did not go well for me and I made a slew of tactical errors.

1. Free Company are actually very good and should rarely if ever be thrown away.  Using them to bait a spearmen company into a position where I could charge them (and thus the spears would fight with an additional rank) was downright stupid.  The free company unit could have faced off against the white lions or even sat in the wings to supporting charge.

2. While the enemy Spearmen Champion and my Halberdier Champion fought each other in the first challenge (and of course the Halberdier won because halberds are the best) the second challenge was an unmitigated catastrophe.  The Elven BSB would kill my BSB which would greatly damage my ability to stay in combat (no more re-roll break tests).

The end result is that instead of routing or even pushing back the elves - my halberds were stuffed on the hill, down a Battle Standard Bearer and subsequently charged in the flank by White lions (below).  Terrible Terrible Damage would ensue.

More Mid Game

My initial smug attitude was greatly diminished by this point - instead of holding my right flank - it had been disentigrated.  The Free Company were destroyed after reckless use, my battle standard was down, and my large infantry black was headed for disaster.

The rest of the table was not fairing much better and I ran into the following problems.

1. I didn't effectively concentrate my shooting - probably due to the Level 3 wizard casting a ward save on the Swordmasters - however even with a cannon, archers, handgunners, and Helblaster I just took a rank off the spearmen and the swordmasters instead of focusing down one unit.  This lack of concentrated fire probably doomed me.

2. The level 3 wizards also cast a vortex that slowed my flanking Knights who would not arrive to combat until turn four - far too late to impact the outcome of the game.  I should have deployed them in marching column or maybe even deployed them centrally.

3. I had a great eagle on my Helblaster crew.  Not good.

The end result is that instead of routing or even pushing back the elves - my halberds were stuffed on the hill, down a Battle Standard Bearer and subsequently charged in the flank by White lions (below).  Terrible Terrible Damage would ensue.

Late Game

Well.  Shit. As you can see from the above image my right flank has completely folded.  The elven battle standard bearer eventually killed my BSB, General, and unit Champion - he'll then to proceed my Warrior Priest - killing almost every character except for the Engineer.  My only hope is for the Greatswords to hold and for the Knights to charge and break the swordmasters from the rear.

End Game and Summary

Unfortunately my Greatswords fell back in good order and Chris managed to restrain and reform his Swordmasters.  The Eagle, although in the picture above, would be killed by Grapeshot from the Cannon while both Chris's Swordmasters and Spearmen would be bruised by neither would flee or lose any victory points.  The Knights would charge the Swordmasters in the last turn but fail to break them and run them down.  My army would close this game out with a relative whimper - and while we did destroy a fair amount of elves very little victory points were scored.

As an aside - I took no mages but never felt particularly overmatched by magic.  Chris and I discussed and while important it is far more subtle in its game impact compared to 5th or 8th edition magic.

Final Tally

Empire VP: Great Eagle, Bolt Thrower

Bretonnian VP: 1x Warrior Priest, 1x unit of 10 Free Company, 1x Helblaster, 23x Halberdiers, 1x General, 1x Battle Standard Bearer, 1x Master Engineer, and two Banner Captures

Lessons Learned

1. While strong mages are not overpowering at moderate points level even without bringing magic defense they can still be impactful with directly deleting units.

2. Concentrate your fire - the goal of ranged weapons is to cause panic in the enemy lines and piecemeal their advance - if I could have eliminated one unit or even made it show up later the game would have been much closer.

3. Handgunners suck man, I should probably drop them.

4. Don't setup charges against spearmen - control the shooting tempo and make them take the disadvantage of charging you.

5. I probably need a unit to deal with enemy flyers and potentially a unit to harass/eliminate enemy backline units - enemy archers were never touched in my first two games.