A couple of weeks ago, I asked for advice to round out my Daqan and Waiqar armies to field 200 point armies. Thanks again to everyone who offered advice. I ended up buying a Reanimate expansion pack and a crossbowmen expansion pack. Thread:

Last weekend, my brother and I got the new armies to the table. My brother played the Daqan and I played the Waiqar. The following is a loose summary of the battle that featured a fair share of charges into the ether and readying weapons to swing at nothing it turned out.

Waiqar Horde :

• Reanimate Archers 2x1 (Rank Discipline) - 22 points
• Ardus (Ancient Technique) - 39 points
• Reanimates 3x2 (File Leader, Trumpets) - 43 points
• Ankaur (Reg. Magic) - 45 points
• Carrion Lancer 2x1 (Master Crafted Weapons, Moment of Inspiration) - 36 points
• Carrion Lancer - 15 points
• Total - 200 points

Squishy Humans :

• Rune Golems 2x1 (Visored Helms) - 35 points
• Lord Hawthorne (Shield of Margath, Might of Daqan) - 44 points
• Kari (Heartseeker, Wraithstep) - 43 points
• Spearman 2x2 (Greyhaven Channeler, Rallying Cornicen) - 40 points
• Oathsworn Cavalry 2x1 (Wind Rune, Moment of Inspiration) - 36 points
• Total - 198 points

Unfortunately, my Waiqar command pack arrived one day too late due to a slow e-bay shipper, so the lieutenants in the Waiqar army were late to the battle, limiting the options for Waiqar army construction. I used Ardus' ability to make the 2x1 Carrion Lancer pack a little extra punch in the form of Master Crafted Weapons to try to take down higher armor units. My brother skipped my new Crossbowmen entirely and opted for a more upgrade focused build. He spent about an hour reading all of the upgrade cards while I was putting my kids to bed and setting up the battlefield and came up with a support based spearmen unit and as I would discover, a skeleton consuming Lord Hawthorne.

On to the battle, we played the confluence of magic scenario with the oblique formation deployment, with the sniveling humans in the corner deployment area (the blue one I believe).

We ended up with all of the tokens and armies grouped across from each other, leaving one end of the battlefield empty and largely unused, as I felt I needed to contest the objective tokens. Only one terrain placement was involved in the battle as the forest was essentially in the center of the battlefield. The humans from left to right went Rune Golems, Hawthorne, Spearmen, Kari, and Oathsworn, with all of the units pointed directly across the battlefield save the Oathsworn, which were aimed at a couple of tokens and the largely unused portion of the battlefield. The Waiqar forces were aligned from right to left with the solo Lancer, Ardus, Reanimates, 2x1 Lancer in front of Ankaur, and finally with the Archers facing the forest directly in front of them.

The initial runes had four unstable runes, making Ankaur a potential damage machine if the runes didn't change.

The Golems charged in to grab some objective tokens and proceeded to get blighted by the solo Lancer. The Lancer followed up with a charge that took out one of the Golems out using the blight for a mortal strike and four additional damage. The remaining Golem and the Lancer then locked into a battle of attrition that the Lancer lost many turns later (turn 6 or 7). In retrospect, I probably should have skipped attacking with the Lancer and blighted the Golem again, since he had ridiculous defense on the turns when the Daqan acted first due to the Visored Helms, but a lesson for next time.

Ardus, Hawthorne and the two infantry blocks engaged in a bit of a dance in which my Reanimates charged on turn two and ended up whiffing when the spearmen did not advance as I hoped. The following turn Hawthorne was able to charge and flank the Reanimates and was able to cause them to Flee in Terror. Skeletons fleeing in terror didn't seem very thematic to me, but Hawthorne is a bad man. He took out two trays on the initial attack. For whatever reason, Lord Hawthorne lost his nerve to continue pressing the attack on the Reanimates after his initial success and fled towards the center of the battlefield, which in a generous interpretation was to aid his fellow humans in the battle against the famed necromancer Ankaur Maro, but Hawthorne admitted after the battle the he was spooked about getting surrounded and flanked by Ardus and the Reanimates and cowardly fled the danger. Eventually Ardus was able to successfully charge and flank the Spearmen, who were focused on trying to save Kari...

The other side of the battle saw Kari and the 2x1 Lancers each cautiously move forward to capture objective tokens and the following turn the Carrion Lancers were able to successfully charge Kari and utilize Moment of Inspiration and Master Crafted Weapons to put two wounds on Kari in one vicious attack. Kari would fall to the Carrion Lancers over the course of the next two turns while only able to inflict two wounds on one of the Lancers. The Spearmen were desperately trying to aid Kari during this portion of the battle, but were blocked by Kari and couldn't get an angle to charge. This was the subject of a bit of a rules debate, but I believe we correctly ruled that the Spearman could not pass through Kari and then square up on the flank of the Carrion Lancers. The failure of the Spearmen to come to Kari's aid was devastating for both units, as Ardus was able to flank the Spearmen while the Lancers finished Kari off and then the Lancer were able to charge into the Spearmen and finish them off in a pincer move with Ardus.

Finally on the far side of the battle, the Oathsworn were able to plant themselves in the forest on turn 2 and lost a single unit due to a late Reanimate Archer volley, but then utilized an early charge to completely destroy the Archers the next turn. After ineffectively shifting and readying ranged attacks for enemies that didn't advance as expected, Ankaur was finally ready to inflict serious damage to the Oathsworn, who were at a diagonal to him and so could not charge him after destroying the archers. Unfortunately for Maro, the power of the wind rune was revealed the next turn as the Oathsworn were able to advance and shift to engage Ankaur prior to the unleashing of his mighty four white die ranged attack to destroy the cavalry. Maro, spooked by the speed of the Oathsworn, then resorted to melee attacks to attempt to destroy the cavalry. Maro eventually prevailed and was able to destroy the three Oathsworn units remaining, but only due to the Oathsworn completely whiffing on their dice rolling for several rounds in a row with no rerolls to bail them out. Not surprisingly, after the battle my brother said he would love to have more Oathsworn available for inclusion in the army.

During this time, Lord Hawthorne wandered the center of the battlefield seemingly dazed by the losses occurring all around him. Eventually his resolve returned and he once again attacked the Reanimates who had turned around and foolishly charged Hawthorne, which resulted in no damage to Hawthorne and Reanimates being chewed up by the Shield of Margath. Hawthorne finished the job on the Reanimates the next turn, but when he finished his work, he only saw a single Golem still standing from the host that he originally led into battle. A wounded Ankaur Maro, a pair of Carrion Lancers, and Ardus all remained at the end of the carnage, giving the Waiqar horde the victory.

In the end it was tons of fun, but the battle took a long time with several breaks to look up rules and look at the dials of the opposing army to figure out what was possible. Both my brother and I felt like we were losing at a various points during the battle, especially when on what I believe was the same turn when my Reanimates lost two trays and fled in terror and my reanimate archers were completely annihilated by the Oathsworn. After the battle, we both agreed that the key points were when the Lancers were able to charge and eventually kill Kari, when Ankaur was able to miraculously survive due to several blanks by the Oathsworn, and when Hawthorne lost his nerve in the middle of the battle.

The next battle will probably be smaller scale elves vs. demons as I bought both army expansions to try out the other factions. I have a lot of painting to do...

Nice report! A rules observation: It sounds like you rules Kari and the Spearmen correctly. The Spearmen can ignore one tray of friendlies on their movement, but have to be able to end their movement legally where they collide before they can square up. That sounds like what didn't happen, so they would collide with Kari and stop.

14 minutes ago, kaffis said:

2   )  It sounds like you might need to look over the rules   for exiting terrain. Most things can't charge out of terrain, because the terrain exiting rules replace t  heir normal movement then cancel the rest of the dial. It tak  es pre-activation moves like Uthuk can get t  o hide in terrain and charge the turn you leave.  

I don't believe exiting terrain cancels your dial the same way that entering terrain does. However, you are not allowed to touch another unit when you exit terrain. Oathsworn can do a march action on the action dial to exit and a march bonus action on the modifier dial to move away from terrain. In this case, they would not be able to touch an enemy at the end of the first march, but could collide with the second march. Unfortunately, that second march would not be modified by a charge. This is why Flesh Rippers can charge out of terrain. Their mandatory march before revealing their command tool forces them to exit terrain. They can have a march action and charge modifier set on their command tool to then charge into something nearby.

Yeah, mental slip without rules at hand. You're right. I'll edit it when I get home.

4 hours ago, Budgernaut said:

5 hours ago, kaffis said:

2   )  It sounds like you might need to look over the rules   for exiting terrain. Most things can't charge out of terrain, because the terrain exiting rules replace t  heir normal movement then cancel the rest of the dial. It tak  es pre-activation moves like Uthuk can get t  o hide in terrain and charge the turn you leave.   

I don't believe exiting terrain cancels your dial the same way that entering terrain does. However, you are not allowed to touch another unit when you exit terrain. Oathsworn can do a march action on the action dial to exit and a march bonus action on the modifier  dial to move away from terrain. In this case, they would not be able to touch an enemy at the end of the first march, but could collide with the second march  . Unfortunately, that second march would not be modified by a charge. This is why Flesh Rippers can charge out of terrain. Their mandatory march before revealing their command tool forces them to exit terrain. They can have a march action and charge modifier set on their command tool to then charge into something nearby.

Thanks for the tip on exiting terrain. I definitely remember that in the rules, but it got lost in trying to figure out strategy.