Welcome to Gull's own Battleground Blog!

This is my personal space about YMG's Battleground: Fantasy and Historical Warfare miniatureless miniatures game. If you love miniatures wargames, but are put off by the expense in time and money of collecting and painting all those figures, this is the game for you! If you are unfamiliar with Battleground simply click on the tutorial link below and watch a quick sample combat. Next, click on the forum link and meet some really great folks who will be responsive and answer all your questions. If you are already familiar with BG:FW&HW this site is an adjunct to the forums where I put up my own brand of replays and and stuff that just wouldn't fit in the forum (but I'll post links!).

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Wuxing v Lizardmen

Here we have the two epic foes facing each other. The Lizardmen have fielded an army of swarmlings, trogs, and a trike. On the right in this foto you will also note a raptor pack. I was trying out the Wuxing faction and so I took a wide variety of units. From left to right I have Fu dogs, Jade Nobles, Salvaged Terracotta Warriors, Wuxing Heavy Cav, Salvaged Terracotta Warriors, Terracotta Swordsmen, Shenzhi Monks with Jun Horse Archers just behind, In the center I also have my Rocket Arrow Battery. Wuxing has nine units to the Lizardmen eight, but Wuxing has the Rocket Arrows stand and shoot, so the main vans of each army are eight units wide




Below you can see the lines have started advancing. The Raptor Pack at the top of the foto is moving out to try and instigate some decisive action. On the Wuxing left the Fu Dogs are seen making for the red die with the ultimate attempt to outflank the Lizardmen. In the foreground can be seen the wine that was consumed during the evening as we are civilized cosmopolitan Generals. Of course, I don't drink, so it was all part of my attempt to boggle my opponents thought processes. Of note before the forces engaged, the Wuxing Rocket Arrows had fired a couple of volleys at the swarminlings in the Lizardmen center and had fairly shredded them! The Jun Horse Archers had caused a point of damage and the Wuxing Heavy Cav had failed to do any damage. Their MC had been capped to 3.5" to match the line, but even with no move and shoot penalty my rolls just failed me there.



And they Clash! This foto is taken from the other end of the table, so now you will note the forces on the other side from the picture above. At the top of the picture you can see the Fu Dogs have reached their objective and turned to face the line. Moving down the line we can see the Jade nobles and the Trog Spearmen have begun what will become a gamelong grindfest which was helped by my EPIC FAIL charge turn dice as captured in the foto below this one. The trikes did heavy damage on the Salvaged Terracotta Warriors, but failed to follow it up with any success. The Wuxing construct's psychological immunity really told in this battle. James took the Lizardmen with the intent of outlasting Wuxing in the beatdown, but he didn't count on the no-rout and he did count on breakdowns, which drained me of CAs, but not as heavily as one might think, and I was able to draw many cards. The rest of the line was a grind untill we reach the flank where my Horse Archers stepped up to the plate and pinched the Raptor Pack that had charged the Monks.


The Raptors go poof and the game should be gravy now as Wuxing rolls up the Lizardmen right flank.

But wait, the salvaged in the center are reduced to fine dust and the Heavy cav gets pinched. The Lizardmen are back in the game! It is worth noting at this point that the Trikes had to take a morale check and if they had failed James would have called the game. It did look for awhile as if the Lizardmen were surely done in. However, in my experience, that usually means the game is going to end with the other player winning :-P



Which very nearly happened as you can see at this end game foto where the Lizardmen have three units (two trogs and a trike) all in the yellow, and Wuxing has the monks with one red box, undamaged Jun Horse Archers, the undamaged Rocket Arrows, and the Jade nobles about to go poof in a pinch.


Well, fast forward a few turns and you have one trog spearmen in the yellow and the Horse archers and Rocket Artillery ready to do in the trogs with relative impunity. It was late and we called a draw even though if we ran it out I would have certainly plnked the Trogs to death and if he had charged the rocket arrows I would have pinched him. One major error was James forgetting to invoke the Saurian Blood thirst on my guys which were in the yellow and red, which was most of the game. That alone would have tipped the scales. Also we had a situation where my units front arc was ahead of a Lizzies side center point and we decided since it was clearly visible he could charge as we culdn't find a rule that said you couldn't do that. If you go through the Final Rush steps it doesn't say clearly anywhere that the target unit has to be in the front arc. I'm sure that in the clearly visible rules it says that, but all that is in the FR section is a reference to the clearly visible rules. As read they make it seem that you could charge in any direction as long as the opponent was in the LOS of the unit. Ultimately, it wouldn't have been that much of a game changer as I could have FR'ed to the side and achieved the ssame success, but it was late and we were tired. Below you can also see James' array of useless cards since he could engage with me.



Here are the Dividers that made a real successful debut this game. The wide one was set to 3.5" and the small one was at 1.25" (L & 1/2S respectively). All movement and range measuring was done with great precision and the cards were not disturbed by the act of measuring. This was the first game where James had used my new bases and he gave them an enthusiatic two thumbs way up! They were quick to slide the cards onto and fulfilled the obligatory mark/erase needs without touching the card. There was so much text on the Rocket Arrow battery that the damage track wasn't under the sleeve, so I just sleeved them conventionally.

I will let James post his Wuxing impressions, but these were mine. Wuxing is a really fun and very interesting faction to play. It feels very different. You have to fix  construct units when they breakdown because otherwise being in the yellow costs you three attack dice and being in the red costs four. They don't rout, which makes them tough, but you still have to expend a CA to repair them or the outcome will not be in doubt. The benefit is you don't get a hole in your line, the drawback is that it will cost you a CA to fix whereas sometimes a regular unit will pass it rout check. I like the Monks and the way they work, James has very strong feelings about them however, not that they are over powered, but that they should cost more. We will see after he plays Wuxing next time. They certainly wouldn't have lasted so long if he had remembered to use bloodthirsty.

1 comment:

  1. If you are on the BattleGround boards please post your comments here http://yourmovegames.com/forum/index.php/topic,5002.new.html#new so we can keep all such comments in one place. If however, you just want to be snarky go ahead and post right here ;-)

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