I brought the Wood Elves, mainly because they are all I have. Still waiting on my Waywatchers to show up, and it's at the point that I'm getting a bit nervous about their arrival (should have been here by now). So little goblins are used as proxies.
Wood Elves:
-Spellweaver, level 4, dispel scroll, asrai longbow (Pit of Shades, the Withering, Miasma, Pendulum)
-Waystalker
-Waystalker
-Glade Guard, x10, Hagbane, Musician, Standard
-Glade Guard, x10, Hagbane, Musician, Standard
-Glade Guard, x10, Hagbane, Musician, Standard
-Wild Riders x5
-Wild Riders x5
-Waywatchers x5
-Waywatchers x5
-Great Eagle
-Great Eagle
Ogres:
-Slaughterdude, level 3, dispel scroll (He had the +1 toughness power, a panic power, and the 4+ regen (uggh!) one)
-BSB guy, heavy armor
-Ironguts x5
-Ironguts(I think, might be normal dudes) x7
-Leadbelchers x6
-Sabertusk
-Sabertusk
-Mournfang Cavalry x3
I was actually dreading having to play against this army a good deal. Our local Ogre Kingdom players is pretty great, so my only real advantage was that he's never played 1,500 points before. I apologized many times that I was unable to field 2000+ yet, so we ended up fighting a battle over the Watchtower!
Unfortunately I forgot to take any more pictures after the first one, but positions didn't change too much after the early rounds. This is after deployment, scouts, and vanguard moves. The tower to the left is the Hatred giving structure, the marsh is the 6+ regeneration one, and none of the others will matter. The white primed forest was mine. I ended up deploying a 10 man glade guard as bait in the watchtower.
So having control of the Watchtower, my opponent began his turn. He declared a charge on my Great Eagle with his left Sabertusk. I chose to flee and he chose to redirect into my Wild Riders (which we determined post game was probably a bad move). My Great Eagle flees only 5 inches and my Wild Riders make their Panic test. His Sabertusk makes it into the Wild Riders with a huge charge! Next, his big block charges directly at the tower and I managed to inflict 2 wounds with their stand and shoot. He moves up everything else a bit, placing his other Sabertusk in front of my Great Eagle, walking his Leadbelchers to be within shooting ranged of my glade guard unit with the spellweaver, and skirting his other ogre unit alongside the Watchtower. His Mournfang kind of reposition a bit and just move forward to try to get a later charge off on the Wild Riders. So, yeah, he ignored my Waywatchers completely. His shooting wasn't amazing, and he took out one Glade Guard from the unit to the left in the forest that was holding the Spellweaver. Close combat went favorably, although I didn't manage to kill his Sabertusk with my Wild Riders until after he killed one (the mounts finished him off). I also managed to inflict two more wounds from the Glade Guard in the center unit onto the huge block of characters he had. He then took down 9 Glade Guard in return, and I held up with my Bannerman.
On my turn, I declared a charge onto his exposed Leadbelchers from my Wild Riders, moved the other Wild Riders back a bit (and this was a bad idea, as they were left within the charge arc of the 7-Ogre unit. And tossed my Great Eagle at an angle in front of his Mournfang (which bought me another round of shooting). The Waywatchers all repositioned towards the rear of his army, while the left Great Eagle rallied. Magic phase was almost a bust, but I managed to get off the Withering on his 7-Ogre unit and made them lose a toughness. He used his Dispel Scroll on my Pit of Shades. Shooting ended up putting 2 wounds on his Mournfang from the Waywatchers/stalker, while doing 1 wound on his 7-Ogre unit from the other Waywatchers/stalker. I tossed all my shots into the 7-Ogre unit from the glade guard units and turned it into a 6-Ogre unit. In close combat, my Wild Riders removed three leadbelchers from the board, but lost three in return. With the charge and being up by 6 wounds inflicted, I won combat and chased them down with the remaining Wild Rider. Bare-bones, that's a wicked little 130 point unit!
His next turn was pretty good. He charged my Wild Riders with his 6-Ogre unit and his right Sabertusk, charged my lone Glade Guard in the watchtower with his big unit, and slammed into my Great Eagle with his Mournfang (positioned in a solid way to prevent any real overrun attempt. Magic went well for his, as he got off a bubbled 4+ regen on all of his units (which I forgot all game to see if that was a power I could dispel on my turn). No more shooting, at least. Close combat saw a dead Sabertusk from the Wild Riders and no wounds to the 6-man Ogre unit, and then I lost 4 Wild Riders. His Mournfang took down the Great Eagle with impact hits. The remaining guy ended up running off the table in a later round. His 6-Ogre unit reformed to face down my Glade Guard. The lone Glade Guard bannerman was slain with but a whimper. A mass of ogres now controlled the tower.
I had a good turn too, though. I positioned my glade guard with swift reforms towards his 6-Ogre unit, and brought my Waywatchers around to face the tower, with the other unit moving up behind the Mournfang. I rolled double 6s on the Winds of Magic, and I knew the game could change. I tossed Pit of Shades on the 6-man unit with irresistable force (which only saw me losing 1 wound and 6 dice from my casting pool, well worth it!). Direct hit over 6 ogres and they all failed their toughness. Woot! Shooting had a lot of shots at the Mournfang, and I managed to take 2 out completely and leave another with 2 wounds left. My last Great Eagle moved to intercept any charge they could try for next round, and my Wild Rider (the last one from the left unit that took out the Leadbelchers) moved down towards the center of the board to hopefully face off the Mournfang next round.
His charged my Great Eagle with the Mournfang as expected, and ended up killing it no problem. Magic found the unit inside the Watchtower with a 4+ regen and 1+ toughness, as he didn't want to risk the big bubble cast so he could force me to address the Mournfang issue. He overran from the Eagle a bit and I knew my last Wild Rider could make the charge.
I started the turn debating to not charge from the Wild Rider into the lone Mournfang, but decided against it since I was pretty sure I could take him out. Magic was a bust on my end (I cast Pit of Shades, but he dispelled it). Shot tons into the bunkered unit in the Watchtower and inflicted some wounds into the unit. My Wild Rider took down the Mournfang and was hoping my overrun would stop me from possibly having to check to charge into the Watchtower unit, which it did. Excellent.
End of turn 3.
The game at this point was a game of Magic phase. I couldn't do much to him if he had a good magic phase, and he was just sitting there buying as much time as possible. Luckily the game continued on to the point that I managed to grind down his models with Pit of Shades and Withering and mass shooting. In the end, I won on Turn 7 (which we were kind of unsure about - it says the game "at least continues another round", so we assumed that meant keep rolling until the turn number + d6 roll equaled 10). Hopefully we didn't do too many mistakes on the rules, but he's a pretty experienced player, and we were checking the rulebook as much as was felt was required to make sure we had them down.
It was a hardfought match for sure, and we talked a bit about the battle afterwards. I told him I don't know why he chose to redirect his Sabertusk into my Wild Riders on the first turn, as he could have blown them away with his Leadbelchers. He agreed, and realized then that he probably should have tried getting them into the Watchtower, which would have been brutal for me. Taking down his Leadbelchers early and making his Mournfang ineffective through Great Eagles really did a lot for me (and I was highly amused that his Mournfang only killed two Great Eagles all game, heh). The magic phase was unbelievably important for both of us. Lowering his toughness and making him take initiative tests were huge swings for me, and him increasing his toughness and giving out 4+ regen is ridiculous for his units against my Str 3 bows. It was a really fun game, though, and I learn a lot for my first game with Wood Elves. I can't wait to get them back on the field, and hopefully for much more than a 1,500 point game.
Note: I'll try to not forget to take pictures of each round/turn next time. It was a pretty intense game overall, so it kept slipping my mind.
