Friday Night Book of War

Trolls and Gnolls Attempt to Cross a Stream Under Orcish Arrow-Fire

So here's a game my girlfriend and I played the other weekend.We hadn't played in a while, since (a) I've been crushed and pickled by math-teaching, and (b) my girlfriend was on the other side of the planet for an environmental art residency for a month (link). So we were blowing off a bit of rust. Nonetheless, all the Advanced Rules are in play for us, all unit types in the published BOW booklet, Optional Weather & Morale adjustments, with 300 point armies.


Start -- Opponent at the top, with red figures indicating 100 Gnoll Longbows, along with two figures of 20 Trolls and one Frost Giant. I'm at the bottom with masses of Orc Archers (330), a Storm Giant, and a Gold Dragon (charmed?). The last piece of terrain set down was that winding Stream, placed by myself in as uncomfortable a location for the enemy as possible (in particular, with that narrow and unmaneuverable strip between it and the Marsh). Weather was found to be Cloudy (no modifiers to anyone).

Turn 1 -- Enemy moved units up to the stream, after which I moved all my units on the right flank a half-move. This allowed me to get a few shots off at long range and kill two Gnoll figures (but didn't have any morale effect).

Turn 2 -- Opponent had Gnoll Longbows stand & fire, while Trolls marched full across the Stream (slowing their movement). This allowed all of my forces to launch a full barrage against the ferocious Trolls and wipe them out completely! I actually had a surplus of attack dice that got wasted because of this, but it was well worth the cost. That's a tremendous blow to my opponent's main strategy.

Turn 4 -- Now we're engaged in a long-range missile combat. Her Gnolls & Giant are standing and throwing missiles, reducing my forces (but again, morale stays good). I've pushed forward and crossed the Stream on one side, and managed to rout her rightmost group of Gnolls.

Turn 5 -- I've lost my one unit of Orcs in the center, but managed to advance on the right and kill her Giant with arrow-fire.

Turn 7 -- Having degraded her forces to a single figure, on the last turn I've launched my Gold Dragon forwards for an auto-kill, engulfing the last group of Gnolls in Fire Breath. Victory to the Orcish Mob!

Commentary -- A pretty good example of the game, if more lopsided than usual. The terrain and weather were ideal for my cheap missile-heavy strategy (specifically: all terrain could be fired over, no orcish morale penalty from sun nor missile penalty from rain), and slowing the Trolls down with the Stream was key to my being able to eliminate them. Plus, my girlfriend being a bit rusty helped me. She seems pretty fired up now to give me a different lesson next time, yikes.