Revolting Goblins and Ornery Orcs in Massive Midgard battle

[Grah]

We played a big 1050+ point large Migard battle between an Orc army and a Mixed Hob/Goblin army a few weeks ago.

Great fun was had and we found that Midgard handled something that large really easily.

I have written up the battle in three parts. It was a bit too big to go all on one post on my new blog  dont lose this one   (having lost the credentials to previous blogs!)

Cheers,
Grah

[Pattus Magnus]

Wow, those are BIG armies! It’s awe inspiring to see so many painted figures deployed for a game.

[Grah]

Yeah, that Orc army is 40+ years in the making and I have never had the opportunity to field it in one battle before.

And it is all down to James Morris who has re-awoken my desire to raise my orc battle standards in such numbers. I did try some WFB 3rd edition last year with about half of on the table at a time it but it has been a while since I had played that. It seems wayyyy more fiddly than I remember! 

Thanks James for spending all that time working on a ruleset that allows us to play big games and normal-sized games in a decent amount of time and just have fun doing it

[Pattus Magnus]

Yes, James definitely put a lot into Midgard and in my opinion it’s a pretty great system for the kind of games I enjoy. There are some kinds of fantasy battles that it wouldn’t fit well with (character/hero figures are definitely on the mortal end of the spectrum in Midgard - if you want a game with “level 30 dragon slaying mega characters” this isn’t it), but it does what it was designed to do quite well. And like you say, Grah, it’s fun! There’s something cool about accumulating renown tokens when a character does something heroic!

[Grah]

That is good fun although I am still in two minds about whether the attacker has an advantage in that regard. If they can engage the whole enemy battleline with the first charge (big if, with command test mishaps, I know ) and get reputation from doing it with leader charges then there may be no unengaged front line troops for the defender to lead charges into combat with on the subsequent defender phase.

I have noticed several times where the attacker gets a big boost in reputation early from leading such charges in. It does up the risk for the attackers' leaders and may all even out in the wash if some of them are wounded but 4-5 rep gained from three leader charging in (1 per leader, first charge, army leader charging etc) is a big chunk in a maybe 9 initial rep 300 pt game. It is glorius though and fun and quick 

[James Morris]

Really glad that you are enjoying Midgard! That game looks epic - great to see these kind of projects hitting the table.

I think that the Reputation bonuses for the Attacker are only a big factor if your Defender sits there and accepts all the charges. There are several ways to avoid this - careful positioning of troops (you don’t need to deploy right at the front of your deployment zone); use of Skirmishers to screen; and having heroes ready to lead their own charges helps.

[Grah]

Thanks for those tips James. Mistakes and bad luck in the one army did mean that they had far fewer heroes in any position to lead charges which contributed to the disparity in reputation at the end.

What your answer just made me realise as well is that Light Infanty (skirmishers) have the same flexibility of movement as Skirmishers (shooters) - moving a full ST in any direction, retreating through their own troops etc. Up to now I just had it in my mind that this was only for shooters. Hmmm. That's going to lead to more fun times