So, let us step a little back in time. I'm still fielding the big bus list with the Star Lance BSB, mini-unit of 10 white lions, 2 repeaters, 18 archers and 2 units of 5 sisters. I was looking at a big unit of knights errant with HKB lord (1+rr), two tank heroes, a BSB and a Level 4 Heavens with Crown of Command, all in one unit. Another lesser bus was made of Realm Knights with a couple more characters, after which 3 or so small units of knights, a unit of pegasi and two trebuchets.
Deployment
The field was scattered with terrain bits and bobs but, apart from a large wood in the middle of the field, most of these were fairly unobtrusive. A ruined building protect my left flank and a non-ruined building did the same for my opponent. Since the scenario was meeting engagement, I set-up an enveloping move on my right and deployed to hold on the left, relying on my shooting and magic to burn away some knights before mobbing them to death from a couple of angles. Obviously, in this context, the only thing I could hit the huge hero bus with was my own helm bus, bringing in the swordmasters for support.
Early Game
I won first turn because my opponent was praying, and I ran into the first problem with double High Magic. You see, the excellent spell selection the lore offers is excellent because it offers you useful tools against any army. The problem is that not all of those tools are useful against every army, but if you've only got High spells, you have to make do with the most useful spells and a hail of close-range magic missiles. In this game my primary magic strategy involved Unforging, movement-boosting magic and a hail of Str 4 magic missiles. Turn 1, I naturally had very little to do with all those missiles. Fortunately, I had Unforging to throw at the Bret lord, and I managed a wound, albeit without destroying any items on a 2+ (damn). My WBW put one of my eagles within charge range of a trebuchet, all good. Then things got even when, Bret Turn 1 my opponent brought forward his big knight buses and kicked off his excellent anti-flyer magic phase. Too many dice to stop, and the eagle threatening the treb was killed off. But that was ok because my opponent had miscast on 3 dice and blown his level 4’s head off, putting another wound on his general and most of his heroes (although he warded a couple).
This made my opponent deeply upset (as well it might). So while I was moving my units about he dejectedly explained to me how, if his mage was alive, all he really needed to do to win was drop a comet. But I was happily chuckling to myself that, without a caster, these humans were toast. Then, after my Turn 1 movement phase – my units circling to envelope the tight-knit Bretonnian army, something changed in the air. My opponent wasn’t speaking any more and his hand was trembling. Adrenaline. Uhoh, thinks I… What have I forgotten?
Early moves and an exploding Prophetess
I’d made some decent moves this turn. The Brets had remained quite static while their level 4 caught up (and exploded), so I’d got a volley off for free and already begun to envelope the right flank. If the Brets wanted to bomb toward my infantry line, I would flank them. Until they made any such move, I would shoot them, shield my big elite unit with High Magic, finish their general off, close and strike. That eagle and the chariot were closing in for some new charges against the trebuchets, and frankly everything looked peachy. So what was my opponent so excited about? I looked over at the 15- strong silver helm bus. It stood within sight of the Bretonnian Herobus, but it was miles away… Um... Unless my opponent had that 'extra dice on his first charge' virtue, maybe?
OH. SHIT.
Throwing a load of dice at Walk Between Worlds to get my last eagle in the way did no good – dispelled. Brets' turn now, and my opponent declares the charge. It’s still only a 50/50 whether or not he gets in and… he does. His lord, still only on one wound, challenges. My prince proudly accepts, but only hits twice on 3+rr and then fails to get a wound through his enemy’s 5+ rr armour save. No! I get Killing Blow'd and the silver helms, who can’t get wounds through the wall of armour in the front rank, are in turn hit by all those charging lances (the real killer) and broken. They get away, but the BSB falls off his horse and dies, and next turn the unit fails to rally on Ld 9 and runs off the board.
Holy crap. My furious response to this disaster was to open up on the Bretonnian general's unit with everything I had and avenge my prince. Arrows and Magic missiles now start grinding knights down. All of my power dice fly at Arcane Unforging for that last wound on the Bret lord… Dispelled. Two single bolts from the repeaters fly at the flank of the front rank of the big bus (including the lord and 2 heros): one hit… and I roll 1 to wound. Gagh!
Staying Alive
Buying myself time for the shooting to take effect, the chariot moves up into the teeth of the big bus to act as an impromptu eagle. My opponent doesn’t fancy this – the air is too hot with bolts and arrows – so he reforms the big bus and makes a beeline for his back line. With the way cleared, my light units now come into the game. The chariot flank charges the Pegasus knights and eventually breaks them, runs them down and overruns into a small knight unit – which it then beats and breaks. My silver helms chase a small lance off and redirect into a dual charge with the white lions which persuades my opponent to run his second bus away too. One of my sister units receives a charge from another small knight unit – charging through the central wood and suffering from fire on the way in, and actually beats it when it rubber lances and breaks.
All this sounds great, but it isn’t, because on Turn 4, long after my archmage had gone AWOL on his mission to stay within 24” of the Bret lord and cast Arcane Unforging every turn, the unprotected swordmasters get hammered by 2 treb shots and cease to be as an effective standing unit (although they hold their ground and survive the game). The white lions get into combat with the second bus when it rallies, but are ground out in 2 rounds – chiefly by the Bret BSB whom my opponent had cleverly switched into this new unit. It was a little unlucky to lose all 10 elves in only 2 rounds against non-charging knights, but a unit of 10 lions suffers more from bad first rounds than other units, since they cripple its fighting power. In a tough combat like this, without the reliability of getting a combat buff off, the lions wilted. Steadily, all of the fleeing small knight units on the flanks rallied. The nail in the coffin was magic. Two Arcane Unforgings make it through the Bretonnians’ magic defence and strike the Bretonnian general: the first one, I roll a 1 to wound. The second one, my opponent makes his ward save.
That's the last shot on Turn 6. In my head, I sink to my knees, hold my hands up to the heavens and cry out ”WHHHHHHYYYYYY?!” like Sean Connery in First Knight after his wife's pulled Lancelot.
The High Elves push back - just not hard enough.
Game to Brets.
Good things
Once the smoke had cleared, I was genuinely amazed that this army of knights hadn’t just rammed its face into my deployment zone once my bus had run off the table, and destroyed me. As it was, my various light units carried just enough combined weight to win local victories and, with overruns, hem my opponent’s units in. Having enough missile power (and the swords in close contention, still at full strength), to force my opponent to turn his unstoppable bus around and leg it was pretty satisfying. Having failed to run down enough of those fleeing units, and then seeing them all rally, was frustrating. Still, having unexpectedly (if foolishly) lost my star unit on Turn 2, things could have been much, much worse.
Bad things
Er… Yeah. If, like me, you don’t play Brets very often (that’s twice now in 8th), you’ve really got to remember about their ‘roll an extra d6’ charge virtue. That can be a bit of a deal breaker.
Secondly, and more striking to the way that the army played, was that I didn’t have enough genuine threat units in the army to win, and press, valuable victories when things were going wrong on the right flank. The practical truth was that this list wasn’t really MMU combined arms, as the old list was, it was a Helm Bus+Swordmaster Block army with a load of MSU support units. Units of 5 sisters, for example, could act as little more than deployment drops and walking bows: they are too small (even if I got lucky this game), to double as an emergency combat unit where you need it, and this makes them ineffective for holding ground against a wide range of other light units. This burden is therefore shifted on to other units, making it hard for them to achieve bigger and better things.
Meanwhile, the obvious practical truth for units of 10 White Lions is that, without the re-rolls of the previous book, they don't hit as hard as they used to, but they still die just as fast. if I wanted a unit of white lions that could pose a threat in its own right (with some support), as opposed to act only as a glorified support unit itself, I would have to make it a bit bigger.
As previously discussed, 18 archers were fine as a support unit, but they didn’t give me that big ranked unit to send forward when the enemy was on the run, in this instance leaving the lions all alone. There was a disconnect between my units that made them far less mutually useful than I was comfortable with.
Then we come to magic. It was this game that showed most most clearly the limitations of an all-High magic phase. Firstly, having 2 mages in the swordmasters unit made these valuable troopers reluctant to get into combat (because the level 2 had no ward save). Secondly, because of the lack of combat threat coming from any unit but the swords and helms, my magic had to perform, to a disproportionate degree, as a damage-dealer. High magic’s short range made it, outside of Unforging, unsuitable for this against armoured units and, once my power-house combat units were out of action, it wasn’t able to do much except take out the enemy general. Of course, I got unlucky with Unforging, but it was the absence of either intact decent combat units or a wider selection of decent buff spells that really cost me.
Conclusion
It occurred to me, therefore, that the easiest way to balance out my magic abilities and significantly boost my standing combat power was to consolidate my units slightly (so 2x5 sisters becomes one unit of 8; white lions get boosted to 12), and switch up my 2nd caster to Heavens magic, without the ring, to offer more direct support in the form of either long range damage or excellent combat spells. Iceshard Blizzard, in particular, would allow me an easy doubling-up of combat buffs alongside Hand of Glory. So, yeah you can throw away a game by getting something horribly wrong, but there was plenty to learn here too. It’s not until your best units take damage that you realise how important your secondary units can be.
And so, as per our recent discussions on core balance, infantry and lore selection we get to a revised list and, a couple of months later, another tournament… This one I’ll skip through quickly because it brings us to another list edit which, in effect, continued the consolidation we’ve recently seen.
