1st game of Lord and Lands

We had out first game of Lord and Lands by Craig Armstrong this week and I'm happy to say that it did not disappoint. It had been a few weeks since either of us had read the rules, so there was a bit of flicking back and forth to check things, but the guts of it flowed pretty well even then. I took us about two hours from start to finish, and that included the looking up of army lists and creation of an undead horde.

Brett fielded two units of wights, one unit of skeletal cavalry, two units each of skeleton archers, warriors, spearmen, a bone giant, and an undead dragon. I was running the halfling militia of Hearthshire (well sort of, I had an older list but didn't realise it - so while Brett had 1200 points of skellies, I had 1320 points of stunties; whoops!).

The undead horde pushed forward generally along it's whole front, moving faster on the wings where the cavalry, dragon and wights on my left flank, and the bone giant on the right flank, looked rather intimidating. The halfling poultry riding skirmishers on the left, and skirmishing rangers on the right pushed forward to meet them, while my centre held back.

On my left the bone giant swept down over the poultry patrol to take on my cockatrice. Meanwhile, the poultry riders make the most of their skirmishing powers to evade the skeleton cavalry and epper them with darts.

On my right, my tree folk lumbered up to engage the bone giant. 

As the lints start to close, the skeleton riders crumble to dust and I consistently block the line of sight of my artillery piece. 

The poultry patrol start to sweep around the exposed flank of the undead army, while the cockatrice takes a right battering from his bony opponent. 

However, as the lines crash in the centre, the paltry effectiveness of my halflings begins to show. At this pint, we discovered that skirmishers didn't count towards the total number of units in an army when calculating breakpoints, and it becomes apparent that - with six skirmishing units n the army, the Hearthshire militia is actually rather brittle. I'm not sure that ineffective+brittle=victorious,  but you know, when in Rome...

As the cockatrice is destroyed and my treefolk start to suffer, my militia forces in the centre take a battering and victory starts to look a bit doubtful. And then we realised that mounted always get a +1 against infantry (except when they have spears or pikes), and that therefore, enveloping flank charges, even by relatively ineffective mounted skirmishers, can be quite powerful. As my halfling yeoman cavalry were decimated, the poultry chaps swung in from the flank and rode down a unit of wights and a unit of archers, securing the halflings a great (if Pyrrhic) victory.

Moral of the story: skirmishers are very effective. They have a 50% chance of evading charges - and in this game I thing I was lucky and was only caught ones. Further more, they can make closing shots, so there is a chance (again, I managed it repeatedly) that they can be charged, fire closing shots, evade, and then shoot in the subsequent shooting phase.

Learning point: if the other guy takes loads of skirmishers, take cavalry and try to ride them down, securing a +2 melee bonus.