So last night I got a chance to get in not 1, but 2 games of Relics down at the club.
It was hoped that I would get destroyed or at the very least lose ;) Seems the Ridend had other plans as we worked on how they played out nicely.
So the lists of the first game were the following:
Ridend:
Vaettir:
Thoughts were to try out 300 pts so we could try out more troops each.
Just a straight up pitched battle with some basic terrain set up inside.
I forgot to take photos at the beginning of the game but you can see my forces attempting to make it across the table from the bottom of the photos. Iain was trying to move his troops forward as well into the center ( but were proxing his Vaettir troops from Ridend models ).
I really had no idea what I was doing here, and I was setting up the Kapolop Knights to charge his troops when they came into range. Considering that this was the first time I have played with the Ridend, and has been a while since I played last it was interesting to see how they worked while playing them :)
Turn 3 here.. and I had attempted to charge the Sol troops with the Kapolop Knights. I did not fare well for me here. Though we played the fire attack wrong for the Sol, and they took more damage than they probably should have :)
The archers were able to do a bit of damage to the Vicieros, but nothing major there.
The dragon tower was starting to do well even without moving by just putting spot tokens on things. But I was not really working on synchronizing the units so well in this game, so he put the spot on the Vicieros instead of the Sols. And the Kapolop troops suffered from that and their lack of extra dice to hit.
Turn 4 we see the Vicieros fail a charge against the Baron ( thank you spot token to remove charge bonus ), and the Baron was able to slip behind them. The Broken had tried to charge but were blocked by their own troops, so moved forward instead. The second Baron with Retinue charged in, and used the Fight from the Front skill to give them a bit of assistance, but it did not really help too much. The 5 knights were slowly making their way towards the Sol to get revenge for the dead comrades on chickens!
Turn 5.. the foot knights charge into the Sol. And they lay one heck of a smack down! Having the ability to get 3 dice, plus 1 on the charge, and be able to re-roll one due to furiousity skill. They were quite deadly...
Quite the smack down indeed here! ( Oh and the Bolt Action dice was used to track which unit had already moved or taken their turns :) How can you tell we play a lot of Bolt Action in the club :) ).
The Baron and Retinue would still hold firm against the Broken, but do nothing in return either.
Turn 6 and I lose a little drummer chicken, but also squish his hero in the process. And kill more Viciero with the Baron in close combat. Dragon tower has not had to move, still within the 10 inch command range of the Baron ( who is knocked down ) but putting out Spot tokens. At this point I am beginning to better understand where they should be and where they should go.
Turn 7.. yeah.. we just kept going. We never really picked a total of turns or something.. just decided to keep going. The foot knights turning around to face the Broken, while the Viciero died at the hands of the Baron.
The Broken would finally get put down by the foot knights with some more spectacular dice rolling once more!
The broken have a 4+ hardened which makes them terrible to put down, but it seems the Foot Knights are ready for the task and put a nice 6 hit combo on them to finally take them down :) It was basically at this point I was beginning to understand the combos better within the army.
Learning points from the game and this army. Everything needs to work together. Just one type of troops do not work with this army at all, but when working together, in a small space they are quite deadly. Having the buffs stack up in a round of combat were brutal near the end there.
An example was.. Foot knight with 3 combat, charging +1 combat, against a spotted unit +1 combat, and if the fight from the front was added to them, thats another +1 combat to add to them. Giving the knights 6 dice a piece on a charge! Even with defense 1, they are getting 5 dice and with 5 in the unit they were dealing out some mega hurt to the Vaettir!
The Kapolop Knights should not have attacked head on though. They should have been used as a supporting unit to get into a unit that is a bit more squishy ( 1 wound ) and without defense if possible. Though looking back, there are some deadly combos with them as well to get them to dish out 7 dice in combat! Base of 3 combat, +1 for Impetious ( though -1 defense for it also ), +1 for charge, +1 for FftF, and +1 for Spotted troop. But no re-roll available, which honestly I think is what gives the Foot Knights an edge.
Barons are good solo, but excel with their Retinue alongside them. And after seeing the conversation on FB about the troops, they can only take advantage of the FftF skill if they have them ( otherwise they are considering Independents ).
Dragon tower.. well.. best tactic is to keep it away from enemies, and within command range. So that they can keep on spotting to give the bonuses.
Archers.. well their tactics and uses are quite limited. And I think that unless they can be made into units of 9, I do not think they will be very effective. Their special skill of re-roll only coming into effect when you gang up, and having low numbers don't make them too useful.
I have another bat rep to put up, but will post it up for tomorrow then! Where I take out the Kapolops and Archers and focus on just Foot knights, barons with retinue and a dragon tower!