MEK-OP Game Night: Book of War

This week's Book of War scenario saw an undead army facing off against a living force of lawful units. Each side had two players with a 200 point budget each, for a total of 400 points per side. As usual, my bargain-bin approach to mini battles involves using the plastic figures from the War of the Rings game.

For the sake of making the game more interesting, I statted up some higher-level undead (ghasts, mummies, liches, and a couple of dracolich hero types) to throw into the mix, using their attributes from classic AD&D in Gygax's Monster Manual. All of them were difficult to price, being quite vulnerable to certain types of attack but highly resistant to others. In particular, the last three types were given a fear aura, which required melee troops to make a morale check before entering their area. (Unfortunately I set this to 6 inches, when it probably should have been only 3 inches, given the different scale used for mass battles versus tactical RPG combat. This had decisive implications for the outcome.)

As the player for the living side, I selected a ranged-heavy group.

• a Storm Giant hero (for purposes of weather control)
• a war elephant
• 4 horse archers
• 4 longbowmen
• 5 pikemen
• 1 elf medium infantry and 1 halfling slinger (hiding at start)

The other living player went with a large force of light infantry, pikes, and crossbows, and a Knight Renown hero (essentially a mounted level 10 fighter).

The undead side featured a dracolich, a lich, a figure of mummies, three ghasts, and a handful of weaker skeleton archers and melee types. The weather roll was "sunny" (bad for ghasts and optimal for ranged) and the terrain was forest-rich (bad for ranged and good for melee). The terrain was mostly set up across the center of the map, creating a barrier to movement and sight.

Those horse archers are about to be driven off the map by the dracolich hiding in the forest..

Initially the dracolich positioned itself in the forest, driving away a group of horse archers with its (overly large) fear aura. An abortive attempt to kill the dracolich with the storm giant ended in failure, at the loss of the giant. This exchange (over the second and third combat turns) amounted to the loss of about 70 points of lawful units (out of 400) without a single combat roll.

And there they go!

The tide shifted slightly when the war elephant made a suicide charge on the dracolich, successfully eliminating it. The ghasts counterattacked with lethal efficiency.

After the elephant/dracolich exchange.

As the archers crested one side of the central hill, they began mowing down skeletons. With limited movement the skeletons could do little to close the range. A rear ambush from the hidden elf/halfling team provided a short distraction.

As the lich (with a mummy entourage) moved into range of the central hill, it began systematically fearing all the melee type units it encountered. Each failed morale check resulted in a single unit (large formations of infantry and pikes) running away over multiple turns until it could rally itself. Meanwhile the ghasts slowly marched across the hill to join the fray in the forest on the far side.

The battle ended with a valiant charge against the lich by the knight, with the result that both heroes perished. With nothing left capable of defeating the mummies (and their fear aura), we elected to call the game.

In hindsight, the lawful side desperately needed a couple of gold dragons, or maybe a barbarian hero archer, to take down the dracolich and lich/mummy team with dragon fire from the sky. That would probably have swung the battle quickly in the other direction, as ghasts are not priced to be very efficient against large groups of weak enemies.

I'd like to try another undead battle with more reasonably sized fear effects. I'm debating whether the hero types (lich and dracolich) should be priced higher, although their vulnerability to certain types of cheaper heroes (namely, dragons) makes me suspect that this might just create other problems. Fear is extremely powerful against low-level units (5 or fewer HD), but relatively unimportant against heroes. The stronger it is allowed to be, the more difficult it is to balance that kind of specialized ability.

We're still considering what to play next. Proposals include a small Battletech scenario, or maybe something involving naval ship-of-the-line combat. My preference would be to try the rules for Naval Thunder, which seems to be a highly regarded WW2 system. But since I've been choosing the game the last few weeks, I think someone else should take a turn.