WHAA Big Battle

Warrior Heroes Armies and Adventures is a ruleset for skirmishes, but it also contains some rules in case you want to play a big battle ala Warhammer Fantasy Battles or Armies of Arcana. So today I decided to try those rules for the first time, and then I gathered all my 10 mm minis and quickly arrayed them for battle. I made four units for each side and deployed them randomly.

Orc deployment from left to right: one unit of orc warriors Rep 4 AC 2, another unit or Orc warriors with a standard, one unit of Black Orcs with two Trolls in it, and one unit of Orc archers in the wood.
Altengard deployment from left to right: one unit of arquebusiers Rep 4 AC 4, one unit of infantry Rep 4 AC 5, one unit of allied Mirholme warriors Rep 4 AC 5, and finally one unit with four knights Rep 5 AC 6.

The battlefield with the Orcs on the right and men on the left.

On the first turn only Altengard activates and moves forward all its units. On the next turn only the Orcs move and the first unit are the archers who advance and then charge instead of firing as they all are frenzy. The arquebusiers shoot them and one Orc dies and two retreat but the rest charges, killing more than half of the unit in one go, and exterminating it in the following turn.
Then the unit of Black Orcs charges the Altengard infantry, killing most of them as well.
The Mirholmen is the only unit which holds heroically against the Orcs, treating them on equal terms.
The last unit of Orcs tries to charge the knights but in the last moment stops and the charge is failed.
In the last turn the knights are finally charged, being killed two of them and the other two routed. The rest of the Altengard army dies except the warriors from Mirholme, but I finished the battle here as they were outnumbered by four to one and its situation was hopeless.

Four were the main causes of the Altengard's defeat: first they did not have any standards and consequently most of the soldiers routed instead of only retreating. Secondly, excepting the Mirholmen, all the human units were outnumbered. Third, The Humans had bad luck rolling for activation and could only stand and see what was happening, whereas the knight being capable of activating a couple of times due to their Rep, failed all his charges and stood still watching the Orcs coming at them. The fourth reason was that all the Orcs were Frenzy and this give them the extra edge they needed to win all the melees.

WHAA Big Battles works perfectly to simulate WHF style battles; melee is deadly and the game is fast.
I think I am going to use WHAA BB as a bridge between WHAA skirmishes and Rally Round the King for mass battles, for my Campaign of Einar.

Jackals pursuing wolves. Einar's saga chapter six.

Short time after seizing the sword Soul Reaver, Rialto tells the party they are being followed. Einar gives an order and the party starts to run northwards. After a couple of hours Rialto tells them they are about to be caught and Einar puts a faster rhythm, but Tiku cannot keep up with them.
They are running for their lives, nobody looks at Tiku and she says nothing.

After a couple of hours more, the Dwarfs are closing again and they have to go even faster. This time it is the archer of the group who sit on a rock and watches in silence how the rest disappears in the distance.
Now the party goes faster but the Dwarfs are in their territory and know all possible shortcuts, and after a couple more hours of hot pursuit, they are finally caught and have to stop to fight for their lives.

You use the lower Rep of each group to check how the pursuit goes, and Tiku had Rep 2 and delayed the whole group, so I decided to drop her. Then I start again to check and this time Einar's party had same Rep as Dwarfs (4), so they could escape more easily. But luck was with the Dwarfs and after a couple of rolls I had to drop the archer too, to try to definitely escape, as the next lowest Rep in the group which was 5. Well, even having the Dwarfs worse Rep than Einar's group, they managed to catch them anyway, so now Einar had to fight with only two men against a horde of vengeful Black Moon Dwarfs.

As soon as they could see the Dwarfs, Rialto casts spell "Fear me!" on them which is intervened by a Dwarf caster, who fails and becomes dazzled; half of the Dwarfs are now terrorized.
The Dwarfs charge as fast as they can but none of them reach close combat yet; the arquebusiers miss their shots.

The Dwarf caster resulted to have Rep 4, like his predecessor, so he could badly do anything against Rialto. When he tried to stop Rialto's spell he failed and got dazzled instead, losing one point of Rep to cast, and going the same way during all the encounter until reaching Rep 1.
Ignoring the pathetic efforts of the Dwarf caster to stop him, Rialto successfully summons an skeleton to use it as his bodyguard. Now all the Disciples of Null reach hand to hand combat. Fafnir barely holds but Einar quickly slain one Dwarf and engages the Big Bad, a Rep 5, AC 6, H 3 with a two handed axe. In an epic fight, the Dwarf leader resists many blows by Einar and falls stunned several times until he recovers and hits Einar, but without harming him. The summoned skeleton resists and successfully defends its master from a Dwarf attack.
Rialto summons three wolves in his aid, right on time as the tentacled Dwarf kills his skeleton.
Einar finally kills the Big Bad, and Fafnir runs to help Rialto. But now the rest of the Dwarfs arrive and Einar is charged by four of them. In a very heroic style, he instantly kills two of them and puts in flight the other two!

Einar with Rep 6 and Hardiness 4 and Soul Reaver (produces terror) has become a fearsome and almost unbeatable opponent. It is time for him to search for bigger enemies such as Trolls and Ogres, but we will see this soon as they are heading towards the land of the Orcs. Also, Rialto unbalances all games with his powerful magic so far, so I definitely need to include more powerful opponents in future encounters.
A straggling band of Dwarfs arrives but now Rialto casts "Flee you fools!" and suddenly eleven Dwarfs run away from the battle! Einar and Fafnir quickly dispatches the three remaining Dwarfs and once again they win the day.
The Dwarfs are so terrorized that they will not chase them again, so they can peacefully head towards the Border Kingdoms, through the territories of the Orcs. Einar has kept the Sword and has raised his Social Standing to 9. Also, Fafnir has raised his Rep to 6!

PORTO en Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Porto era una humilde tienda de wargames y librería que abrió por 1.998 y que desde entonces ha sobrevivido a otras tiendas del hobby que abrieron y luego quebraron, principalmente debido a lo bien que se encontraba uno allí y lo mucho que te ayudaban en cualquier tema de pintura, modelismo, conversiones o tácticas de juego, y luego más tarde, por su buena administración.

Porto was a humble hobby shop that has been opened since 1.998 and that has survived many other hobby shops in this small city, firstly because its friendly and helpful atmosphere, and later also because its good management.

La vieja tienda.
Ye olde shoppe.

Hace unos pocos años llegó Adolfo y se hizo cargo de la tienda, y desde entonces no ha parado de crecer cada vez más, hasta el día de hoy, en que ha abierto un nuevo local mucho más grande y moderno. La tienda tiene casi 200 metros cuadrados, 10 mesas de juego, talleres, aire acondicionado, muy buena iluminación y cualquier cosa que puedas necesitar para el hobby.

A few years back Adolfo took charge of the shop and since then it has been growing and growing to the point of opening today a new and much bigger and modern shop. The new local has around 200 square metres, 10 gaming boards, air conditioning and anything you may need for the hobby.

La nueva Porto.
The new Porto

Estoy muy contento porque es una maravilla jugar en este sitio y también porque la tienda va a tener un destacado espacio para jugar históricos como DBA, Impetus, Napoleónicos, Blitzkrieg Commander, Disposable Heroes, Nuts! y Flames of War entre otros. Así que estoy como unas pascuas porque después de más de 25 años de estar jugando en esta ciudad con los de siempre, por fin hay una auténtica tienda donde comprar y donde quedar para jugar y pasarlo bien, ¡e incluso encontrar oponentes para jugar históricos!

Personally, I'm very happy as this new shop is going to devote not only to Games Workshop games but also to historical ones such as DBA, Impetus, Blitzkrieg Commander, Disposable Heroes, Nuts! and Flames of War among others. So yes, I'm very happy, because for the first time after more than 25 years of wargaming in this city, I'm going to have an authentic shop where to find anything I may need for the hobby and where to find opponents to historicals!

Lander terminando los 10 nuevos tableros para DBA. ¡Pronto habrá un torneo!
Lander finishing the ten new boards for DBA. Soon we'll have a tournament!

Si vives fuera y te pasas alguna vez por Las Palmas, no te olvides de visitarnos y echarte unas partidas con nosotros. Si vives aquí, simplemente no puedes perderte esto.

If you live abroad and someday you visit Las Palmas, do not forget to come by and play some games with us. If you live in the island, you simply cannot miss this.

De izquierda a derecha, yo haciendo de reportero y Adolfo, el manager.
From left to right, me visiting the shop and Adolfo the manager.

In the land of the Dwarfs. Einar's saga chapter five.

After the disaster of Treyine, Einar and his men travel East towards the lands of the Black Dwarf. During winter they cross the north frontiers of Hykar and Mirish, avoiding all possible contact with unwanted patrols until they reach their destine.
It is Spring of 897 and it has passed more than a year since Einar started his quest to find a sword of power to build his own kingdom, but they finally arrived.
The land of the Dwarfs is dominated by great dark mountains and desolated wastes. They start searching for anybody or anything which may help them to find what they are looking for, but they find nothing and keep moving towards the heart of the country. After a month of travelling Eastwards, Rialto's senses warn him that a group is approaching by the road behind them. As they are in unfriendly territory and also they have to "borrow" the sword, Einar decides to set his group in ambush.

As soon as Einar arrived at the Black Dwarf territory, I rolled in the Quest Table to see if he has found the item of his quest. I roll 5 and 1 which meant there was nothing there. Einar's party then move inside the country and again I rolled the dice but this time I got 6 & 6! The object was finally found and I had to go to a Raid encounter. I rolled again and the Raid was to have place at a village; as I did not know how a Dwarf village is nor had any suitable building to represent it, I chose to play the Raid in the wilderness and changed the raid for an ambush.

I'm playing with 10 mm. miniatures in a 60 x 60 cm. board and with all distances halved and rounded up. As usual, all the pictures are clickable.

After being hidden in the rocks for almost two hours, they finally spot a caravan of Dwarfs led by what it look some kind of priest or sorcerer, wearing ceremoniously a long sword sheathed in a barbarously jewelled scabbard, the sword of his quest!
Now, according to the rules my party was of 120 points of CV and this means that I had to fight against 60 Dwarfs approximately, which was absurd; Einar alone worths 40 points of CV so go figure. Therefore, I decided to use the How many of them chart from LOA instead, in which they use a number of figures instead of CV; but as 6 figures was going to be too few to fight against, I used the Hardiness of each character as a number of figures; so Einar's party had a total of 16 "figures".

As soon as Einar sees the sword he jumps on his feet and let the Dwarfs spot him. The Ambush is spoiled.
The Dwarfs came down the road and when they were near the ambushers I rolled to see how the ambush worked. I rolled 5 dice for the Dwarfs and 3 dice for Einar's party (Tiku had dropped her Rep down to 3 in the last encounter). The Dwarfs passed 2d6 more and the ambush went off early and surprise lost. Ambushers were revealed and Activation dice were rolled with the battle going on as normal.

Einar's party activates first but only Rialto and the archer accompanying him. Rialto casts Fear me! and the Dwarf caster tries to intervene. The Dwarf caster tries his best but fails miserably, suffering backlash and remaining dazzled until his next activation.

Rep of Dwarf caster was yet to be determined, so I rolled to see which was and I rolled 3 and 1. The Rep was 4, not very good. He lose by 3d6 more in the test of magic, but saved his life by a hair's breath and only resulted Dazzled. Rialto produced Dread on the first eight Dwarfs with his spell.

Then, the nearest Dwarfs react and charge Einar, Fafnir and Tiku, but two of them stop in the last moment due to the dread Rialto casted upon them. Einar easily parries his opponent and Tiku kills hers outright, forcing the nearest disciple of Null to retreat.
Two Dwarfs at the bottom and armed with harquebuses, fire at the far archer, who covers behind the rocks and returns fire, killing one of them and making two more to retreat.
The Dwarf caster keeps Dazzled, holding the magic sword with his arms and incapable of doing anything else.
The Dwarf caster finally recovers and tries a spell, but is intervened by Rialto and Dazzled again. Now the rest of the Dwarf warriors charge en masse but are rejected once more as Einar and Fafnir kills one warrior each, while Tiku with her two swords holds for the moment. The harquebusier misses.

Fafnir kills another warrior and Einar defeats their leader, the Big Bad, producing some break offs and routs from the battlefield. Then Rialto spells Blinding light and all the remaining Dwarfs get Dazzled; Tiku takes the opportunity to kill her blinded opponent.
The archer fires and hits without further effect.
Rialto casts now Steel Wind and perforates the poor unarmoured Dwarf caster, converting him into pink mist. The remaining Dwarf with harquebus routs and Einar slays the last of the Disciples of Null.
Piece of cake. Mission accomplished, return to base.
Indeed it was an easy encounter, but this was mainly due to the Fear me! spell that Rialto casted in the first turn. More than half of the Dwarfs had dread and failed tests of charge, crisis, leader lost, etc. as well as having worse performance in melee. Then it came Blinding light and the remaining Dwarfs were helpless and doomed. Also, the Big Bad resulted to have only Rep 4 and the Dwarf caster did not have a high Rep neither.

So Einar finally got his magic sword to to become king, according to the prophecy made on his childhood. He passes it to Rialto to check it and he explains to the group that the sword has a name, Soul Reaver. This sword is evil and greedy of souls and carnage; it will help to conquer a throne, but not to rule it. The sword produces terror in the enemies of the wielder; it also adds +1 to impact when used in melee, and +2 against magical creatures and +3 against Daemons. Once a month, the wielder has to roll 2d6 against his Rep; whenever he passes 0d6 he will move one step towards Black Moon worship. So for example, if Einar who is now Twilight alignment, passes 0d6, he will be Rising Moon, and if he fails again then Full Moon. The sword attracts evil.

After designing the sword I proceeded to roll for the Einar's party advancements: Einar raises his Rep to 6 and Social Standing to 8, Fafnir also raises Rep to 5, but Tiku falls to 2 (something must be happening to this wild creature). Rialto raises his Hardiness to 3 and the archer downs his Rep to 3.

After the ambush and looting the corpses, Einar and his friends decide to move directly northwards to the lands of the Orcs as fast as possible to avoid retaliation, and also as the shortest and safest (avoiding the Dark elves) route to the Border Kingdoms where to find their own army, castle and lands.
I will see you all in the next episode of Einar's days of high adventure!

Elven arrows.

This time I wanted to use a bow based army to see how it worked, and so I borrowed from my buddy some Warmaster High Elves. The Elf army of 396 points was composed of 12 archer units plus two spear units with the general in one of them. All the units are Rep 5 and AC 4, and the archers are also elite. Elves Battle Tactics is C, their War Rating 3, and made Encircle flank deployment (30%-60%-10%).

Their opponent were an Orc and Goblin army of 398 points and composed of 6 Orc Warriors Rep 4, AC 2, 3 Black Moon Orcs Rep 5, AC 4 with the general in one of them, 3 Trolls units Rep 5, AC 4, 10 Goblin archers (foot skirmishers aka meat shield) Rep 3, AC 2, 2 Wolf riders (mounted skirmishers) Rep 3, AC 2, and 1 Boar rider unit Rep 5, AC 2 (shock). Trolls, Black Moon Orcs and Boar Riders produce terror. Orcs and Goblins Battle Tactics is A, their War Rating 3, and made Penetrate Center deployment (20%-60%-20%).

In the first picture it can be seen how the Orcs & Goblins have already moved in their first turn, while the Elves waited for them in the forests. The Orcs had a screen of Goblin skirmishers in front of them and all the cavalry in the right wing.
No heroes nor magicians on neither side on this occasion.
All pictures are clickable as usual.
Second turn and the Elves right wing had already pivoted to face the charging Orcs whereas in the center the Goblin skirmishers suffered two hits each, although they resisted as they were heavily supported (+3).
The Goblin skirmishers accomplished their goal which was to protect the Orcs from enemy fire, and then they stopped and let the Orcs charged the enemy through them. All the Elves resisted the charge and shot before the clash, producing one hit on each of the Orc units, who kept charging and then melee was joined. The Orcs on the left pivoted to face the Elves' right wing whereas the cavalry stopped at charge distance, threatening Elves' left flank.
The archer Elves in the center were outnumbered and routing on both extremes at a rate of two units per turn, and in no time there was only the general with the spears holding the line. On the left flank the Elves rejected the Orc charge, and on the far right the archers finally decided to leave the forest to try to help their general.
The Elves had an extraordinary luck all through the battle, rolling sixes to hit and ones to hold their place, and thus they completely wiped out the Orcs' left wing, held in the center, producing many hits and even pushing back one unit of Trolls and one of Black Moon Orcs. On the right flank, one unit of archers resisted the Boar riders charge and forced them to retire!
But finally the Elves in the center broke and their general died, and as there were only five Elf units remaining on the battlefield, I decided to finish the battle at this point. Most Orc and Goblin units were badly injured nonetheless.