Hey,

This is my second batrep, but around my fifth game. I was facing a high elf army and decided to mix my list up very slightly by sinking a hell of a lot of points into a longbeard ranger unit, as well as buying a runed-up dragon slayer for war machine protection (I know, probably not the best idea in retrospect). I had also made a decision not to sit back this game, wanting to take the fight to the enemy despite his superior numbers.

My list:

Runelord (general): MRo balance, Ro preservation, Ro stone, Ro spellbreaking x2, shield

Thane & BSB: MRo Gromril, Ro preservation, Ro resistance, Ro fire, Ro furnace

Cannon: Ro forging

Grudgethrower: Ro accuracy, Ro penetration x2

Dragon slayer: Ro speed (against high elves!), Ro fury, Ro striking

Longbeard rangers: Ro slowness (because I love wasting points), GW, throwing axes

GW warriors x20, FC

Shield warriors x20, FC

His list, roughly:

Noble on eagle, some fancy lance that gave s7 hits on the charge

Lord on eagle, deathwish

40 or so spearmen, shields

10 white lions

10 Phoenix Guard

Repeating Bolt Thrower

20 bowmen

Level 1 mage, unsure of lore, magic staff that let him cast any spell of his lore

5 fast cavalry

Deployment looked like this, roughly. Sorry for the length of the picture in advance:

The plan was to advance up the middle with my two big(gish) blocks of warriors, take out his bolt thrower ASAP with artillery and move on to the eagles/tougher units, and hopefully break him in the middle. His deployment left me without any weak flanks to exploit, so the rangers went opposite his white lions. With their rune of slowness and throwing axes, I figured I had a good chance of taking him before he did too much damage.

I won the roll for first turn:

I made my first tactical mistake (in the first turn, no less) by moving my rangers up too close to the White Lions and leaving them with an easy charge (despite the rune of slowness). The cannon skipped short on the bolt thrower, and the grudge thrower misfired. Artillery's off to a great start.

General advance from the elves. His white lions get their charge off after I roll a 2 for the rune of slowness, and my stand and shoot takes four of the ten out before they're even in combat-- S5 throwing axes rock. I shut down his magic, burning a spellbreaker to do so (he rolled high for comet of whatsitsface) and in close combat I take another three white lions out-- he gets a couple of longbeards in return.

His bolt thrower targets my cannon, but if I recall, does nothing this round.

Turn 2:

My GW's declare a charge on his fast cavalry, and he feigns flight in response. Luckily his bowmen don't know it's feigned and flee too, which is a nice bonus. Shield warriors move up a little.

The cannon skips short AGAIN, and the grudge thrower scatters off a little to score a single wound on the bolt thrower.

In close combat the longbeards cut down two more white lions, leaving only the champion standing, for a couple more dead in return.

The two eagles get around on the flanks, ready to charge my increasingly desperate (and useless) war machines. Dragon slayer sits around, bored at all the lack of combat, but not for long. I shut down magic without event. Bowfire takes three or so GW warriors. The white lion champ is cut down. In the funnest news for me this round, the fast cavalry still fail to rally, but the bowmen make it.

The bolt thrower manages to wound my cannon.

Turn three:

Three failed charges get me off to a great start-- I literally can never make a charge if it's over 8". GW and shield warriors trundle forward desultorily, and the longbeards amble towards the bolt thrower. The cannon overshoots, because the crew decide it's time to throw in a dash of variety in how spectacularly they can fail to hit the same target three times in a row, and the grudgethrower scatters off the spearmen to inflict decent casualties on one of the bow units. I totally forgot about the marauding noble in the shooting phase, because my opponent was proxying bits of card for the eagles and they're kinda hard to see.

The prince charges my GT, doesn't charge with his noble, and his (now-rallied) fast cavalry sweep around behind his line to get ready to deal with the longbeards. Phoenix guard move up, and in shooting news, his bolt thrower one-shots my awesome cannon, blowing it up. GW's take a few more wounds, and in close combat he kills two GT crew. I sigh. A lot.

Turn four:

Longbeards finally get their lil' legs into gear and charge the BT. The Dragon slayer puts his extra point of initiative to good use against High Elves by charging in and still swinging last. With my shooting effectively gone, it's straight to close combat. My longbeards take a wound off the BT and the dragon slayer manages to knock two wounds off the prince! The GT is destroyed, however, and since he's looking at a rear charge from a noble soon, things are not looking too good.

The dragon slayer is rear-charged by the noble, as predicted. The spearmen charge my shield warriors with the runelord. Shooting whittles away at the GW's. Dragon slayer bites it before swinging, and although they don't lose by too much, the shield dwarfs fail their re-rollable break test and flee! Luckily he comes up an inch or so short on the pursuit. The longbeards finish off the BT.

Turn five:

My longbeards move up and get their throwing axes stuck in on the fast cavalry, killing two. Shields rally and turn around, ready for the next charge. The next charge being two rear-charges from characters and a frontal charge from a hefty block of spearmen fighting in three ranks even on the charge. Oh dear. I leave the GW's where they are (they may have taken a wound or so this turn that I didn't put in above), presumably to save them being flank-charged by the Phoenix Guard.

A three-pronged charge is both inevitable and dismaying on my beleaguered shield dwarfs. Luckily I take a smaller number of casualties than I deserve and hold. The Phoenix guard get ready to finish me off.

Turn six:

In the proudest moment of the battle for the dwarfs, and something that had nothing to do with my tactical acumen and everything to do with good old-fashioned dwarf stalwartness, they win combat on three fronts, kill the noble(!), break the prince and also break the spearmen! The noble's eagle fights on, however, and they reform to face it. Of course, the GW's had flank-charged the spearmen and that may have had something to do with it, but it was still a pretty awesome moment that I didn't really deserve. GW's reform to get ready for the Phoenix guard, and the longbeards swift-reform and take another fast horseman out. Why they did this instead of menacing the mage is beyond me.

The Phoenix guard charge in. I lose combat by quite a bit and break. Sigh. Luckily, in a repeat of earlier in the match, they fail to catch me by 1". Fast cavalry and bowmen shooting (the diagram doesn't reflect it, but the leftmost unit of bowmen had reformed to shoot at my longbeards) takes a couple of longbeards out, and we're done.

At the end, we had a draw on our hands (I won by like 100 points' worth of models, astonishingly enough). I had only lost the two war machines and the dragon slayer, whereas he lost the white lions, his BT and his general. However, after remembering something about standards, I think it's entirely possible that we didn't take into account my units that broke with standards in them. Regardless, I don't think it would have swung him a victory anyway.

After my previous batrep and this one, I think I'm simply going to give up on marching out and putting my war machines in places where they're difficult to defend with other units. I had hoped to eliminate the flyer threat to them early on, but the dice were against me. Some abysmal positioning and poor charge choices left me really vulnerable as well.

I was really pleased with the longbeards, however, They did a good job of harassing his back line, and those throwing axes are just awesome. It's a shame that the Ro slowness didn't come through for me, but that was my own fault with positioning.

In general, I had far too many points concentrated into far too few units compared to his much larger, much more flexible army. I was extremely lucky to scrape the draw-- a couple of slightly better dice rolls for his pursuits would have resulted in a massacre to him.