Pink Phantom Postgame: An army in flight

My reworked redux of the first scenario of the Campaign Carnival 2022 took place early this morning.

My previous post, Still Tinkering, discussed the details, but here's a brief synopsis:

Army A (Heirland) has suffered a battlefield defeat. 45% is fleeing the pursuing Army B (Mireland). Outnumbered two to one they must escape the scenario batttlefield. Army B is looking to inflict as much damage as possible.

In my prior playthrough, using the scenario as written Side A scared a tremendous victory, and neither side suffered much in the way of losses.

 This time was different.

Aftermath

The Heirland forces were very much wiped out this time, victory point wise. Out of 18 units, only 6 of them escaped and two of those were of reduced strength. Two of the three Weirland leaders were captured as well.

In terms of victory points -

By stand (unit): Heirland - 14; Mireland - 30

By figure: Heirland - 32; Mireland - 148

Heirland casualties: Inf - 350 killed, 450 injured; Kni - 150 killed, 250 injured; Sc - 250 killed, 300 injured, and 1 Battle Mage injured

Mireland casualties: Gator - 50 killed, 150 injured; Drake - 650 killed, 700 injured

From a purely "dead and gone" point of view losses are fairly even in numbers.  But the Mireland forces had a two to one advantage to start, sooo moral victory for Weirland?

Scenario execution

As far as running the battle: 

By increasing the ratio of men per figure, it went quicker. Only 52 units to manipulate vs 99 in the previous play. I did add some markers, but they didn't add a lot of time. Despite my added deployment mechanic, and added setup time for cameras and tracking sheets, the entire play was about 4 hours from start of setup to tear down, vs well over 5 the last time.

 (this deployment section will make more sense if you've read the previous post.)

I had mixed feeling during the battle of using cards and bags to randomize entry of most of the armies onto the field. Early on and very late I thought my process was hamstringing Mireland, but they also benefited from the process in the middle section.

Mireland forces were slow to accrue on the first two turns because of the stacked mature of the top of the deck. There were more Heirland cards than entering Heirland forces, so there were 'empty' draws, especially on turn 2. The one change I would make to the process is making sure the card selection matched the armies available.

But once on the field, Mireland benefitted from the automatic movement entering units had until they entered battle or moved into command range.

(end deployment section)

The presence of the cameras inhibited my access to the board and reference/tracking cards/charts, but not too badly. I don't know how people play while providing continuous commentary. Much respect to the consistent Youtubers in the hobby.

From a strategy standpoint:

In the Dice Legions system, once a unit is engaged in melee, it is stuck there until the unit(s) engaging it 'dies', unless they have a special ability to escape (Mireland Drake Riders and Heirland Battle Mages do).

My Heirland strategy was to use the initial numbers advantage to kill the few Mireland units and free up incoming units, then flee. My Mireland strategy was to use drake riders and double moves (which can be executed instead of move-attack) to engage and cut off forces. Then oncoming numbers could polish off the Heirland units.

I used the leader led units to reorganize incoming units for Heirland, but with limited activations, it'd have been better to let the incoming units benefit from the 'free' move action disorganized units of both sides had. Still things might have worked out if the initial Mireland forces could have been killed faster. I definitely erred in the mid-game, trying to save a tied up leader unit when a third or so of the Heirland forces were unengaged and had a good chance to escape.

The Mireland strategy worked very well, though at the cost of hi casualties among the Drake Riders.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I like how this scenario played out. A change in the fortunes of war could have changed the victory points result in Weirlands favor but also could have led to much higher Heirland casualties had it gone the other way.  The semi-random deployment mechanic is something worth using and refining in the future.

Now I just have to figure out how to hammer this video footage into something coherent and...not 3 hours long.