Wyre Forest Gamers - The Battle of Bad Pot Pass

The Battle of Bad Pot Pass

I am grateful to Ewan for providing the following account of a game played at the club in April 2024. It was an Orclish Civil War battle at 1500 points and using Oathmark rules

Harry and Ewan's respective kingdoms met at an infamous magical site, where Ewan's warriors guarded ancient oathmark menhirs inscribed with pledges of service from many ancient warriors and venerable regiments. Ewan commanded an army of orcs and goblins, Harry with a similar number of orcs with some human archers and goblin wolf riders.

The 'Oathmarks' scenario required that Ewan keep Harry from obliterating his precious orthostats, two of which were situated in Ewan's half, but critically one in the centre of the table. Here Ewan was required to forward deploy two regiments. This makes them very vulnerable to the enemy who may concentrate early-on against the two-regiment force. The giddy goblins given this task, perhaps inspired by the heroic Scottish Flags they bore from Flodden 1513 (Pendraken), surged forward straight at Harry's archers. This endeavour soon faltered however, and there was much to-ing and fro-ing while getting shot by Harry's arrows. One goblin regiment did eventually make contact but the decisive blows happened elsewhere.

Ewan's orcy minions had the upper hand with long range heavy catapults, quickly causing turn by turn damage and causing 'disorder' among Harry's big-numbers/big-target regiments. Harry sent forward a hefty regiment of Wolf Riders against Ewan's right flank, evidently keen on smashing the catapults. Unfortunately Ewan's line was extensively manned and soon Kaptin Kambul and the Lon Cheney Appreciation Society (a huge goblin regiment) took action to block, outflank and annihilate Harry's cavalry strike, Kaptin Kambul ably calling upon assistance from a nearby light unit of his own Wolf Riders.

Fate struck back at Ewan when Harry rolled a 'strange event' of 'bad food' and selected one of the crew teams of the catapults to suffer dietary difficulties, inflicting a +2 for activation of that unit. Orc toilet habits and hygiene being matters of little concern on any day of the week, this crew merrily passed all their activations and continued their bombardment despite the cooking misdemeanours. Then suddenly - perhaps the orc commanders and their hasty henchmen were too quick to blame the chef - an inexplicable 'weakness' affected the LHS goblin regiment. When Harry said "it lasts the whole game!" it was immediately apparent that this was foul magick at work and Ewan rather regretted not having taken a sorcerer to put things right!

Heavy blows from the catapults continued to pummel Harry's valiant orc horde as the opposing regiments closed in for a melee in the centre in front of the Oathmark stones. The artillery caused many units to pause, be pinned down and then eaten up including breaking some and spreading a cascading panic. Despite this being Ewan's own ground to defend, fickle fortune again granted Harry the benefit of a 'strange event' - he was blessed with enhanced spell knowledge and his dogged magician instantly cast 'Rain of Knives' upon the hapless goblin vanguard. Needless to say, there being heavy rain, fine rain, rain that gets you wet etc: Rain of Knives is decidedly uncomfortable and is not recommended.

With the similarly unpleasant 'rain of stones' from the orc's home-made catapults spoiling his opponent's plan and pinning their units, Ewan's elite Scottish Orc / Scortch(?) heavy infantry closed-in with the remainder of his host to start finishing off Harry's beleaguered line. Pushing in front, Ewan's other goblin Kaptin leading a small unit of Wolf Riders was badly knocked about, but resisted heroically and went on alone to smash up Harry's mischievous archers while riding his deadly war-pig 'King Snorton'.

After playing 7 out of 8 turns Harry had been unable to move upon the Oathmark objectives. Ordering the onslaught on the orthostats be abandoned, he conceded victory to Ewan's bad-bellied goblins and flag-following orcs. A good time was had by all and the bizarre tragedy of the Orclish Civil War will continue, pitting brother against brother, although none of them know who is related to whom.