Domains at War

Yeah, we forgot and did it when we got to that point in the Initiative order. As that was my last Division Commander, it didn't really change anything.

Thanks for the clarifications!

Valana actives first and shoots my slingers. They get hit, but do the toga shuffle and avoid damage by withdrawing.

My turn comes around! Peyman throws his light infantry into melee against the light cavalry, but scores only one hit. His slingers attack the heavy cavalry, but thrown rocks are not effective weapons.The Skysos Medium cavalry rotate and stab upwards at the Medium Cavalry threatening Jagtai, and WRECK them, scoring 3 hits which knocks them to half HP, prompting a shock roll at a total of -5 (flanking, disorder, 50% HP.) Bloblah rolls a modified 1 for shock, instantly destroying them. First blood! 

http://imgur.com/lVflb5e

The Skysos light cavalry charge the now-disordered enemy light cavalry, and score multiple hits, forcing it to recoil. Jagtai's unit, now unthreatened, marches down and attacks but whiffs on all three attacks.(Jagtai himself does land a poison arrow on the lieutenant though, who dies.) This is absolutely critical, because with the light cavalry alive, I can't charge my elephants into his Autarch. Hitting their great general's unit with seven flanking charge attacks would be INTENSE!  Instead, the elephant marches up and takes the light cav's last few hitpoints. I choose not to follow up in favor of creating a nice battle line.

On the other side of the field, Baal activates and shoots their archers with my archers. He scores minor damage on one, who withdraws, then hits it again. It's kinda boring. Haakon decides the lake route is too long and hustles to return to the fold and back up Baal, who advances with his heavies. I'm getting ready for the fighting to start in earnest now!

http://imgur.com/l9ft0AR

I'm about to roll init when I remember that heroes get three extra passes. Bloblah was unaware of this rule, and understandably frustrated to hear that his wizard is four times as potent as previously believed, as that throws off his whole game plan. Also, he didn't realize that Jagtai got to shoot three more times this round and is now in range of his Autarch. Can heroes attached to threatened units make missile attacks during the extra initative passes? If attached heroes attack the same target as their unit, do they also attack in the same way, or can Jagtai use his bow while his unit uses melee, as long as he attacks the same target?

Does the prohibition on wizards casting a spell the same turn they moved apply to the extra passes as well?

 

Can heroes attached to threatened units make missile attacks during the extra initative passes?

A hero can make missile attacks if he is not threatened. A hero is not threatened by an enemy unit unless an enemy hero is attached to the enemy unit. So the answer is that the hero can make missile attacks during the extra initiative passes IF the enemy unit that is threatening the unit he is attached to does not contain an enemy hero. 

Keep in mind that if a hero is leading from the rear, he has a visibility distance of 0 hexes. Given that Bobloblah didn't know that heroes would receive multiple attacks, it would likely be kind to allow him to assume that attached heroes he hasn't attacked with are currently leading from the rear. There's no particular advantage to leading from the front if you're not about to fight - it just makes you vulnerable.

If attached heroes attack the same target as their unit, do they also attack in the same way, or can Jagtai use his bow while his unit uses melee, as long as he attacks the same target?

The hero can make whatever attacks he is eligible to make. Jagatai can use his bow provided he is not threatened.

Does the prohibition on wizards casting a spell the same turn they moved apply to the extra passes as well?

According to the rules-as-written, in order to cast a spell you must have remained stationary in the movement sequence of the turn. This would apply to all bonus attack sequences. 

That said, the rule above was simplified from an earlier, more mathematically, accurate rule, which would actually say that you should get 2 bonus attack sequences if you walked and 1 if you hustled.

The mathematics are that each Brigade-scale D@W battle round represents 4 combat rounds and each hex is 4x the distance; a hero that moves full speed is moving full speed for 4 rounds;  a hero that moves half speed is assumed to moving half for 4 rounds and thus unable to use magic (which is what the rules as written assume); but they might be moving full speed for 2 rounds and stationary for 2 rounds, and thus able to use magic. This latter interpretation got so complex that I eliminated it, but for games where you are really "zoomed in" and focusing on the PCs on the battlefield rather than the wargame aspect it can be more fun.

 

Hm. Jagatai was Threatened.

That is correct. I should not have killed the lieutenant. Luckily, Jagtai's unit was, I believe, the very last one to move, so we can easily go back a step. I suppose the fair thing to do is to place him back on the board and roll shock to see how he feels about his unit being destroyed, as per Alex's post on what happens to a hero when his unit is destroyed.

I won't be able to get back to the game until tomorrow. Not sure when exactly, but I'll find some time.

So, now that we know Jagtai can't use arrows at point blank range against heroes, this has raised some more questions. Do heroes have facing? Can they benefit from flanking each other? Do they become disordered? (It seems odd for one woman to be able to become disorganized) If a hero was serving as a lieutennant, and their unit is destroyed, do they immediately roll initiative, or continue to act on their commander's?

1) Yes, heroes have facing. They follow all the rules for movement and attacks except where otherwise noted.

2) Yes, they can become disordered from charging. (The origin of the Disordered condition is the ACKS rule that states that combatants suffer a -2 AC penalty when they charge. This is the primary way that heroes would get disordered.) Heroes do not become disordered from damage, however, since they never take unit hit points of damage. "A unit becomes disordered as soon as damage is dealt to it." 

3. During the round when the hero's unit is destroyed, the hero would still be activated during his commander's phase. Starting next round he would become independent, as if he'd detached. (Note that a typical lieutenant would not qualify as an independent hero in a brigade-scale game.)

 

Oh shoot, I hadn't checked whether the lieutenants actually qualified! Well, that solves that. Thanks Autarch!

Hey bobloblah any idea when you'll be able to get back to this?

​ I'd like to get back to it, but it's been crazy between the holidays, a bout of the flu that I'm still suffering from, and trying to finish the edit for Guns of War and Lairs & Encounters. I'll try and get on this afternoon, but if not it'll be a couple days yet.

Far be it from me to pester someone dying of the plague! Take all the time you need, just let me know when you're ready again.Also, whoo, guns of war! I'm very excited for that.

Whoo, we're back in business! I took the liberty of rolling init for both sides, and two fun things happened:

 

First, Baal won init against Valanna, so Red gets to hit Blue again. I considered having my archers shoot the crap out of that disordered Light Infantry #2 in hopes of deleting it entirely, since it can't withdraw while disordered, but instead opted to surround Valanna. She's got a relatively low morale, so if I can destroy her unit, she may well flee the field. Unfortunately, my archers do extremely poorly, and the first one whiffs entirely. The second one scores two hits on the flank, which is respectable, but in moving up that far exposes him.

Baal moves up, his massive armored phalanx rolling SIX dice against a disordered enemy! He scores exactly one hit, enough to force shock! Valanna's terrible leadership, combined with the natural cowardice of light infantry, means they'll rout on anything lower than an 8.

She gets an 11. Which becomes a 6 with the modifiers, so she just scootches back a step. Baal follows. Baal's other phalanx scores exactly one hit too, but I'm waiting on Bloblah to find out if they withdraw. Ultimately, Baal's great init roll has yielded little. It probably would've been wiser to delay until after her, and then counterattack. The good news is that the Jutlanders are getting really close now! They're going to participate real soon, I can feel it!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the map, Jagtai has outrolled Tarkaun and Mennic by the grace of nuffle. That means he'll get to go first, which is a VERY interesting prospect. I might get to see those elephants charge! I can't see anything Danir or Valanna can do about that.

Let's do the math real quick: An elephant gets four tusks at 8+, and 3 tramples at 3+. On a charge, everything is +2. We'll also be charging into a flank, so that's another +2. They've got 6 AC. That means in real terms, I'm looking at four 10+ and three 5+. That means I can reasonably expect two lance hits and at least two trample hits, and like all lance charges, buying one gets you one free, so that's a total of five hits, or 20 damage. As a medium value! That's three hits away from total destruction. The second charge could well finish his unit off, if I can just find someone else to charge it. 

Those elephants are getting deleted though. Mennic is going to explode elephants, because he's the Thomas Edison of his generation. They will suffer his fury knowing they did their duty though, so #worth.

Overall, I think I'm very well poised to take the match, so it looks like this will be a big success for my ego. It's also been a big success in terms of learning the rules, because we've had a number of great conversations about "wait, HOW does that work?" most of which made it onto the thread. Seven to eight more of these, and I'll feel comfortable running against my players.

Agreed on the learning the rules. This match has made me realise how badly we mangled them the first time I tried this scenario right after getting Domains at War.

I've started work on constructing a battle scenario. For this one, I'm interested in playing with weird unit types, so I'm having it be a crossbreeding wizard versus a necromancer wizard.

It turns out creating custom units is a damn nuisance! That's okay though, because I'm making cavalry out of ghouls riding giant black widows. It'll be worth it.

It always seems like too much work until you imagine them coming over a hill through smoke and fire to the dulcet tones of Wagner.

I'd like to see the build process and end result if it's not too much trouble to post.

 

I just posted the end result over in the homebrew forum! I thought about recording the build process, but my screen kept filling up. The most surprising thing to me is that per-unit, the ghouls have a significantly higher BR than black widow spiders, so making them into cavalry actually waters them down into a lower BR unit.

The other surprising thing is that because there are so many mulitipliers, if you miscalculate even one variable, you can easily end up doubling the final result.

There's an error in the published BR for Ghouls, I believe; you might want to recalculate it from scratch.

I did! That does explain a lot about the published stat though.