Command Challenges - Warlord of Erehwon AAR

Recently I met up with Josh, who I'd met when he posted his interest in playing Warlords of Erehwon online. Some of the SJGA members have also been building warbands for Erehwon (and I even got a chance to playtest a scenario with a couple of them), and my Orcs & Goblins for my Classichammer project work perfectly. 

Josh brought his dwarfs, and we both built warbands of 1,000 points (a little under what I'd call a standard sized game, which is 1,250 points.

We decided to play the "Upon the Fields of Battle" scenario, which is a pretty straightforward punch-up, with the goal either being to break the opposing warband (drop them below half their original order dice) or do the most damage after six turns.

The first couple turns were spent by both sides running up the table. There was some exchanges of missile weapons with a few pins and a couple losses, but nothing spectacular occurred.

In the third turn, I got a preview of how the game would do when my Orc Chieftain charged a unit of dwarf Warriors, bounced off, and promptly fled the table after accruing a ludicrous amount of pins thanks to my terrible rolling! My Goblins were much more effective in their long-ranged battle with a unit of Dwarf Rangers.

On the other side of the table, the Orc Chariot bounced off another unit of Dwarf Warriors, while my second mob of Orc Warriors hustled towards the Dwarf Guards, blithely unaware of the fate of their leader.

My Orcs continued to be fed into the meatgrinder, and the Dwarfs happily obliged. Another of my Warrior units was routed and were unable to rally and so ran off the table. My Goblins wore down the Rangers to just the leader left, but they were running out of time as the Dwarf Thane and his retinue approached.

I had to use my Bolt Thrower to rally the routing Chariot, but my Boar Riders routed a unit of Dwarf Warriors, who fled off the table. They were going to have to deal with the Dwarf Guards, who had handily deleted another of my Orc Warrior units.

My Goblins didn't last very long against the Dwarfs (no surprises there), and they were able to take out the remaining Dwarf Ranger before being slaughtered.

And, unfortunately, the Boar Riders weren't going to fair much better. A crossbow bolt un-boared one ride, but the greenskin cavalry passed their break test. They then failed to activate on their turn, which left them in the perfect position to be charged by the Dwarf Guards, who expertly applied their greathammers to Orc and Boar alike, destroying the unit.

By this point, my Warband was reduced to my Goblin Wizard, the Bolt Thrower, and the Chariot. They were out of range of any of the Dwarf units, and we had reached the end of turn six.

With a score of six order dice claimed compared to my single die, Josh and his Dwarfs had a solid victory to take back to their Holds.

While my Orcs and Goblins were pretty well massacred, I had a great time playing. Erehwon's a pretty simple ruleset to pick up with some intricacies that aren't apparent at first. Hopefully we can pitch it to some of the Age of Sigmar players in the area to give it a try, and I'm looking forward to playing more.