Legiones II - Setting up
The first thing to do in setting up a game of Legions is to decide the two armies and to find out which is the home army as this will affect the choice and type of terrain. In this game which will be played on Tabletop Simulator the two forces are Amerindian and Northmen.
The Amerindian list of 400 points is chosen from the following list with 200 points having to be from the red core units. Units in blue can be brought into play using a magician and a summons spell or paid for at start as normal
After some consideration the Amerindian player has gone with this...
Warchief 44
Medicine man and totems 48
3 warrior bow 45
6 Plains mounted 144
3 Apache skirmishers 36
1 Thunder Eagle
1 Giant
for a total of 17 units. This army is 2 points over the 400 and may have to give up a VP at the start. If it has to deploy first then 9 units will have to be placed before the enemy deploys his full army.(1.01e)
This should give a fast moving force with the eagle and giant for a bit of punch. There is plenty of missile fire and the Apache are needed for their Ambush attribute which is important in deployment as they can deploy outside their deployment zone. The Medicine Man will be trying to Summon a Wendigo turn one and after that will be looking to cast Confuse on any Trolls the Northmen bring and fog to hide obscure targets from the enemy Elves should they be chosen. The Medicine man has chosen his 5 spells as follows...
Summon - always useful especially turn one when there are no other calls on his time. It can only be cast successfully once per turn though.
Fog - a protect spell to provide some cover against the pesky Elf bowmwn. Not unknown for me to cast it and regret it as it causes more problems for me than my enemy.
Confuse - this is great against beasts as they are usually low WP and can be neutralised with Confuse. If you are expecting beasts it is always a good call.
Heal - more useful for keeping units with lots of HP in the game than small units. Probably the giant and warchief as the Thunder Eagle is usually out of range.
Doom - hoping to lower the defences of some enemy units before shooting with lots of arrows
The Northman player has gone with...
Warchief 50
Shaman 30
3 huscarls 54
3 hunters 48
2 Valkyries 70
3 spearwives 30
2 trolls 70
2 Elves 50
Coincidentally this is also 2 points over the 400 limit so both sides will start with 1 VP in the bag and as this too is 17 units so will have to deploy 9 units before the enemy deploys his full army if deploying first.(1.01e)
This is an aggressive army which is looking to get a lot of VP through Kill Points. Kill point VP are the numbers in the first column. The magician will be looking at a first turn Summons of a bear and then be looking to Heal and Cleanse the big hitters. The Elves with 5 dice out to 5 hexes are very dangerous and difficult to shift from woods etc as they have Skirmish which allows them to fire unimpeded and Evade which adds a disadvantage to hand to hand attacks against them. Spearwives will try to swamp an objective in cover and just hang on. The Northmen have a Magician 5 shaman but have chosen not to take the totem which allows rerolls on misses if the caster is adjacent.
For magic support the shaman will take
Cleanse - this is needed to keep low WP beasts like trolls from being Confused by the enemy Magician
Summons - excellent summons choices for the Northmen with attack and support possibilities
Hasten - getting units there 'firstest with mostest' is good in a killy army
Fog - not a standard Northmen choice but Amerindians have lots of shooting
Heal - keep the good stuff in the fight hopefully and avoid losing kill VP
Note spell cards are chosen before game and are shown when casting. These are in the package. Most spells are range 4 so casting can make the caster vulmerable.
The terrain charts provided with each army list have a number next to the Army name which is an Aggression number. This reflects the tendency of the army to go about pestering other kingdoms on the globe. The Amerindian number is a 2 while the Northmen unsurprisingly are a 5. Both sides roll a dice and add their aggression number. The lowest is the 'home' force and lays out the terrain. Be aware that in laying out the terrain you have no idea of the deployment type ( 7.2), the object 7.1 ) or the side on which you will deploy.(1.01d )
Terrain is chosen from the home players' chart found with their army list.
10 playing cards are randomly drawn and matched against the chart. if the maximum number of any type of terrain is reached redraw until a valid terrain set is achieved. Terrain sizes are in the rules but are usually around 5 hexes or so. Court cards allow a free terrain choice.
Once the terrain is laid out as in the example below a roll are made made for both deployment type and object as explained in 7.2 and 7.3. In this case standard deployment has been rolled and the objective number1. Capture the Relics – 3 objective markers are placed equidistant along the centre hex row, one in the centre hex, control of objectives gains 5 points for each at end of turn. These are marked with the red markers.
Clearly control of the objectives is going to be vital with 15 points per turn up for grabs at the end of each turn. Control is gained by having more units of any type on the objective at the end of the turn.
Both sides now draw 5 cards from the Plot/Tactical deck.
The Amerindians get these
This is a pretty good set of plot cards for the Amerindians as they will have to contest the centre anyway and can play one of the Hold the centre each turn. The Kill 2 enemy units is doable if the shieldmaidens go forward early although it is probable that the Kill more units is difficult as the Northmen are very killy. Killing a troll to get Bounty is possible over time with all the missile fire available especially if the Amerindian gets a decent Confuse spell off on the troll lowering it's defences.
The tacticals on the lower side are also useful and the Conch on the Kill more Plot card is likely to be used and Recovers are always handy to use on the important units.
The Northmen get these
For Plots, Kill more should be a shoe in for the Northmen and Assassinate not impossible especially against the Medicine Man. There are also 6 plains Indian mounted units all worth 24 points for Lead by example.
For Tacticals Hidden Enemy can wreck an enemy turn if they are down to their last few cards and need them all. Darken the sky will be used on an Elf unit just to really hurt something. Hold the line is situational but might help a Spearwife unit. Deep raid is unlikely to be used so no loss using the tactical.
Both sides now draw their 10 Activation cards in their 'command hand' from their decks of 52 standard playing cards
Amerindian
Not an outstanding draw tbh, 7 cards of 7 and above. This limits use of troops and beasts, whilst the lack of red cards is not good for rerolls of attacks or spells. On the other hand there are plenty of black cards which can be used for movement bonus...
The Northmen
Also not a great hand, similar numerically to the Amerindians but with more attack reroll possibilities.
It is worth pointing out that neither side knows what the other has drawn in terms of plots/tacticals or in their command hand
With Objectives Plots and Tacticals sorted out it is time to roll for deployment (1.01). This turns out to be in favour of the Amerindian player who can decide to either choose which deployment edge to take or to deploy first or second. He looks at the table again and decides to deploy at the top edge handing the choice of first or second deployment to the Northmen. Wanting to have the final part of deployment the Northmen decide to deploy first. This means they will deploy 9 units first after which the Amerindian player will deploy all his units except those with Ambush. Finally the Northman player will deploy the rest of his units without Ambush and crucially will then place the first Ambush unit in an alternating sequence.
This deployment and discussion of the players thoughts will be in part 3