WHFB: Snatching Defeat from the jaws of victory

W/e before last Byakhee Rich and I had a game. Empire vs Dark Elves:

I had a strong left hand cavalry wing with the Warlocks in there, their third (?) outing as I stil am assessing them as a combat/cavalry/magic unit.

Rich confessed to mucking up his deployment, as I distracted him with Eric and the Cold One Knights, and he deplpyed his artillery and knights on his left flank against them, which caused him pain to re-roganise once he’d seen what I was up to.

But this still left his rather impressive two infantry units facing me in the centre.

First I got the Vanguard move for the Fast Cavalry (10 Warlocks, 10 Dark Riders), then I won initiative and went first and was pouncing on his poorly defended right flank.

Stupidly, I did not move up the centre of my army to support them.

WHY ?????

Because I thought I’d wait to see how he re-arranged his army. Pathetic, I should know better, I should have moved them up immediately. I really should learn from Belkar Bitterleaf, and know that throwing an angry housecat in the opponents face is the best way tio solve things.

This resulted in me wiping out his skirmishers (at a price of most of my Dark Riders), and then following them up along with my army general on Manticore into one of his large units. As you can see in the back ground, the Silver Talons (c30 Spearmen) are a long way away – at least two turns).

Still I hoped that the General and Manticore would cause significant casualties.

Nope, the dice were as against me as they were against Rich.

Rich starts to re-arrange his army in the meantime.

Whilst both our knights faced off against each other. However, Richard managed a few shots onto Eric, so after two turns I blinked and moved Eric forward with the CoK suffering from stupidity stuck where they were. Typical.

Despite not winning by a convincing margin, my general stayed in combat, and then Rich failed his LD test when I did win combat the second round. Both of us were hurling Augment and Hex spells into this fray, as you can see by the caspell cards we slipped under the models’ bases. (our one concession to on table clutter).

Mt RXBs whittled down an Empire detachment to one Wizardess and one archer. Much school boy humour about the wizardess holding her globes !

The Manticore got killed, the general was defeated.

The Silver Talons after dithering and being whittled down by organ gun fire, closed in and defeated the halberdiers.

But too late to rescue the general who failed his LD test, ran and was cut down by the Empire Halberdiers.

Eric pranced forward, before being cut down by the Empire Cannons. The hippygriff knights got bored and moved across the front of my army to engage the Silver Talons.

The Warlocks got this Empire contraption (chariot) in the face, and whilst good were no match for it. I think they’d be good against infantry.

So, because I’d idled for one round, Rich was now in a better position than me. Conclusion to follow.