The most one sided game I ever had!

This may also be the shortest battle report I write.

One of my long-time opponents, Ross, is moving to Eire soon (lucky guy); and had been badgering me for a game of Kings of War: Historical for the longest time.  No small reason being that he has a fledgling Mongolian army he wanted to field.  Bare plastic, but you have to start somewhere eh?

I was happy to face them, even though I knew I didn't exactly have a historical opponent, and that they would be a very difficult opponent.  In the end the best enemy I could offer was a version of the Holy Roman Empire, essentially a German army.  I decided on bringing a reasonable chunk of firepower, but it would prove of little value.

As it turned out I was facing unit after unit of mobile machine guns, aka, Mongolian Horse Archer regiments.

 

 What followed deployment can scarcely be called a battle.  The Mongols advanced into bow-shot and unleashed a storm of arrows on first my artillery, obliterating it before it could fire a shot.  In the next turn the Mongols decimated my crossbows and bowmen, and my one unit of knights without loss.

At the same time they retired in front of my pike blocks, permitting them time to deal with them once my ranged offense was destroyed.

 Defeat

I conceded on turn three.  There was no point continuing; I had no ranged attacks left and only a handful of light cavalry able to even keep up with the enemy.  It was clear my force was finished and their best bet was to retreat.

Ross lost no units at all, heck, I barely inflicted any damage on him.  On my part some 50% of my force was gone before I yielded.

I have to say that the horse archer units in KoW:H are completely f***ing broken; they fire the same distance as foot, and some units don't suffer movement penalties, and count as skirmishers so can shoot anywhere.  But the worst is that unlike any other shooting unit, they double their ranged attacks when scaled up to a regiment; infantry only gain about 25% more attacks in the same situation.  Sure, this matches how non-shooting cavalry are structured, but for mounted archers it does not work; they are simply too effective.

Anyway, rant over, and I hope you may learn from my experience!  It remained a good natured game, and I will miss Ross as an opponent when he does finally go!

(BTW: We used my own terrain for a change, I think I need to upgrade those woodland templates, the trees really show them up...)