This is part 2 of a Dragon Dice tutorial battle. It is recommended that Part 1 is read before continuing. This can be found here:-

Dwarves v Coral Elves – Part 1

Coral Elves

Coral Elves 1st March

As can be seen from the statistics, the Transmute Rock to Mud is making it a very tall order for the Selumari to take the 8th face of the Coastland. Their only hope of knocking back the Vagha horde is by use of a knoll minor terrain with a 37.5% chance of being able to use missiles, including the Trebuchet and Heartseeker.

The Selumari Home army introduce a coastland knoll.

They are fortunate this time around as the minor terrain shows missile action. They make the most of this fortune by attacking.

That makes it interesting. We have 3 important SAIs taking effect, along with the non-useful (in this instance only) Fly SAI. In the order that we will use them, they are Bullseye, Crush and Impale.

First, the bullseye targets 4 health of the Vagha horde army, a Skirmisher and a Footman.

The Skirmisher rolls a counter, so is saved. The Footman is not as lucky this time. He visits the DUA, being the first Vagha to fall. The Sharpshooter gets in another shot.

Another 4 missile results might prove to be useful. The Crush from the Trebuchet targets another 4 health of Vagha units they have to use manoeuvre to avoid being crushed by the boulder. The 4 remaining Footmen try to dodge.

All 4 units fail to move away in time. They must now save to avoid being buried.

3 out of the 4 units manage to save and go to the DUA. The other goes to the BUA and will take no further part in the battle. The remainder of the army now rolls for saves, if one or more rolls an ID, the Elves choose which one is killed.

The Sergeant rolls his ID and therefore bites the dust. The Roc produces the required 4 saves to parry the Sharpshooter’s missile attack.

The Vagha did not come out of that encounter very well. This is where Items and Artefacts make a big difference to the game tactically. The Selumari home terrain now looks very different.

The advantage that the Dwarves had after their turn has now disappeared, and the advantage is now with the Elves. The main effector of this change was the introduction of the knoll, which allowed missile combat for the Selumari army.

Coral Elves 2nd March

Over at the Highland home terrain of the Vagha, the situation is very different. The prime objective of the Selumari horde is to stop the opposition from casting magic.

The Elves are showing an expected 10+ manoeuvres, but the Dwarves have Mountain Mastery in their favour at earth terrains (yellow). My quick calculation gives an expected 3.31+6.35=9.66, minus 2.5 for the repeated ID results (15 health divided by 6) plus the 0.67 from the dragonfoal and a 0.4 contribution from the ID of the dragonstaff. This gives us and expected result of 8.23. In other words, it is going to be close.

The Horde army try to manoeuvre and the Dwarves try to resist.

Both armies badly underperform, resulting in a 6 – 5 win for the Coral Elves.

The terrain is moved to face 4 and into missile range. The dwarves can no longer use magic without either going into reserves, of by being lucky enough to roll a magic action on an introduced minor terrain.

The horde fire their missiles towards the frontier, aiming at the last Footman standing.

The Herald does his job and dispatches another unit to the DUA. All Selumari units remain at their posts awaiting the next round of battle.

The next part of the battle can be found here:- Dwarves v Coral Elves – Part 3