Tales from the Table
The Players and Armies:
Greg - playing the Dwarves,
with Damlo Hammerfist, The Mighty Garnoth, Suza Mancrusher, three Dunwarr
Regiments, a Blacksmith, three Miners, two Centaurs of Kunth and some Stalwarts.
For the purposes of this game, since we didn't have the errata, we let Greg
play the Miners as written (i.e., they could send units on top of other miners).
Kyle - playing the Undead, with Aggra the Hag (and a Familiar), Oorlian,
Vhass Frothan, a Harbinger, three Legions of Bones, a couple each of Crawling
Limbs, Vampires and Undead Riders, a Bat, some Undead Hordes and Banada Zombies.
Robbie - playing the Knights, with a Standard Bearer, King Falladir,
Prince Llewellyn, General Cordwain, three Warhorses, two Lucina's Rogues,
an Alchemist, a Squire, a Siege Catapult, some Men at Arms, a Sergeant at
Arms and a Groman Beastrider.
Russell - playing the Dragons, with Helspanth, Azaellrog, Marizyak,
Oboros, a Helspanth's Brood, a V'orkass Sorceror, two Fire Wyverns, some Dragonflights
and Drake Warriors, and several spells.
The Setting:
150-point Ring of Fire game, with no terrains,
players set in a square four feet on a side, with Kyle, Greg, Russell and
Robbie at the corners in that order (Kyle moved first).
Everyone spent the first four turns bringing out units and planning their lines of attack, but the Dragons quickly decided that the Knights were easy pickings. A Fireball threaded through the front lines took out the Standard Bearer, and Helspanth and Marizyak followed quickly, killing a Men at Arms and Sergeant at Arms, and wounding the Rogues. Unfortunately for the Dragons, a miscalculated distance left one Fire Wyverns short of attack range and vulnerable to a Warhorse, and King Falladir found himself able to kill the Helspanth's Brood in a sacrifice move (the other Fire Wyvern attacked him) that killed two Dragonflights. Since Helspanth and Marizyak were unsupported, they both died, and the Dragons withdrew, to confront a threatening Dwarf advance, leaving both the Dragons and Knights seriously wounded.
At this point, the Undead and Dwarves had yet to fire a shot in anger - neither was fast enough to get into combat in the first six turns. They finally engaged one another. The Undead left a small rear guard and threw most of their forces at the Dwarves, but the Dwarves never really figured out where they were going, using Miners to pull units from the Undead front to the Dragon front and back again. Ultimately, the Undead were making headway with few losses, and the Dragons decided to try a quick stab into the heart of the Dwarves with most of their remaining units, as the Knights finally committed toward the Undead homeland.
The Knight assault ended in ruin, with too little ability for the slow units to support the quicker ones, and too little overall toughness. The Dragons were able to penetrate deep into Dwarf territory, but were face with fighting Dwarves and Undead for that homeland with a depleted army, while the Undead marched on a nearly undefended Knight homeland. At that point, after several hours of play, everyone conceded to the Undead.
Greg, a relatively new player who hadn't really played with the Dwarves, was never able to put up enough of a concerted effort against the Undead to stop their advance, and when the Dragons began to advance the Dwarves were doomed. Russell should probably have been much more careful in his assault - a few changes here or there and it could have put a rapid end to the game, since the Undead were in no position to send much force to contest the Knight homeland.
We did decide that fireballs need a tool (we're going to use a ribbon) to indicate the path, because Russell's shot at the Standard Bearer was subject to some controversy (particularly on the part of the Knight player) as it weaved its way between two Men at Arms, past a Sergeant at Arms to clip the edge of the Bearer. The line of sight was there, but the trajectory needed to get that shot off was by no means clear or easy (and his "straight line" drag of the Fireball disk left some unsightly curvy trails on the carpet...). In the interest of letting the game move along and not retroactively ruling on anything, we let his shot stand.
The Harbinger is quite an influential disk for the Undead. Several Dwarf assaults were repelled by it, and in many cases disks died that would have caused great harm as a result of extra flips provided by that Harbinger. Also, the Legions of Bones let the Undead achieve a nice number of Activations. We did play with the one-inch range modification on Oorlian's bonus to Undead Hordes, which helped them a lot as well.
Helspanth's Brood do not appear to be great assault disks. Definitely a disk to be used in moderation. Russell was also unhappy with his inability to use Darkdrakes and other neutrals with the inclusion of Azaellrog, and will be experimenting with leaving him out of future Dragon armies.
Finally, the length of a four-player game, especially one with as absolute a victory condition as Ring of Fire, led some of us to conclude that we would be better off playing two-player games even with several players present so that everyone could stay involved in the games longer.