Hi, I was planning on offering up a battle report and even took a shed load of pictures but after five turns my will to take pics broke and I stopped. My life then became rather hectic and detailed battle-reporting was among the first pleasures to be put on hold. From memory, here's a basic idea of what happened.
Armies:
Mine was largely as above. A large number of heroes, max shamans.
Dwarf army contained 3 heroes (including the least effective Rune Smith in the Old World), 2 Slayers, 2 Gyrocopters, 2 cannon, Flame cannon, 4 Warriors, 2 thunderers and 4 rangers (I think).
Terrain:
The key bit of terrain was a large hill in the centre of the board. Everything else turned out to be insignificant (though there was lots of it).
Set up:
Both armies set up on their respective sides of the hill with no real attempt to use the flanks. (I had a pair of wolf rider units set up wide but little else).
Turns: 7 (we got to 6)
The game:
The Orcs went first and failed pretty much every order but blundered twice, sending the precious boar rider units (x2) onto the top of the central hill right opposite the cannons. My flanking goblin wolves moved forward a couple of times. My plan to screen with goblins was done with. The magic phase went better with the flame cannon destroyed.
The dwarf turn was a washout with almost all orders failed. Shooting destroyed one unit of Boar riders. The thunderers headed over to see the wolf riders and would eventually kill them with shooting.
The next few turns were pretty calm with magic taking down a unit of cannons. I foolishly sent the Giant and the Goblin on Wyvern to take on a unit of rangers. The stand and shoot meant that they started down a few wounds and while they won the combat the giant was wounded and killed in the next turn by nearby cannons/guns. Lesson learnt: work out the points cost of things before suicide charging! The dwarfs sent a unit of slayers over the hill to kill a unit of goblins before being killed themselves. Lesson there, remember to stand and shoot (I'd have won the combat) and he ought to have sent both units of slayers (he'd have won the game!).
After some painful hill-based stalemate I decided to go for it and sent my units over the top. To my surprise I got four units into combat. Then the unthinkable happened. I got three spells off despite the runesmith. The effect was that two units had extra attacks and the one supporting unit of dwarfs was driven back. The extra attacks spell plus charging and a multitude of heroes in combat (3 I think) meant that I won the combats and the game stopped. It turned out that I had just won, if the slayers had managed to kill themselves he'd have won (or indeed if any of my damaged units had been killed completely). I think there were about 30 points in it.
Basically, the multi-hero and max shaman tactic worked pretty well. Better than I could have hoped really. It was the shamanic magic that won the day. Next time it's shamans + rock lobbers to max out on attacks that don't require orders to work! I'll need the lobbers because the dwarfs will certainly bring the scrolls next time!
Overall it was a great fun game, our best so far I think. The orcs weren't too frustrating as most of the time a few would move and my plan didn't really involve them having to move each go. I had tried to set up some initiative based counter charges for when things failed but the great big hill, which required 3 orders to cross and get into combat, played a significant role with neither of us confident of making it over the top.
