It is fair to say I may have been a little cocky going into my third Vanguard game. Once again, I was facing the Trident Realms warband commanded by Lord T, this time the scenario was “Rescue the Princess”.  The reason for my confidence? I was lucky enough to be the defender in this scenario and my Forces of the Abyss warband had a handy numerical advantage over my opponent.  My confidence was further reinforced by a very favourable power dice roll in the first round.

The scenario is a fairly basic one – and one that the defender should have the advantage in. The “Princess” objective marker is set up on the base line and the winner is the warband with control of the Princess at the end of the game. Game plan should be pretty simple: keep the Trident Realms away from the objective for as long as possible, but keep enough troops near the objective to contest & prevent the attacker from untying the princess.

I won’t give a blow by blow account of this game, history belongs to the victors! I will share my lessons learned instead.

Needless to say, I lost sight of the objective of the scenario. The attacker was slow to move between & around terrain towards the “Princess” objective. Having jammed up the Trident Realms in close combat, I made the mistake of committing everything to engage.

By moving my “blocking” units to engage, this gave the Trident Realms flying units the opportunity to leap frog (pun intended) over my units, leading to a mad scramble back to the princess for the last round.

A well deserved win to Lord T & his Trident Realm for staying on mission.