Ok. The veterans of the Chicago area went and did a test run of the Hanging Tree mega battle tonight. We played on a 16 foot table with the tree deployed by scenario in the middle of the long end of the table 18 inches in.
Armies involved
Good:
Me: Von Schaedel, Warrior Priest with enchanted shield, block of 30 flagellants, 3 great cannons, 2 DoW cannons (One of them core)
Another Empire: 2 cannons + some blocks of infantry.
A third empire: Infantry and knights, attempted to roll up the right flank
A dwarf army: 2 cannons, 2 bolt throwers, some thunderers and some warriors
A High Elf Army: All I rmember are 2 Bolt throwers and 5 shadow warriors
A Lizardmen army: Dramatis Persona with 17 saurus warriors, 10 scouting skinks, 3 terradons, 3 salamanders
Evil:
Chaos 1: A bunch of marauders, a beefy guy with the berserker sword in a chariot, and I think another couple chariots
Chaos 2: Beastmen. A unit of Dragon Ogres, some dogs and a pair of ambushing herds
O+G: Block of Boarboys + General, block of night gobbos, block of arrer boys + a shaman, and a giant
Ogre Kingdoms: Bruiser, 4 units of bulls, 2 units of leadbelchers
Skaven: Don't remember what they had, they were on the far side
Vampire Counts: See the Skaven
Deployment was done in the 1 drop per side alternating. I got 3 cannons (the 2 DoW + 1 Great) on a hill with los to the tree and the other 2 Greats right in front of the tree, flaggys and saurus were defending the cannons on one side, a block of swordsmen with an 8 crossbow detachment and 2 units of 10 handgunners were defending me on the right. then a bunch of stuff to my far right. In front of me evil, the whole Ogre army, the Chaos Marauder stuff and the orks to the right of that. All cannons in the Good army had LoS to the tree.
Turn 1: Good goes first, defender blocks move up a little to free up a little bit of los issues, cannons knock 10 wounds off of the tree, the 3 cannons i had directly in front of me were aimed perfectly, the 2 great cannons in front of the tree were coopted for the guess by the second empire player and he underguessed badly, my cannons were right by the table edge and the tree was 18 in front of the enemy edge. my original guesses of 20 inches would have probably been sufficient to hit it from there. No misfires on the cannons.
Evil 1: some squabbling and a couple rushes from the orks, all of their stuff moves as fast as it can towards the lines. Enemy magic phase 1: First spell cast. MISCAST. Roll on table 9, Magic phase OVER! Turn pretty much over.
Good 2: A little more manuvering, I get the flaggys in position to take a couple charges and the cannons whittle off another 14 wounds from the tree with 1 cannon getting a "this and next" misfire. Empire player on the right has been rolling badly on stuff and is pretty much dead at this point.
Evil 2: Charge flaggys, do some other stuff, orc shaman casts the only spell that gets through on my part of the table (Gaze of Mork) and kills ONE DoW cannon Crew member. Leadbelcher unit gets a misfire and a 2 on its shooting at one of the handgunner unit, takes 5 wounds itself and kills only 1 handgunner. Stuff gets stuck in on the far right from what I can see. Flaggelants lose 9 I think to the charges.
Good 3: more stuff manuvers and gets ready, the 2 DoW cannons knock off the last 6 wounds killing the tree, winning the scenario for the good guys, it's decided we're going to play out the full 6 turns.
Evil 3: Butcher charges Great cannon on hill, other stuff gets charged and things get a little wacky. Butcher hits once and fails to wound on the cannon crew, cannon crew fails to wound back, Butcher loses combat because of High ground and fails the break check and flees right in front of the saurus unit. flaggys break the boss character chariot due to bad rolling by the chariot owner and it flees straight through a marauder unit, killing enough to panic it and IT breaks as do some ogres IIRC.
Good 4: Great cannons that were in front of where the tree was both in the same turn try to chip shot the dragon ogres and a chariot respectively and both misfire 1 to blow themselves up. Saurus charge and chase down the butcher and ram into a bull unit that I believe on this turn got frenzy flank charged by the flaggys, the bull unit gets wiped out.
I can't remember other major details from the rest of the game outside of my army eventually getting wiped out to the man but things were interesting the whole game with a lot of gimpy dice rolling.
As it was, I felt dirty about the list that I played and mentioned vehemently to everyone that I would never ahve used the list outside of how the scenario was written up.
The Evil side was not happy about the cannon spam that we had set up though realized that the scenario as written was unwinnable without it.
