Daily Sketch: Dark Elves Rule

I'm forcing myself to take a week-long break from Total War, since I played it for maybe 20 hours over just two days. Gross. Unhealthy behavior. Sad. 

Here's one fun story though. It was towards the end of my Dark Elf campaign. A four-stack of enemy armies were headed directly for my capital, and because of a stupid miscalculation on my part, the majority of my forces were on a separate continent, raiding and sacking High Elf cities to generate tons of gold and slaves for my economy. All I had to defend with were two armies that were luckily pretty stacked with elite units, one of which was lead by Malekith. I put my armies together next to the capital so they could reinforce each other when the attack came. 

But I was a fool. The enemy army attacked in an ambush formation, which meant that not only would Malekith be fighting alone without any reinforcements, but the battle would begin without me being able to deploy my units in any strategics way. They'd all just be lined up like toys on a shelf. I didn't want to auto-resolve the fight because the computer had the outcome weighted about 80% in the enemy's favor, so I decided to play it out. My plan was to lose with attrition, and to focus hard on taking out a few elite enemy units so that my next army would have a better chance of survival. 

The battle began badly for me. Malekith got surrounded and lost half his hit-points in the first few minutes of the fight. I wasted my cavalry to save him, and they were slaughtered. I never even got to use my artillery because it got overrun before I could even set it up. Luckily for me my army was mostly made up of highly mobile hybrid specialists who could use both armor-piercing ranged attacks and anti-infantry melee attacks. I started skirmishing to break up the enemy army, which worked, and I was able to get Malekith back into the fight in a meaningful way, killing their lord and routing half their army. When the enemy reinforcements came rolling in, I was reading for them. I sent in my three Black Dragons to eliminate their artillery before it could be set up, and when their army clustered to deal with the dragons, I rained death upon them with every single ranged unit I had.

The battle was long, grueling, and by the end it was almost pitiful. The field was littered with thousands of dead bodies, and all I had left was Malekith, a Death Hag heroine, a single Black Dragon (I started with three), and a handful of my hybrid infantry who had depleted all of their ammunition. The enemy was down to just a few ranged specialists, also skirmishers, which made hunting them down a pain in the ass, but it was worth it, because Malekith could use magic, and I was able to pick them off one by one, leading to a very satisfying Pyrrhic Victory. 1,400 loyal Dark Elves went to battle that day. Less than 70 came back alive.

I was the one who initiated the second battle, which meant that I got to deploy my troops the way I wanted, and I got the capital's garrison as reinforcements.  That battle wasn't even a challenge. Without any artillery, the enemy army was forced to charge, and what they charged into was a braced line of halberds and and entire hillside covered with ranged units. The enemy army broke before it even hit my front line, and then just for fun I sent in my cavalry to fuck them in the ass. 

Great game.