Dragon Rampant: Dwarves vs the Green Horde

With travel and board games and other things going on I haven't been painting any more miniatures lately, but I did get in a game of Dragon Rampant. I used smaller units and kept track of strength points by the use of dice. This allowed me to field some units with fewer figures, temporarily glued onto stands as an experiment to see if I liked that arrangement. I did/do, so I will probably make some units from some of my existing miniatures. I really like the various rules sets that Dan Mersey has done for Osprey. They're pretty simple, but versatile, and make for a fun game that doesn't have to be too large.

View from the dwarven side (light blue dice as strength trackers)

Instead of playing any of the scenarios in the rule books I just had a line up of 4 dwarf units (2 crossbow units, one on each wing; a unit of muskets; and a unit of axe thanes, the heavy hitters), with a horde of goblins and allies facing up against them with the object of breaking through. There were 2 units of goblin wolfriders, one with spears and one with bows; a couple of units of orc warriors; a couple of units of goblin infantry with spears; a large stone troll.

View from the goblin side (red dice as strength trackers)

The goblin horde tried to move in for the attack, with the wolfriders heading around on each wing to try to hit the dwarves quickly. But the numerous units on the goblin side had to go in a bit piecemeal, to avoid bunching up and also because they weren't always able to all move. This allowed the dwarves to shoot them up as they came in.

Goblin horde getting shot to pieces around the mid-point of the battle

The only real damage done by the goblin side was when the troll got close enough to attack and manged to do enough damage to the dwarf muskets, and eventually cause them to rout. But it wasn't enough. The dwarves were able to prevent any goblin units to break through.

Troll attack!

Dwarves triumphant

If I were to try this scenario again I think the goblin side would need some combination of more units, stronger units, and/or more shooters. Especially some stronger units.

Still, it was fun and gives me more confidence about wanting to base some of my figures on multi-figure stands for small battles. And I can use just some of my existing figures for that, and still have plenty to leave as single figures for other games, such as dungeon crawls, skirmishes and such.