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Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

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Valmond said:
Trade now vs trade later.
We can take more time to push them out of the Karags once there is no longer a critical mass of a WAAGH oushing them, bring in reinforcements, do hit and run tactics.
The whole point of withdrawal is to make them bleed, without bleeding ourselves.
But if we lose too many when the line breaks, and i am pretty sure it will break, we might just loose to a point of no recovery.
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And we're attempting to communicate that they've got a lot more blood than us. They can afford that bleed. Thus we're attempting to inflict maximum wounds.
 
I've made my decision.

[X] FIRST LINE: Caldera
[X] SECOND LINE: Withdraw
[X] THIRD LINE: Eastern Valley

Belegar disagrees with the basis of this bandwagon, and I trust Belegar's judgement on the defensibility of his Karak.
 
tryingtobewitty said:
The reinforcement feeds will be inside the shadow of the Caldera lip and the citadel. The Eye will not apply for the second phase of the battle, and the artillery can't hit nearly as much area.
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The width of the Caldera remains well within bombardment range of both our runelords and mundane artillery batteries.
Thirty or sixty guns concentrating grazing fire in a couple square km is a fairly spectacular sight, even when they're using roundshot and not shellfire.
tryingtobewitty said:
You can continue ignoring Belegar's opinion on the matter, but the fact remains that both plans will result in tunnel fighting. The difference is that in the Hold plan the tunnel fighting will be to the bitter end, while the Withdraw plan minimizes tunnel fighting in favor of the Eastern Valley fight.
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This is not true. This is what the options say:
[ ] SECOND LINE: Hold
Build strong fortifications along the lines the greenskins are expected to approach from, and if they seek a way in use a wall of lead to keep them out. These points will only be abandoned if they become overwhelmed.
[ ] SECOND LINE: Withdraw
Set up a fighting retreat through a dozen or more defensive positions through each mountain, making them bleed for each step without significantly endangering any friendly forces.
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In Hold, they only abandon the fortifications if the Orks do very well and overwhelm the positions.
Which is something that both firesupport and Grombrindal's presence allows against.

In Withdraw, they abandon them immediately and guarantee Orks will enter the mountains.
tryingtobewitty said:
And those new leaders kept fighting amongst one another and generally being incompetent on average. A splintered Waagh before it reaches the Caldera is bad, but a splintered Waagh inside the Karak is purely to our benefit.
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We have been LUCKY to have incompetent or uncooperative warbosses so far.
Warbosses DO cooperate.
 
tryingtobewitty said:
You quoted it yourself.


Belegar doesn't say that we can hold the line unless we're overwhelmed. He says we can hold the line until we're overwhelmed. Being overwhelmed is phrased not as a possibility, but as a certainty.


Check his phrasing.

Belegar is only unsure that the second line will be reached in that he's not absolutely, 100% certain. The odds the battle will be won in the Caldera are very low.


The reinforcement feeds will be inside the shadow of the Caldera lip and the citadel. The Eye will not apply for the second phase of the battle, and the artillery can't hit nearly as much area.


You can continue ignoring Belegar's opinion on the matter, but the fact remains that both plans will result in tunnel fighting. The difference is that in the Hold plan the tunnel fighting will be to the bitter end, while the Withdraw plan minimizes tunnel fighting in favor of the Eastern Valley fight.


And those new leaders kept fighting amongst one another and generally being incompetent on average. A splintered Waagh before it reaches the Caldera is bad, but a splintered Waagh inside the Karak is purely to our benefit.


There is nobody in the Karags that will be overrun. The point of the Withdraw plan is to go directly from Caldera fight to Eastern Valley fight, inflicting some casualties on the Waagh in the process.



This is a 400,000 Orc Waagh. Do you seriously think they'll just stop when there's a fight in front of them?
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You are interpreting his words very very differently than I am. Which is fine. But at this point we can't even really engage with each other over this because we have such a fundamental disagreement about what is being said.

As for this being a 400,000 orc waagh, it won't be once the eye fires. It will be significantly less. Such a battered waagh may very well decide to call it once they feel safe. If the head warboss leading this charge dies I would place a bet on it happening.

Valmond said:
You think those snotlings are not going to do damage to fortifications as well?
They can just swarm over whatever we have set up, eventually there will be simply a ramp of snotlings for orcs to walk over, but in the tunnels, the orcs will eventually have to dig through the piles of dead snotlings because withdrawal is not going to just mean traps, it means choke points and constant fortifications in the tunnels that will stop any snotlings dead, literally, making sending snotlings in eventually a problem for the orcs.
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If you are talking damage as in chipping the walls as they hurl their bodies at it then no I don't think snotlings can damage dwarf walls. If you are talking about being effective against dwarf fortifaction than also no, I don't think they will be able to do anything substantial. When we ran over the snotling city during our march to K8P the dwarfs did the following.
BoneyM said:
The result is as devastating as you'd expect when one side reaches knee height on the other. The dwarves don't even swing weapons - they trample the scattered and panicking snotlings underfoot as they charge clean through the city, and then turn their weapons not on the bewildered enemy, but on the passages carved into the stone leading out from the central pit, caving them in one by one.
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They didn't even bother swinging their weapons to kill them. They just trampled them. When snotlings come into dwarf fortifaction they will just be stepped on or kicked. Likely by both sides. So I don't really see an extended engagement with snotlings as an issue.


Withdrawing causing snotlings to be a problem for the orcs doesn't mean that those orcs die. Plus the very idea of the withdraw plan makes it so that those overwhelming dead snotlings in one place a distant possibility because the dwarfs keep moving. There won't be any time for the snotlings to build up like your suggesting.
 
Asheram said:
In trying to not lose them all.
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We have 3 lines for a reason.
Let the 3rd have the hold till death moment, 2nd should focus on bleeding enemy without dying in the process.

DragonParadox said:
So you are thinking once they have taken half the Karak and have a free line of reinforcements from Black Crag they will be somehow easier to kill?
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Actually, yes.
If we can thin the numbers enough with our 3 lines, and take out the warboss and some bigbosses.
Yeah, they will be easier to kill.
 
Valmond said:
Actually, yes.
If we can thin the numbers enough with our 3 lines, and take out the warboss and some bigbosses.
Yeah, they will be easier to kill.
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No they will not be IMO, because we will not be able to use artillery and humans are terrible at tunnel fighting so it's back to throwing dwarfs into the meat grinder unless Ranald is feeling like making another boxcar train and having them kill each other.

Orcs can literally grow out of the walls down there. Dwarfs can't.
 
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[X] SECOND LINE: Hold

Theres no reason to allow the orcs a permanent foot hold by falling back and doing so means they could use the snotlings to push through.
 
I get the feeling though Clan Eshin more conventional forces have fled, assets like our Eshin Assassin friend and that Assassin trio might still be observing the upcoming battle and the heroic last stand of Clan Mors from the second and third best position possible.

Why do I get the feeling had we choosen to paraly with Eshin and succeeded with the rolls, we would have unlocked Eshin Favor as a currency?
 
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Vote tally:
Adhoc vote count started by forlornhope on Dec 6, 2019 at 5:23 AM, finished with 542 posts and 106 votes.
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Lupercal said:
Somehow I doubt that the dwarf Chronicles will represent Clan Mors in a positive light.:V
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I kinda hope they do this big magnificent diorama of Mors Skaven statues desperately and heroically holding the line against a tide of Greenskins, wonderful and inspiring, a real masterpiece, and then behind the Skaven there's just a statue Mathilde and Kazador leaning on each other pointing and laughing at the oblivious Skaven.
 
So, uh, I'd just like to point out that Boney usually doesn't make right or wrong options. How well a plan works depends a lot on the rolls, and little else. If we roll really well or the orcs roll badly, we could certainly hold them at the second line with minimal losses. We could also bleed them completely dry with traps. We should not, in my opinion, be comparing what CAN happen, but rather the end states of either option. If we fail, Hold becomes a tactical defeat--lots of lives lost for more casualties on the enemies to make it happen--while Withdraw becomes a strategic defeat; less dwarves lives lost, but the orcs now have the mountains, with all that entails, and probably lost less forces. For a victory, however, you flip it. Hold ends with the strategic victory in the orcs straight up being routed, albeit with more immediate losses on our side, while Withdraw becomes a tactical victory, with the orcs still having their territory, but severely weakened at little cost on our side. So the question really is, what's more important to you, Tactics, or Strategy?
 
Ericwinter said:
So, uh, I'd just like to point out that Boney usually doesn't make right or wrong options. How well a plan works depends a lot on the rolls, and little else. If we roll really well or the orcs roll badly, we could certainly hold them at the second line with minimal losses. We could also bleed them completely dry with traps. We should not, in my opinion, be comparing what CAN happen, but rather the end states of either option. If we fail, Hold becomes a tactical defeat--lots of lives lost for more casualties on the enemies to make it happen--while Withdraw becomes a strategic defeat; less dwarves lives lost, but the orcs now have the mountains, with all that entails, and probably lost less forces. For a victory, however, you flip it. Hold ends with the strategic victory in the orcs straight up being routed, albeit with more immediate losses on our side, while Withdraw becomes a tactical victory, with the orcs still having their territory, but severely weakened at little cost on our side. So the question really is, what's more important to you, Tactics, or Strategy?
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Boney doesn't make outright trap options. Less good options and more good options are totally a thing, though.
 
[X] FIRST LINE: Caldera
[X] SECOND LINE: Withdraw
[X] THIRD LINE: Eastern Valley

I don't understand why people voted for "Hold" in the Second Line. Withdraw has the advantage of bleeding the enemy without significant dwarven casualties, and even if after the Waagh the karags are somewhat infested, it'll be easier to defeat them 1 Karag at a time than hold 3 or 4 Karags against Orcs with their blood up.
 
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