Dragon Rampant-Solo Game

I had a couple of hours free today so decided to have a quick solo game of Dragon Rampant. I've always been keen on solo gaming, probably dating back to reading Donald Featherstone's ideas in his solo wargaming book back in the late 70s/early 80s. Solo gaming does of course have limitations but it does give those without regular opponents a chance to game, as well as giving you the opportunity to try out new ideas on the table top before facing your regular opponent.

So I put together two 32 point forces- one dwarven and one of Orcs.

Dwarves
Rune caster and heavy foot
2x Axe dwarves (heavy foot-offensive)
2x clansmen (light infantry with short range missiles)
1x bowmen
1x dwarven scouts


Orcs
2x Heavy foot (offensive)
2x Crossbows
1x Scouts
1x warg riders (light riders)
1x troll

The game ended being very one sided. Both sides failed plenty of command rolls ending turns early but that didn't really change the outcome.

Deployment

 The dwarves stand firm

 The orcs advance

 Steady lads!

 The warg riders lead the charge.

 A couple of fluffed rolls and the dwarves haven't really done much.

 The troll lumbers off towards the dwarves...mmmm dwarves. Lumbering being a bit on a misnomer when you have a 10" move for being a large warbeast!

 Come on then! The dwarves await the onslaught

 The troll and wargs are nearing the lines. the runecaster manages to befuddle the troll a couple of times to slow it down.

 Missile fire from the orcish crossbows and warg riders is starting to have an effect on the dwarven units. 

 The light foot have moved forward to protect the bowmen but are taking a mauling from orcish crossbows.

 On the other flank the orcish heavy infantry starts to advance.

 A view of the left, the troll eyeing up the dwarven light infantry.

 The troll has finally attacked the light foot destroying the easily. Next unit in its sights are the bow-dwarves.

 The orcish heavy foot close with the dwarven infantry. The two units are evenly matched, which will come out on top?

 The orcs roll better- 3 wounds to 1- as both units have armour 3 every 3 hits (4+ on  d6 in this case) equals a reduction of one in the units strength point total. Thus the orcs win this round decisively.

 Th dwarves retreat.

 On the other flank the troll attacks the rune caster, it has now taken 3 hits.

 The orcs continue to attack the dwarven axemen,

 The runecaster and his unit defeat the troll! But the rest of the dwarven force is crumbling around them

 In the end massed crossbow fire destroys the runecaster's unit. .

Victory to the orcs.

As expected with Dragon Rampant the game played fast, a little over an hour from start to finish.

A few lessons learned-massed crossbows (two units of heavy missiles) are nasty when they can focus their fire. The dwarven bows were unable to do much harm to the troll. I was going to take the ballistra but dropped it to add a second unit of light infantry. I think that was a mistake. The scouts on both sides didn't really do much but have lots of potential.