The Grim & The Grave - EPIC Pike and Shot Formations (Massive Battles)

Hey, what's going on everybody? I am Indy Pryde with Milk and Cookies Total War, joined by Oakley Hydeff from THFE Productions. And we have an awesome battle. Two Empire forces duking it out with the new units. The idea here was to try and do kind of a pike and shot formation. So you're going to see a lot of spears, handgunners, free company and whatnot. And this map is an awesome asymmetric setup. This is the Devastation of Ostromark. It's one of the new maps in the Grim and the Grave DLC. I'm rocking with a bunch of artillery up front. We'll go over my artillery pieces first. So I have the Sunmaker, which is a better Hellstorm rocket battery, which does a ton of damage. Shoots, I believe, nine rockets instead of three or four per volley. So there's a ridiculous amount of damage from range. Also the Hammer of the Witches, which is a bonus versus large. It's not going to be very useful versus the Empire in a gunpowder kind of setup. But we'll still do a ton of damage to these huge blocks of infantry. And we also have a bunch of Sigmar Sun swords and a bunch of the new regiments that were added into the game. Basically the way we wanted to set this up is we're going to fight this on the three tiers of the map. So my bottom tier on the flatlands is all these cheap spearmen moving up in blocks. And they're going to be huge bait for Indy's elite artillery. But that's fine. We're going more for show than anything in this battle. And that's why I brought my General of the Empire to try and shore them up. So that's a low ground so it can't fire. In the middle I have my Mortars and other units pushing forward. But what I had is Vanguard deployment with some free company. Now I'm going to get a nice ass ambush on you. Some of my units are already firing from on top of the hill where they expose themselves. Now we're going to feed up on your dudes. Yeah, this was brutal. This was something I actually suggested to Oakley. I said on this map there's some really cool line of sight stuff you can do. Like put guys up on the cliffs to fire down. And that is really brutal. You have guys up top. They're firing down to get an accuracy bonus. And they're shooting the crap out of the flank of my free company militia. They're getting absolutely destroyed by mortar fire and gunpowder stuff right now. So that's quite a bit of damage coming in. Sunmaker's still doing work near the bottom. And we can get a better look at Oakley's deployment. He has free company militia hitting all over the map. Over on my flanks and up here on the cliff. There's so much damage pouring into my gunpowder units right here. Yeah, and like Eni said, that's how I seize the top. A bunch of vanguard forces and I'm not going to let you take it quite so easily. So I'm going to be able to hold this advanced watchtower which gives me a flanking shot. So no matter which way you turn, you're going to be hitting the flanks somehow. So it looks like you're going to start pushing forward with halberds. But meanwhile I'm going to be pushing forward on the assault on the low ground. I'm going to try and make my main assault with these spearmen. But they are getting just absolutely shredded here. No one is going to be left standing soon. Combined fire from all your artillery is going to do work. But I'm nonetheless going to order a charge. All those halberdiers and spearmen are going to start moving up, getting ready to engage. And now you're going to spring the ambush with the free company militia from my right flank. They're going to get a nice little volley off into the flank of my gunners. Probably not kill too many on that first volley. It's interesting, the free company militia do not have armor piercing. Which is kind of strange. They're using handguns, or I guess pistols instead of handguns. But they just don't get the armor piercing that regular handgunners do. But they're cheaper, which is nice. One of my shots on the low ground decapitated one of your guys. I saw his head roll. Poor guy. That's not a pleasant way to go. I'm going to turn my silver bullets, which I believe do magic damage. Yeah, they do magic damage. And they're going to fire into these free company militia doing quite a bit of damage here. And now Oakley's halberdiers and spearmen are moving up to close into melee. Which I'm going to notice. So I'm going to get one last volley off with each of these units and then pull back. And you can see just the utter devastation getting wreaked across the line here. Going to pull back and then send in my own halberdiers. The hammer of the witch is still firing in and my flank is still firing in. So the bottom is going really well for me. But over here on this flank, I'm getting really blobbed up against all these handgunners and mortars firing in. The witch hunter is trying to reinforce, but I'm getting kind of destroyed over on this side. So on the low ground, I've executed my picket's charge. And it's run straight into your line. You're reinforcing with other units. But that's fine. I'm just trying to sweep you back and seize the low ground as my main reserve pushes up. But even that force is getting pounded on the low ground. My flagellants are moving up, backed up with some halberds. Some more expensive units, but you are making sure to focus fire on them. And they're getting exploded into little giblets. Oh my god, it's so brutal! The artillery in this game is so satisfying. I think the last time CA did such a good job with artillery was probably with Apollo Samurai. That might have been the last time Gunpowder was even aimed. But it's just going to do so much damage here to your flagellants as they move up. Now your handgunner line has made it up and they're backed up by the Lord General. He's probably going to buff up the morale of your guys at the bottom part of the map. But look at how many units are routing right now. The spearmen are routing. Hoverdeers have already died. And with all my firepower concentrated on the bottom of the map, I was definitely going to win over here. Top and in the middle is where you have a much better chance of winning the engagement. And you have kind of pushed back my free company on the top end because you brought witch hunters and other units. So I pulled back to a little bit of a better position where my free company can start unloading. And I do have this reinforcing column moving up. We can take a look at that. There are a couple crossbowmen, a couple spearmen in here. And then I believe I have my tattersouls as well. Yeah, the tattersoul, the elite flagellants are also moving up. Very sweet for us. I can't wait to use it. There's some Bernie Sanders models in here. There's the... I love seeing these guys. They've got some bondage like sadomasochism masks on. I know. They're into some kinky stuff for sure. It's nice. I'm trying my best to push through these free company militia right now. The halberdiers have gotten into melee, but they've taken so much damage from the units up top. It's going to be pretty problematic. And pretty soon here I'm actually going to decide to send Boris Todbring over to the side of the map to help me hopefully win on this side. Yeah, and look at the free company militia in close quarters combat. Half the units are fighting with swords. The other half is point-blank shooting with their pistols. It's so epic. Oh my god. Pike and shot, dude. Yeah, pike and shot, and then you guys are breaking, but you have more reinforcements. So this should come out in my favor, but you have more reinforcements streaming up. I do want to delay my approach. In the mid-ground, I guess we can see what's happening. Your free company militia is tied up with my captain. Most of my troops have poured down into this location. So I am kind of getting the advantage, but you're nice and buttoned up. And you've pulled up with your multiple ranks of cannons and gunners. And now you're going to be getting a bit of the advantage against me since I've kind of revealed myself. Yeah, I've got a ton of cannons. Oh my god. They're firing through the length of that handgun unit. I think this might be... Oh, this is your silver bullets. Just did so much damage to them there. When you can ever get artillery to shoot into the flank of a unit and just go through the entire flank, it does so much more damage. Just completely eviscerating units. You do have your mortars firing. Let's actually see how many kills they've gotten so far. 2456. Nothing truly amazing. I think my artillery's done better. 109 on one of my batteries. 326 on the Sunmaker. And 220 on the Hammer of the Witches so far. But right now, they're firing into some big, meaty blobs of Oakley handgunners and Halberdiers. So, I expect that number to continue to rise as this battle goes on. Yeah, and then down on the low ground, you counter-charged my charge with your units. Although, some of my guys reinforced. And so, I think now you're going to be in the process of kind of trying to retreat. Slash pulling in Sterling's Revenge, Free Company, and Silver Bullets. Two elite gunners that should be able to tie up this flank here and help you hold it. So, we'll see how that goes. I definitely expect a win over here. And actually, I believe my Silver Bullets are firing into your— Yeah, they just opened fire at the Borg Commander. Did so much damage there and brought him down. And Oakley's gen is going to die. And meanwhile, I'm going to find one of those Halberdiers. I think he's on—up top. Oh, no, he's actually tied up into your mortars right now. I sent Boris over here with that Runefang to deal with some of these— I just decapitated one of the mortar crew. Poor guy. So, the mortar crews are going to start getting wrecked with a lot of cannon fire actually coming in as well. Halberdiers are going to tie him up and melee him. I definitely don't want to stick in there for too long. So, I'll soon pull Boris out of that and go around to deal with these crossbows up top. And the Witch Hunter is actually up here as well. I'm going to get a rear charge into these crossbows and see what kind of damage he can do in melee. Oh, my God. So, you're doing good work with your heroes. You countered my hero, whereas I only brought two. You've got a bunch of Witch Hunters running around doing pretty well. But I have won—I missed all this. I have won the high ground. You've won the low ground. My big cluster of Tattersouls leading these Halberds and Spear Infantry cleaned up the top. And now they're going to be swarming back down to the bottom, coming down with a Wrath to seize this part. They're trying to rally against my units that are being chased. So, these are Sterling's Revenge Free Company units trying to pull out. And now we're going to clash with your guys. So, this is going to be me trying to sweep the top. And they're going to slam into the Halberdiers in my line here. And I'm just going to start throwing everything I can into this engagement to just tie stuff down. I have a bunch of cannons that are now starting to turn just to this part of the battlefield. The Hammer of the Witch is going to soon fire in as well. You have your—those are Outriders with grenade launchers who are doing quite a bit of damage, up to 54 kills. Taking some shots there. They're definitely losing some men right now. In fact, they're probably going to go down pretty soon here. But firing into the flank of these Halberdiers, they can do so much damage. And you're actually going to do something very smart and get them out of the line of sight of my Free Company Militia. And if you can save them here, they might be able to do quite a bit of damage shooting into the flank of my Halberdiers over on this side. Yeah, they end up breaking just when I could have Hammer and Anvil, but they will come back. Meanwhile, your Tattersouls are down to 23 men chasing off some of my guys. So, my guys are kind of tied up. And this is going to be a crucial moment as well, where you have broken through my back lines, and you have everything occupied. So, I can't reinforce my front. So, Boris Todbringer, the Witch Hunter, has broken my Crossbowman position that was trying to support everything. And now, that opens up a gap for you to come and reinforce with your cannons and other units, which is going to be pretty good for you. Meanwhile, on the low ground, I'm kind of holding with Sigmar's Sons. Sword Infantry, these guys are unbreakable, and they're going to get a lot of kills. I think they end up with like 200 kills towards the end of this battle. So, they're definitely doing work, but this is going to be one of the last few remaining units that I have left. With a couple extra troops that came back from rounding Halberds, and it looks like Handgunners. But against your Silver Bullets, I don't think I'm going to be able to hold up. Yeah, the Sigmar's Sons are not a particularly amazing looking unit. They look pretty standard, honestly, but they have unbreakable morale. They're not very expensive. I think they're one of the units you're probably going to see a lot in Empire builds, because Empire Swordsmen are a useful unit in and of themselves. But add unbreakable on top of that, and that's a very nice little feature to have. The Handgunners and the Free Company Militia are getting some good shots in. But they're probably going to get tied up here, because my micro and 40-unit cab battles are sometimes atrocious. They are indeed. We get charged in the face by Sigmar's Sons. Boris Todbringer and the Witch Hunter still doing work up top, slaughtering everything. In fact, I've gotten Boris into the Sterling's Revenge. And you're not going to be able to pull away. There's really nothing to reinforce them over here. So these Sterling units are going to get slaughtered, decapitated, and cut to pieces by Boris Todbringer and that Runefang. He's got four decapitations with one swing of his sword there. That's pretty useful. Oh my god, I'm going to watch a little bit of that. Yeah, I'm trying to push my Handgunners up here to start shooting in. You can see I've kind of got... Oh my god, dude, you're right. The heads just pop straight off. Yeah, it doesn't even matter if he hits them in the head. They just kind of fall off. Blood and Gore DLC. Jeez. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And so now, yeah, my cannons... I'm trying to wheel them into a position where they can fire into this blob right here with your Tattersouls and stuff. Tattersouls are up to 90 kills, which is pretty nice. Mortars are finally going to get silenced very soon here. But my Witch Hunter is actually going to get chased off by your Spearmen and Crossbows up top. Yeah, so what used to be a pretty healthy blob on my end has been kind of chipped away at by your Scrabble... I don't know, like a couple little Scraggling groups of Handgunners that are all wavering for you have managed to just pick away at my guys. Yeah, I'm having real issues dealing with your forces. I finally secured the top with a healthy Spearmen unit that saw off your Witch Hunter. So Crossbowmen are now free, but it may be too little too late at the top. On the downside, my Empire Captain is also in the mix, and he just went down. Actually, he's still alive, but he's routing. And it's just with your Special Gunners in the mix here that are really awesome. Silver Bullet Handgunners or whatever do really good work against the Heroes. Plus, your Witch Hunter was in the mix too, so he was helping to bring down my Lord. So you've done a good job of kind of sniping my key units this whole battle. Yeah, I accused him there, and that's what finally finished him off. I only had like 200 HP left, and I ended up killing him there. Nice shot from, I believe, that was the Hammer of Witches. Going to start decapitating some of these Crossbows up top. Some really accurate fire coming in from those Artillery pieces who have done so much work for me in this battle. Crossbows are shooting in, destroying some of the remnants of these Handgunners, but they're not too important. You're going to make a pretty nice push here, actually, and get some Spearmen. And I believe the Tatterswolves. Yeah, they're pushing all the way past. You see a bunch of my units over on this flank are routing, and you're going to go straight for the Hammer of Witches. And I'm going to do my best to absolutely slaughter them as they charge in. I know, this is an awesome cinematic shot of this. Your Spearmen running away from me, Tatterswolves coming in, and then this Hammer of Witches with the burning background. Just so epic, and it looks like you're going to get the final reloads off. Oh my god, it took out that guy! Please shoot again, I want to see it shoot at a point-blank volley. Even with the Tatterswolves still in the melee, they're still firing. Let's see if they get a couple more point-blank volleys. I feel really bad for the Tatterswolves, they're stuck right in front of the guns themselves. Not a good way to go, although it's probably pretty quick. Let's see if we can get any more shots off, I don't think so. I think the crew's going to get tied up now. So now I'm going to get a bunch of Gunners to just fire in from the flanks of these Tatterswolves. Start doing a bunch of damage to them. They are unbreakable, not like getting shot in the ass by Handgunners. With all of that gunfire coming in, I think they're going to be pretty much boned. There's a minute and a half left in the replay, but now I'm just going to have my Witch Hunter in the back here. Watch this, when he fires into these groups of Spearmen, he's going to start getting Collaterals. He can kill like 7 or 8 guys in a single pistol shot, which is pretty awesome. Oh my god, the group of 111. Oh, he's lining it up. Oh, Collateral! Oh my god. Collateral, oh yeah! Oh, baby! Good shot from the Witch Hunter. Geez, yeah, it's a good triple headshot. Yeah, he's going to get more than that. Dude, this guy is so creepy. He's walking around in the background in the shadows of the trees. Yeah, he's like in the tree. Oh my god, dude, these shots are so brutal. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in one shot, 6 in one shot! A bunch of heads flying too, it's so awesome. And now he's going to start shooting at the artillery crew, the Flagellants, the Tattersouls over on the other side of the battlefield, still dying. And I just want to watch the Witch Hunter kill stuff, because you don't get to see him shoot you. Oh my god, that's so satisfying, dude, I love that. Oh my god, dude, my Tattersouls just got wrecked by a volley and like half of their heads just popped up instantly. So I think one more shot is going to come in from the Witch Hunter here. If I can catch that. Oh yeah, there we go. And that's pretty much going to be the end of the battle. So IndiePride's Boris Todd Bear Army is going to carry the day. But this guy, dude, if you guys haven't tried the Gunpowder-style battles on Warhammer, they are so much fun. Especially on the asymmetrical maps like this one, where you can get kind of line of sight, get units above and start shooting down, that kind of thing. It makes for really interesting Gunpowder battles. Kind of a la Napoleon-style or a fall of Samurai. It's really entertaining, I definitely recommend trying it out. Yeah, it's really, really fun. And I think kind of what ends up being a crucial factor in these battles is one, artillery, and then two, hero units. Because they can kind of brave the volleys of the guns and get in and just do a lot of hammer and anvils. And that's kind of what you ended up doing with Hammer of Witches, striking my key units and my generals. And then your generals were free, kind of had free reign on the backlines and they cleaned up a lot of it. A fair amount of my troops did die needlessly in glorious charges or by marching in nice compact square formations under artillery fire. But that's part of the strategy. And so we can see the kills here. Silver Bullet Handgunner's got 190 kills. Hammer of Witches, 375. That was near the beginning of the game, although near the end they were still doing work. And they don't run out of ammunition very quickly either, so you give them time to fire, they wreck stuff. Sunmaker, 370 kills. Very fast too, they run out of ammo very quickly. So that was all in the first five minutes of battle, maybe even less. It's because it shoots so fast, it has really quick reload time. And the Spirit of My Shields, of course, didn't do anything spectacular. Boris Toddbringer, almost 200 kills. And my Tattersouls, 200. Yeah, it's pretty intense. Meanwhile, I had kind of a cheaper force. Yeah, fewer cannons, fewer heroes. Actually just one fewer hero, so maybe it kind of evened out. Both my mortars are firing the whole game through and through. Did fairly well. Not as well as yours, but I think you were more on the defense and you had clear line of sight. Yeah, some of my free company militia, like Sterling's Revenge and the one with 153 kills were the ones who kind of first laid down that ambush. The rest kind of did so-so. My gunner is mostly getting torn up. Crossbowmen are actually getting more kills than I expected, so they were good in that position. And then if you look at the rest of my troops, yeah, most of it is fodder. With the Sigmar Suns and the Tattersouls being pretty much the exception to that with getting the bulk of my kills in key locations. It was a really fun battle. I had way more guys than Indi. Indi had 3,400, I had 4,100, so that's like 700 difference, which is a couple spearmen units. Had I kept those alive, I probably could have swarmed you. But anyways, different tactics shown throughout that battle, and we saw what was superior. So I hope you guys enjoyed, and I guess that's it. See you in the next one. See you guys. Bye-bye.