As a faction, the strength of Total War: Warhammer 3’s Bretonnia lies in their knightly calvary. The peasant infantry is basically just there to squishily hold the enemy in place for charges. However, I’m feeling revolutionary today, so we’re staging a serf uprising. Let’s see how long we last. Pretty simple rules here, then. No knights. No horses. Conquer the entirety of Bretonnia. Defeat every horse I see in one-on-one combat.
We were in a bad way. Rats to the south. Goblins to the east. A dwindling stockpile of gold reserves. Worst of all, the lady of the lake herself had shunned us, stripping us of her blessing for no other reason than the cheeky bit of cowardly retreating we’d done from Masif Orcal. No appreciation for self-preservation tactics, that one.
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No appreciation for our brave refusal to autoresolve, either. Chivalry? More like chiver-me, as in shiver me timbers I wish I’d just played Vampire Coast again instead of being stuck with these garbage peasants for the full run. No matter. Our noble mission to liberate the land from horses must continue. You can lead every horse in Bretonnia to water, but we won’t get fooled by every horse in Bretonnia again. Because we’re going to murder them.
The plan was to hold up safely at Castle Carcassonne for a spell while we build up our military, which was going fine. Well, even. An especially chipper peasant commented that we we’re “really back in the saddle”, and while it was heartening to see such an improvement in morale, we did unfortunately have to execute him for using a banned horse simile. With so much of our roster unavailable, we settled on building a stupid quantity of trebuchets, as well as filling out a secondary army with more disposable chaff. Sorry, sorry. Stalwart revolutionary proletariat. To throw into the meat grinder.
We were just finalising plans to head back to Masif Orcal, when stinky Ikkit Claw raised his Ikkit paw and opened his Ikkit maw to declare Ikkit war, which was just the sort of Ikkit bawbagerry we didn’t have time for just now. After a few turns waiting around in ambush to try and outrat the rats, we had to make a decision. We needed to fight something because our money was running out fast, and we weren’t strong enough to split our forces. Back to Masif Orcal it was. We promoted the castle janitor to captain of the garrison, gifted him a coin on a bit of string with ‘anti-nuke amulet. Very magic do not sell.’ carved into it, and buggered off.
The gobbos were out in force, although they’d arranged their armies in such a way so that the first half of the battle was just against a single warboss. We chucked lots of rocks at him for a bit, which was very funny but also a massive waste of good rocks, so we decided to wait until the rest of the goblins showed up.
And show up they did. Plus some trolls. Plus a giant. Plus about fifty pump wagons. In our favour, we had the trebuchets and several hundred archers, protected by a mass of destitute meat shields who were each promised a hearty trough of lightly salted gruel if they survived, and an open grave filled with ripe manure if they didn’t.
A song in their hearts and a dream of full bellies in their empty heads, the frontline held out surprisingly well against the few trolls that made it through our arrow volleys, aided by heals from the Fey and Liora Hoofsbane. I took note at this point of the archers shouting ‘loose’ instead of ‘fire’, which I’m sure will make at least three nerds very happy but did little to reassure me when the pumpwagons started piling in and broke through to the trebuchets.
Fortunately, we’d kept some infantry in reserve. Pitchforks do little against pumpwagons, but you can gum up their wheels real nice if you keep sending waves of starving farmers directly at them. The trebuchets were freed up long enough to swing the battle in our favour, and we pulled through. “We’ll eat like horses tonight lads,” cheered the head trebuchet engineer, who was commended on his exemplary performance and heroism in battle, then swifty executed for using a banned horse simile. Masif Orcal fell in short order. The taste of victory still sweet on our tongues, we began to consider the logistics of making a large enough quantity of cheese to convince the rats to leave us alone. And also, maybe, to help us murder our fellow Bretonnians…
