Endgame, or, "Rally `Round the Flag, Boys"
Now we were getting down to the three minute mark. One of my opponents was virtually out of the game. I had a clear shot at the flag, but my other opponent had me vastly outnumbered and possessed the higher ground. With nothing better to do, I had sent my berserks to touch the flag during the forest giant kamikaze run, to see if any of Rommel's forces were on the plain beyond it. The field was clear except for Hors d'oeuve's remaining two archers, so I sent a small detachment of berserks to take the archers, and my archers and warriors to join the berserks at the flag. As those troops began to move, Rommel came down off the bluff with a forest giant and archers. My warriors turned to engage the giant but unfortunately met it in a stand of trees, where they could not effectively surround it. They were all lost, but they gained time to get my archers to sniping range, and for the berserks to come up and engage. The berserks dispatched Rommel's giant, taking three casualties, and went after the enemy archers, with the detached force now arriving back on the scene after removing Hors d'oeuve from the game. Rommel lost ten archers and a warrior before he could retreat back up to the bluff. (Meanwhile his ghôls had put down my last ghôl, making a try for his dwarf, atop the bluff.)
Rommel wades through my warrior wedge; berserks weigh the pros and cons of assisting
With about one and a half minutes left, I set my four remaining archers in a line on the flag hillock and formed the thirteen berserks up in front of them, blocking the clear path between the trees; if Rommel were to choose to attack along the shortest path, the trees should afford some protection from missile fire and cause problems for his infantry formations. (There's no tactical map for this; things are very simple from here on out.) Rommel's forces were now at ten berserks, fourteen warriors, three archers, seven ghôls, a dwarf, and a journeyman. His archer foray had cost him dearly in attack options. He perhaps should have tried to get some of his forces behind me, but feeling short on time (and large in number) he opted for a frontal rush, sending a mix of infantry units down from the bluff, through the trees to the side of my berserk formation. Unfortunately for Rommel, this left his attackers strung out and vulnerable.
The attack through the trees; one berserk has difficulty with the "formation" concept
Seeing that things were going poorly for him, he sent in his dwarf as well to indiscriminately bomb the engagement, since even if he killed all his own troops in there, as long as he got my berserks out of the way he could send in his reserve troops to overwhelm my archers. The trees made this scheme a little difficult as well, but the dwarf kept up the bombardment while Rommel moved in another wave of troops. With my berserks thinning out and the fresh influx of Rommel's men, some enemies began to get through to charge the flag hillock, but none of those made it past the archer defense.
What a mess; dwarf bombards the fray as Rommel's second wave tries to sneak around
At eighteen seconds remaining in the game, one of those freak events happened that possibly could have changed the outcome. On the other side of the trees from the flag hillock, one of my berserks had caught Rommel's dwarf and cut him down just as he began to toss a Molotov. The dying throw landed in the dwarf's dropped pile of satchel charges, triggered an explosion, and tossed a burning bomb completely over the stand of trees and across the field to the center of my archer formation.
Uh... guys...
One of my archers survived, and maintained possession of the flag.
After that it was all over. My four surviving berserks chased the remnants of Rommel's force back up to the bluff and blocked the attempted last-gasp rush of his pack of five ghôls. Time expired with Johnny Law in possession of the flag. In the "post-game show", for good measure the berserks offed the ghôls to rid the field of the last enemy units.
Cleanup, aisle 6