The Plains of Doom

"Brother Anselm," the Elder spoke to the young adept. "The realm is is dire straits. An army of orcs is on the move. We don't have sufficient forces to stop them yet. We need time to gather reinforcements. Therefore, someone must delay the invasion . . . you must delay the invasion."

Anselm was stunned. He knew that he was being ordered to lead a suicide mission. Yet he could not refuse the command of the Elders. But with the determination of youth, he vowed to return from his mission.
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Anselm takes up a position on the hill with Randall's rangers on his right.. He stations Gifford's rangers in the woods with Gernier's paladins guarding their flank. A horde of orcs appear.

They charge wildly ahead. Randall's bowmen inflict casualties on an orc warband while Gernier's paladins prepare themselves for an attack by giant spiders.

The spiders leap among the paladins but their fangs cannot penetrate the paladin's heavy armor. The paladins, however, have no problem slicing the spiders to bits. Meanwhile, Randall's rangers wipe out a warband.

The paladins charge an isolated warband and destroy it. However, Anselm's men get caught in a hail of arrows and take serious casualties.

Anselm retreats his men behind the hill. The orcs surge forward, causing casualties among the rangers.

Gernier's paladins find themselves under attack by three warbands! Yet they wipe out one unit. Alas, Randall's rangers are scattered from sustained orc volleys.

Gernier wipes out another warband!

But his men take serious casualties.

He retaliates and a third warband falls! Anselm pushes his lance forward, wiping out some orc scouts. The remaining orc unit takes to its heels.

Victory!

Notes
Kudos to Gernier's paladins, who managed to wipe out 4 enemy warbands. Clearly they were the heroes of this battle!

After my previous play-test, I tweaked my rules a bit and had another go (using my old 3mm orcs for the enemy). The rules changes worked much better. The paladins were clearly superior, but still got bloodied. Still needs some work but it's getting there.

One change I made was to use Squad Hammer's activation rules (use best of 2D6). It worked perfectly.

Although I am not using the Dragon Rampant rules, I decided to try out its scenarios. The first is called "Bloodbath on the Plains of Doom." I added a couple pieces of randomly determined terrain, which the paladins used to good effect.

Finally, I whipped up some new casualty markers out of some Litko wooden bases. I used a red marker to make blood splotches, with 1 spot on one side and 2 spots on the other. Units can take 2-3 hits so one marker is sufficient to track a unit's casualties.