Bretonnia vs Orcs & Goblins at 500 Points — a Proper Total War Draw
A tiny game that felt absolutely massive
Sometimes a 500-point game has no business feeling like a full campaign, and yet that is exactly what happened here. Wilini brought Kingdom of Bretonnia, Staś brought Orc & Goblin Tribes, and what we got was one of those games that reminds us why we’re all so deep into Warhammer: The Old World right now.
By the end, the score was a perfectly fitting 3:3 draw — and honestly, we wouldn’t have had it any other way. Up until the last round, it was genuinely unclear who was ahead. Cavalry charges, goblin panic, fallback moves changing the shape of the battlefield, peasants getting mulched, and both sides having moments of brilliance and disaster. Proper stuff.
The lists
Wilini started with the same Bretonnian concept he had used before, then made one small but very thematic tweak: trimming a few Men-at-Arms to give the bowmen defensive stakes.
Bretonnia — “Cinquacento” (498 pts)
- Damsel (Level 2, Battle Magic) on foot
- 21 Men-at-Arms with polearms, shields, light armour, command
- 10 Peasant Bowmen with defensive stakes
- 5 Mounted Knights of the Realm with standard
- 5 Mounted Knights of the Realm with standard
Wilini summed it up nicely: this was basically the same list as before, just with a few peasants cut so the archers could get spikes.
Staś, meanwhile, kept things exactly as in previous rounds.
Orcs & Goblins — “Śśś-waaagh!” (500 pts)
- Orc Bigboss with great weapon, heavy armour, shield, Trollhide Trousers
- 19 Orc Mob with warbows, shields, light armour, full command
- 20 Goblin Mob with shields, 2 Nasty Skulkers, musician
- 20 Goblin Mob with shields, 2 Nasty Skulkers, musician
- Orc Boar Chariot with third crew member
Pre-battle hobby energy
Before dice even hit the table, there was already a lot of good hobby momentum around this game. Wilini finished some upgrades for the peasant block and posted one of the most Bretonnian status updates imaginable: the peasants prayed to the Lady of the Lake and were rewarded with heads and polearms.
And then the scouts of warboss Leetabett met a Bretonnian crusade in the Badlands. Game on.
The battle
This was one of those matches where every turn seemed to produce another swing in momentum.
Early on, the first unit of Bretonnian knights ran down a goblin unit and pushed it right off the table edge. Exactly the kind of majestic cavalry violence you want from Bretonnia.
Then came one of the first big turning points: the Orc Boar Chariot tried to flank the peasant levy, but went in too early and from the wrong angle — straight into the front. It lost the combat and also fled off the table. Brutal.
At that point it looked like the green tide might be losing control of the whole battle.
But then came what might have been the wildest sequence in the game.
The second Bretonnian knight unit launched a huge charge across roughly a quarter of the table into goblins hiding in a forest. In the first round, the goblins fell back. In the second, they managed to win combat resolution and break the knights. And then came the panic-fuelled Bretonnian escape roll: afraid of being caught by bloodthirsty gobbos, the knights added the third swiftstride die to their flee move and rolled 14 inches — stopping just one inch short of the battlefield edge.
Which, sadly for Bretonnia, only delayed the inevitable. In the next turn they failed to rally and ran off into the distance.
That should have been a huge goblin success story. But because this battle refused to stay simple, the goblins who pursued them didn’t have enough momentum, stopped halfway, and exposed their flank to the first knight unit, which was still very much in business. Without rank bonus, the goblins folded and also ran off the board.
So by then, the goblins were gone, the chariot was gone, and the green side was down to the orcs.
And the orcs answered in the most orc way possible: by smashing the peasant block with the Damsel and driving them off the table.
Michał, watching it unfold, called it one of the better games he had seen — and honestly, same. Staś described it as a true total war, and that really nails the feeling. It wasn’t just a clean sequence of optimal plays. It was a battlefield that kept mutating because of fallback moves, failed rallies, exposed flanks, and units overcommitting at exactly the wrong moment.
Final result: 3:3
In the end, it finished 3:3.
That result felt perfect. Neither side really deserved to lose this one outright. Both players had great moments, both made strong tactical plays, and the game stayed alive all the way to the final round.
Wilini was especially happy with how tactically sound it felt from both sides, and Staś gave him props for really strong positioning and for consistently playing the objectives. That tracks with how the game sounds: not just dramatic, but actually very well played.
Post-game: rules, bookmarks, and the usual descent into more hobby
Of course, no proper Old World game night ends with just the result. It immediately rolled into rules chat, list ideas, and planning the next round.
Wilini started digging into wizard levels and casting values, then into templates, then into Bretonnian options like the Prophetess and the Green Knight. In other words: the usual healthy spiral.
There was also a very relatable moment of post-game honesty: maybe it is in fact worth reading the rulebook. We’ve all been there.
To help with that, Staś had previously recommended bookmarks, which turned out to be a massive hit.
Wilini also shared a rules snippet during the discussion to double-check template hits.
And after that came the inevitable upgrade path: more reading, more accessories, more physical books.
For anyone else deep in The Old World rabbit hole, these were the links being passed around after the game:
Meanwhile: the league goes on
As if one great game wasn’t enough, the chat immediately shifted into scheduling the final league match, with all the classic adult-hobbyist energy: travel, birthdays, practice, architecture appointments, printing reference sheets, and trying to figure out who can be where and when.
At one point it was pure communication chaos, but eventually everyone got there.
And because hobby momentum never stops, Wilini also kept painting through all of this.
There was even another schedule screenshot dropped into the chat while everyone tried to lock the next game in.
Final thoughts
We really love games like this. Not because they’re perfectly clean, but because they create stories.
A goblin unit survives a knight charge in a forest and breaks the cavalry. A chariot commits at the wrong time and vanishes. One knight unit becomes the hero, the other bolts off the table. The orcs hang on long enough to smash the peasants and drag the result back to even.
That’s exactly the kind of nonsense-rich, tactically interesting, cinematic Warhammer we want more of.
Big congrats to both Wilini and Staś for what sounds like an absolute belter of a game. If this is what 500 points can do in The Old World, we are extremely ready for more.
And yes — we’re also very ready for the next battle report and the promised photographic documentation from the league finale.