Defy elven forest-fighting tactics! (Now open to my players)

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I'm not sure exactly how an elves brain works, but perhaps some of them are selfish or cowardly?

Try offering them deals? Set aside an area of forest - far away from the river. Anyone going there gets to live unmolested. Most will think you're lying. But some of them might go for it. Great. Stick to your word (for now ) - more might follow.

If you have orcs with wilderness savy then try to stage an ambush for the pointy ears! If they can handle animals then get a few stealthy monsters involved. There are a number of ways to go - either make it a dangerous persuit to try going for your patrols... or set up a target they can't pass up and try to lure them in en masse. Something like a mass prisoner staging area?

Perhaps get some really vicious predators and turn them loose - they're not likely to bother platoon sized units of orcs... but lone elven snipers? Yay for Fiendish Dire Apes. Starving experimented upon Grey Renders? Displacer beasts? Just empty the contents of the nearest Gladiatorial zoo out there.

Is it possibly to corrupt any of the forest, rather than simply destroying it. Treeant + foul toxin + subversion = cool new friend?

 

[Dirigible]

Can't you just wait for Fury of Shadow, Stalk ? I know of what I speak.

Are we talking about the Keep of the Cataracts? If so, taking it by any kind of river action will be hellish... that whirlpool elemental doesn't play softball (er... by which I mean the opposite of hardball).

This tactic won't work if the 1,500 orcs in question are the only ones in the area; if they are backed up by the other legions invovled in the war in Erethor, though... (say, Grial's army).
* Make hundreds of camps all along the river. They only have to be tiny; a spiked palisade wall, a few tents, towers for javlineers and archers. This means your barges will be able to sprint from safe harbour to safe harbour, minimising the attacks form elven guerillas. Also, they elves will have to keep away from each of the camps, redcing the area they can operate in.

Have soldiers randomly fire one burning arrow into the trees every 100 yards or so.

Just what I was going to suggest. There are some terrific ideas here already (I'm looking at you, Mr. Elder-Basilisk. Remind me to never, ever invade your country)

 

[StalkingBlue]

Thanks for more comments, guys! Cool stuff.
Dark Jezter - Cheers! Cool thread, yup, thanks to everyone contributing!


More clarification and thoughts from the poor orcs.

For those of you who insist on taking the keep :
We're downriver from it, not upriver. I don't want to go into too much detail here, but due to the keep's location and general terrain around it, getting upriver would be quite a feat. Easier to take the keep than work around it, possibly.

Dam-building:
The river has been dammed at the forest border for about 50 years, turning an area of many square miles just upriver of the forest edge into a lake-swamp terrain with dead and rotting trees. That's a good place to be if you're an orc. Many nice slimy underwater thingies to help you out if any elves venture out here to cause trouble. Unfortunately, we're also fighting our way miles and miles further in, with no strategically good place to bui8ld further dams. Not to mention the keep is far too high up to be flooded by any amount of damming. (But our siege fortifications aren't.)

Special forces:
Missions deep into the forest seem to suffer from that accursed elven forest-defence magic, with troops getting turned around on themselves and never finding their way back to base and all that.
So, sneaking to their homes and killing young (yum, young elf!) is an expensive enterprise. Too expensive in lives since we've got rid of the more obvious settlements around us and some others have been abandoned and trapped.

Spreading monster terror:
We've got Fell (sorta-intelligent undead), yup, plenty. Who doesn't, these days, in a battle zone? Trouble with them is, you never know whose side they are on.
Letting bands of expandable monsters loose works ok to spread terror and discourage guerrilla bands from camping just a mile from our camps - we've got gray renders, we might get some findish dire apes if we beg and wheedle (rare they are these days, can't seem to get a resupply of them), can get some ettins, trolls etc.
The elves have monsters too. Horrible watery things lurking in the cataracts just below the keep, for example. We had been promised someone would be dealing with them before we came in, but nope.

Deception:
Can work if we make it look good, but those long-eared nasties are quick to adapt. Shiny new ideas always welcome!
Haven't noticed elves trying to free human slaves btw. Wrong race I guess. You hardly see any humans around where we are, although we occasionally get assaulted by ragged human renegade bands closer to the forest edge. Some of those imitate us, can you believe it! Use our equipment and shave their manes.
Contrary to what some people would want to make you believe, communication between human renegades and elves seems limited btw, so there we have an advantage.

Poisoning water supply:
We're downriver from what we're fighting and our most powerful fortress in the region controls the big dam at the forest edge, so poisoning the river (which is one of the biggest on the continent btw, so it would take one cold hell of a lot of poison) would mean poisoning not only the forest, but our own troops. There's also some other problem with contaminating the river further downstream because there's humans living on those plains who are to be kept alive because they are said to be producing food for us. If you ask me, butcher them and give us good meat instead of that soggy, maggoty bread we get from them! Not that anyone listens to what I say.

 

[StalkingBlue]

And more ...

The forest:
It's not a copse, ok, it's half a continent full of forest. Spreading disease and poison in one little bit of it isn't going to do much for us.
There's spirits in the trees or something, that die in agony when we chop, ring or burn their tree. Many elves can sorta hear that, which is great.
Would be even greater if our troops could hear it too, to boost morale.
Fire attacks with pitch and sawdust, nice. Good to spread terror and to boost morale.

Beachheads:
Rolling walls to protect our beachheads are great. We need more safe landing-places along the river that we can defend against guerrilla assaults.

Tower shields work so-so when you're being shipped upriver with people shooting at you from the river banks as well as from branches hanging high overhead. We've already had roofs built to provide cover against archers on some of our biggest barges, but there are many boats left unroofed, and new boats have to be built to replace losses along the river - and those gnomish ship-builders talk smoothly but work like tortoises.

Making deals with elves:
By the time you cut their second foot off, most will talk. That's the kind of deal you can rely on with those sneaky long-ears. Some more interesting ones are selected to be shipped downriver, they say to be locked in a dark dungeon and turned to our side by cruel and devious means. More likely those prisoners are just being reserved as a tasty morsel for someone far away from where the fighting is, I suspect.
Can't really set bits of forest aside 'for them to live in' when it's them who control vast expanses of forest where no decent orc has ever set foot yet.

 

[Dirigible]

we might get some findish dire apes if we beg and wheedle (rare they are these days, can't seem to get a resupply of them)

Except that elves have an alliance with the Dire Beasts of the forest.

 

[StalkingBlue]

Hi Dir!

Thanks for commenting. Although shouldn't you know by now that my game has little to do with what they write in those books...
(Speaking of which, I seem to be locked out of the repaired AtS forums, can't see any new posts since yesterday although I appear to be able to post posts of my own that no one else can see! Is that a new shadowy feature? If so, I'm impressed! If not, can you please help?)

Except that elves have an alliance with the Dire Beasts of the forest.

Yeah, but not the Fiendish ones.

 

[Dirigible]

Thanks for commenting. Although shouldn't you know by now that my game has little to do with what they write in those books...

Oh, fair enough then. Bare in mind I'm one of 'they now', though...

The impression I get is that, left to their own devices, orc and human commanders (except Grial... you still using him, at least? ) will tend to not give an ort's backside about the lives of their minions, so they'll let them sit there in inadequate defences and get butchered while the elves attrite themselves to exhaustion and defeat.

But I suppose that make MN orcs a little to much like, say, FR orcs? Lying there, saying 'please stab me now, nice adventurer, and take the contents of my 10'x10' room.'

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

But I suppose that make MN orcs a little to much like, say, FR orcs? Lying there, saying 'please stab me now, nice adventurer, and take the contents of my 10'x10' room.'

Not old Mama orc's delicious baked halfling pie?

NOOOOOOO!

 

[StalkingBlue]

Oh, fair enough then. Bare in mind I'm one of 'they now', though...

Yup, true! My 'pologies.

The impression I get is that, left to their own devices, orc and human commanders (except Grial... you still using him, at least? )

Grial? Who on a rainy day in a forest is Grial? As my players will be able to tell you once I let them in here, the current commander of the troops in the Felthera Valley theatre is War Leader Kraith. (I'm storing Grial away for special use.. )

will tend to not give an ort's backside about the lives of their minions, so they'll let them sit there in inadequate defences and get butchered while the elves attrite themselves to exhaustion and defeat.

Yeah, and of course all that ongoing siege of the Keep of the Cataracts might just be just that .... Or of course not. Who knows, ahem. There might be complicated politics involved, army, church and sundry other thingies that don't come into our little tactics discussion here at all.

But I suppose that make MN orcs a little to much like, say, FR orcs? Lying there, saying 'please stab me now, nice adventurer, and take the contents of my 10'x10' room.'

Nah. It's not a 10x10 room. Also I'm not letting them lie down or anything. "This isn't a holiday resort, people, we have a forest to chop down! Hack at it, go!"

 

[Dirigible]

Grial? Who on a rainy day in a forest is Grial?

Don't let Kane here you say that.
[whisper]I think he wants to marry the Fey-Killer[/whisper]