Giants? Who need giants?

The Young General definitely didn't need his giant in the Denizen of the Wood scenario.

While the Young General has been anxious to start playing with more creatures, he didn't let the dramatic appearance of a Wood Giant in his order of battle distract him from the real key to victory, which was effective card play.

As usual, Young General's War Council was pure balance -- a council of equals, as it were -- with a Level 1 commander assisted by Level 1 masters of Wizard, Cleric, Rogue and Warrior lore. Filling out the Council was the aforementioned Level 1 Wood Giant.

The Old Warrior ,as is his wont, went with his usual maximize-the-hand strategy, with a Level 3 Commander assisted by a Level 3 Cleric.

And that cleric got early action with a second Turn Forest Frenzy that did some damage, although an ill-considered foray to try to assassinate the Wood Giant before he got into his Forest Lair came to a bad end for the Green Banner light infantry unit tasked with the mission, The battle savvy giant battled back with some dice that loved the bonus and three of the four green troops fell to the giant's hammer. Ouch. Needless to say, on his next turn the giant finished off the survivor.

Some jostling around the center weakened a few Pennant units and the Old Warrior was preparing for a strong advance in the sector when the Young General unleashed his favorite card. Yes, the Mounted Charge. It was nice to have a giant in the line, but Young General has the spirit of Murat or Stuart in his blood. His main pre-battle complaint was that his army didn't have any Red Banner horse!

Well, as it turned out, he didn't need any Red Banner horse because his three Blue Banner horse troops portrayed a reasonable facsimile of heavy cavalry. They literally smashed the opposition, eliminating a full strength Blue banner infantry (on the Standard army's right) and the entire left wing of the Standard army (three full-strength horse, one red and two blue) for absolutely no loss!. Suddenly the score was 5-0 and the Standard army was in desperate straights.

Of course there was really little to be done at this point. The Healing Pool brought back a dangerously low Green Banner unit and two of the offending Horse were eliminated in the coming turns to bring the score up to merely 5-2, but the surviving Blue Banner Pennant horse had no trouble picking out a vulnerable 2-figure Standard unit to hit. A Stone Skin clerical lore did little good as the Blue troop rolled three bonus strikes and that was it.

A resounding 6-2 victory for the Young General, who barely activated the giant,although said giant did get the ball rolling by killing the first enemy unit. Still, the heavy lifting was done by more conventional means, as his three Blue horse units eliminated 5 units for the loss of two.