Warlord: King of All Clans

In large-scale wars, ambushes no longer resemble scenes from movies or TV shows, where a group of soldiers suddenly charges down a hillside or showers arrows upon a marching column.

Those scenarios are limited to battles involving fewer than a thousand soldiers. In any force exceeding ten thousand, the vanguard, scouts, and patrols can account for up to twenty percent of the combat troops, and these are elite units, more than capable of detecting any unusual activity along the marching route.

The McDonald Legion numbers over forty thousand, with a vanguard of six thousand and nearly ten thousand more escorting supplies and siege equipment in the rear.

In addition to the fully formed main force, several cavalry units are tasked with raiding villages and towns for supplies, allowing them to monitor the movements of enemy forces in the vicinity at any time.

Even without intelligence from other legions, their own patrolling cavalry can keep track of everything within ten miles on either side of the marching column.

Without this level of command ability, Earl McDonald wouldn't be able to keep the battle-hardened Northern Earls at bay, let alone invade the North year after year and bleed them dry.

Therefore, Strong's Riverbend Legion was detected by scouts as soon as it appeared, and they rushed back to the main camp to report.

However, the Riverbend Legion's advance was also swift, closely following the scouts. By the time Earl McDonald received the news and reacted, the Riverbend Legion had already closed half the distance.

At this point, the bulk of the McDonald Legion was still in a long, serpentine marching formation, stretching over ten miles from head to tail.

Only the ten thousand elite troops near him managed to quickly reform into a battle formation, hastily lining up in the wheat fields.

The more distant units were either still marching, halting, or reorganizing. Except for the new-style firearm legion, which reacted slightly faster, even the most elite traditional cold weapon units had to wait to receive equipment and don their armor before forming up.

To counter Riverbend's firearms, the traditional units in the McDonald Legion had to stack armor like crazy. In addition to the standard chainmail, they would also wear extra heavy breastplates during combat, and their shields were also reinforced.

Such equipment was too heavy to be carried during marches.

This is why ancient generals were reluctant to take risks or use tactical maneuvers; large-scale battles were like two giant whales fighting, with long setup and recovery times.

Often, the more you maneuver, the more mistakes you make, and nine times out of ten, you'll turn your forces into a disorganized mess, turning an advantage into a disadvantage.

For both sides to line up their battle formations and engage in a fair, head-on clash was the norm in traditional warfare.

By the time Earl McDonald had urgently directed a legion into battle readiness, Strong's Mammoth Behemoths had already appeared at the edge of the McDonald soldiers' vision.

Three thousand ironclad ogres, like demons emerging from hell, surged past Strong's Mammoths and charged towards the human legion like a tidal wave.

These were all the elite troops that Asa had gathered over the past few years. They had marched south from the northern snowfields, battle-hardened and seasoned veterans, and now, having received Asa's military formation training, their organization was unprecedentedly improved.

Six's Tusk Boar Riders and Akkhan's Worgen Warriors flanked the Riverbend soldiers, advancing steadily behind the ironclad ogres.

Surrounded by his personal guards, Earl McDonald saw the panicked faces around him and roared in anger, "What are you worried about? How many soldiers do they have? We'll form a defensive formation and hold for half a day, and then the front and rear legions can form a pincer movement, ensuring they won't return!"

"All generals, listen up! Return to your respective units, stand your ground, and await orders! If the enemy wants to die, we'll grant them their wish!"

"Artillery! Mages! Quickly blast those ogres apart!"

As one of the top great lords in the Southern Border, Earl McDonald's domain, although not as developed in industry and commerce as the neighboring Earl Brutus's territory, was rich in minerals.

Earl McDonald's family businesses also included firearm workshops, which had produced tens of thousands of guns in the past two years, and they had also used high-quality iron ore to trade for dozens of cannons of various types from other forces.

Unfortunately, they had not yet unlocked roller bearings and two-wheeled gun carriages, and could not produce horse-drawn two-wheeled field guns like Riverbend.

Encountering an ambush at this time, they only had time to take more than a dozen cannons of various sizes from the freight trucks, urgently assemble wooden gun carriages, and set them up behind the infantry shield wall.

A group of artillerymen frantically loaded ammunition, preparing to fire.

One cannon is equivalent to a mid-level mage.

In addition to the cannons, Earl McDonald also had a mage corps composed of fifty mid- and low-level mages, who, like the artillery positions, had set up a heavily guarded mage position, ready to unleash a magical barrage on the enemy.

The Southern Border's firearms were indeed inferior to Riverbend's, but the Southern Border's path of transcendence was far more complete than the Northern Border's!

A mid-level mage who could become a city lord's honored guest in the Northern Border could be found in several cities in the Southern Border.

Strong stood on the tower of the Mammoth Behemoth, watching the distant enemy commander's flag standing firm, and couldn't help but nod, "He's an opponent."

But the mage corps was an unknown. No one knew if they would cast a high-level area spell together, causing massive damage to the Riverbend army.

However, according to the conventional performance of mages, the casting distance of mid-level magic systems was within a thousand meters, basically not exceeding the range of vision.

Following Strong's order, the twenty two-wheeled field guns dragged by minotaurs behind him began to be deployed urgently.

The artillery captain standing next to Strong, using the high ground advantage, observed the enemy's situation with binoculars, and then shouted to the artillerymen below, "Direction 2450, HE shell, instant fuse, elevation two hundred!"

Following his order, next to each field gun, an artilleryman vigorously turned the base below the barrel with a "z"-shaped rocker, adjusting the muzzle to the specified reading.

The loader on the other side opened the breech at the rear of the barrel and loaded a wooden-cased iron HE shell into the chamber.

The other two artillerymen used a carrying pole to lift the tail beam of the gun carriage, and under the command of the squad leader, slowly shifted sideways, adjusting the horizontal angle.

All twenty field guns were steel breech-loading smoothbore guns with modern gun carriages!

"Three rapid shots, ten seconds to prepare!"

"Fire!"

As the ten-second countdown ended, twenty field guns fired simultaneously, and twenty HE shells weighing more than ten pounds flew out at a speed invisible to the naked eye, traversing the entire battlefield and landing in the mage position a thousand meters away.

The Riverbend artillery squad that came along were the elite of the elite. Their rapid fire was true rapid fire. The fastest artillery squad completed three rapid shots within one minute.

The HE shells exploded, and dense lead bullets scattered, instantly causing a wave of casualties.

Under the sudden attack, most of the mages did not have time to erect magic shields to resist the grapeshot. Only those wealthy mages who wore magical defense items had their magic shields automatically pop open at the moment of the lead bullets hitting, thus avoiding death.

Mages were not combat personnel in the first place. Many of them had not experienced the bloody trials of the battlefield. At most, they would hide under heavy protection and slaughter soldiers from a distance, as they were doing now.

Suddenly encountering an attack, all the mages lost the will to cast spells, and they all erected magic shields, anxiously searching for the enemy.

The leader of the mage corps, a seventh-level mage from the McDonald family, watched his mage corps collapse in an instant and shouted in grief and indignation, "Counterattack! Give me a counterattack! Where are our cannons?"

However, the Southern Border artillerymen not far away were all standing there blankly, watching the enemy's artillery barrage on the mage position.

Their observers searched for a long time with binoculars before finally discovering the traces of the enemy artillery position.