The Great Arthurian Repair Project, Colonial Updates and Kings of War...phew!

Just a quick update tonight...


Firstly, after my...ahem... 'slight accident' involving the road and a large box of my beautiful Arthurians a month or so ago, I am pleased to report that all bar 4 of the damaged cavalry are now fixed (barring a wee bit of varnish and Dullcote). This is good, as I want to field them in next week's club Kings of War campaign game!! There are still about 25 infantry in need of a few fixes, but nothing as major as the cavalry - mostly just new spears or bows to paint.

Talking of Kings of War, here's my latest model for the Kingdom of Brythonia, a small kingdom near the Mammoth Steppes...and here's their Warbeast, a faffing great mammoth, courtesy of West Wind miniatures (albeit minus its Dwarf crew!) Apologies for cruddy pics...just snapped 'em quickly with the phone.

Eventually, this will be crewed by this fella (the one with the mahoosive axe!) from the brilliant Barbaric Splendour Barbarians Kickstarter that I have pledged for. I may also add a few old Grenadier barbarians to the crew as well (I intend to do a barbarian war band for Dragon Rampant, you see, so this will get dual use...)

Finally, my good friend Andy MacTaggart and I convened at the club on Monday to do the first play test of the 'Men Who Would Be Kings' game we are taking to Hereward Wargame Show this year. A couple of teaser shots below...as you can see, we have temporarily departed from the NW Frontier in 1897 and have gone back in time 12 years to 1885 in the Sudan! Watch this space for more details as play tests continue!!! 

That's all for now. Back next week for a full Kings of War batrep, all being well!! Toodle pip!!!!

Kings of War Campaign game 2

So, last night was campaign night! My 3rd game (second in the campaign) of Kings of War. As my Arthurians are being repaired, I dragged out the El Cid models for the evening. I also decided to, err, 'customise' myself a hero on a 'winged beast', so up into the loft I went to drag out the old 4th edition WFB High Elf dragon ( long since missing its Prince Imrik rider) and onto this I blu-tacked (yeah...I know!) a Foundry Norman knight I'd painted years ago for an 11th century Saga Welsh force that got abandoned. I painted him a shield in the El Cid colour scheme and 'Bob was the proverbial uncle'. At least, it would do as a temporary measure... I do quite fancy painting an Arthurian hero to place atop the beastie as the Dragon imagery in my Arthurian banners would go well with an enormous red dragon model!!

Anyway, the army I took was different this week. As well as the winged beastie, I took a mtd hero with Diadem of Dragons giving him a breath attack and 2 wizards. I took 3 regiments of knights, one with a terrain negating item, one with 'nimble' so it behaves like light horse and one with 'The Fog' so the impact of enemy shooting against is reduced. They were supported by 2 troops of light horse, a phalanx horde and an archer horde and, of course, my war mammoth!

I ended up in a 3-way game against Mike W and his Kingdom of Men force and Grahame who was fielding a Kingdom of Dust (or something like that) undead army - basically WFB Tomb Kings. We set up on a 8 x 6 table and off we went with a 'kill 'em all' scenario.

After last week's humiliation, this was very different - unpleasant though it was, the hefty defeat had taught me lot about KoW. I had read up on flyers (and how to deal with them, though that wasn't necessary in this game.)

We didn't get many turns in as 3-way games take a while, but it was essentially a drawn game, with none of us scoring over 10% of the army total difference over each other, although I can closest, being 10pts short of beating Grahame. Highlights included my mammoth facing down the undead Behemoth (essentially a skeleton Triceratops). The mammoth got flanked by skeleton light horse which saw its demise, but I was then able to frontally charge the Behemoth with knights, while flanking it with the general on winged beast...cue dead Behemoth!! On the other flank, Mike managed to sandwich the undead chariot horde with his own chariot horde, a knight horde and 2 units of guard infantry!! Cue about 135 attacks on the undead! We proceeded straight to the nerve test!!

Overall, a more balanced game. It was quite fun and I'm learning much more about how the troops move and how to get things working. I still suspect that in a game against the more experienced players, I'll get proper mullared but at least I'll have more idea of what I'm doing. Still not sure my army is that well balanced the way I picked it tonight, although it felt better than the last twice I have played.

Here's a couple of pics from the game last night.

The Great Arthurian Repair Project...and Kings of War

Yes, all the models from last Monday's 'unfortunate incident' now have spears replaced and the job of going over them to 'black out' the chipped parts (and undercoat the new spears) has begun! This is a shame as it has deflected my attention from the unit of Elves I was about to do for my Dragon Rampant Wood Elf force and, more importantly, the start of my big Indian Mutiny project that I am really looking forward to doing.

Still, I need the Arthurian models for a War & Conquest event in September and they are doing double duty as my Kings of War army (although El Cid knights will be called up for duty for tomorrow's campaign game) so I need to bite the bullet and get the done.

Speaking of Kings of War, there'll be more on that shortly. I lost an entire 2000pt army in 4 turns last week in possibly the least enjoyable wargame I have ever had. The fact that this was largely down to being beaten by the rules and army selection worries me, although unfamiliarity with rules mechanisms doesn't help. Still, the chap I played did tell me that, of the 3 games he'd played, I was the only person thus far to destroy even one of his units, so that was a tiny bonus (and he's a lovely chap too, so it wasn't like being gloated over by some tournament crazed buffoon, far from it.)  He played with The Brotherhood, essentially Brettonians... It was rather like the battle of the Somme, as I advanced into the teeth of 60 arrow shots per turn (all armour piercing as well). The archers also count as a phalanx because of the 'stakes' they deploy, so negate knights' charges. Ok...fair enough on first turn of combat, but these guys always count as phalanx, so even if they've been pushed back (and away from their stakes, of course) they STILL negate your knights' 'Thunderous Charge' in subsequent turns...very silly!!! Anyway, he had 2 hordes of these, 2 siege catapults and 2 regiments of kick-ass knights. But the worst thing was the 2 heroes on pegasus that aren't 'individual' heroes  but count as Monstrous cavalry (so they can happily fly into the rear and they then get triple attacks on you!) AND he had taken a horde unit of the same sort of thing as well. I could do nothing but watch as I was systematically taken apart, unit by unit. Even when I did get into combat, my knights were so shot up that the enemy archers routed them in a counter charge (my own charge being weakened by the bloody phalanx rule!) Ignominious defeat...

Still, it was fun fielding the new (partly painted...another thing I can't finish cos of the repair project) giant War Mammoth... It kills things fairly adequately and looks IMMENSE. Pictures when it's done, I promise!!

Anyway, campaign game 2 tomorrow. No doubt I'll be the target of various pre-battle political things so that could end up being interesting!! I suspect that using an historical army in this campaign will prove my undoing as it lacks enough nasty stuff (especially flyers) to enable me to deal with the horrible things in my opponents' armies. I also suspect that the lack of archer models I possess will be a downfall as well, as shooting seems to be a key thing in these rules - possibly far too important given that it's based on typical Fantasy warfare...

Well, that's enough rambling on for a Sunday morning. I plan to sort out the terrain boxes today - bought some new trees and new stone walls at Partizan last week and need to cull the damaged old stock from my collection and repackage it for easy storage...

Kings of War

Well, last night I played my first game with the new edition of Kings of War. I used my Arthurians to create a Kingdoms of Men army. I played against a chap at the club who had Twilight Kin (dark) Elves, using a list that wasn't in the rulebook. Despite having a significant numerical advantage, I got my arse handed to me on a plate due to not really understanding how the army lists work, but it was good fun.

For those who haven't played, it's buckets of dice, elements based (units can be troops, regiments or hordes...some can even be legions) with each type having its own number of hit dice, wavering limit and rout limit, e.g. my shield wall foot can be a troop of 10, a regiment of 20 or a horde of 40. Base size is more important than number of models on it, so you can use fewer models and model a nice diorama on the base. There's no casualty removal either, which is different to most games I play.

The hardest thing to get used to is the fact that you only do anything in your own turn! In WFB, WAB, well...EVERYTHING else I play, you are interacting and doing stuff in both our own and your opponent's turn. This...well...it was odd! Odd in a good way though. I enjoyed it! It's fast and bloody and I suspect that it's an ideal tournament set, as there are definitely tricks in army design! I learned that hordes of nasty cavalry are cool and that fireballs are a pain in the ass!!!

Seriously though, it was fun! It won't become my most favourite game, but I'll certainly join in the club campaign and won't refuse a game if someone offers. It also gives me an excuse to buy the rather lovely war mammoth from West Wind to be my 'beast of war!'

One rather good thing is that, although Mantic do their own ranges of models and I guess will be expanding the army lists, pretty much any models will work! A Kingdoms of Men army could be made with anything from ancient Greeks to 15th century Swiss (albeit with wizards, and maybe the odd monster thrown in) so you can use anything! NO 'GW-esque' only use our models crap here!!!

Watch this space as I'll definitely play again and next time I may even be able to take some pics!! Last night I was too busy trying to remember rules and watching my arse being served on a plate to get the iPhone out!!!