Kings of War - Dwarfs vs Varangur and Orcs

After a long time Steedo and I got together to play Kings of War (2nd Ed) - I also wanted to use some of the fantasy stuff I had painted recently. Unfortunately I had been ill for a couple days, with a heavy cold - the first days off work for over 6 years. Anyway back to the game approximately 1600 points a side Dwarfs versus Varangur (Chaos) with Orc allies. 

The Dwarfs had 2 units each of warriors (ironclad), spears (bulwarkers), then one each of guard (ironguard), ironwatch (crossbows), earth elementals, a greater earth elemental and a steel behemoth (a steam tank).

The Varangur had a unit of Reavers, 2 units of warbands, a horde of cave trolls and a cave troll king. Their Orc allies brought along a boss, a unit of Ax warriors and a unit of gore riders.

Initial deployments … Steedo had tried to avoid having his trolls face off against my heavies - elementals and steel behemoth, but I had matched them… all was going to plan. With the Dwarfs being a bit slow I was planning to absorb the attack from the forces of darkness, and then pick up the victory points for the invade scenario. 

The first move saw Steedo throw his troops forward. The Dwarfs remained stationary, so they could use their crossbows apart from the elementals moved towards the trolls.

In the second turn saw the Reavers charge through the woods losing their bonuses and picking up a hindered charge - however they did put 5 damage on the dwarf guard, before the counter attack from the dwarfs put them to rout! First blood to the dwarfs … however the crossbows didn’t put any damage on the gore riders this turn.

The 3rd turn saw the warbands charge the dwarf left flank and to my shock take out the crossbow unit and isolating a unit of bulwarkers about to be flanked by the wolves … and my dice rolling had taken a turn for the worse.

The dwarf guard finished off a unit of warband only then to face the gore riders - meanwhile the bulwarkers held off an attack on two fronts with a “snake-eyes” roll with about 15 hits … much to Steedo’s annoyance, but would there stoicism be paid off.

Meanwhile on the other flank the elementals were taken out by the trolls - the regeneration of the trolls really hurt. It allowed the trolls to absorb the damage dished out by the elementals.

In the centre the Orcs managed to overwhelm the other unit of bulwarkers and the Chieftain of the Varangur took on the Dwarf King.

The steam tank charged the troll horde after they had finished off the elementals - I was hoping that the 20 + d6 attacks would be enough … but my dice rolling and the regeneration, kept the fight going.

The Dwarf king was surrounded by the Chieftain and now the Orc boss … 

The end of turn 6 all the Dwarf have left is the steam tank (which had just managed to destroy the horde of trolls), a unit of warriors and a stone priest (now slightly superfluous as the elementals were gone). Steedo’s forces of darkness still had the gore riders, ax warriors, wolves, warband and all their characters.

We should have rolled to see if we played turn 7 , but it was clear that I had been well and truly beaten. 

Well played Steedo.  

Kings of War is a good game - it has very clear rules and winning does depend on manoeuvring, which I did little of. I think I thought that the dwarfs high armour would allow me to take the attacks, then roll up the leftovers. This was obviously a poor plan - it also needed more characters and more ranged attack to take the sting out the attacks. It was fun and for a short while I thought I had this game, before reality kicked in - there were a couple of turns where it could have gone either way (but for the dice gods went against me in the end).  I know that there have been some rule changes from 2nd edition (what we played) and the current 3rd Edition has just had a compendium - But for now I’ll stick with 2nd edition, but we might look at some house rules such as thunderous charge bonus for coming down hill. 

Morts