First Kings of War battle in 6 months!!!

Wednesday saw Steedo and I manage to get a game of Kings of War in for the first time since Christmas. It was also fought on the kitchen table as the games room is full of other stuff (bedroom furniture from one of the girl's room). 

This was a smallish battle of 1500 points a side - approx 1400 of troops and 100 points of artefacts. It was the Undead vs Hobgoblins (Orcs). 

We were also using the Kings of War Battlefield Cards - the conditions limited shooting to 18 inches and shooting over 9 inches had a -1 modifier (but neither army had much shooting). The objective cards were getting base and field objectives - but Steedo and I just battered each other and ignored them .....

From top left clockwise - initial deployment, end of first turn - the Soul Reaver (vampire) infantry getting into trouble - but both Skulk (Orc skirmishers) troops have been destroyed. Bottom right and the Soul Reavers have been forced back. The trolls and werewolves are starting to trade blows!

(TL) The undead centre has been destroyed - a two on one cleared out the Soul Reavers and the Gore Riders chewed the bones of a skeleton unit to little pieces! But some skeletons and zombies flank a unit of Hobgoblins. (TR) The battle lines are being reset. (BR) The Hobgoblin left flank is destroyed leaving just the Wizard and Warleader - but (BL) the undead's left flank has also ceased to exist! Well there was a Necromancer over there. 

The field at the end of turn 6! Where the game ended. The Hobgoblins about to march over to smash the remaining skeleton unit and mop up the remaining two Necromancers. So looking fairly one sided if counting points "killed", but then we looked at the objective cards ....and as we had forgotten these neither of us were controlling any - d'oh! I did have more points within the centre of the board 3VP to me, but Steedo had put "bounties" on my 3 most expensive units and managed to kill one so got 3VP too!

Apparently it was a draw ..... 

The Battlefield cards were interesting and I would certainly use the strategy cards again - for in game changes. We will need to check the objective cards out again as we sort of ignored them for the duration of the game. 

Morts

World of Tanks -Rush ..... Bargain game play through.

Managed to get two games played last night -.Steedo and I had a Kings of War battle (report on that later), then DK joined us to have a run through of my bargain buy of a few months ago World of Tanks -Rush. 

Now as the game was picked up very cheap and doesn't have the best reputation as a card builder expectations were pretty low (I hadn't read the rules, but had watch a play through on YouTube). 

However we were pleasantly surprised with the game. 

It played through relatively quickly and had some interesting machanics for getting victory points and ending the game. The basics were start collecting tanks (duh!), use them to defend bases, attack other players or use their special abilities. I need to use the special abilities more next time we play.  We found that to gain medals (a source of victory points) you needed people to defend their bases with their tanks but on occasions no one did .... So no medals issued that turn, but a captured base was worth 3VP. It could be frustrating watch the card you wanted disappear into the "graveyard" pile or not having the right amount or sometimes type to buy a card. The amount of cards we were collecting meant it was difficult to kept track of who had what in turns of victory points. So it was a close game 18 to me, 16 to DK and 11 to Steedo. 

The hour or so that we spent playing this certainly covered the pitiful outlay I made on the game. And we are up for another (hopefully in the near further). The downside of the game NO BRITISH TANKS! Shocking we invented the bloody things - they are in the expansion ... But my google-fu have failed me and I go can find a copy. 

Morts

The Elves of the Second Age

Well I have rebased my Lord of the Rings 2nd Age Elves - so now they can be played as GW intended as individuals for the "Battle Strategy Game" - well large skirmish game, or as a force in Dragon Rampant (planning to run them as reduced model units so the units are smaller than the Orcs) or with sabots HotT. Of course there is nothing to stop them being press ganged into Kings of War - but that would indicate that. Actually played some of the games I have .... Haven't been doing too well with that recently as work has been pretty busy, weekends taken up with weddings and parties .... It's been a tough time (the less said about the "dancing" the better). And the hot weather and the World Cup (it nearly got home) isn't exactly conducive to painting and gaming. 

That and the "gaming table" needs sanding and painting .... Along with the decking and garden furniture. 

Anyway I managed to rebase Gil-galad, Elrond and their forces (at some time these will be supplemented by some Elves from Lothlorien when they get painted). 

The Elven Lords and their forces arrayed..

  The Lords themselves. 

The light horse. Mainly conversions of the plastic Elves and Riders of Rohan. 

The Spear Phalanx. All metal - with a few press moulded shields. 

The Archers. Mainly plastic apart from the command figures. 

The army need some light troops, but as already suggested they will come from the forces Lothlorien. 

Hope you like them. 

Also got a lot of rebasing of Orcs to do ....

Morts

Star Trek - Ascendancy

With a bit of grief from the other halves and Slyon leaving the country to avoid gaming and marital clashes, the collective assembled at Steedo's to play Snakes-eyes new and shiney Star Trek Asendency! We were playing with the Cardassian expansion for a 4 player game. 

We allocated the races randomly. I was the Federation, Snake-eyes the Romulans, Steedo the Klingons and DK the Cardassians. 

Snake-eyes had also invested in a rather nice official gaming mat. 

The game is a 4X game - Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate. 

Intially turn order is randomly decided by cards - until contact is made them players can bid for first what position they want to play the round in. 

The turn is a build phase - ships, resource generators, pay for research, then a command phase were you can find systems, move ships and create fleets, try to take control of a system, initiate combat or invade systems. But with never enough resources or command points to do what you want.  

Some pictures of the game - top shows early game no first contacts made. Bottom left the Feds, Cardassians and Romulans have made contact and have exchanged trade agreements. Bottom left an explore card has caused the Klingons and Cardassians have had to exchange systems - which was of no benefit to DK.  

The exploring stage did leave DK and I frustrated as he was finding anomalies (worth points to the Feds), when he wanted to find planets to invade (worth points to the Cardassians) - these little tweaks to each race was where the game tried to inject a Star Trek theme (the Romulans had to research and the Klingons had to fight with no retreat or surrender). 

The game plodded along quite nicely - with no one appearing to be getting ahead. Steedo was amassing Klingon fleets, so not one made contact with him, where as DK and I had to make contact to  gain a trade agreement to earn production points to build ships!

Then DK pulled an explore card which made him swap a system with Steedo - this an Steedo and Snake-eyes quietly collecting Asendency tokens (5 needed for a win - checking for a win is done at the end of the round, so more than one faction can "win" in the same turn, but then it goes to number of systems controlled).  This change really mixed things up leaving me as the Federation having to play against type and attack the Romulans and Cardassians in an attempt to win by controlling two other home systems. 

The initial plan went pretty well - taking Romulus and holding off the counter attack (and effectively putting Snake-eyes out of the running). The second part was successful as Cardassia Prime was taken, but the lack of command cards prevented the vital reinforcements being moved to stop DK (very much in character) take it back (by levelling the place to the ground and destroying all the resources!) - a move which ended my chances of victory, but served it up nicely to Steedo .... 

Bloody Klingons!

Overall a good game - shared some similarities with Twilight Imperium (but lighter and a bit quicker). I think we would play it quicker next time (Snake-eyes has now bought the Ferengi expansion). Plenty of replayability with this as the explore part of the game is random (perhaps too random for some DK) and the game basics are the same for all factions, with some changes to made each more Star Trek. 

I would like to play it again, but I think next time no one will be left by themselves to quietly collect points so that their win can't be stopped.  

Morts 

The March of the Undead....

So my second showcase of a finished force, and as the title suggests it is the turn of the undead. 

The army could be used as a small Kings of War force of around 1000-1500 points or a full force for Dragon Rampant. Obviously any of these will be press ganged into Frostgrave or Sellswords and Spellingers as required. 

First up the whole group shot - the lower shot shows the old chaos warriors being included as vampiric infantry (soul steelers in KoW). 

Next up are close up of the leaders and their pets - ie the Necromancers/Liches and Werewolves.

A mixture of metal and plastic-there is also a Banshee in there - to be honest in wouldn't mind getting some wraiths or wrights for this force .... ). 

Come come the Zombies (all Mantic ) and the Ghouls (10 GW and 2 Mantic).

The first 2 of the 3 skeleton warrior units - one Greek themed (Eureka and Harlequin miniatures) and the other a mix of GW (the big boned lads) and Mantic. 

With the Mantic skeletons I tried to go for a dirty, decaying look for their equipment to minimise the effort in painting the shields - the first unit getting a white shield with a red stripe, while the second green and white halved shield. 

I think this worked quite effectively - and clearly differentiates the units. 

Finally we have the Vampiric infantry (well old Chaos Warriors/Cultists who made join the ranks of the living at anytime if required for another force). Lead by Elric of Melnibone who makes a rather splendid vampire Lord I you ask me. 

 So that's it - no more undead to paint for me ... Unless I get some wraith or wrights in the future. 

Overall looking pretty good ... is that correct?

Morts

Been away awhile....

They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions... I have been meaning to up date the blog for a few weeks with showcases of finished forces, but stuff and the World Cup have got in the way. 

So I recently purchased the Kings of War Battlefield cards (not played it since Christmas 😦), which look like they could make the set up of games interesting. The cards also allow you play effect in the game for every 500 points in your army. So I am looking forward get this to the table (before Christmas). 

I have also picked up Sellswords and Spellslingers by Ganesha Games - this is an RPG lite cooperative game. Just got to print out the rules and make the cards. But I think this could be a nice little game for the group to play. 

So today I have been mostly cycling - 58.5 miles (or 93.6km) to be precise (well according to by phone), for charity... But I don't want to talk about it.....

So I am enjoying a well deserved beer!

Knackered now!

Hopefully I will get the army showcases done this week!

Morts

Games Expo 2018 ..... Saturday only!

The collective (minus Sylon) got up early on Saturday and headed to Brum for the 2018 UK Games Expo!

The night before started with a "quick" game of Viticulture with Snake-eyes, Steedo, DK and myself - the game was meant to finish by 9pm so we could have an early night of bugger off down the pub. I went to the pub at about 8.30pm after 2 rounds and the others finished at 9.50pm ..... The picture shows the quality Toby breakfast on the Saturday and the insert the result of Viticulture! A massive win to Steedo ... But I threw the game.

So after a might feast (which kept us going until 8pm!) we arrived at Nerd-vana - sorry game fest at the NEC!

There was more noticeable cosplay this year (with Viking and Orc villages/camps ... and Stormtroopers?) - but there was a movie/collectables convention running in an adjacent hall which might explain this. 

So with some excitement we headed in! First spot was the Game of Thrones version of Catan - which I was very tempted by .... We had a chat with one of the Catan team, who said it was a good twist on a classic as was the Empire of the Incas version .... But I stayed strong! We then head up the the bring and buy, only to be met by a massive queue - which was solidly massive throughout the day! So we moved on! DK and I made the first purchased of the day (DK - a Shadespire expansion and myself a set of card protectors for Risk-Europe (which fit perfectly!) cards). 

We then had a look at the very nice and very expensive gaming tables at Geekson (bribed by free coffee) - Steedo looked like he was interested. Then we managed to split up. Snake-eyes and myself ending up at Gale Force 9 and getting a play through of Dr Who - Into the Time Vortex and a run through of Star Trek-Ascendency (of which Snake-eyes has an unplayed copy). 

We both quite enjoyed Dr Who - which seemed to involve dice matching to symbols, failing to do this advanced Daleks! This made success more difficult. The run through of Star Trek convinced Snake-eyes to buy the Cardassian expansion - he now plans to get this to the table soon. 

After this Steedo reappeared and we went on looking for more games. 

We found Perditions Mouth Abyssal Rift - a euro dungeon crawl, with nice figures and an interesting activation mechanic (a wheel with spaces which you had to move into each turn) - Snake-eyes felt that this was too much of a puzzle game, in that the cooperative element of the game required the group to work out who needs to do what in what order. The game took longer than we would have liked - Snake-eyes and I died some that our party could escape and win. 

We then split up again - Steedo and I then wondered off to get the 9 worlds expansion for the game he picked up last year and got caught up in play testing a couple of games. First up was a very quick game " Oh bother" - which was a colour and symbol points scoring game which I have say I really enjoyed (I reckon I could make the game from memory) but I would happily pay a tenner for a well produced version. Then we played "Role Quest" which was a lite intro to role playing - a sort of speaking charades, where you could made the other players sing and stand on one leg as they tried to role play their characteristic word for that round. It could be a good party game and reminded me of Codenames in someways. Both games were given positive feedback by Steedo and myself. 

While we were play-testing Snake-eyes and DK were getting a play of Star Wars Armarda (a game Snake-eyes bought over a year ago and hasn't played yet .... Is there a theme here?). Anyway based on this game Snake-eyes purchased some more expansions - an Imperial Star Destroyer and the Millennium Falcon!

Steedo and I had a run through and played a couple of terms of Blood Red Skies by Warlord Games - which was pretty good - but there were number of WW2 fighter games on display at the show. 

Right at the death of the show DK and I managed to sneak in a game of Carnevale (and we managed to get caught in the background of the On the Tabletop video view) - I got my butt kicked in this game. So boosted DKs ego - but the game ok - a Cthulhu set in 18th century Venice, but nothing special in my humble opinion - nice figures and terrain though. 

I did want a play through on Wotan Games War of the Nine Realms - but managed to miss all of the sessions, but in chatting with the head honcho found out that they have prototypes for miniatures for the game rather than card stands in the current edition - so waiting maybe of benefit in the long term. 

Overall a bloody good day! 

Morts