Artefacts of Kyron Campaign Battle #1

This week we kicked off the KoW mini-campaign my brother and I are playing. As is normal I got sucked into the game so forgot to take many pictures. The campaign will be a series of linked battles to vary the scenarios we will be playing. Stuart brought along his new Kingdom of Men Arabian Nights themed army and I fielded my Twilight Kin.

The first battle was the Invade scenario with the aim to have more points worth of your army in the opponent's half than the other side.

Initial Setup

Both sides deployed a strong center with strong flanks facing each other and then the weaker flanks facing each other. The men fielded a strong combination of shooting and cavalry which included a massive elephant counting as a chariot horde and some flying carpets counting as Talonriders.

The Elephant provided an imposing focal point for the and due to it being used as Chariots was cheap on the points front.

KoM right flank

Kin right flank

The game started off with the Kin Shadows advancing into the centre wood as a vanguard move which set them up to shoot at the carpets. This forced the carpets into making a charge into the woods as they would lose a shooting match against the two Shadow regiments. This was a fight they lost and the horde was defeated leaving a gap in the KoMs lines.

Generally the KoM forces held back in order to try and make the most of the extra shooting they had so the Kin advanced forward to take the fight to the humans.

This meant that the Kin took some hits during the advance and some focused fire in the centre lead to one of the Reaper Guard regiments being routed.

Reaper Guard regiment being focused

The advance meant that the Kin Blade Dancers regiment came within charge range of the elephant and the human General not being impressed with its shooting decided to put its charging potential to the test. Unfortunately some truly terrible dice rolling lead the elephant to bounce of the Dancers with barely any casualties caused and it was shot away by two lots of breath weapons and two mages. It was at this stage that the Kin cavalry got stuck in a fight with a regiment of lighter KoM cavalry which was to drag on for several rounds.

At this point I got distracted by the game so the photos stopped, the Kin continued to push forward in the centre with one regiment of Reaper Guard routing a regiment of archers and then being routed in turn by the KoM guard infantry and berserker regiment. The remaining Reaper Guard unit routed the KoM skirmisher cavalry on the lightly populated flank but was in turn routed by the KoM heavy cavalry. On what was the more heavily populated flank the Kin cavalry got the KoM cavalry to the point that anything other than double 1's would route them and then duly rolled the required 1's, the KoM unit took advantage of this to rout the Kin unit but was then routed by a breath attack unit.

This took us through to the final move and the KoM made a grab for victory by charging into the woods in the hope that the berserker regiment could route a regiment of Shadows and advance over the centre line, unfortunately they failed to rout the Shadows and the game finished as a close draw.

Update :

After a late night flash of remembering I realised that we had not counted the Troops as scoring units :

0 – individuals & war engines

1 – troops, heroes without individual, monsters, height zero units

2 –- regiments

3 – hordes & legions

So as the KoM had a couple of Troops left at the end of the battle I dropped my brother an email to let him know he had actually won.

Putting down a Marker

The first job in hand this week was to get on with completing the extra terrain and markers needed for the forthcoming KoW campaign. Having written up some introductory fluff I have also created some rules for the artifacts.

So from the fluff and the rules I needed to create three artifacts and three gates to take them to. The gates had been started last week and with the addition of a grey paint job, some Army Painter dip and a few basing bits they came together very quickly with little fuss.

I doubt they will be winning any terrain making awards but as they may only be used the once I am happy with the results / time spent balance.

I had also knocked out the three artifacts, in fact these had been done before the gates but I forgot to get any pictures done.

Again these took only a little effort and a quick search through my bits box furnished the needed parts. The sword made an outing last week when it was the largely ignored objective in a SAGA bloodbath.

The campaign is due to kick off next week with the Twilight Kin and Kingdoms of Men clashing in a 2000 point Invade scenario. I haven't yet seen what devilish list my brother has put together for his Arabian Nights themed army but I suspect cavalry will feature strongly and I know some flying carpets will be present.

This week would have been a good chance to practice my battle reporting skills by remembering to take pictures in my latest SAGA clash with Mick. Once again though I got wrapped up in the game so forgot.

Once again we played Anglo-Danish vs Vikings and this time the initial clashes proved decisive as on the Anglo-Danish left the Vikings push a unit of Warriors forward which got destroyed by a surprise attack by the AD warlord and a unit of Warriors.

With the AD right flank refused the Vikings pushed up but did not manage to engage before the Vikings Levy unit was wrecked by a AD Hearthguard unit and then the Viking Warlord was left exposed as he charged into the AD left flank and his support was stripped away buy a sacrificial Hearthguard unit which died in the process.

Once the Viking Warlord was dead the battle was effectively over, all of this happened in just a few short moves which reinforced the importance of not overextending your Warlord early in the game.

Mick and I also went to the Colours show put on by the Newbury Wargames club and he managed to pick up the remaining figures for his Normans so hopefully they should see the field of play in the near future. I had a less successful shopping spree as no one was stocking Gripping Beast models so I could not get the Byzantine Cavalry I needed, I did get the extra infantry models though.

Sword in the Stone

Another week and another game of SAGA has been played. Again Mick took the part of the Vikings and I the Anglo-Danish. Of course I remembered to take only a few photos but this game went right down to the wire.

Terrain setup, I swapped the heavy and light terrain over for the game

The scenario revolved around the Warlords trying to retrieve a sword that had gotten stuck in a stone. This week I replaced the levy bowmen with warrior footmen and Mick stuck with his javelinmen.

Anglo-Danish

Vikings

Again my Mycenaeans had to be pressed into action to fill the gaps in the roster and the game developed into a pretty brutal encounter with the sword largely forgotten as the two bands got stuck into each other. The Vikings initially suffered greater casualties but then the Viking Warlord went on a rampage and came within a whisker of killing his opposite number. Even though Mick had bought some new dice at the critical stage they let him down and the Anglo-Danish Warlord survived being charged by his opposite number and a unit of heathguard.

Early on the Anglo-Danes seized the light cover

The game ended when the Anglo-Danes sacrificed several units to exhaust the Viking Warlord so that the coup-de-grace could be administered by the home Warlord.

This was another close and enjoyable game, I suspect my winning run will not last much longer.

I have also put some more work in on my water feature and after receiving some supplies managed to get a water effect I am happy with.

The still water effect I had been using being a single part solution relies upon evaporation to set the water effect and pouring it over a large area meant that all it did was form into a cracked mess with lots of large gaps in it. A search on the internet suggested that a two part resin which uses a hardening agent would work much better so ebay came to the rescue and a substitute was purchased. The two part resin does have a strong smell so a well ventilated area was essential and it also suffered from a very small amount of shrinkage so I did end up doing a second layer. Overall I'm pretty happy with the outcome and I suspect the pond will be featuring in the next battle.

I have also been working on the structure for a KoW campaign to play with my brother when he comes over. He has been building up a desert themed human army and as Ophidia is next to the home of the Twilight Kin I tied the two together.

The campaign with feature a series of linked battles using the scenarios from the Clash of Kings book to create interesting battles.

The Setting

With the setting in place it was obvious that I would need to create some artifacts to be captured ( more on those next week ) and also a destination for them to be taken too. Building on the idea of gates I decided to make something that could be put out on the table. Using the door from a Necron Monolith, Milliput, MDF and some blue foam offcuts I managed to put something together without a massive effort.

Frame

Necron door and Milliput Gate

Once the Milliput gate was dry I stuck it onto some foam card and then fashioned a door frame out of left-over blue foam from the hills, this was then stuck onto a MDF base.

I have done some painting and then slapped a load of Army Painter dip over it all ready for some dry brushing. The should be done next week, hopefully before Saturday. On Saturday we are off down to Reading for the Colours 2017 show so I am expecting to pick up the remainder of my Byzantine force for SAGA. This will be good as I am running almost on empty for things to paint.

Over Hill and Dale

I didn't manage to get a game in this week as Mick was feeling under the weather so the planned SAGA clash had to be called off. This did however leave me with extra time to crack on with the terrain making.

The finished set

I was surprised at how easy and cheap it was to make a decent looking set of terrain just using some blue foam and MDF sheets from Ebay and the flock and sand I already had to making multi-bases. I suspect you could pick the bits up even cheaper if you didn't mind going out to a local hardware store.

The set consists of several hills and some area terrain pieces and several soft and hard terrain markers that can be placed on the them. The gaps are all 50mm so I have been using 45mm bases to construct the markers on and if another type needs to be constructed it should be easy enough to expand the range.

For the hills I put a lip around the bottom of the production pieces which was missing on the prototype. This should help to reduce storage damage and also helped with the modelling of little land-slips. I still have a few sheets of the blue foam left over so again if I think of some more pieces I want then I have the spares all ready.

The rocky terrain markers are made from the blue foam off-cuts painted grey and then given a healthy coat of Army Painter Quickshade. Again very quick to do and looks good with a minimal effort required, just the sort of modelling I like.

As I was feeling inspired I also decided to put together a water feature ( Alan Titchmarsh would be proud ) having spotted some lovely little chaps on the Mastercrafted website. The base was constructed from MDF and then built up with Polyfilla. It now just needs filling with layers of still water.

Talking of inspiration, one of the things I enjoy about wargames is looking at the new models coming out and sometimes you cannot help but be inspired to build an army around the superb figures being produced. My eye ( and heart ) has been caught by some new models from the Wrath of Kings range that should be hitting the UK soon.

The elephants look fantastic and would I think look great charging across the table, perhaps the starting place for another Kings of War army.