Capture the Giant

Having just completed the Mega-Moo it seemed only fit that the next game of Vanguard be the Capture the Giant scenario. This scenario sees both sides trying to wear down a giant over 5 rounds with victory points being awarded each turn for who ever causes the most damage on the giant. Bonus victory points are awarded for killing off members of the opposing warband but with 3 VP's awarded each turn to the warband that does the most damage on the Giant then the route to victory is via hitting the Giant the most.

Having had the worst of it in the two last games I changed up my Warband to be a more elite affair with no grunts being involved. The new look warband was comprised of :
1 * Shade with Heavy Weapon
1 * Mind-screech
1 * Shadowhound
3 * Reaper
1 * Phantom
3 * Spectre
By adding the Spectre's I also added an extra ranged element which I hoped would be effective against the Basileans as it would negate the Parry ability that makes many of them such a pain to kill.
The warband also puts out a decent amount of attacks which I hoped would make Stuart have to use his Iron Resolve ability more often and allow me to attack more models without them having 3+ saves.

The Basileans opted to add an extra Battlecat for speed which meant dropping the caster and with it the Heal spell. The combination of Parry, Iron Resolve, and Heal make the tougher Basileans almost impossible to kill without investing many times the points value of the model.

The game started well on the VP scoring front for me as I managed a couple of turns scoring the most hits on the Giant but I also lost four units including the Mind-screech whilst only killing the Palace Ogre in return. This did prove useful to me as the Basileans lacked unit with Crushing Strength to lower the Giants defence. With a defence of 3+ the Giant helped me out by withstanding lots of attacks by the Basileans who really struggled to damage him.

The Giant itself initially made a move towards my right table edge and then moved back and forth towards the centre of the Basilean table edge and the right hand table edge. This meant that it ran over the Basileans a couple of times and even managed to kill one of them.

Over the next couple of turns I lost even more troops which took me to the breakpoint on turn 3 so I had to roll nerve tests for the last 2 turns. Despite having good nerve on most of my troops they generally failed them and fled towards the table edge and then failed again to depart the table. This did have the effect of limiting the troops that the Basileans could kill so they couldn't get VP's.

By the last turn the Basileans needed 3 VP's to claim the win and due to the movement of the Giant they could only get 2 units into contact, neither of which caused a wound.

Somehow to my great surprise my Nightstalkers had held on for an unlikely win mostly due I think to the more elite warband composition. The next game we play should be the start of our mixed Vanguard & KoW campaign, I just need to get the campaign written!

Mega Moo

Having had the week off I've put some effort into completing the Giant giant model from KoW:Vanguard. Standing at 180mm or so he's a big beastie and has taken a lot of work to get looking even halfway decent. I suspect this size model would be much easier to handle with an air brush rather than painting with normal brushes. In any event I'm rather pleased with the results and the move to add a minotaur head has worked well and gives him an unusual look.

Once I get the Clash of Kings 2019 open I can try to work out how/if it can be included into my Herd army. He will get an outing in the Vanguard Capture the Giant scenario but it would be good to be able to get more use than just that one scenario.

The fur/hair on the back is the first time I've worked with Greenstuff and I have to say it gives me confidence to try some more conversions with it.

I also completed most of the scenario tokens and scenery that came with the Vanguard Kickstater with only the Bard model now left to be completed. I also dug out some crates I bought a while ago and painted them up to use as some light scatter terrain.

My only real gripe about Vanguard is the number of tokens that can be out on the table at any one point so I bought a few blank dice and made up some marker dice wich show 6 of the most common combinations. Hopefully this should cut down on the number of tokens on the board at any one time.

I also visited the homeland for a game of Vanguard with my brother who once more pitted his Basileans against my Nightstalkers.

The Basileans once more proved very difficult to kill and easily dispatched my more fragile Nightstalkers. The only real bright spot was the introduction of the Mind-screech who at least allowed me to put one enemy model into lockdown for a turn. I suspect however that it's usefulness will make it a high priority target in future outings.

Rolling Thunder

Having finished painting up the crew I was finally able to complete my Tribal Chariot Horde for KoW. This in theory means that the army is complete, though I do have some more Werewolves on a Kickstarter to arrive and I have picked up some models for a secret addition to the army.

In an army that lacks shooting the Tribal Chariots offer a decent amount of shots (only on 5+ though) and also a good charge as they hit on 3's. Thunderous Charge(2) offers decent chance of converting the hits made in melee and the nerve is average for Large Cav Hordes.

The big drawback for Chariot Hordes is the massive depth of the base they are on which offers plenty of flank to be charged. They do however look rather good and I have grown to really like the Mantic boar models.

With xmas looming Mick and I got a few games of Mythic Battles in, in fact we got through them so quickly that we managed 5 games in one session, Mick ran out a 3-2 winner overall.

These will probably going to be the last Mythic Battle games we play for a while as I want to get Mick playing Kings of War so we can have some proper massed battles going on.

I've also been cracking on with the Giant and as I have the next week off I'm hopeful that he can be brought very close to completion in that time.

I should also be getting the rules for him soon as well so I can see if he will be used for just the Vanguard scenario or make it onto the field of battle proper.

Slow Going

Progress on the painting front has been slow this week with most of my time going into the crew for my Herd Chariot Horde. These aren't quite done yet so no piccies to show but they should be done for next week.
I did get a couple of games of Mythic Battles in again this week with Mick and we played another of the scenarios from the book with pre-chosen forces.
The scenario pitted a force of monsters against Hades, Heracles and a host of troops who were trying to locate and free a captive.

The monster player decided in secret which of the 5 markers represented the captive and also started with all the monster on the board at the start of the game.

The Hades player had to deploy as normal onto the board so would be bringing at most two units onto the table a turn, and probably only one most turns.

This slow buildup proved decisive as the monster player was able to get stuck in as the opposition  deployed and keep them pinned down.

 

We each played both sides and the both times the person playing the monsters came away with the victory.

During my turn as Hades I did manage to make some progress out of the initial deployment areas but Mick killed off Hades and even though I had some troops make it close to the captives Mick had the threat covered well enough that I could only free a decoy.

Hades has Fallen

We both agreed that the large number of Troops in the attacking force made the going pretty hard especially as the defenders could not be overwhelmed easily.

I have also been plugging away at the Minotaur Giant, initially his hair was grey but I wasn't enthused by the look and having switched him over to brown hair I'm feeling much better about the progress made so far.

Once I have completed the Herd Chariot crew then I will be focusing solely on getting him and the Vanguard objective markers completed.

Unnamed Terror

This week I completed the final (for the moment) models for the Night Stalker KoW:Vanguard company. I still have enough spare models to make an army so may revisit this when the extra models are released next year by Mantic to build a full army.
The biggest model in the NS list is the Mind-screech who supplies spell casting support for the warband. Having a move of only 4 means it isn't the quickest around the battlefield but it does have access to a couple of spells that do not require Line of Sight so it can try and hide itself from direct attack.

The model itself is a solid lump of resin and required no sticking together. I borrowed the red brain idea off someone on Facebook and I think it came together rather well.

The other two resin models are the Banshee and Shade who are both quick flying command units that have abilities to disrupt the enemy in a small area around themselves. All three of the units add extra Power Dice to the warbands pool.

Banshee on the left, Shade on the right

I also added a couple of bases of Needlefangs made up of the spare parts left over from the other models made. They are cheap grunt models on 40mm bases who being only height 1 can be seen over by most other units, so could be useful for positioning shooters behind.

The whole force together looks pretty good and I have added the Chroneas in as it was the test model for the whole force. If/when I build a full size KoW army it will be added in as a Shadow Hulk.
I also need to think up a name for the Company before we do the campaign so need something suitably nightmarish.

I also managed a couple of games of Mythic Battles with Mick this week both of which ended pretty quickly. In a double matchup between Hermes and Apollo the first game saw Hermes quickly killed off and the second saw Hermes die in equally quick fashion.

The scenario featured a falling rock mechanic which in both games did most of the work in killing the god with the opposing player moving in to complete the job.

At the Sharp End

Yesterday I hosted Stuart the Eldar and we played our first game of KoW:Vanguard which is Mantic's new fantasy skirmish game. The game is marketed as fantasy black-ops and features small warbands of warriors fighting it out over objectives.

The battle we played saw both sides trying to harness the power of a mystic portal, this was done by remaining in base-to-base contact with the portal, this scored you points at the end of each round but ran the risk (on a roll of 7 or 8 on a d8 per model) of being sucked off the battlefield and into the void.
My Nightstalkers consisted of three groups:
The fast : 2 * Shadowhounds, 1 * Shade all with 7 speed
The punchy : 2 * Reapers, 1 * Horror, 1 * Butcher Fleshripper
The expendable : 2 * Scarecrow, 1 * Horror

Stuart has written up an account of the fight which after a good early start where my fast troops managed to wipe out three crossbowmen took a turn for the worse for the forces of the shadows.
The Basilean special ability allows them to save all wounds in a melee rounds on a 3+ (using d8) and whilst it is pretty expensive that along with the Parry rule which some of the troops have makes them very hard to get rid of. They may not be flashy but the Basileans will be very hard to break down if they can generate enough power dice each turn.

As with all initial playthroughs of a game we spent plenty of time flicking through the rule book trying to work out if we could or couldn't perform an action. Once we got going the game flowed well and as each turn consists of players alternating activating either a single or closely spaced group of models it would work well as a multiplayer game. I could see a three or four player all against all game being lots of fun with the only change really needed being to reduce the size of the forces deployed so you could finish in a reasonable amount of time.

All that is needed now is for me to get my thinking cap on to get a campaign to tie the Vanguard and normal KoW battles together. The latest KoW supplement is set to include rules for assaulting fortifications so that would seem like a good set piece for the final battle, I just need to get the route to the battle worked out. The other thing I need to work out is how to get rid of Paladin Defenders, that may prove more tricky.

One thing we have agreed is that we will be using or Vanguard forces to represent a Regiment in the main battles. I got my custom movement trays sorted out for the Nightstalkers so they will be ready to join the Herd on the table.

My plan is to use them as a Regiment of Doppelgangers which would help to explain the variation of troops in the Regiment.

The Doppelgangers also have a very interesting special rule which could be fun if they manage to catch a expensive and powerful attacking unit with a charge.