Double Trouble

The playing front has gone from drought to flood this week with two games in two days which was really good.
First up on Friday was another outing for the Gods in Mythic Battles with Mick and I trying out another combination of Greek heroes and monsters.
I went with Atlas who at 8 points is the most expensive deity with a force designed to try and kill the opposition whilst making them spend the ever precious Art of War (AOW) cards. With the games mechanics requiring you to spend AOW cards to make second activations and use many special powers an opponent without any has very limited options.

Odysseus was added mostly for his 3 AOW cards he generates and Icarus as cheap source of cards to throw away for Atlas's Bearer of Heavens passive power.

Mick went along a similar line with Aphrodite costing AOW cards to attack and then backing her up with some solid heroes and a nasty monster. As Echidne was Mick's first draft choice I was careful not to pick any monsters in order to limit her effectiveness as much as possible.

One mistake I think Mick made was he choices only generated an additional 3 AOW cards to the three you get at the start of the game compared to the six generated by my force.

We played the Styx map which features some rift areas that monsters and deities cannot end there moves in, but heroes and troops can.

The game started with Mick quickly getting all his force onto the board whilst mine took longer to deploy.

I advanced across the board and used Echo to put the pinch on the opposition. Atlas got stuck into the opposition and he dished out some good damage and managed to kill Atalanta early on.

After that he and Achilles killed a couple more of team Aphrodite whilst Aphrodite absorbed a couple of omphalos.

After that we had to speed the game along as Mick's son arrived and he needed to make a get away. The end result was team Aphrodite being wiped out and Atlas ending with only a few vitality left, so as with last week it was a close run thing.

On Saturday my brother arrived with his Kings of War Salamanders and we had our first battle with the new armies. As he has already gotten to press with a battle report I won't repeat a blow by blow account.
It was great to get the big armies out onto the table again and as I earlier purchased a two feet extension to the table we could go beyond the 2500 points we used upto 3500 points on a day we have more time to play.

We used the battle cards from Mantic which provide a random set of objectives for each side and then adds a mystery objective at the start of turn 4. My objective was to push over the centre line with more unit strength than the lizards and then needed to capture the hill just outside my deployment zone.

With having the speed advantage across most of the table I was somewhat able to pick the fights so I was looking to gang up on the big hordes to start off with and then take advantage of the confusion in the enemy lines to kill off some more and push over the centre line.

 

The crunch came in my turn two with my triple charge failing to break the Salamander right wing horde after causing 21 wounds and then rolling snake eyes to let them stay on the table.

The central horde of Placoderms was also vulnerable to being routed but another poor roll for nerve saw them stay on the table.

As the right hand Salamander horde had Fury this allowed them to join in the counter charge and in one turn my entire left flank was removed from the table, ouch!

I did manage to take off both those hordes in the next turn ( only turn 3 ) but the battle was effectively lost as I had too few troops to battle on.

In the fourth turn the rest of my infantry was wiped out and even though my flyers had removed a couple of units it was not enough a victory went to the Salamanders.

Even though the final table looks very bad for the Herd the battle really turned on the snake eyes roll and I can't help but feel it could have worked out very differently, but such is the nature of wargames sometimes.

Overall it was a brutal battle and I suspect that if either of the two armies get on a roll then the battles will be over well before turn 6 arrives.

Minos Maze

This week we got another Mythic Battles game in and as I'd just completed the terrain we played on the Minos map. This features a high ground area strewn with ruins and a lower area broken up by the maze walls. The boundary between the areas is denoted by a double white line with arrows pointing from high to low ground. Being on the high ground gave a range and attack bonus against units on the lower ground.

As it had been a couple of weeks since our last game the draft process was drawn out and both sides ended up very different.
Mick went for a small elite force putting his faith in Hades. Bellerophon, Heracles and Medusa.

As we saw in the last game Bellerophon is hard to stop once he gets on a roll and Hades is tough to kill with his ability to regain vitality as units are destroyed.

I went the opposite direction and built a force around the long range firepower of Artemis buffed by Eurytos. The idea was to setup a firebase and then send the others onto the map to try and claim the omphalos.

My army ended up being comprised of lower value units so I had a much larger desk of cards to play with and the potential for many more units to be out at once.

The early part of the game saw Medusa dash down field and use her petrify to wipe out the Amazons  but she then got whittled down by Artemis and the rest of her forces. This felt like a really good start for Artemis as Hades had already lost 1/4 of his forces very early on.

Team Hades then went on the offensive and piled down field into Team Artemis and though Hades was taking heavy fire his heroes managed to kill both Leonidas & Eurytos as well as the Hounds dieing. Artemis made a withdrawal away from Hades and kept up a steady fire along with the Amazons who had been recalled. All the while Hades was absorbing omphalos and his forces had enough omphalos claimed to win him the game.

At the end of the game Bellerophon was killed whilst guarding Hades and Hades reduced to one vitality by the time Heracles arrived to deliver the final omphalos to him. A quick calculation showed that Hades had benefited from regaining five vitality over the course of the game and managed the closest of victories as Artemis was primed to shoot him down in the next round.
All in all a good close game.

I've also completed some bits of terrain I have had hanging around for a while and a couple of baggage tokens.

As well as being good for adding shade to models the Army Painter dip is also excellent for bringing terrain to life as a quick side-by-side shows.

These are all ready to be used as scatter terrain and may feature in a KoW:Vanguard game in the future.

Cherry on the Top

In truth wargames could be played on a plain table with units drawn on card and terrain on paper, but that wouldn't look very nice would it ?
With this in mind I've been adding some 3D terrain elements to the Mythic Battles boards in order to add a little extra.
Having completed the extra walls I got from Ainsty I had a quick check to see if I'd ordered the right bits.

The Minos map is the natural home of the Minotaur so it seemed only right that he should have a prowl around the maze with its new walls in place.

Along with the walls I also bought some stairs to go on the Styx map, here we can see Heracles descending the stairs to face Cerberus.

This map also has some swamp areas so I was able to use the swamp tokens I'd already made to show that.

That should be all the 3D elements I need until the next set of expansions arrive, I suspect the Poseidon map will need some more water elements.

The Herd Grows

A little late with the weekly post but this was to allow me to actually complete some stuff rather than just have all WIP shots.
I wanted to have the option of adding a Great Chieftain on Chariot to the Herd army but did not want to spend the cash for something that may not be used that often, so I opted to use some Technolog miniatures. Whilst these aren't fantastic quality they do have the advantage of being under £10 delivered for 5 models.

The Warchief can be armed with a bow so I created both variants so either could be fielded.

Under Clash of Kings 2018 chariots got a decent buff with increased range and the Hero variants also gaining Nimble. With 7 attacks and good speed the Chieftain could cause some real problems with a flank charge, so would be one to watch out for.

I've also been working away at some of the scenic bits I had waiting to be painted and completed some standing stones. The will make good objective markers and have also been based up to fit onto my area terrain bases.

In preparation for the KoW: Vanguard Kickstarter arriving soon I have also been working on some troops which hopefully will go into the warband. I haven't seen the Herd list yet so I'm not sure what size bases things will be on so at the moment they remain not suite completed.

Another WIP are some walls for the Minos Labyrinth map for Mythic Battles. The boards look much better with some 3D terrain so after a quick bit of measuring up I ordered some Ainsty walls. They have painted up really well and with the dip stage drying should be ready for some matt varnish very soon.

Lastly the 'to be painted' pile is looking dangerously low, steps have been take to rectify this however.

The Complete Pantheon

After a couple of months of good progress I have completed all the Mythic Battles models that I currently have. I do however have several more expansions ordered under the second Kickstarter which are due to ship in February 2019 so I should have lots more to paint then.
First up is Atlas who is the only Titan that I have and at 8 points the most expensive Deity on offer. His stats back the price up with maximum offence and defence values and twelve vitality, he won't be dying quickly and packs a mighty punch.

To set him apart from the Gods I went with a dark flesh tone using the Vallejo paint of the same name and picked out a few veins and highlights with the Army Painter Tanned Flesh. I rather like the effect and he certainly stands out from the pale Gods.

Cerberus is the guardian of Hades and his stats make him a highly effect guard unit which can also put the hurt on any enemy that strays within his range.

Being mostly black this was a really quick paint job with just a bit of orange dry brushing around the head to pick out a lava effect.

That brings us to the final unit which is a Troop of Infernal Warriors. They aren't quick or very good in a fight but they do regenerate a warrior if not wiped out so could be useful for tying down an enemy that lacks the attacks to wipe them out in one turn.

Mick and I also managed a couple of games this week after going through the draft process via email.
With so many Gods and units to choose from there would seem to be a really large number of ways to build a warband for each game. I chose to build my warband around Helios and Python.

Helios can use his Gem Collector talent to collect omphalos from areas touching the one he is in and Python can stop the enemy from picking them up in areas touching the one he/she is in. The plan was to occupy the middle of the board and go for a win by collecting 4 omphalos. Medea was added to help with survivability and Odysseus for his extra Art of War card, Achilles rounded out the force as he is a melee bad-ass.

Mick had less knowledge of the Gods and units available so went with a more gut instinct method of force building. He put together a nasty looking warband with Pan having a good ability against units that stack up in one area (as I planned to do) and some tough melee units in Minotaur and Jason.

From reading the Mythic Battles Facebook page Bellerophon has a reputation for extremely powerful and from his card you can see why. Being fast, able to fly, removing two of the opponents attack dice and able to evade attacks due to the fly rule, makes for a good package. He is also able to go on a activation roll with his Friend of the Muses ability, rather nasty all round.

We played out two games in the end as Mick got a bit excited in the first one and rushed Pan in to take on Helios and the Python, this did not end well.

In the second my occupy the centre plan had more time to be implemented and the combination of my forces meant that Mick could not cause enough damage to take me out and stop me collecting the four omphalos required for victory. Helios' whip ability also came in useful to stop the Minotaur being able to charge into a crowded area. Bellerophon proved impossible to kill in both games but he could not turn the tide on his own.

We plan to play again next week so I'll be looking for another combination to build a force around.