Control - The One With Six Squares

This week Mick & I played out the Control scenario, this divides the table up into six 2*2 foot squares with the points awarded for each square that you control by having the most unit strength in at the end of the game.

As we are getting weekly KoW games in I thought it would be a good chance to try out some units and tactics I wouldn't take a chance on in a campaign game. With this in mind I went with a strong flying force and included the Avatar of the Father who is the Herd's unique monster hero. At 320 points for the winged version he is the same price as a dragon in other lists and I wouldn't normally be tempted.

The list I played was :
1 * Horde Tribal Spears with Iron resolve
2 * Hordes Guardian Brutes
1 * Great Totem
2 * Chimera with Wings
1 * Avatar of the Father with Wings
1 * Shaman with Mount and Healing
1 * Centaur Chief with Bow

The other unit I'd not used before was the Great Totem and I was worried that it would be taken of early so left it within charge range of my initial setup, this fear proved to be unfounded and it gave a nice nerve bubble for my troops contesting the middle of the table, so that seemed to justify the 80 point cost.

I put two of the fliers on my left flank and it was pretty obvious that in order to get the flank charges you need to make the cost of fliers back you do need at least two units operating together to force the enemy to expose a flank. I'm not sure the the Avatar was really worth the extra points over a standard Chimera though having the flying inspire source was nice and he does pack lots of rules in but you would probably do as well swapping him out for the standard Chimera.

The battle itself saw the Basileans initially pin my centre and right wing but I managed to grind out the kills with the help of the extra nerve and some healing in the middle and eventually kill the Elohi on the right. The left flank saw me skipping around with the fliers and the Avatar actually ended up on the right flank to finish off the Elohi and the Chimera rear charged a Ogre Guard Horde to wipe them out, 21 attacks hitting on 3's really hurt.

Mick kept plugging away and despite things looking grim for a while he had a good chance to win when with the final charge of the game he needed to kill my Shaman ( which he did ) and then overrun to contest the centre square, unfortunately he was a couple of inches short on the move and I ended up winning by 1 VP.

I've also been making progress on the seaside terrain and completed some rock formations to act as hazards for shipping, these are from Games of War and are really nice casts, I particularly like the crashing waves on one side of the rocks.

The Hunters Camp is from Mantic and is one of their small terrain crates, the models come in brown plastic that didn't need cleaning and painted up rather nicely. The plastic is good for thick casts but not great for thin ones as I shall show soon.

Last off the blocks is a market stall from Iron Gate who 3D print terrain, being printed the thin parts are nice and straight but you still get the layering effect from the printing process. It doesn't look great close up but looks ok from a normal playing distance.

So now to plan next week's Herd army, I have some Warchief on Chariot proxies so perhaps a rolling thunder list may be on the cards.