League of Infamy: Grand Larceny

This week I finished up the last of the League of Infamy villains and with them the whole set of models that came with the game and a few extra ones as well.

Firstly we have The Mother Infernal who is a fallen Abbess of the Basilean church. We saw a similar villain in the Drowned Secrets book by Ben Stoddard so whilst a rare event the turning of a once holy Abbess isn't a complete unknown. The Mother Infernal has an equal number of attack dice for melee and ranged but her War-pick gives her a chance to ignore armour in melee so that would seem to be her best fighting spot. She also has a nice re-roll a dice mechanic that can help smooth out a bad roll for her or a fellow villain.

Alaia used to be a Kraken hunter until her ship was wrecked and she was forced to take up alternate employment, as a Naiad she come from a neutral faction so is used to looking out for her own best interests. Much stronger at range than in melee she wants to stay out of trouble and shoot the enemy away, she has a chance to be able to drag enemies out of position with her harpoon though she probably wants to drag them into a waiting melee villain rather than into melee range of herself.

Barthamus's path to becoming a necromancer was set when his family was murdered and the League recognised the usefulness of having a master of the dead on their roster. He has a powerful ranged attack but also the ability to raise a recently slain defender to fight for him. He does need to stay close to the action to recharge his spells so will want to be careful about his positioning during raids.

Lat up we have Blaine, Mantic's interdimensional traveller who appears in all their games. He probably shouldn't be used in the game as he tends to be very powerful in any game in which he appears. It is nice to have the model for him and he could even appear to give the villains a bit of a slap as a bonus boss.

With all the villains complete I grouped them up for a bit of a team photo, it also shows the wide range of villains available to be chosen from. As I said before the villains cover the full range of archtypes so no matter if you prefer, tanking, DPS or support you should have someone you can pick. Without playing it's hard to know if you need to cover all the bases in order to be successful on a raid but I expect you can get through them without taking a 'one of each' approach.

I also gathered all the models together from the game and took a couple of big group shots as well. Considering the Kickstarter edition was only £140 you get a lot of models considering how many books, maps, & tokens also come in the set.

As we've just started playing some D&D it's probably going to be a while before these hit the table but hopefully we can play at some point and get the models out on the table.

League of Infamy: Elf Defenders & More

Rather than focus on this week's SAGA game I thought I'd post up the defenders I've been working on for League of Infamy. 

The first campaign is set around an Elf Drakon farming facility so you get lots of Elfs, Drakons, and some nice kitty cats.

As well as the base miniatures the game comes with some stats for models not included so you can add your own. The rear ranks are models I've added in to represent Palace Guards and Kin Archers, these are from my spares pile.

I also purchased an Elf mage from Reaper to give models for all three of the extra profiles provided.

This is quite a varied set of models so for the Elfs I went with a green & grey theme and then for the Drakons I mixed it up with a range of different colours to add some variety.

I also painted up my fourth Lord on Drakon, which I found a bit hard going after completing the three for my Kingdoms of Men. He came out OK in the end, but it was somewhat of a slog.

The Kickstarter version game also comes with some extra scenarios and rules for wandering monsters with figures included for these.

Whilst I was grappling with the Lord on Drakon I started on these as well to keep my painting mojo going.

The Brocks (giant badgers) and Owlbears are my favourites out of the set though the nasty looking Cave Dweller (giant mole thing) is also a good model. 

This means I have a decent chunk of the defenders completed with the Halflings and Trident Realm forces to complete, and then the villians.

On the Deep Blue Sea

This week Mick & I took to the waves in our first naval battle for Blood & Plunder. The rules treat ships as structures that can move, so all the earlier rules we had learnt in the land battle still applied and we 'just' needed to add the ship movement on top. This took a while to explain but once we got playing it actually flowed very well and we got stuck in and had a good game.

For this game I stacked up on the guns for the ships but you could equally build a boarding focused list as the rules include the ability to grapple the opposition.

Mick's early cannon fire proved to be very effective with him scoring multiple lucky hits which left my ship leaking and in need of repair. Fortunately I was able to effect a speedy repair and stopped my ship for sinking below the waves.

At one point my cannons decided to work and I briefly started a fire on Mick's ship but he was able to task some sailors to put that out in short order.

By the end of the evening the casualties where about even but my ship had taken much more damage in the fire-fight. One thing we did find out was that musket fire is still pretty effective even when firing to and from a ship so taking good musket troops is useful in a ship combat game.

Last week along with visiting Mantic HQ for their open weekend we also played out the final game of our KoW v2 campaign. Having won the majority of the big battles I was the attacker and Stu brought along his castle which his Salamanders occupied.

I won't repeat the details of the battle which can be found over here but I committed a reasonable strong force to attack the castle with a view to taking down the front wall with my massed artillery and then put everything else opposite the forces outside the castle.

The Salamanders had a lot of points inside the castle so I was able to outnumber those on the outside and made good inroads into killing them off.

I was also lucky with the artillery and managed to take the wall down but I lacked the strength to clear the courtyard against the massed defenders.
The game ended in a draw with neither side looking likely to be able to gain a victory, a good way to end a keenly contested campaign and see off the old armies in style.

With the Herd being the old army that means work has been continuing on the new one!
I'm into the home run with the Undead and have been busy getting the Skeleton Hordes painted up. At 30 models a unit these take a fair old bit of painting but I have managed 1 1/3 Hordes so far.

The infantry are all Mantic models and they have a lot of character especially considering how cheap they are, so it hasn't been a drag to paint them so far.

The plan is to glue them into place and then level things off with some polyfilla & paint before applying the cracked earth effect.

A Tale of Two Forts: Pillage

The fourth big battle in the ongoing campaign was Pillage which sees 4 + D3 objectives being placed on the table and then one victory point being awarded for each uncontested objective being held at the end of the game.
The Salamanders had changed their army up again with some shooty chaff making way for melee chaff and the Horde of Primes being replaced by Ancients on foot.
Both sides equipped a caster with Blizzard with the aim of getting some long range wounds on the enemy.

With a concentration of objectives in the centre of the board both sides setup with the heavy hitters front and centre and their faster troops on the same table edge. With the Salamanders taking the first turn to edge up a little the Herd made sure they had gotten into charge range across most of the front.

The open table edge saw a more cautious approach though the Salamander caster with Blizzard managed an impressive 10 hits with its first cast.

The second turn saw the Salamanders take out the Herd chaff and also shoot the Giant Eagles off the board scoring 11 hits with the second Blizzard cast. In turn the Herd got some good charges in and wiped out both of the dangerous mounted Ancients regiments but fail to route anything else. The Nightstalker Doppelgangers finally managed to get a charge in against something tasty and wiped out on regiment on their own.

Both lines had pretty much closed at this point so it settled down into a bit of a grind. I was also feeling rather unwell so didn't really concentrate enough on taking pictures.

The Salamanders had the edge on the grind in the centre but both sides rolled low on nerve tests so it probably went on for a turn longer that required, especially with the Herd rolling two sets of snake eyes in one round.

But whilst that was going on the Herd had cleared their left flank and started to move back into the middle of the table looking to seize control of enough objectives to gain a victory.

As the grind pretty much came to a close with wounds mounting up on both sides the Salamanders held three objectives but the Herd where closing in.

The last turn saw the Herd holding two objectives to the Salamanders one with two being contested so victory went to the Herd.

This means that the Herd lead 3 v 1 in the big battle stakes so we agreed to move straight onto the final Siege game as the next battle. The Herd will be on the offensive so I need to have a look at the best way to knock walls down with the troops I have available. That will probably be the last Kings of War v2 game I get played before v3 hits.

A Tale of Two Forts: Control

The third of our big battles for the campaign saw us play out the Control scenario. This involves dividing the table up into two foot squares with points awarded per square to the side with the most unit strength in the square. This battle also saw the involvement of a new general, young Sam who I persuaded to help me out on the Herd side.

The Salamanders opted for a heavy left flank whilst attempting to refuse the right and centre whilst the Herd hoped to turn the Salamander right and break the centre whilst holding off the right.

The opening moves saw the Herd push forwards on their left and centre whilst the Salamanders held back with the positions being reversed on the Herd right flank. The Salamander shooting proved failed to cause many casualties on the Herd side.

One thing I have noticed is that the Salamander shooting hasn't been as decisive as I had initially feared, they never seem to have reached enough weight of fire in a sector to take units off the table.

The opening combats saw the Herd take off a couple of units on the Salamander right and threaten to turn the flank.

On the other flank the Herd played for time and managed to bottle the Salamander heavy hitters up behind their chaff.

In the centre the Herd continued to advance and set themselves up for charges whilst the Salamanders held firm.

On the Herd right they managed to get a couple of charges in that if successful would have spelt disaster for the Salamanders but unfortunately they failed to rout both the units they charged.

The centre saw the Herd counter charge and destroy two units having survived the charge they had to take due to the hills.

On the left the Giant Eagles had fallen to a double six nerve roll (must get some fast flying Inspiring for the flying flank) but the Brutox and Chimera had made up for the loss with some excellent melee work.

Now at this point I needed to get cracking on lunch so I didn't get any more picture so I hope that Stu over at Cirencester Wargames got some.
The last two turns saw the Herd wiped out on their right flank but the had held up enough that the Salamanders could only reach one of the centre squares (worth 2 VP's) which cancelled out the one held by the Herd after they destroyed the Salamander Prime Herd. However the Salamanders held two other squares to one held by the Herd so they ran out 4-3 victors, all in all a very close game that could have gone either way at the end.
One point of note is that the allied Regiments finally made an impact with the Basileans Finnish off the Spirit Walker Horde and the Nightstalkers managing to get into combat with a powerful unit (at last!) and routing them.

That means the overall campaign situation is 2 - 1 for the Herd, so the Salamanders need to win again in order to stop the Herd taking an unassailable 3 - 1 game lead.