First Blood : Rats vs Kin

Today I played my first Kings of War game against my brother who came over from Cirencester with his Rat-Pack. The army composition was primarily decided by the figures that we had available and the forces came in at 1400pts per side. This still gave a nice mix of units but perhaps not the optimal forces that  competitive players would field.

My Kin fielded :
1 * Crossbow Regiment
1 * Shadows Regiment
1 * Reaper Guard Regiment
1 * Blade Dancers Regiment with Caterpillar pot
1 * Blade Dancers Troop
2 * Gargoyles Troop
1 * Hydra
1 * Priestess with Bane Chant & Inspiring Talisman
1 * Dark Lord on Pegasus

The Ratkin fielded :
1 * Warrior Horde
2 * Shock Troop Regiment
2 * Shock Troop Troop
2 * Clawshot Troops
1 * Vermintide Horde
1 * Weapon Team
1 * Mutant Rat-fiend
1 * War Chief
1 * Warlock with Inspiring Talisman

The scenario was Loot, in which 3 loot tokens are arranged along the center line and the aim is to pick them up and move them back to your table edge. Both sides start 12" from the center and take it in turns to deploy units.
In the deployment phase the evil Rats tried to sneak an extra Mutant Rat-fiend onto the table but I manged to spot this mix-up on understanding the army list that I had sent through. Having just read the list again I have now noticed that they did manage to field a second Weapon Team rather than just the one.

Having read that KoW battles are better with more terrain I set the terrain up last night and the Rats got to choose sides.

Mushroom forest and altar

The three tokens prior to them being deployed

It was much sunnier last night

The Rats chose the side away from the window and deployment was made, I went first and then as the Rats had more units they had a few free placements without me being able to respond.

A solid wall of Rats

The main Kin deployment

Out of focus Rats, sorry.

The Rats with a superiority in unit numbers deployed a strong force to contest each loot counter whilst I concentrated on the center and left hand tokens with only a single unit of Gargoyles on the right to try and cause some mischief. 

During the first pair of moves the Gargoyles on the left flew forwards and claimed the loot and the flying lord and Blade Regiment pushed up to take the cover of the wall. The Rat Shock Regiment then charged and wiped out the Gargoyles with the Weapon team doing a little shooting into the Lord.

End of Rats first turn

In the center I missed my first special rule by not doing the Vanguard move on the Shadows so they and the Crossbow Regiment moved and shot into the Rat Horde. The melee troops moved up into charge range of the token and waited for the horde to claim it which they did supported by the other Shock Regiment. The Ratkin Longshots opted to stay in place and shoot rather than lose a move by getting into cover. They took some long range shots into the Crossbows but without much effect.

The rats have control of a second token

On the right my Hydra shuffled to hide behind the building and also to get an angle to charge but I left him out of range for the central horde. The Gargoyles move forwards a bit but did not go for the token. The Rats rolled up with 2 Shock Troops and the Mutant and took control of the third token.

At this point I managed to forget to take photos after each pair of moves but on the left flank the flying Lord charged and manged to hold up the Shock Regiment with the token whilst the Blade Regiment wiped out the Vermintide and then a Weapon Team on consecutive moves. 

In the center the Blade Troop and Reapers charged and did massive casualties to the Horde but only managed to waver it. Concentrated fire from the Shadows and Crossbows also managed to waver the Shock Regiment so it could not intervene.
On the right flank the Gargoyles flew over the Rats who realizing that they had wasted troops on that flank started to move some towards the center.

In the final moves the Kin managed to wipe out the units in the center and take control of the token and position themselves on the left to deliver a rear charge with the Blade Regiment ( 75 attacks ! ). It was agreed that the Rats would not be able to stop the Kin from getting both these tokens off the board.

Poised for slaughter

The Mutant finally gets involved

Gargoyles block the exit

All in all an enjoyable first game ( of course winning always helps ) and as the rules are pretty simple the game moved along pretty well for a first go. I have since realized that the Rat Warlock manged to get both his bane-chant and lightening spells off in the same turn a couple of times rather than just casting the one spell each turn but other than that I don't think we got anything wrong.

The only real mistakes came from not being used to the rules enough to make proper tactical decisions so for instance the Rat left flank got too tied up with the Gargoyle unit and missed most of the battle when it could have been deployed to the center much earlier and helped things there. Though having said that even though the Mutant should hit like a truck once it got into combat is failed miserably to put enough damage out to justify 200 points.

There should I hope be some close-up shots and a Rats opinion of the fight over on the Cirencester Wargames blog once my brother has written it up.