The initial deployment saw most of the forces mustered around the more central gates with the Kin positioning the two artefacts they had opposite them and the Men going for the gate furthest away. The Men aimed to get forward as quickly as possible in order to ensure the Kin could not gain a quick victory.
The Men won the roll off for first turn and pushed forwards onto and over the gates they also launched one charge into the woods against the Kin Shadows but this was repulsed. The giant Oliphant mode was this time being used to represent a Horde of Elephants from the KoW Historical lists and this made it easily the more expensive unit on the table.
The Men had also been expanding their flying Corps so more carpets took to the skies.
Some fire from the central flying carpets wavered one of the Gargoyle units in the Kin's front line which caused some disruption to the following units. The Kin also pressed forwards and engaged some of the leading units in melee and also with ranged fire.
In what became a bit of a theme some poor rolling on nerve checks meant that only one unit of Men's chaff was removed and the other was able to further constrict the advance in the middle. The Buccaneers also failed to clear the central unit of carpets but did manage to lock them down by causing the casualty to stop them from flying.
In the next turn the Men stripped away the chaff units from the Kin but could not leave themselves out of arc or range to be charged in the next turn.
The had however managed to turn the Kin right flank and started to work their way through the artillery units there.
The Kin then launched a series of charges along the line all of which failed to route the enemy and if I recall correctly did not even manage a waver. The Oliphant managed to stop the Dark Knights I think for the first time in the campaign and this then left them in a bad position.
During the next Men's turn the Dark Knights went down as did another artillery unit and the Men caused casualties along the line, with the centre in particular being a bogged down grind. The Dark Lord on Pegasus was also amongst the fallen, this freed up the Men's right flank as well.
During this time the Men had pushed their Artefact upto a gate but a doughty defence by a lone Dark Avenger had keep them from being able to claim the gate.
During the Men's next turn the Kin casualties really started to mount and it became a matter of when not if they lost. Once you can get onto the flank of the enemy especially with heavy hitting units you can quickly roll up the opposition.
So in this turn the Shadows Regiment and Buccaneers routed and also the Lycan Horde was lost.
The Reaper Guard Regiment was also wavered leaving it straight in the path of the Oliphants.
The Kin had one final chance to break the central infantry Horde and again rolled low on the nerve test so did not even waver their opponents.
After that it was all over with the Men making some good nerve check rolls and the Kin being wiped out apart from one artillery unit.
In the end the collapse was swift and pretty much total but once again I came away thinking that even though I had mode some mistakes it could have been a different game with some better nerve check rolls, but such is the life of a wargamer.
So that is the end of the campaign and we had some good battles and it was great to push some models across the table and good to see two painted armies fighting it out.
Next up will be some SAGA with Stu building up a possibly Irish force so we will need to play some practice games for him to get used to the rules.
We both also have our second Kings of War armies under construction so we will need to think up another campaign structure to use once they are ready to be fielded.
Good fun indeed and I think the "veteran units" rewards worked well - not so powerful as to deeply affect the next battle but enough to make it feel like you gained something. I suspect the next go round the buoy on KOW will be rather different with Herd vs Salamanders - two hard hitting horde-based armies.
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