At the Sharp End

Yesterday I hosted Stuart the Eldar and we played our first game of KoW:Vanguard which is Mantic's new fantasy skirmish game. The game is marketed as fantasy black-ops and features small warbands of warriors fighting it out over objectives.

The battle we played saw both sides trying to harness the power of a mystic portal, this was done by remaining in base-to-base contact with the portal, this scored you points at the end of each round but ran the risk (on a roll of 7 or 8 on a d8 per model) of being sucked off the battlefield and into the void.
My Nightstalkers consisted of three groups:
The fast : 2 * Shadowhounds, 1 * Shade all with 7 speed
The punchy : 2 * Reapers, 1 * Horror, 1 * Butcher Fleshripper
The expendable : 2 * Scarecrow, 1 * Horror

Stuart has written up an account of the fight which after a good early start where my fast troops managed to wipe out three crossbowmen took a turn for the worse for the forces of the shadows.
The Basilean special ability allows them to save all wounds in a melee rounds on a 3+ (using d8) and whilst it is pretty expensive that along with the Parry rule which some of the troops have makes them very hard to get rid of. They may not be flashy but the Basileans will be very hard to break down if they can generate enough power dice each turn.

As with all initial playthroughs of a game we spent plenty of time flicking through the rule book trying to work out if we could or couldn't perform an action. Once we got going the game flowed well and as each turn consists of players alternating activating either a single or closely spaced group of models it would work well as a multiplayer game. I could see a three or four player all against all game being lots of fun with the only change really needed being to reduce the size of the forces deployed so you could finish in a reasonable amount of time.

All that is needed now is for me to get my thinking cap on to get a campaign to tie the Vanguard and normal KoW battles together. The latest KoW supplement is set to include rules for assaulting fortifications so that would seem like a good set piece for the final battle, I just need to get the route to the battle worked out. The other thing I need to work out is how to get rid of Paladin Defenders, that may prove more tricky.

One thing we have agreed is that we will be using or Vanguard forces to represent a Regiment in the main battles. I got my custom movement trays sorted out for the Nightstalkers so they will be ready to join the Herd on the table.

My plan is to use them as a Regiment of Doppelgangers which would help to explain the variation of troops in the Regiment.

The Doppelgangers also have a very interesting special rule which could be fun if they manage to catch a expensive and powerful attacking unit with a charge.