A Tale of Two Forts: Capture the Plans

The second Vanguard battle of the campaign saw the two sides trying to take control of some vital plans before the next big clash. The sides would need to reach and search the body before they could see if the plans where still on it, if not then it could be in one of two locations which would be randomly determined at that point.

The Melas Oneiros force consisted of:
1 * Shade with Heavy Weapon - Company Commander
1 * Mind-screech - Arcanist
2 * Shadowhounds
3 * Spectre - including the Quartermaster
3 * Reaper
2 * Shadow
1 * Horror with Spear

This is basically the same force as last time but with a Spear swapped in for some Bandages.

The Argent Defenders fielded a balanced force of :

1 * Veteran Sergeant
1 * Ogre Palace Guard
1 * War Wizard - Salamander Advisor
2 * Sergeants
2 * Paladin Defender
2 * Men at Arms with Spear
2 * Gur Panther
2 * Sisterhood Scout

The Sisterhood Scouts where a late addition and adding up the points now I can see that the Basileans got the numbers wrong and ended up with 259 points rather than 250 (an extra man in effect).

The opening move saw both sides advance cautiously towards the center objective and push their fast troops down the flank towards the objective not already guarded by the Sisterhood Scouts ( they can pre-deploy on the table and guarded one possible location for the plans).

During the next turn my fast troops on the right flank advanced to engage the Scouts in the hope of clearing them away but with a series of disappointing dice rolls they managed to hold on, in fact the lightly armored Scouts went toe-to-toe with my leader and Phantom for the rest of the game without being killed.

In the center the Basileans rushed a Men-at-Arms forward who failing to discover the plans was able to see footprints running towards the objective guards by the Scouts before he was cut down by a hail of Spectre fire. This lead to both forces making a move towards that corner of the table. The Argent Defenders cut a more direct path towards the corner which allowed my troops to move forward and engage them with ranged fire.

In the critical corner my Leader was still bogged down and a Sergeant moved forwards to block off the Hell-hound which was advancing to help whilst some of his comrades rushed into the central group of Melas Oneiros to tie them up.

At this point a Paladin Defender took hold of the plans and I knew it would be difficult to take them back with a direct assault as the Basileans can be very hard to kill if they have the dice for their special defensive ability.

This meant that I needed to get the Argent Defenders to their break point by causing over 50% casualties before round 5 started (6 if I got lucky and we rolled for the extra turn) not an easy task but better than throwing my troops in piecemeal against the enemy.

With four of the Argent Defenders sheltering behind a temple this meant that the Melas Oneiros could group up against the Basileans and once you have a model knocked down it is much easier for an extra person to get the kill. In the end I couldn't get the kills required with the Scouts proving particularly durable.

In the end the Argent Defenders had 7 soldiers standing at the end and held the plans so they secured a Pyrrhic victory which means they gain an advantage in the next big battle.
Once again the Melas Oneiros had suffered no casualties in the battle with the combination of good nerve & armor and also never being outnumbered whilst on the ground being the difference. Having no casualties again also meant that several members got promoted with nine of the company now being rank 1.

As I was visiting Cirencester wargames bunker we also got an extra game in pitting my Herd Vanguard force against the Abyssals. I won't repeat the write-up already done other than to say that the Abyssals look like they could be a real handful for a melee focused opponent so I reckon I need to start breaking out the bow-beasts for the next time.

I also need to not charge my best troops straight into the biggest nasty on the opposition at the start of the game and then lose them all, that makes life pretty hard.

In the end I managed to help the Bard live through the battle and eek out a draw which looked extremely unlikely at the start of turn 2.

I've also been getting some work done on painting as well as all this gaming with my Blood & Plunder Bark hitting the dry dock and being given a lick of paint.

The painting was actually very easy with the colors being blocked in and Army Painter Quickshade doing much of the work (as is my normal method). I added a couple of extra touches from Games of War to help the model look extra nice. The wheel wasn't actually used at this time on boats but just looks right so went on and the anchor looks good as well I think.

The next stage will be to sort out the masts, rigging and sails and then she should be almost ready to take the table, well once I have some models to go along with her of course.

Oops I did it Again

As every wargamer knows you never run out of things to paint and the easiest way to accomplish this is to make sure you are always adding to the pile. With a trip to Attack at Devizes last week and then a few bits of online ordering I have managed to maintain the integrity of my 'to be painted' pile for a while longer.
Whilst ordering a Fire Elemental for my brother I picked up a Abyssal Chroneas  for myself. I really liked the look of the model when it was released and even though I have no obvious use for it at present I thought I'd take advantage of the in-show discount Mantic offered. I did manage to resist spending money on the new Terrain Crate line but I'm now thinking I should have picked some of that up for scatter terrain as well.

The model came as five parts with all apart from the head making a good snug fit. I used a little green stuff to fill a few obvious holes and only a little work was needed on the mould lines.

The official paint job is as a fire demon but the Chroneas fluff describes it more as a beast of time so I'll be going for an alternate colour scheme, probably green & black, but I'm not entirely decided as of yet.

He's a big beastie standing at around 120mm and only just fitting on a 50mm square base. As you can see he towers over a normal 32mm infantryman and even my Elephant beast for the Herd.

Next up are some Frostgrave Gnolls which will be used to make up a Horde of infantry for the Herd army. The models look to have good detail and the box comes with loads to options considering you only pay £20 for the box.

The Horde will consist of the 20 Gnolls from the box and I have space for a unit filler on a 50mm square built into the base.

With that in mind and the fact that I want to be able to add a Chieftain on Chariot to the Herd if needed I want a cheap way of adding the unit. After looking around I ordered some 54mm Centaur models from Russia. They do a soft plastic version of these as well but I'm happy with the hard plastic version as I suspect the soft ones would be a pain to paint. For the sum of £9 including postage I got 4 large models, two of which I put on chariot bases ( 50mm * 100mm ) and one on a 50mm square to use as a unit filler.

I also picked up a new set of rules that I had spotted. Blood & Plunder are rules to be used to wargame the pirate age and what intrigued me was the fact the same battle could include naval and land forces. I've not had a good enough read yet to give any sort of review but my thinking is that the rules may be able to be converted to cover the ancient Greek period, if not then I will need to get my Pirate on !

The book itself is well made with lots of good illustrations and some really nice models and terrain, with Firelock Games making a good range of models including ships it would be pretty easy to get a force together.

As well as adding to the pile I've also been working away at it with some light lancers nearing completion for the Basileans.