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: Capture the Giant

The final KoW: Vanguard game of the campaign saw both sides trying to subdue a Giant ready to use in the siege game which will round off the campaign. The board was pretty much setup from the night before when Mick and I played our first Blood & Plunder game so had a tropical feel.

Three victory points are awarded each turn to the side which scores the most wounds on the giant with one VP being awarded for killing support/command/spellcaster models on the opposing side. The giant makes a random move each turn after the first can cause damage to anyone in it's path.

The first turn saw my faster troops get uncontested attacks on the Giant so I got a quick 3 VP's.

But disaster then struck as it rampaged through almost all my army knocking down some of my troops and causing six wounds, this was a sign of a rough battle to come. I did however manage to score the most wounds again.

The Giant then reversed it's course and rampaged through my forces again this time killing a Phantom and causing more havoc.

I also started to lose models as my damaged forces got picked off by the untouched Basileans, once you start getting outnumbered in Vanguard then you tend to die pretty quickly.

So in turn three the Basileans got the most wounds and also killed a couple of support models so the scores where 6-5 to the Nightstalkers but with the NS severely weakened.

The next turn saw even more Nightstalkers killed and the Basileans again scored the most hits so with no hope of rescuing a draw or victory I conceded defeat.

Not a great last outing for the Nightstalkers who had previously proved very hard to kill but this time I lost over half the Warband, luckily it was the last game so I didn't need to do all those rolls on the inter-game wound table.

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: Burn the Stores

The next game in the ongoing Tale of Two Forts was the Burn the Stores scenario for Vanguard. This scenario saw the Argent Defenders on the attack trying to burn down a storehouse being defended by the Melas Oneiros. Unusually for the scenarios we have played so far there was only a hook for the winners in the next KoW game so the Nightstalkers only fought to stave off disaster not for any advantage.

The Melas Oneiros fielded an unchanged warband composition with the only change being swapping out a fresh Phantom for the one who's speed had been reduced to 4" after being wounded in the last battle. The Argent Defenders once again shuffled the deck and fielded a power dice intensive list.

1 * Veteran Sergeant
1 * War Wizard
1 * Ogre Guard
2 * Veteran Sister
2 * Sergeant
2 * Paladin Defender
3 * Men-at-Arms

This left them with eight red dice and two white, which is a whole heap of dice to be throwing each round.

The scenario required the Melas Oneiros to defend a barn from being set on fire which was done by being in contact with the barn and spending a long action to set a fire. The defenders could remove a fire marker by again spending a long action whilst in contact with the barn.

My plan was very simple which was to force fatigue as many models from the group that need to move over to the barn to take an extra move and then try to stop the Basileans from getting into contact with the barn. The early moves saw my troops hot foot it over to the barn and even manage to pick a couple of the enemy off. With the number of power dice being rolled by the opposition I had to get lucky as Iron Resolve (giving a 3+ save) was being used pretty freely.

With the Argent Defenders not wishing to over commit by leaving themselves in charge range of my troops their right wing ground to a halt and the left spent a turn dealing with a Shadowhound.

At this point the game was effectively won by the Melas Oneiros, the Argent Defenders had no way of getting to the barn without exposing themselves to a charge and the Melas Oneiros had no need to over-extend themselves.

The Ogre did manage to kill another Phantom and the War Wizard had a few long range pot-shots but nothing major happened in the last couple of turns.

I think had this been a one off game then the Basileans would have been more inclined to charge in but having a developing Warband and the chance (though very slim) of having a model permanently lost meant they did not want to commit.

So the first actual win (after a few moral ones) of the Vanguard part of the campaign with the next battle being a Kings of War battle using the Pillage scenario.

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.