Artefacts of Kyron Campaign Battle #4

Battle #4 of the campaign saw the opposing armies fighting out the Control scenario as they sought to gather supplies for the march south with the Artefacts of Kyron.

Starting Positions

The scenario works by dividing the table into 2 foot squares, 2 Victory Points are awarded if you control the square in the centre of your opponent's half, 1VP for all other squares.

Having greater numbers the Men's battle line was once again longer than the Kin's with the Kin aiming to secure victory by holding the centre and their right flank. The Men had opted to leave the fearsome Oliphant at home ( along with all their multi-bases ) and include some more hardy Foot Guards and troops of Sergeant Cavalry. The Kin had swapped out a troop of Blade Dancers for two mounted Avengers to act as chaff in an attempt to slow down the Men's mounted troops.

The Men's right flank

The Men's left flank

The Elven Army

The Kin moved first and pushed forwards to occupy the centre woods and also to get in position to move forwards on their right flank to block the Men's mounted troops.

 A miscalculation with the Gargoyles on the right left them in range of the Men's mounted archers and they plunged forward creating a great deal of surprise in the Elven ranks.

The charge created a logjam in the middle of the Kin's right flank and prevented them from being able to execute the planned advance with screening chaff units.

 Disaster also stuck on the Elven left flank when the Lord on flying mount was wiped out in one turn of combat, his high armour and good nerve not being able to save him.

 The Men continued to advance across the breadth of the board but their numbers meant that some of the fighting troops got stuck behind the shooting chaff that the Elves had left alone.

On the Kin's left flank they launched an attack with two regiments of Reaper Guard and one of these managed to rout their opponent.

However on the Kin's right flank things had gone badly wrong with the third unit of Reaper Guard being swept away in one round of combat without replying leaving the Crossbow Horde isolated in the woods.

 The Dark Knights despite once again proving their worth by removing an opposing unit of knights also then got removed by a combined airborne assault by the flying carpets and air elemental. The Lycans who had move around to support the Crossbow Horde did manage to survive the initial charge by the Men's remaining knights but they sustained heavy damage.

This left the Twilight Kin with no way back to capture enough area to win or even draw so once again the Men emerged victorious.
As with the last game this was a quick a brutal affair with melee combat being joined on Turn 1 and the battle being decided by Turn 4.

The next game will be the Push scenario and will feature a river running across the table which should mix things up again.

Artefacts of Kyron Campaign Battle #1

This week we kicked off the KoW mini-campaign my brother and I are playing. As is normal I got sucked into the game so forgot to take many pictures. The campaign will be a series of linked battles to vary the scenarios we will be playing. Stuart brought along his new Kingdom of Men Arabian Nights themed army and I fielded my Twilight Kin.

The first battle was the Invade scenario with the aim to have more points worth of your army in the opponent's half than the other side.

Initial Setup

Both sides deployed a strong center with strong flanks facing each other and then the weaker flanks facing each other. The men fielded a strong combination of shooting and cavalry which included a massive elephant counting as a chariot horde and some flying carpets counting as Talonriders.

The Elephant provided an imposing focal point for the and due to it being used as Chariots was cheap on the points front.

KoM right flank

Kin right flank

The game started off with the Kin Shadows advancing into the centre wood as a vanguard move which set them up to shoot at the carpets. This forced the carpets into making a charge into the woods as they would lose a shooting match against the two Shadow regiments. This was a fight they lost and the horde was defeated leaving a gap in the KoMs lines.

Generally the KoM forces held back in order to try and make the most of the extra shooting they had so the Kin advanced forward to take the fight to the humans.

This meant that the Kin took some hits during the advance and some focused fire in the centre lead to one of the Reaper Guard regiments being routed.

Reaper Guard regiment being focused

The advance meant that the Kin Blade Dancers regiment came within charge range of the elephant and the human General not being impressed with its shooting decided to put its charging potential to the test. Unfortunately some truly terrible dice rolling lead the elephant to bounce of the Dancers with barely any casualties caused and it was shot away by two lots of breath weapons and two mages. It was at this stage that the Kin cavalry got stuck in a fight with a regiment of lighter KoM cavalry which was to drag on for several rounds.

At this point I got distracted by the game so the photos stopped, the Kin continued to push forward in the centre with one regiment of Reaper Guard routing a regiment of archers and then being routed in turn by the KoM guard infantry and berserker regiment. The remaining Reaper Guard unit routed the KoM skirmisher cavalry on the lightly populated flank but was in turn routed by the KoM heavy cavalry. On what was the more heavily populated flank the Kin cavalry got the KoM cavalry to the point that anything other than double 1's would route them and then duly rolled the required 1's, the KoM unit took advantage of this to rout the Kin unit but was then routed by a breath attack unit.

This took us through to the final move and the KoM made a grab for victory by charging into the woods in the hope that the berserker regiment could route a regiment of Shadows and advance over the centre line, unfortunately they failed to rout the Shadows and the game finished as a close draw.

Update :

After a late night flash of remembering I realised that we had not counted the Troops as scoring units :

0 – individuals & war engines

1 – troops, heroes without individual, monsters, height zero units

2 –- regiments

3 – hordes & legions

So as the KoM had a couple of Troops left at the end of the battle I dropped my brother an email to let him know he had actually won.

Sword in the Stone

Another week and another game of SAGA has been played. Again Mick took the part of the Vikings and I the Anglo-Danish. Of course I remembered to take only a few photos but this game went right down to the wire.

Terrain setup, I swapped the heavy and light terrain over for the game

The scenario revolved around the Warlords trying to retrieve a sword that had gotten stuck in a stone. This week I replaced the levy bowmen with warrior footmen and Mick stuck with his javelinmen.

Anglo-Danish

Vikings

Again my Mycenaeans had to be pressed into action to fill the gaps in the roster and the game developed into a pretty brutal encounter with the sword largely forgotten as the two bands got stuck into each other. The Vikings initially suffered greater casualties but then the Viking Warlord went on a rampage and came within a whisker of killing his opposite number. Even though Mick had bought some new dice at the critical stage they let him down and the Anglo-Danish Warlord survived being charged by his opposite number and a unit of heathguard.

Early on the Anglo-Danes seized the light cover

The game ended when the Anglo-Danes sacrificed several units to exhaust the Viking Warlord so that the coup-de-grace could be administered by the home Warlord.

This was another close and enjoyable game, I suspect my winning run will not last much longer.

I have also put some more work in on my water feature and after receiving some supplies managed to get a water effect I am happy with.

The still water effect I had been using being a single part solution relies upon evaporation to set the water effect and pouring it over a large area meant that all it did was form into a cracked mess with lots of large gaps in it. A search on the internet suggested that a two part resin which uses a hardening agent would work much better so ebay came to the rescue and a substitute was purchased. The two part resin does have a strong smell so a well ventilated area was essential and it also suffered from a very small amount of shrinkage so I did end up doing a second layer. Overall I'm pretty happy with the outcome and I suspect the pond will be featuring in the next battle.

I have also been working on the structure for a KoW campaign to play with my brother when he comes over. He has been building up a desert themed human army and as Ophidia is next to the home of the Twilight Kin I tied the two together.

The campaign with feature a series of linked battles using the scenarios from the Clash of Kings book to create interesting battles.

The Setting

With the setting in place it was obvious that I would need to create some artifacts to be captured ( more on those next week ) and also a destination for them to be taken too. Building on the idea of gates I decided to make something that could be put out on the table. Using the door from a Necron Monolith, Milliput, MDF and some blue foam offcuts I managed to put something together without a massive effort.

Frame

Necron door and Milliput Gate

Once the Milliput gate was dry I stuck it onto some foam card and then fashioned a door frame out of left-over blue foam from the hills, this was then stuck onto a MDF base.

I have done some painting and then slapped a load of Army Painter dip over it all ready for some dry brushing. The should be done next week, hopefully before Saturday. On Saturday we are off down to Reading for the Colours 2017 show so I am expecting to pick up the remainder of my Byzantine force for SAGA. This will be good as I am running almost on empty for things to paint.

Last of the Twilight Kin

This week I completed the last of the Twilight Kin units for my army having decided to add a couple of Dragon Breath units as an alternative to the more static Bolt Throwers.

These will give a unit with better mobility though lesser range ( just 12" ) that can also be used as a chaff unit.

Having seen the Ratkin breath weapon units in action I think these should be a good alternative ranged unit.

I also got to play another game against the Rats ( thanks Mick ) and again after a tight battle came away victorious. I think at the 1500 point mark the Rats are a good match-up for the Kin. Once again due to a mixture of poor camera work and getting wrapped up in the game I managed to come away with only a couple pictures.

The Rats opted for a more extended deployment which meant that the more concentrated Kin managed to pick off the opposition more quickly and despite heavy loses they captured two tokens to the Rats zero.

I have also started painting the Fireforge medieval Russians that I picked up at a show last month with a view to making either another KoW army or perhaps a medieval skirmish force.

The box has 25 miniatures in it so I will be doing eight each of archers, spearmen, & axes and then a leader with sword.

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.