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.

Marauders: The Complete Team

With Deadzone being a skirmish game you don't need many models to make a Strike Team which means that once you get stuck into the painting the army comes together nice and quickly.
After the commanders last week I only had a couple of models left to paint and with my second Grunt Bot Goblin arriving I managed to finish all the force off. I'd also been given a mercenary model by John who I play with so he/she got painted up as well.

For the second Grunt Bot model I painted him up as Bolts and left the helmet in the open position so you can catch a glimpse of the suit operator. Bolts is a force commander who specialises in melee combat and comes with a nice heal ability for himself and other Grunt Bot models.
The Survivor looks like a good close range tank with armour 1, Tough and a defense of 3+ making it a hard model to put down.

Lastly we come to the Guntrack which I don't think I would ever field but I built the indirect fire version with the mortar which I realised I had stuck on upside down once I had completed painting it. The unit is rather expensive I would say and indirect fire has a reasonable chance to scatter so I think this would only be included in a large scale fight.

So that's the team all done and dusted, I may have a look at a second force and some terrain so I can play at home as well but that is down the list of priorities at present as I want to complete the Undead and then the Mythic Battles models I already have.

Speaking of the Undead I have also been busy at work on the second section of the army with some models almost ready to be called completed.

Undead: The First Horseman

The first section of my Undead army to be completed (well mostly) is that lead by Death. I'm not sure if the four are ranked but I would suggest the Death would be first among equals if not the outright leader.

From the reference description Death rides a pale horse so I undercoated Death in Black and the horse in grey to help him look darker/the horse look paler. The scythe and hour glass he is equipped with are nods to the Discworld Death and I opted to add the barding on that comes with the Fireforge Knight kit to help make him stand out.

The second Regiment of Soul Reaver infantry have been based as Troops just in case I need to field them in that manner and I added a couple of the Undead dogs on so I could remove two infantry to use in my Vanguard Warband.

The only thing I am looking to add to the bases now is a tree growing from outside the wall and over-hanging the base. I've been on the lookout for a suitable model but haven't found anything yet I really like so have also been looking for a natural branch/twig to use, again no luck so far.

The next section I'm going to work on is that lead by War, who carries a sword, so that should be easy enough to arrange.

The Boss

Another week and more Marauder progress has been made, this almost completes the Strike Team options. So far I'd only completed one commander so it was good to welcome two more into the team.

Each commander has a special ability they add to the team which can be used with the 'Splat' result on the command dice. The Splat is the rarest result with only a 1 in 6 chance of being rolled. 

The Commando Captain is widely considered to be one of the best commanders around with his ability to roll two extra command dice (Tactician 2) and his special Tactical Genius ability which allows the team to spend a Splat to take and then use one of the enemies command dice (move, shoot or fight results only). He also comes with Combat Team Training which means you never lose the ability to re-roll command dice which normally happens when you have lost over half your team.

The Warlord is a more straight forward melee mincing machine, his Green Rage special allows him to designate a model to gain Frenzy (4), this allows you to re-roll up to 4 dice in a melee, including exploding dice that have missed. He's a great leader for any melee heavy Strike Team.

I also completed some more Commando models, two with the normal Rifle only build and then one each of the Claw & Ripper variants. The extra melee parts are metal so this makes the models rather top heavy which makes them a bit unsteady on their feet as the bases are quite small (25mm).

I'm not sure I'd pay out the extra for the upgraded Commando's as the beauty of them is the low cost and their decent stats.

The last unit is the Sky Scraper which has only one official model for the mercenary version. This unit suffers in a couple of ways mostly I think because of the size of it. In Deadzone you use a true line of sight system so if you can draw a LOS from any part of your model to any part of the enemies model (including the base) you can shoot. With this model being so high it will be a real bullet magnet.

Official Model

The other issue is that this is a Specialist which competes for that slot with better units and Aerial Deployment whilst it lets you drop into any square at the start of the game doesn't then  give you any tactical maneuverability bonus like Jump Pack does.

But as I had loads of Commando models and some old 40k jump packs I made a couple up in case they get a boost in a future update.

So that's the team almost completed, I've got a few more models to finish off and then I can start getting serious on the Undead.

Let it Rain! (Fiery Destruction)

As well as getting a game in this week and watching the cricket and then listening to the cricket I've also completed some more painting.
I've pretty much rounded out my Deadzone Marauders with the completion of another troop type and the heavy hitting suit wearing specialists.

The Mawbeast is a fast moving melee dog some of whom have had chainsaws medically inserted in place of their mouths. I'm not sure how they eat and given the fact that dogs love to lick themselves I presume they have a very high rate of self-inflicted death. But for 12 points you get a fast, hard hitting melee troop which is perfect for getting in the enemies face or moving around a flank.

It would have been nice to get a couple extra of these in the boxes in place of some of the  Goblin snipers so I may need to buy a couple more if I go with a roughly planned Mawbeast and Goblin only force. The Mawbeast comes in a suicide bomb Specialist version as well but with the Specialist spot being so much in demand with lots of great options I cannot see them ever being fielded.

The other units completed are the two mech-suit variants that drew me to the Marauders in the first place. The Ripper suited Marauder is again filling a Specialist slot and the Rainmaker is generally considered to be one of the best shooting units in the game.

The models themselves are packed with detail and the Rainmaker belt feed comes in a solid piece so you can change the arm position and cut the belt to length to make it fit. You also get a fair few bits of rocket and other kit to glue on making them look really tooled up.

The Rainmaker has a ranged weapon for every occasion and would for me be an auto-include in any list as it can deal with massed infantry as well as single high armour targets.
The Mauler is a couple of points cheaper and comes tooled up for face punching and cutting things up. He's not as flexible as the Rainmaker but can step in to keep your power dice re-roll if the main commander should die due to his Tactician (1).

Once again the contrast paints made these a quick and easy job to get done and I think for the effort involved they look really good.

I also sorted out the rest of my bases for the Death section of my Undead, this allowed me to base up the cavalry who I had already painted.

These are planned to be used as Soulreaver Cavalry who currently occupy the extremely heavy hammer spot in the Undead lists. I don't think I would ever take a Troop so have based them as a Regiment.

My suspicion is that they may come down in price in v3 as I think they will be losing De 6+ which I think will become extremely rare. But if they retain 20 attacks hitting on 3+ with some Thunderous Charge & Crushing Strength they will be a force to be reckoned with.

The Soulreaver units are not shambling so they do have the advantage of moving more quickly across the table under normal circumstances but they cannot be surged. That does mean however that whatever surge is in the army can be concentrated on other units.

So two units completed so far with another Regiment of each and the commander to finish off this section of the army.

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.