We both fielded about 1500 points per side, with no magic items. The battle was played for Victory Points and Objectives, which is one of the three basic scenarios in the Kings of War rulebook. The three Objectives were the Woods, the Ruins and the Spring. We also house-ruled an extra two inches of movement to any unit that spent the majority of its move at least partially over the road.
Jon took one look at the number of figures involved and quickly made some unit trays out of cardboard, which turned out to be a brilliant idea. I can't imagine moving blocks of troops across a fabric landscape without them.
On the right side were my Marauding Hordes of Chaos. I use a combination of units from the Kingdoms of Man and Undead lists.
On the left were the human and terra cotta soldiers of the Rising Sun, as well as their Dark Elf allies. These units were drawn from the Kindoms of Man and Twilight Kin army lists.
For our opening moves, both players embarked upon a general advance that was broken up by the terrain, which forced us to decide early in the game where to deploy our forces.
The Dark Elf Griffon seized the ruins objective early, but his position ensured he would be drawn into the fray soon enough.
On the far flank, the Chaos Dragon (using stats for the Vampire Lord on Pegasus) advanced on a unit of archers.
On the near flank, the Dark Crown Knights wheeled about to face a pike phalanx regiment.
In the center of the battlefield, a band of werewolves unsurprisingly cast caution to the wind and ranged out ahead of the main line.
Battle was fully joined as the two forces clashed all across the board.
Jon's pike phalanx was an effective unit versus mounted and flying units, but it couldn't prevail against a unit of charging knights combined with a attack flank from a flying Vampire Lord.
An attempted flank by the Dark Elf Griffon forced the werewolves to reverse course and expose their rear to an advancing Rising Sun regiment.
Unfortunately the Griffon was taken down in a flurry of claws and fangs. The werewolves took a beating from the human warriors, but still survived and wiped them out in the next turn.
A unit of foot guard from each side traded blows for a turn, but the Chaos commander charged the flank of the terra cotta warriors and tipped the scales in favor of Chaos in the following combat.
The forces of the Rising Sun got a small bit of good news as their hydra made short work of a band of beastmen. Though not entirely destroyed, the beasts were mauled severely.
The nearly undamaged hydra followed up this attack with a charge against the werewolves. The werewolves took some damage, but give as good as they got. In the following turn, a flank by an ogre and a rear attack on the hydra by the Chaos dragon spelled the end of the great multi-headed beast.
The battle would carry on for one more turn, but it was clear by this point which way the battle was going. The Warriors of Chaos continued to defeat one unit after the other, though the werewolves were eventually killed.
Jon and I both agreed that we enjoyed the game. As in past games, it was clear that the werewolves are a really hard unit that can only be effectively countered by other equally hard units. Having a couple of small mobile units that could flank (even within the confines of tight terrain) really helped me in several instances.
As someone who has played almost exclusively sci-fi and fantasy skirmish games, Kings of War is my first experience with a game that really rewards maneuvering of units with respect to flanks and rear, and I'm really enjoying that tactical aspect. I credit maneuvering and some bad luck in dice rolling on Jon's part for most of my victory.
Given our time and table size, 1500 points made for a good game. I'm not sure that there would be much benefit to fitting more units on the table. However, I definitely want to expand the size of most of my units and expect to top out around 2000 points. I've already purchased the necessary figures, I just have to get up the desire to paint another 50 miniatures. Stay tuned for another blog post showcasing all the units presently in the army.
-- Karl, Chicago Skirmish Wargames club member
1 comment:
The battle looks fun. I'm slowly increasing the size of my forces, and my group is starting to find it gets a bit more tactical when you have a second rank of troops - so you find you then have someone to guard your flanks. Is your table a 6x4? Looking forward to reading about many more games!
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