Beoley Gap

Following the disaster at Bredale Wood, the Royalist army found its path blocked at Beoley Gap by Scots Covenanters.  Both armies possessed a surplus of muskets (four regiments each), with the Royalists possessing more cavalry (three to two) but the Scots being rich in artillery pieces.

The action that then followed was an intense duel of black powder weapons, to which we were rather unaccustomed.  The objective was to have more unit strength within 12" of the board center (the aforementioned "Beoley Gap") and great quantities of shot and powder were expended as both sides fired at each other.

In fact, such was the intensity of this firing, that neither side's pikemen could be brought against the other, and the cavalry largely fought each other exclusively on the Royalist right flank / Scots left.

We tried new rules for frame guns, combining the shorter range stats from a ballista with the Mimble and Pathfinder rules - this allows them to move "at the double" through rough terrain and also to still make a 90 degree turn when moving on the double.  In this way, they can be carried by mule or hand quickly through woods or rocky hills and deployed facing the enemy.

The only melee in the game was a dire affair between two musketeer regiments.

But in the end, the Royalists held Beoley Gap, the Scots fell back, and the Royalist army could move on to friendlier towns to rest and resupply.

Lich War (Kings of War)

'Lich War' is a Kings of War narrative scenario I made to go along with two custom terrain pieces.  The story background is that for untold years, two ancient liches have perched atop their towers locked in magical combat. As they cast spells of untold power at each other, arcane artifacts of great value are strewn across the land between and around the two towers.  Armies frequently end up in battle at the Liches' Towers to retrieve these artifacts, but are also at risk to being exposed to side effects of the Lich magic coursing between the two towers.

Functionally, this means the game is a 'Loot' scenario played with five tokens instead of the usual three.  The two towers are impassable terrain and there are two hills, two woods, and two obstacle pieces terrain as well. Starting at the beginning of the second turn, one of five effect cards is drawn randomly, and the instructions carried out.

These effect cards reflect the influence of the Liches' sorcery on the battle. Effects include the random redeployment of loot, units, and even terrain, as well as other effects reflecting the madness which befalls those who spend too much time around the towers.

 

 

Jared and Dan were able to play test this scenario with me observing, taking notes, and clarifying. Jared was running his Twilight Kin army and Dan ran Imperial Dwarfs. The Twilight Kin won on the last turn, and the effect cards were able to change the course of the game but without taking away player agency.

The towers are foamcore to which I applied joint compound and then "carved" the alchemy symbols into the surface while still wet.  After the joint compound dried I sanded the surface down, and a series of layers and washes of paint. The lich miniatures are Reaper Dark Heavens, and I was mainly just really pleased they had TWO liches on thrones.

Ambush in Bredale Wood (Kings of War)

The Royalist northern army marches through the woods of Bredale, and is ambushed by a Scots-Parliamentarian armies laying in wait. The Royalists successfully route the Parliamentarian cavalry, but continuous musket fire from the woods is too much, and the Scots-Parliamentarians carry the day.

Gabe's friend from Argentina, Maro, turned out to be a tabletop battles player (One Page Rules, mostly), so we used this forest ambush scenario from the Kings of War Historical book. The attacker has 2,000 pts and the defender 1,500 (so we divided the attacker into two smaller forces of 1,000 each).  The defender deploys in the middle facing all towards one long edge or the other, and the attackers deploy in huge wooded spaces on the short sides of the table. 

I played the Royalists and overthought on deployment, setting up my units in a single column in order to try and avoid being charged right away. What this instead accomplished was making it very easy for the Scots-Parliamentarians to shoot the same units from both flanks. If I played this again I would deploy in double columns which statistically reduces the number of casualties on a given unit from shooting by half, if that makes sense.

The other thing I would do differently is probably attack one side or the other with all pikes and cavalry and try to defeat one side in detail (because then I have a slight advantage of 1,500 vs. 1,000 points worth of troops).  This would also probably move most of the army out of musket range from the opposite flank and draw shotte units out of the woods on that side. As noted above, by deploying thinly along the middle, the Royalist army was subjected to fire from both flanks, resulting in unequal transactions like a pike unit routing from shooting without ever even being in charge range of anything.

 

Hunt for Bigfoot

I played in the 'Hunt for Bigfoot' Kings of War tournament three weekends ago. This was a three-game, one-day tournament with 10 players.  Hunt for Bigfoot had a rather neat sub-game to it where there were three tokens on each game board that you could pick up if any unit ended up in contact. At the end of each game you exchanged these for tickets and then there was a lottery out of a hat at the end of the day to win a 3d-print Bigfoot miniature that one of the tournament organizers designed.

Here's my Kingdoms of Men battle line: my Renaissance Spanish pike and swordsmen, supported by a pair of stone giants.

Stone Giant mixing it up with Trident Realms forces.

These pegasus knights significantly helped my army's performance.

Spaniards doing their best to slow down this Kraken.

Battle at Brewich Woods (Kings of War)

 

Lets see, the chronicler says "at the hills before Brewich Woods the Dark Dwarves made camp, the armies of Men came forth with the stone giants and both sides clashed the long day, and then each retired away from Brewich Woods under cover of night."

Had a lovely game of Kings of War, Abyssal Dwarves against Kingdoms of Men. Further tweaks to unit selection for Kingdoms of Men makes them more and more viable. Kings of War really is a very very nice set of rules - big historical armies fit in very nicely.

 

Rose City Rumble 2024

 

Rose City Rumble was last weekend.  As I am still a bit of an novice, I lost all my games, but just missed a win (I timed out!) and a tie, so some progress.  From a list point of view, I dropped all my cavalry and took the Monarch with flying upgrade and 3 giants (so four titans).  This gave me some punch ability lacking in prior outings.

During the lunch break most of the armies were on display, so here's other people's armies...

This is a terrain piece and not part of someone's army.

"Goat Town"

Kings of War in Keizer

On Saturday I played 3 games of Kings of War in a one-day tournament at Shiv Games in Keizer, Oregon. I used my Renaissance figures as a Kingdoms of Men army, with a few tweaks from last time at Wildwood.  I still lost all three games, but didn't feel particularly bad about any of the losses. I was doing well against an Abyssal army in the first game, routing an expensive chaos dragon, but the scenario goal involved an objective marker that moved around on its own randomly and by the second turn I basically knew it was already completely out of reach.

The second game was against the Order of the Brothermark, which is another human faction with very good cavalry. This felt a bit like a mirror-match, and I was unsure how to proceed. I should have thrown everything at the horde of elite knights (the strongest unit) and just gone from there - instead I muddled around.

The third game was against Ogres and that one went very well at first, with beginnings of a double envelopment starting to form up (my cavalry flanking on both sides and pikes coming up the middle), but some combat results fell one point short and the Ogres were able to counterstrike and start bashing things with combat results going their way right on the mark (so scoring the exact score to route a pike regiment on the first combat).