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.

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).

 

 

Wildwood 2023

Kingdoms of Men versus Lizardmen.

I participated in a five-game, two-day Kings of War fantasy wargaming tournament. I entered my renaissance French as a 'Kingdoms of Men' army.  Kings of War is a list-building game, and I deliberately built a list without a lot of added buffs, just to see what would happen.

The revised deployment.

What happened was what I suspected would happened - I went 0-3 on the first day and my army was tabled (all units removed) twice!  However, I was trying different approaches and trying the learn as I went along. On the second day I changed my deployment/strategy radically and almost eeked out a win (got the tie instead) on game 4. 

Kingdoms of Men versus Abyssal Dwarfs.

On game 5 I psyched myself out during deployment and put myself in a poor position. I lost but not as badly as on first-day.

The oversized, quickly painted the night before red banners denote that a one-turn only status effect ("indomitable will") is in play.  The banners are not glued in place and can be sleeved over a unit's pike or lance and then removed when done.

I think its quite commendable that I could take a list I knew wasn't the greatest and lose horribly at first but quickly get better through experience and player decision.  My opponents voted the French as Favorite Army which was quite kind.

Oathmark (II)

I got another game of Oathmark awhile back with Nellie.  I ran the same army as before, but broke my 18 figure archer unit into two smaller units of 9, split the 10 cavalry into two units of 5, and turned the Spellcaster Level 2 into two Spellcaster Level 1s.  This gave me more actions per turn and more options than the previous game. 

Gothic cavalry on the left on the advance.

Despite being better acquainted with the rules, this game ended up taking longer than the previous game. This was partially due to a 8-turn scenario played to the end, and also due to a long stoppage in play to confirm that there was in fact no rule saying friendly units could not move within 1" of each other. Still, almost three hours for a game with only 50-70 figures per side seems slow  (at least compare to lightening fast Portable Wargame games!).

And Gothic cavalry on the right on a flank move.

We were using the "Wind and Rain" scenario, where shooting attacks and movement become more and and more difficult over the course of the game.

Elves in a defensive block.

This showed the forward advance of the bulk of my army, and made the shooting of my archers almost completely useless.  Because Elves have a higher base shooting score, they were able to score enough hits to chip away at the humans.

The terrain was working against me here. The Elvish archers have nice clean line of sight all around while mine had a "window" through the two woods.

As you can maybe guess, this game ended in another win for Nellie's elves. I could probably do better hanging back out of archery range, waiting until all my units are as close as possible but still out of range and then having them all advance/attack at the same time. As it was, I allowed the elves to winnow down a few units piecemeal. 

Gothic infantry finally in melee, attacking Elvish left. I need to coordinate this better.

Its still a small sample size, but I also have a nagging feeling that elves are a little overpowered.  I know that having base score of +1 better for activations, melee, and shooting shouldn't make that much of a difference when you're using d10s, but that efficiency feels more like 50% better than 10% better. 

Gothic infantry attacking Elvish center. In distant background you can see what's left of my flanking cavalry attack still engaged with the Elvish left-rear.

Which kind of ties into a fault I see in a lot of these points-based kinds of games where units are not same-same to begin with: a unit getting a better stat (usually modifying a base target number by 1, so +16% probability on a d6 or +10% in the case of a d10) usually only results in a small bump in cost.  The Hail Caesar points system seems a case in point on this, with the points-value difference between a light and heavy infantry unit being quite marginal.  The Lion Rampant family is a little better at the extremes (six foot knigts are worth twice as much as 12 foot yeoman, and statistically feel equally superior) but gets fuzzy in the middle (archers and crossbows cost the same but crossbows feel quite superior on table).

Gothic cavalry attacking Elvish right.

I'm still not entirely sold on Oathmark, since the pace still seems sluggish, and I like games where a side can close with thier opponent quickly.