30th December - 29th Kings of War vs The Youngest

So after several failed attempts to get something on the table we finally managed to get a game in yesterday. We're planning to get a few games in this week but we decided to kick things off with Kings of War. Arwen decided to play with her previous Undead list again, but I went for a few changes with my Abyssal Dwarves swapping out one of the heavy mortars for a couple of dragon fire teams and fielding several changes to the infantry side of my list.

We setup for the Kill and Pillage scenario and Arwen won the deployment roll taking the side she'd loaded with objectives (well there was three of the five anyway). I won the initiative roll, but choose to give her the first turn.

Arwen began to advance slowly, keeping her army in a line across the table. I pushed ahead a little faster and managed to get a few early game shots in with my Devastators wavering her Werewolves and with a few lucky rolls routing her Wraiths. On the left flank I surged my Lesser Golems ahead as well to provided a bit of a road black for her Zombie hordes while I got the units behind them into position.

Arwen took advantage of my casual disregard of the right flank (there weren't any objectives over that side of the table so I might not have been paying as much attention as I should have) charging a regiment of Ghouls and her Wights into one of my Halfbreed regiments and after another ineffective shooting phase for her the combined weight of attacks combined with the Wights Brutal rule quickly routed them leaving my side exposed. I shuffled around on the right plugging the gap as best as I could planning on using the Gargoyles as a delaying tactic if necessary. During the shooting phase I peppered her leading horde of Zombies with everything I had in range before surging the Lesser Golems into combat with them, but despite a massive amount of wounds they managed to pass their nerve and the dark magics continued to hold them together.

Arwen continued her poor shooting (but what do you expect from Skeleton Archers let's be honest) though she got a couple of small heals off across the table, but during melee her Zombies managed to do some serious damage to the Golems and they soon crumbled to dust. Unfortunately for her this played into my hand and while her Wraiths suffered more wounds from the attention of my Devastator unit and in the centre my Greater Golem routed her Soul Reaver Cavalry the demise of my Lesser Golems opened up the path for my second regiment of Halfbreeds who proceeded to charge into the awaiting horde and sent them back into the grave.











The following turn was pretty brutal on both sides with her forces wounding mine fairly heavily but failing to break them. My turn saw much of the same and while some of my nerve rolls would have wavered normal troops her fearless Undead pulled through with out any real issues (apart from the massive wounds taken).

With her only successful Lightning Bolt spell of the game Arwen finally managed to waver my Decimators that had been camping the objective point in the forest however, thanks to the Inspiring presence of my Supreme Iron-caster it quickly became a rout (I liked my chances for the re-roll). Her luck continued through the turn as her second Zombie horde managed to rout the Halfbreeds with basically the minimal amount of wounds possible (she got a bloody twelve). However my hero did get a chance to redeem himself which he did prevent the Mummies from destroying the second unit of Lesser Golems. Which spearheaded my push during my turn and I finished up breaking a substantial portion of her force.

With her force in tatters Arwen attempted to secure as many objectives as she could but while I failed to remove her Skeleton Archers camping on one of the points I did mange to fly some Gargoyles over to contest her second one prevent her from scoring it.

The final score left me with the field and victory though it could have gone either way if the if the fourth turn had of broken more units than it did. We both had a good time and we'll be trying to something else on the table today with any luck.

24th December - Merry Christmas

I've been a little quiet on the blog front this month, due to one thing or another so I thought I'd best get something done up tonight at least.

I've been rather busy, but it's not been overly focused on any particular thing. I've been playing a fair amount of Kingdom Death: Monster and have got the core game mostly glued now (only got The Watcher left to go, plus any extra survivors I feel like throwing together). We couldn't resist the Black Friday sales so we've picked up all the expansions the Australian warehouse still had in stock and we're in for the update pack on the kickstarter which is still running now.

Our Dropfleet Commander pledges arrived about a week back so I've got a starter fleet for all four factions assembled and have got a game in against The Wife and her Shaltari and Toby and the PHR. I have to say it was definitely worth the wait as even with only two small games under my belt I can see how it will scale up to a much more tactically involved game in a similar way to Dropzone Commander where as you start fielding bigger armies you get a wide range of possible tactical options depending on what you field.

We've also kept up some strong momentum on the board game front with the Monday games night group going strong and the family and I have been playing our two new acquisitions this week; Plague Inc which is a brilliant adaption from the old app store game, and we got our first game of River Horse's Jim Henson's Labyrinth in last night and we all found it to be quite enjoyable.

Hobby wise I've started to chip away at the Abyssal Dwarves again, almost finishing the three units I've been working on the last 3 or so weeks, but the main focus was on another batch of the sponge rocks I knocked up back in October (giving me enough for a few presents for Christmas as well as keeping a nice amount for myself :) ).

That's about it for moment, I may try to get another update in before hand but if not have a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and a Happy New Years to you all.

4th December - 3rd December Saga vs The Youngest

We've been quite a busy household over the last month but Arwen and I managed to squeeze in a game of Saga yesterday. While I couldn't find the newer rules for her Irish we did find an updated version of one of the scenarios we hadn't got on the table as of yet and decided to give it a whirl. It's basically a pure victory points scenario where the warchief cannot die, however each wound that would have killed them equals one victory point and either the first person to get more than ten points difference or the most points after six turns is the winner.

I played the Vikings this game and took three points of Hearthguard (one of which I ran as Beserkers, the other two as one solid unit of Hirdman) and the remaining three points were Warriors. Arwen took her usual two points of Hearthguard (one unit of six and her two Curaidh) and the rest of her points as Warriors with one unit being her Wolfhounds.

The other main point of difference in this scenario is that the Warchiefs both start in the centre of the table basically having begun the fight without their men.

The viking Bondi quickly moved to support their Chieftain running straight up the field of battle to assist him in his struggle. While they moved up at the double the more experienced members of the viking warband advanced up at a more cautious pace waiting to see which way the Irish would respond. Finally a second Bondi unit moved in to protect the flank from the distant Irish Warhounds.

Suddenly hidden Irish patriots began to hurl javelins at the Berserker unit as they skirted the woods then as quickly as they appeared the 'Sons of Dana' melted back into the forest leaving one fur clad Northman lying on the battlefield. This was followed by the Irish Hearthguard advancing up to their warchief and while several of their javelins found the leader of the Viking warband only one managed to penetrate the grizzled warriors defences.

The Berserkers foaming at the mouth after seeing such an unmanly ranged attack on their war leader charge the Irish chief screaming to 'Frigg' and 'Thor' but the Irishman proves to be quite the warrior in his own right, not only managing to deflect the mighty blows from the Vikings but also killing them all with his own mighty swings. This moved the Viking leader to anger and he moved in on his counterpart himself wounding the man and driving him back.

Again a hail of Javelins strike out toward the Norse warchief but this time not a single missile finds it's target. Meanwhile one of the Curaidh engages the supporting Bondi unit but the Irish champion is fought to a stalemate.

The Viking Hirdmen surge forward and land some forceful blows on the Irish warchief driving the man back and scoring some brutal hits upon him. Emboldened by the success of their veteran counterparts the Bondi charge forward chasing down the Irish Curaidh and cut down the man sending a wave of dismay through the nearby Irish units. Sensing a chance to buckle the Irish line further the Viking warchief leads the remaining Hirdmen into combat with the Irish Hearthguard but one of the men manages to survive the onslaught preventing panic from spreading any further though the ranks.

The Irish respond with a devastating hail of javelins into the unit of Bondi responsible for the Curaidh's death catching the warriors completely unprepared leaving only two men on their feet (combination of Eagle Eye, Fir-Bolg and Bansidh Whispers).

 Seeing his front line in tatters the Viking warchief orders an advance from his reserve units to reform the shield wall. The Hirdman push onto the Irish warchief again, but again the man proves himself to possess the true Blood of Kings and they are unable to land a blow on the man and are pushed back.

Seeing the Hirdman slowly reforming a fresh unit of Irish warriors falls upon them and drive them back further, although it is only one man who limps away.

Three waves of Viking warriors charge the Irish warchief but again the man proves impossible to hit and all of them are forced back while the seemingly paragon warrior is again untouched by their weapons and the bodies of his enemies begin to pile at his feet.

Again the deadly Irish javelins fall upon a unit of Bondi, this time the freshly committed reserves who are left with only three men after the brutally devastating attack (another three power combination).

Seeing the tide begin to turn on them the Vikings begin to pull back from the field leaving the seemingly untouchable Irish warchief in possession on the battlefield but knowing that overall he had been outmatched by the Viking force on this day.

It was a great scenario to play, the undying warchiefs simply meant you were more willing to throw them around which made for some pretty exciting combats. Thankfully my one good turn of damage was enough to win me the game seven points to one, though if the battle boards had been kinder to us both who knows how it would have ended up. I think next time we play this scenario I'll have to watch out for the deadly three combination targeting my warchief rather than my warriors though which will make things a lot more interesting.

I haven't made a lot of progress painting wise over the last couple of weeks, but I think I can now safely say were Christmas ready and I've got three weeks off over the holiday period so I'm hoping to make a bit of a dint in the painting queue again from here on out.

20th Nov - 15th Nov Frostgrave vs Toby

Finally managed to get a game in with Toby this week and we went for Frostgrave seeing as his character was falling a little behind the rest (mostly due to not managing to get on the table yet).

I decided to roll up a scenario this time and got the Worm Hunt one out of the core book. It's a pretty basic one where the bands are basically just facing off against each other until a single Worm spawns, but to be fair it is a rather large, rather vicious worm. I was a bit under the weather so my note taking was sup-par at best (the bits I've managed to decipher anyways) so the write up won't be as in depth as the norm.

Toby started off pretty aggressively frying one of my poor thugs with an elemental bolt. But as the game progressed I rather quickly shut the table down with Fog wall after Fog wall. I was hoping to get my wizard into combat again after my last game against Arwen but unfortunately my bragging about how powerful Christian the Humble, Thaumaturge Extraordinaire and Worker of Miracles was possibly not the best idea as his troops seemed unwilling to get within reach of the humble wizard. Of course due the number of walls of Fog up and the fact that not a single one dissipated I did managed to secure four out of the six chests taking the win.

As far as the casualties went my Thug survived during the end game process dusting himself off and rejoining the warband. One of Toby's archers however as not as lucky as it is apparently a lot easier to shake off a fireball to the face than it is to survive one to the back of the head (that's right he accidentally toasted his own man) followed by a worm's digestive tract (I'm assuming the worm would quite naturally just reach down and swallow the crispy bite of a man that was just sticking it with a pointy stick) even if the creature is eventually killed by the poor souls fellow soldiers.

I was nice to get something on the table against him again and hopefully we can organize another game of something soon.

I've also been playing a truck load of Kingdom Death: Monster having finally opened the box from Jen (The Wife) last Christmas after we watched the initial showdown on Beasts of War. It's also taking up a fair amount of my hobby time as I've been assembling the monsters and a few variants for the survivors in our various games (three campaigns running at the moment a solo in which the settlement is as thriving as it gets in this game, a husband/wife one where we're sitting middle of the road and a family one which is barely scraping through after it's first nemesis encounter and may well disappear over the next few hunts). I'm toying with some ideas for painting them, but I'm still knocking over the Abyssal Dwarves, although I'm possibly going to be picking up a few more things I want to try out before January's tournament so they may keep me going for a few more weeks yet.




I put a gloss coat on the Harley mini to start to get rid of the frosting from the initial matte coat of varnish and I decided I liked the look of her like that. Still not the best photos but I just don't seem to be having much luck getting a decent shot of her.

8th November - Golems, Golems and More

I managed to finish off both sets of Golems for my Abyssal Dwarves last week and finally got around to getting some decent pictures of them. This brings my force almost up to completion, just need to knock over two troops of Decimators  and the Iron-caster on Greater Abyssal Halfbreed.

I've added an extra metallic colour this time round (my original Lesser Golems can be found here). The other big difference in painting style for these guys was a black prime with a grey dusting, as well as giving them a heavier preshade after my base coat of grey. I also messed around a little to get a bit of glow effect around their eyes.

The Greater Golem follows a similar prime coat and build up of colour and shade as the lesser ones did, though I got to play around more with the glow effect in his torso cavity with the gem there and the shards on his back game me a chance to try to get a more crystalline effect. I'm pretty happy with the result though I think some of my edge line could be finer and a few of the white points are a little large.

In between the finishing touches I also smashed out a comic book Harley Quinn miniature from the Batman Miniature Game for my eldest Theresa as part of her sixteenth birthday celebrations. She ended up on the cake board along to help cement the theme of the cake. I've noticed while taking the photos that my varnish coat "snowed" slightly on her so I'll give her a touch up to clear it up tomorrow if the weather holds

Gaming wise my brother and I have been attempting to get together for a game or two of Kings of War but so far every time we've worked something out, something manages to come up. However my youngest Arwen and I got a game in over Sunday and Monday nights. While her army is still in the gluing stage (she is making some decent headway though) I grabbed a couple of shots anyway.

We played an Invade scenario and after a brutal six turns ended in a stalemate, although Arwen did manage to get an extra seventy or so points over the line it wasn't enough for her to secure a win. We're looking at getting another game in tomorrow. I've kept my list the same as I've got a few different ideas when it comes to deployment, where as she has made a few changes to her force composition dumping a few weaker options and strengthening a couple of existing units.