31st January - 28th + 29th Clash of Kings Australia 2017

So Jen and I have made our way down and back home from Canberra for CanCon since my last post. It was a great weekend away and we both had a lot of fun. For me it was my first time entering a tournament and I had a great time. It was pretty much my first chance playing against someone outside my usual group of family and friends, and I learnt a lot throughout two days.


Game 1 - Loss 0VP to 20VP

My first game was against another Abyssal Dwarf player with a small allied contingent of Forces of the Abyss. My opponent also came dressed as a Abyssal Dwarf general, and considering the nearing 40 degree temperature that was no mean feat. The polite term for what happened next is absolute slaughter I believe :). I'm fairly certain I was completely routed by the end of his fifth turn while barely managing to pull down a few hundred points of his army, but I quickly learnt the importance of keeping a close eye on unit positioning and the sheer demolishing impact of multi unit charging. I really appreciated his pointers both during and after the game which gave me some useful ideas going into the following games.

Game 2 - Draw 10VP to 10VP

I came up against an Orc force with allied Goblins in the next round. I was feeling much better moving into this game and managed to avoid any of the serious blunders from the first round. I slightly confused the objective on this one but thankfully had some larger units in the scoring area which allowed me to get a draw, I did have my fingers crossed for a seventh turn which depending on my combat rolls might have got me there, but it wasn't too be. Still I was quite happy to go from a complete annihilation to an even draw.

Game 3 - Win 15VP to 5VP

This was against a Kingdoms of Men force and gave me my first win for the tournament. Once again my opponent was great to play against and we had quite a bit of a laugh though out the game with some amazingly bad nerve rolls on both our parts allowed some incredibly tattered units to fight on for another turn, but I finally managed to break apart the centre of his force and take a hard fought win.

Game 4 - Draw 9VP to 11VP

My final game for day one was against a fellow Queenslander and his Forces of the Abyss. It was quite a different army to play against compared to my previous matches with quite a few fast troops and two hordes of nimble flyers. The objective was to punch through into the opponents half of the table and we both pushed an equal number of troops through he managed to maul me slightly more. It was still a draw but the attrition score gave him an extra tournament point and took one from me. But yet again another great game.

That bought the first day of competition to a close which left me sitting in the high 30s on the ladder. I was shocked at just how drained I was at the end of the day, I was expecting it to be a long day but just didn't think it would take quite so much out of you :).



Game 5 - Win 15VP to 5VP

This game was fantastic, my opponent was an absolute blast to play with. He had brought a Force of Basilea army and although he insisted they weren't finished I thought they looked fantastic. The basing was amazing and watching how they played I'm thinking I might put a force together myself at some stage. Again there was some amazing nerve rolls with three separate double one rolls at annoying instances for both of us but it made for some epic moments and big laughs for both of us. It was such a close game as well. My opponent let out a victory bellow upon the end of the game but after a closer inspection it turned out that my Lesser Golems had made it over the central line which gave me the win by one point. This took me to 30th on the ladder and I mentioned to Jen that I might have climbed a little to close to the sun here which we had a bit of a laugh about especially after my next two games.

Game 6 - Loss 2VP to 18VP

Another match up against the Forces of Abyss, though this one contained two rather powerful spellcasters which proved to be my downfall with turn after turn of two 20 dice fireballs combined with piercing wearing my Lesser Golems down leading them to be the first casualties of the game. My opponent had already begun to apologise about the pair of them before the game began so I was expecting them to be handing out quite a bit of punishment. I might have pulled a slightly smaller margin of loss if a few of my nerve rolls had of gone my way, but sometimes that's the way it goes. It was another fantastic game and another opponent I really enjoyed playing against.


Game 7 - Loss 3VP to 17VP

My final game was against a Dwarf player and again another great game and opponent. He had only recently relocated to Australia from England and had also been working for Mantic so we had quite a good chat after the game both about the mistakes I made (and yes there were several) and Kings of War and gaming in general. The scenario was Kill and Pillage! and I focused too heavily on the pillage aspect during deployment, the good thing was I realised this about 5 seconds into my turn. My other major mistake was trying to shoehorn the Supreme Ironcaster on Greater Abyssal into a role that would have been better served with a stock standard Ironcaster, something which I had started to realise but my opponent confirmed for me.

My final ranking was 48th out of 62 which I was quite happy with for my first showing. One thing that caught me by surprise was winning the Sportsmanship award, so thank you to my opponents for that as this was decided by a submitted three, two, one point vote so I owe it all to them :). Arwen, my youngest is particularly happy with this as part of my prize was three troops of Japanese themed skeletons [1,2,3] from Slave2Gaming Miniatures so a big thank you to them not only for the Sportsman prize but also the Undead captain in my player pack.

Also thanks to Angri Artists for the acrylic tokens included in the player pack. I also picked up a spot prize for my first round annihilation so another big thank you to Scibor Monstrous Miniatures for my Strielecs blister.

19th January - Finished Abyssal Dwarf Force for Cancon

Finally finished my Abyssal Dwarf force. and I have to say I'm rather happy with the way it turned out. I've got a few photos now of the last three components (Ironcasters and Devastators) and one shot of the whole army (although I did have to cram them into the light box). I've got a couple of  Mutated throwing mastiffs to finish off, but seeing as they're just tokens they won't take me too long to knock over. Not sure what I'll start next but I'm leaning toward my Scourge for Dropfleet, although I've got an idea for the basing of my Malifaux gremlins so maybe I'll have a shot at them.

Supreme Ironcaster on Greater Abyssal

Ironcaster

Devastators

2000pt Force Ready to Go

There's still five days left before the kids head back to school so Arwen and I are going to make sure we get at least one more game in before then.

12th January - Clash of Kings AU Painting Progress

First off, happy new year to all. I realise the first month of the year is now almost half over, but while I've been a little slack with blogging so far I've been fairly busy with both gaming and hobby. My youngest daughter Arwen and I have got in another couple of King of War games. It's been good having a live in opponent in the lead up to the tournament in a couple of weeks. My wife Jen and I got a game of Warmachine/Hordes as well a few days ago, we're still just playing with the battle boxes but once we get back I think we'll start looking a doing a small journeyman league over the next couple of months.

I've finished off my Devastator troops for my Abyssal Dwarves but as I sit here I realise I haven't actually taken any photos of them yet. However I have been working on my Greater Abyssal mount for one of my Ironcasters and have now finished him off so I'll put them up for now and next week when I finish the Ironcasters I'll get some photos up of them and the completed two thousand point force.

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.