Gnomevember 2016

I managed to paint up a gnome for Gnomevember - and just in the nick of time too. At this rate I'll have all the citadel gnomes painted by the time I'm in my early 60s - on the basis I've got all 21 slotta based gnomes, and have painted 3 before I have turned 43. I might see if I can do a few of these next Gnomevember...

A 10,000 point game of Kings of War

Had a blast at the war-games club yesterday playing a large game of KoW - 5000 points and two players per side. Tom GM'ed the game which worked really well - he added a number of ideas:

- the sides were determined randomly - the result being my undead were allied with Rowan's Barbarians whilst Tony's humans (with a small dwarf contingent) were allied with Greg's Forces of Nature army;
- a number of objectives were in play - when reached (you only had to move a unit onto them to obtain them) each objective gave your side an advantage card that could be used in a subsequent turn. I don't know what all of the cards were but I managed to obtain a card that gave 2 units a second move as well as two separate cards that allowed units with ranged weapons to fire twice in a turn;
- two impassable swamps that the side who won the scouting turn (and that was based on the number of troops you had in your army) could place after deployment. You couldn't place them on opposing units but you could place the swamps in front of opposing units to cause them problems;
- a large temple which was placed randomly and was impassible terrain;
- baggage areas that were worth a 100 points if you managed to sack them (flying units couldn't do this);
- the side that won a dice roll got archer stakes that they could place anywhere on the board - these stakes prevented any unit behind them from being charged. As it turned out we won the roll for these and placed them in front of Rowan's barbarian archers;
- deployment of any unit bigger than a troop had to be done secretly - troops could be deployed on the table after all other units had been deployed. 

As things turned out both sides deployed their units in the same area of the table - the result being that to a fair degree the game was two separate games of one army vs the other. So most of my undead force faced off against Tony's humans except for a horde of ghouls which attacked Greg. In the end Rowan and myself won after Greg and Tony conceded at the end of turn 4.  By this stage most of Greg's army had been routed and whilst Tony still had a number of units in the field many were suffering a decent number of wounds whilst facing units that had little to no damage. Anyway here are the pics:

Set up behind my undead

Set up - Tony's humans

Set up - Greg's forces of nature

Set up - Forces of nature and the baggage

Set up - Rowan's barbarians

Set up - centre of the combined undead and barbarians

My wraiths attack the humans waivering both units  (they routed both cavalry units in my following turn)

The clash in the centre - the dice are wound markers

The ghouls and forest shamblers duke it out whilst the archers reign arrows down on the shamblers

The barbarian mammoths charge forward

Greg and Rowan's forces clash on the left after skirting around the swamp

The wraiths and undead cavalry wheel around to assault the remains of the human line

Forces slug it out in the middle - this was just after I routed two troops of handgunners

The shamblers are being whittled down

The situation on the left if grim for Greg

As it is towards the middle

The shambers rout after dispatching the ghouls

The undead slowly overwhelm the humans and dwarves

A final charge from the humans as they attempt to breech the undead line (they failed)

The barbarian general attacking the poor defense-less (well not really) lady 

At this point we called it - the forces of nature had been largely swept from the field and on the other side of the table the same result was coming to the human forces that were left. A very enjoyable game that took a tad under 3 hours to play. So what did I learn? Well I finally used wraiths well in a game which was nice - and I found out why mummies are generally used in any undead force as they were nasty. And my hordes all performed well except for the werewolves which I held back a turn too long. And I didn't use the revenant king on the wyvern well. I should have stuck with my original plan which was to fly him straight over the human left flank and then charge along their flank.

I also found out how good pikemen can be - especially on the defense. But that was a double edged sword for Tony - whilst I couldn't rout any of them (largely because of the ensnare rule which meant my to hit rolls were at minus 1) they didn't do much damage in return. Tony was unlucky with his damage rolls but it was clear that the pikemen's lack of crushing strength was a problem when facing decent troops. They did manage to rout a unit of cavlary but that did take two turns - and by that point I had cleared out a number of units from that flank so I had spare units to meet the threat.

A Dungeonquest miracle

Well miracle might be overdoing it a bit. But the odds of getting out like I did would have been pretty low. The situation was this - playing Serillia the elf I had managed to get to the dragon's treasure chamber but without enough time to get to an exit before the time tracker ran out. That left me with one choice - hope I managed to find the book in the treasure chamber without waking the dragon or running out of time. Now if you have ever played dungeonquest with all the add ons you know how hard this is - finding a specific treasure item for one isn't easy. And if you don't find it early on your chances of waging the dragon and becoming toast increase with each attempt. And then if you find said book you have a one in twelve chance of the book containing the correct spell which transports you out of the castle. Well on my fourth turn in the chamber I found the book - on the second last turn of the game before the time tracker ran out. And after my son had been in the chamber and successfully avoided waking the dragon (so one sleeping dragon counter was out of the game when I got there). So as noted above I had a one in twelve chance - I told the boy this and rolled a 12. And then ran around the house like a madman celebrating my miracle escape. I love dungeonquest - one of the greatest games I've ever played. Oh and my son fell down the bottomless pit whilst trying to escape the castle toward them end of the game. He was none to impessed

Here are the pics of the endgame. Oh and I ended up with 4010 gold pieces which is a nice haul.

The 12, the book and my other treasure from the chamber

Me in the chamber at the end

Time tracker

The dragon counters that were left

I'm back

It has been a while since I've posted up anything - largely due to the fact I was in the US for a 2 week holiday and didn't get back until last Monday. I didn't pick up a paint brush (largely due to jet lag) until last night. But I did manage to take some pics of figures I finished off just before I left. These are a real mixed bag - a couple of figures for my undead army, a night horror I did for Halloween even though I spent that in Fremont Street in Vegas, a foundry bear and a couple of figures for heroquest. Anyway here they are: