Cold Wars 2019, Dogs of War vs. Skaven - Warmaster Revolution AAR

My second opponent was Karl and his massive Skaven army. It had 30 units and had a break point of 15, compared to my 20 units, break point 10 force!

The scenario was Breakthrough. As the attacker, Karl had to get as many of his units withing 30cm of the opposite edge of the table (my side) before the end of six turns. As the defender, I would have to prevent this, or break Karl's army.

Since the Skaven can field brigades of more than four units (what's normally allowed in Warmaster), Karl had his army move in massive blocks of furry bodies.

Having played on a similar table against Dave in last year's tournament, I knew I wanted to be in the fields. It'd be difficult to issue orders to the units within, but they'd be defended against enemy attacks. So I aggressively moved my brigades up the table, with my knights moving the furthest.

As my pike brigade slid to the right, and the ratmen approached, my knights struck out. I managed to destroy a doomwheel and do some damage to the Skaven brigade on the right.

However, the Skaven returned the favor and wiped out most of my knights, apart from a single units that I managed to pull back.

I could only watch as the massive Skaven brigades began to split and move to outflank my artillery brigade on the left.

My knights managed to bring vengeance to the Skaven, flanking and destroying the remaining doomwheel and hitting the flank of some clanrats and jezzails.

And in the center, my ogres charged in and sent the skaven reeling. The pushback managed to destroy the Screaming Bell at the same time.

My artillery brigade sat and waited for the Skaven to come, betting that the rest of the army could break the enemy before too much damage could be done.

On the right, Karl sent in his plague monks against my pikemen. With Death Frenzy cast on them, the plague-ridden monks put out a ludicrous amounts of attacks. My pikemen managed to weather the storm, however, and used their weapons to poke holes into the Skaven, wiping them out.

As expected, my artillery brigade was flanked and locked into combat.

But my ogres came through and did enough damage to finally break Karl's army before he could reach the objective zone. My Dogs of War got their first victory.

Painting Update - Mordheim, Warmaster

It's been a while since I've posted a painting update, so here's a look at what I've been doing since the last one. 

Also, this is the first painting update I've done with a lightbox. Please let me know if it improves the images at all!

I painted a Mordhiem warband for a campaign that started earlier this year. I liked the look and theme of the Outlaws of Stirwood Forest. They're a fun bunch of range-focused models that can take a Warrior Priest. His Prayers of Sigmar have been extremely useful so far.

I've also finished my Dogs of War army for Warmaster!

This first brigade consists of four units of Knights - heavy cavalry with good armor that can deal a lot of damage on the charge, but still grind through combat if they're not flanked.

My artillery brigade consists of two Galloper Guns - lighter guns than Empire Cannons with less range but better movement speed - and two units of Dwarf Warriors.

And pikes! This Pikemen brigade is one of the unique features of the Dogs of War list. Pikes are based like cavalry, and count as defended when being charged by cavalry in the first round of combat. However, I found that they were almost always better on the offense. While their armor isnt' great, they can put out an intimidating amount of attacks on the charge.

Since the Dogs of War list forces you to take four units of Crossbowmen, I decided to back them up with combat units. This brigade has two units of Ogres supporting the ranged units.

And this brigade has two units of halberdiers, which can be fielded either as cheaper Swordsmen, or better armored Marauders.

And finally, the commanders and the monster! The old Dogs of War list had a Tuska - i.e., a mammoth/elephant equivalent - but this has been replaced by a Giant in the Revolution list.

The Commanders consists of a General, a Hero on a Griffon, a Paymaster with his Paywagon, and two Wizards.

You'll see the army in action in two more upcoming battle reports, and I plan to use it again at Fall In! this year.

Also, this counts as one of my five armies for my painting goal!

Cold Wars 2019, Dogs of War vs. Tomb Kings - Warmaster Revolution AAR

As I mentioned in the post earlier this week, I attended Cold Wars 2019. Friday was spent at a Warmaster Revolution tournament run by Dave, who also ran last year's tournament at Fall In. 

This time I was bringing a recently finished Dogs of War army. It's a fun collection of pike- and crossbow-wielding humans, dwarfs, and ogres (I didn't have the points to bring a giant, unfortunately). 

The tournament format was pretty simple - three rounds with three different scenarios for players to score points in. 

My first opponent was Matt, who had brought Tomb Kings. We played on an appropriately themed table.

The mission was Take and Hold. Each player had an objective in their deployment zone, and another objective near the middle of the table. At the end of the game, a player scored points from the objective if they were in control of it. The further away the objective was from the deployment zone, the more points it was worth. Players could also score additional points by breaking the opposing army.

Both sides spent the first turn moving up the table. Unfortunately, both my artillery and knight brigades refused to move, leaving my pike brigade stuck.

On the right, my crossbowmen and their supporting marauders and ogres moved up, looking to claim the distant objective in Matt's deployment zone.

My knights refused to budge, leaving a fifth of my army useless on the backfield.

My artillery brigade wasn't looking good, with a single unit of skeletons blocking my galloper guns and Matt's bone-throwers and skull chukkas confusing and damaging the accompanying dwarfs.

Finally, my knights got the hint and charged in, with the pikes coming in behind to hopefully provide backup. My cavalry managed to hit and rout one of Matt's two artillery brigades, but couldn't charge through to the next. And this was after I ended up losing a unit and a base to their artillery's fire previously.

Things weren't going great on the other flank, with my brigades being bogged down and having more skeletons summoned in behind them.

The same was happening to my knights - while they were able to trample the skeletal defenders, more units kept popping up and kept them in place.

Worse yet, Matt finally brought his chariots into the flank of my artillery brigade. Even the stout dwarfs weren't going to last long!

My ogres apparently decided to sit on their thumbs and watch as their compatriots were cut down between the two oases.

Even with my hero on a griffin "helping" (turns out skeletons don't care how scary your monstrous mount is), the last of the knights were slowly being surrounded and ground down.

Finally, however, my ogres charged in and wiped out the tomb king forces in the area, saving the last two stands in what had been a four unit brigade!

However, before I could send the ogres towards the far objective, the last unit of knights were routed and my army broke. I didn't manage to claim any objective before the game ended, so Matt claimed a complete victory.

Cold Wars 2019 - The Loot

This past weekend I attended Cold Wars 2019, and I had a blast! I went on Friday and Saturday, and played in a three game tournament and two particpation games. I also met up with Kevyn on Sunday to catch up and finally bring Carnevale to the table. 

While the AARs for those games will be coming out in the following weeks, I thought I would share what I ended up buying at the convention, and how it'll affect certain pledges made earlier this year...

I ended up with a good mix from the exhibitors hall and Wally's Basement (the flea market).

One seller had a number of old Games Workshop Orcs for Warhammer Fantasy. I've been meaning to jump onto the Old/Middlehammer bandwagon at some point, and the prices were too good to pass up. It's enough to start a 1000 point army and build up from there. I've got some leads on used miniatures, so the plan is to build little by little over time.

One of the participation games I played in was For King and Parliament, put on by a member of the SJGA. I had so much fun with the rules that I decided to grab enough miniatures for a small brigade. Again, I found a couple deals in the flea market, and got the rest at the exhibitors hall.

I also took the opportunity to purchase the two paper armies and the rules for Longstreet for my Longstreet campaign. I'll see how long it takes to cut, glue, and paint two starter brigades, and then go from there.

I also picked up a cope of Armies & Legions & Hordes, by Dave Taylor. It's a fantastic coffee table book for hobby enthusiasts, filled to bursting with lavish images of Dave's collection. It also has guest articles on how painting and project management. I missed the kickstarter campaign for the book, so I couldn't pass it up.

The cartons are filled with laser cut bases from Gale Force 9. You can never have too many!

Finally, two of the items weren't bought, but were instead gifts from Kevyn! One was a dice tray, and the other was a copy of Rangers of Shadow Deep, one of the newer sets of rules from Joe McCullough, the author of Frostgrave. I've been hearing a lot of good things about the rules. At least I can use my 28mm fantasy miniatures I already own to play it! Thanks a bunch, Kevyn. It's very much appreciated!

SAGA: Book of Battles - Rules Review

When the second edition of SAGA was released, I was generally happy with the product.  It seemed like a much needed update to a game that had gotten a little bloated with rules and factions. I also liked the new structure, with a generic core rulebook and additional books for each age. As a Dark Ages player, this worked for me, and I'm still definitely interested in the rumored Fantasy and Samurai supplements.

However, one problem I had with the new edition was the lack of scenarios. The core rulebook only has a single scenarios - "Clash of Warlords" - which is an updated version of a scenario from the core book of the first version. While it was fairly easy to use scenarios from the previous edition, I was still disappointed.

That changed with the recent release of the new Book of Battles supplement.

The Book of Battles offers a set of different styles of scenarios for each of the various SAGA ages. It has not one, nor two, but five chapters, each devoted to a different game types: Skirmishes, Battles, Legends, Mass Battles, and (of course) Sagas. 

The Skirmishes chapter only has a single scenario - "Battle of Heroes" - but it can be modified in a variety of ways. There's a chart in the chapter with 6 categories. Players roll a d6 to determine Scenery, Deployment, Game Length, Special Rules, and Victory Conditions. 

There's a lot of little differences to each of the aspects of the scenario, which means a lot of replayability. 

The Battles chapter has ten scenarios with fixed set-ups, deployments, special rules, and victory conditions, but introduce new rules into the game like objective markers, entering/leaving the table, and baggage. Some of these scenarios are pretty flavorful. For example, in the "A Tale of Challenges" scenario, players will choose between 2-4 Challenges from a list. If the challenge is completed by the end of the game, the player scores a number of points. But if the challenge is failed, they lose those points. You may have lost most of your warband, but with enough completed challenges, the tale of your victory will live on!

Legends only has four scenarios, but they're larger, narrative driven affairs that are both somewhat unbalanced and far more complex than the previous two sections. They also introduced more special rules, such as buildings (and the various interactions units can have with them), obstacles, livestock, event tokens, and civilians. There are some good standards scenarios here; in "Catch Them All!" players will need to wrangle livestock while fighting off their opponents, and in "Urban Uprising" the warbands will need to navigate dense city streets while also dealing with random event tokens.

Mass Battles covers, obviously, larger battles on a 6'x4' table (as opposed to the normal 4'x3' SAGA uses) with multiple players. The three scenarios cover the necessities - one for team battles, another for a winner-takes-all hack-n'-slash mess, and the final scenario uses a deck of standard playing cards that players can use to secretly choose their alliance. 

Finally, the Sagas chapter has no scenarios, but instead allows players to modify their Warlord with various "domains" that give different skills and abilities that can affect either the Warlord or the units in the Warband during the game. These are bought using experience points that are earned during battles. So while it's not quite the intricate system that Age of the Wolf had in the first version, it does allow players to string their various scenarios together into a cohesive campaign. 

After looking through the Book of Battles, I can see why this book was separated from the main rulebook. It kept the main rules lean and easy to navigate, allowed this book to be expansive and detailed in its content, and let both books be affordable for players. I definitely recommend SAGA players of any era to pick up the Book of Battles at the earliest possibility. 

As an aside, I'd like to note some interesting details in the book - namely, the pictures of the miniatures. While there's no Samurai era pictures, there are a number that indicate some interesting hints about the others Ages we may expect to see. There are, of course, the already available Dark Ages, Arthurian, and Crusades eras on display. And it's pretty easy to spot the Fantasy images, with dwarfs, barbarians, and monsters. There's also a very obvious not-Jaime and not-Tyrion Lannister. What was new - at least to me - were images of late medieval miniatures (with all the fleur-de-lis, I'm guessing it's the 100 Year War) and hoplites with an elephant in the background, perhaps indicating an Age of Greece supplement. 

Whatever the case may be, I'm interested to see what SAGA has to offer in the future.

The Sons of Ulric - Mordheim AAR

We're back in the ruined streets of Mordheim again this week with another campaign game. 

This time I played against Ted and his Middenheimers. This was Ted's first game of the campaign, so the Mercenary warband was fresh against my more experience Outlaws, but the difference in Warband Rating wasn't enough to net Ted any underdog bonuses. 

Knowing he'd be facing off against a shooting warband, however, Ted did decided to equip his heroes with Wolfcloaks, which gives a +1 save against ranged attacks. This meant I was facing off against at least three heroes with 3+ saves!

The scenario was Wyrdstone Hunt, with three wyrdstone tokens on the table. We deployed on opposite edges and I had the first turn. 

With no ranged attacks coming back at me, I cautiously (although Ted would say cowardly) advanced my Outlaws forward and managed to grab one token with my Petty Thief. 

Confident in his armor saves, Ted moved his warband forward, grabbing the other two available and putting pressure on my warband. 

  

My Petty Thief and his guard were forced to retreat as an Outlaw was taken out by one group of Middenheimers.

While on the other side of the board, a sacrificied Outlaw meant my Champion was able to ambush one of Ted's Youngbloods and put him down. Ted's leader also fell from a constant barrage of arrows. After this loss, Ted decided to rout rather than keep moving towards my warband. 

While not the most pulse-pounding of games, Ted came out of the arrow-storm generally alright and didn't suffer any real losses. For my part, I had to replace an Outlaw that was killed, but scored poorly on my Rarity Rolls, so no Fire Arrows for the Rangers just yet. 

We did note that table might have had more open lanes than it should have, which meant my longbows could reach across the table fairly easily.