Fight in the Shade - Wargods AAR

Carl and I finally got the chance to play a game of Wargods, with two warbands from Aegyptus. Since it was my first game ever, and Carl's first game in more than five years, we decided for a straight bash across a 4x4 table. 

Carl was kind enough to loan me some of his models, so I could get my warband up to 1500~ points. 

My list:

• Asar Harbinger of Osiris - Hand Weapon, Medium Armor, Shield, Amulet of Isis
• Asar Master of Words - Hand Weapon, Light Armor
• Asar Priestess of Isis - Hand Weapon, Light Armor
• Asar Champion - Double Hand Weapon, Medium Armor, Amulet of Isis
• Asar Champion - Spear, Shield, Medium Armor, Amulet of Isis
• Sebeki Champion - Hand Weapon x2, Amulet of Isis
• Asar Warriors (14) - Hand Weapons, Medium Armor, Shields, Standard, Musician
• Asar Warriors (14) - Spears, Medium Armor, Shields, Standard, Musician
• Asar Warriors (10) - Improvised Weapons, Slings, Light Armor
• Sebeki Warriors (6) - Double Hand Weapons, Standard, Musician
• Anubi Warriors (10) - Hand Weapons, Bows, Light Armor

Carl's List

• Basti Harbinger of Bast - Hand Weapon, Spear, Amulet of Bast
• Basti Master of Words - Hand Weapon, Amulet of Bast
• Asar Priestess of Bast
• Asar Champion - Hand Weapon, Shield
• Asar Champion - Hand Weapon, Shield
• Basti Warriors (10) - Hand Weapons x2, Standard, Amulet of Bast
• Basti Warriors (10) - Bows, Amulet of Bast
• Asar Warriors (12) - Spear, Shields, Standard
• Asar Warriors (12) - Hand Weapon, Shields, Standard
• Sebeki Warriors (12) - Hand Weapons, Heavy Armor, Shields, Amulet of Bast

You'll noticed that the lists are split between a smaller force with more armor, and a larger force with little armor. I was curious as to how this would turn out - would Carl's force be offensive enough to reach my lines before taking casualties from a lack of armor saves?

We alternated deploying units and characters up to 6" away from the table edge. I kept my units close together, while Carl had his spread out a little more.

During the first turn, our units started moving across the table. My Master of Words cast Far-Seeing Eyes, doubling the range of his next spell.

Turn two say both sides still advancing. However, my Master of Words then cast The Land's Despite, reaching out and slowing the large unit of Sebeki's Move Value from 4 to 2, which would last for five turns. Thanks to the dune in front of the Sebeki, they were only moving 1-2" per turn, effectively keeping them out of the battle. This had the added benefit of keeping the unit of Asar Warriors trapped behind them.

This turn also saw the start of ranged combat, and thanks to some hot dice rolling on my part, I managed to cause four casualties to Carl's Basti archers, who then failed their rout save and turned tail. I moved my Master of Words up, but regretted that decision when Carl's slingers managed to knock a wound off of the magic-user. His own wizard then prepped for the next round with a Far-Seeing Eyes spell.

On the next turn, some concentrated shooting between my archers and slingers forced another rout with Carl's Basti swordsmen. In retaliation, Carl's Master of Words threw down an extended-range Spiky Ground in front of my Sebeki unit. Luckily, the hardy lizardmen were able to march across the ensconced terrain with no ill effect.

My Master of Words, in an attempt to make his way to the front and gain an unobstructed view of the battle, caught another barrage of sling-bullets and went down.

Long-ranged fire continued to wreck havoc across Carl's battleline. His Basti warriors failed to rally, unlike the archers, and so ran off the table. The same happened to his unit of Asar swordsmen, who routed after a deadly hail of arrows and bullets cut down a quarter of their numbers. With my left flank unopposed, my own swordsmen marched forward at the double time.

On the right, my unit of Sebeki were moving as quickly as possible. Carl had managed to hit them with Sulfurous Fissures, preventing them from charging into the slingers. His Master of Words then cast Hailstorm on the slingers, and the increased damage managed to kill two of the Sebeki. This, however, gave the lizardmen room to maneuver into a charge that then routed the slingers, and prevented the still-slowed enemy Sebeki from being able to charge into contact.

In the center, Carl's and my own Harbingers finally met, and began a Provocation. Meanwhile, my Anubi archers wiped out their Basti counterparts with some seriously scary accurate shots from their bows, but not before the Basti managed to kill a couple Asar swordsmen.

After a couple rounds of combat, my armored Harbinger won the fight, killing the Harbinger of Bast and absorbing his Ka.

With the death of their leader, Carl's army broke, with all of his units (save the slingers, who had managed to rally) routing, turning and retreating towards the opposite table edge. We decided to call it there - there was little chance that Carl's units could recover, and I held the advantage of a mostly intact force in addition to my Harbinger. 

I had a lot of fun playing Wargods for the first time. It's very Herohammer-esque, with all the characters running around, and I like the smaller unit sizes (where 14-15 models is a standard unit, compared to the 20+ of Kings of War, Warhammer, or the 9th Age). The rules are pretty simple, and the command counters, combined with alternating activations of the player's choice, is ingenious. Hopefully I'll get to play more in the future, along with adding some more miniatures to the collection.  

Painting Update - Frostgrave, Strange Aeons, Wargods

I'm at the shore for the week, so let's take a look at everything I've managed to paint since the last update. 

These miniatures are going to go with the rest of the Frostgrave warband, adding to the variety of different classes that can be hired in the game. Additionally, I could always use these for Open Combat, which I still need to play.

This group of Threshold Agents are from the Strange Aeons starter set, in addition to a kickstarter bonus Priest.

Opposing the Threshold agency are the Lurkers, encompassing all of humanity's worst nightmares. The starter set includes the Cultist Leader and his followers, the Fishman, and the Formless Thing. The Maniac and the Cultist Midget were Kickstarter bonuses, and Kevyn passed along the Shambler, which he received two of accidentally with his Cult of the Black Goat membership. I can probably use it as a Blasphemous Construct.

These objective markers were pretty easy to paint up. The crates and chest come with the starter, while the pumpkins, jack-o'-lantern, and Pickman grave were kickstarter extras.

A pair of Asar warriors will be rounding out the hand weapon unit in my warband.

Painting Update - Wargods of Aegyptus

This week's post is a quick painting update, as I unfortunately didn't get the chance to play any games during the last week.

I finally finished the last of the Asar miniatures I have for Wargods of Aegyptus; a Harbinger, who is the leader of the warband and the chosen of one of the gods; a Priestess, who brings certain tokens of favor depending on what god the Harbinger serves along with some minor magic; a Hero, who is more capable in combat that the rank and file soldiers; and a Master of Words, the Aegyptus equivalent of a wizard.

With these finished, I have a small 750 point force, which is about half of what is needed for a full sized game. Hopefully I'll get to use with with the collections that some of the other local players have, and I'm still considering what units to buy to at least get to 1500 points.

Painting Update - Wargods of Aegyptus, Guild Ball, European Village

Here's another update from the painting table. 

I completed another unit from my Wargods of Aegyptus project. 

This is technically an 11-strong unit of Asar Warriors with hand weapons, shields, and medium armor. The unit Champion, which is bought independently, is equipped in the same way and is placed in between the Musician and the Standard Bearer.

This is the second unit in my small warband of Dispossessed (followers of Osiris and Isis) for Wargods. I know just have to paint the characters - the Harbinger, Hero, Master of Words, and Priestess of Isis - and that'll be the core done. From there, I'll move onto some units and characters from other races. Probably Tethru and Sebeki.

I'm also pretty pleased with the blue/bronze color scheme. I've been considering doing the same for the other races, but decided against it. I think it'll look better if each race has their own scheme. For the Tethru, I'm thinking of using gold and purple, and green and tan for the Sebeki.

I also worked on my Union team for Guild Ball. Including Mist, this puts me at seven Union players - just shy of the eight player limit for tournaments. I'm going to be using this team for the foreseeable future, as I'm planning on running them in a tournament later in April.

One of these players - Decimate, on the right in the back row - can play for the Masons, so that gives me more options for my original team. Gutter, Fangtooth, and Rage (front-left, back-left, and back-middle, respectively) can't play for the Masons. They can, however, all play for the Brewers, as can Hemlocke, the other Union player I'm considering picking up as my eighth. I wonder if that's a sign as to what my third Guild Ball team should be, sometime in the future...

When I put up my blog post about painting Mist, I complained about the quality of the paints I used - Privateer Press' "Beaten Purple" and Citadel's Blood Red. To replace these, I used Vallejo's Game Model "Hexed Lichen" and Citadel's "Wazdakka Red." While the Hexed Lichen is great, I wouldn't want to use Wazdakka Red any more than necessary.

Additionally; back in August of last year, I talked about a few buildings I was working on for some WWII terrain. While other projects have taken up most of my painting time, I have been working on the buildings on and off, and finally managed to finish them.

The fence came together nicely, with some simple painting and washes.

The miscasting is still noticeable on some pieces, however. But it's easy to miss at arm's length.

The Barn House looks great, although I did skip painting the interior.

The same goes for the battle-damaged Continental House.

And a Western European Barn. 

These buildings ended up being pretty great, and I'm looking into picking up at least the rest of the buildings in the series, either whole or battle-damaged. This comes at the cost of realizing that the Battlefront building I bought is far bigger than the MkIV buildings - it's so large, I need to remove the top floor just to get in into scale!

Painting Update - Wargods of Aegyptus

I only have a quick update today. I finished a unit of ten Asar Slingers for my Wargods warband.

They're done up in a blue and brass color scheme that I think works pretty well.

Unfortunately, I did make a bit of a mistake. After finishing the unit, I thought I could use a little more brass (my Citadel paint pot was about to run dry). But it wasn't until after I had started mixing the old paint with the new Vallejo paint I had bought when I realized it was the wrong color - bronze instead of brass!

Now I have a paint pot with a sort of mixture of the two, and I'll either have to buy another pot of the Citadel range, or run out to a local hobby shop, get some paint pots, and fill one of them with the Vallejo option.

Painting Update - Kings of War, Wargods of Aegyptus

I've been working away on more units for Kings of War. 

I finished two Troops of Arquebusiers (with the last now on the painting table) and the Wizard I'm including in the list.

I've also decided to pick up a small force of Asar for Wargods of Aegyptus. 7th Dimension had the softcover rulebook for $10, and FRP games had the Asar starter warband on sale, along with a few other items, so I bought enough to make a 750-point force (a little over half of the points needed for a full game). I've talked to some of the other people I game with, and they do have plenty of miniatures for the game, so I can probably borrow enough other miniatures to get up to a full game.

I'll be working on these intermittently between KoW units, so I don't burn out the same same grey and green color scheme. I'm not entirely sure what color scheme I'm going to use, although I'm considering blue and bronze.

That's it for this week. This weekend in Gary's big Christmas game of G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T., which I plan on taking part in. I should have a post for it next week.