Kings of War Nona-Decimation

We played another Kings of War game at our regular Friday night meeting. This time I played my Vik-orks (or Vik-dorks as one friend calls them) against LeadFool's Kingdom of Men army, at 1000 pts each.

I had: 1 Ax Horde, 2 Morax Regiments, 1 Gore Rider Regiment, 1 Krudger hero & 2 Flaggers

LeadFool had: 1 Spear Phalanx Horde, 1 Pole Arm Horde, 1 Penitent Horde, 1 Cannon, 1 Hero with Ensorcelled Armor, 1 Army Standard Bearer with a Breath Weapon magic item, & 1 other Hero or Standard Bearer

The humans deployed their foot bunched up together in 1 line, with their cannon on my right flank & the characters throughout the line.

Here is the view from my Gore Riders on the right flank.


And from my Ax Horde line


On my left, the human general (lead)foolishly rushed forward & found out what 20 dice of Moraxes can do. The general was dead by the 2nd turn.


On the right, a big melee developed between my Gore Riders, & their mounted Flagger vs Penitent Mob & their hero.


Unfortunately, the humans were the attackers & the Gore Riders got mauled quite significantly, but didn't break.


With the Moraxes extended on the left flank, the evil Human Spear Phalanx Horde skulked forward, and my unit got to find out what 30 dice of Spear could do. They immediately flew off to Valhalla.


Now that my Gore Riders had distracted the Penitent Mob, my Morax unit on the right flank were able to charge the crazies from behind, rolling 60 dice of hits. The Penitent Mob disappeared, regretting they didn't get to go to Valhalla too.


Up until this point, my small archer units that had been screening the Ax Horde, were holding up them up because they kept getting Wavered & couldn't move out of the way. Finally, the Horde had had enough & just ran though them.

This unfortunately put them in range of both the Spear Phalanx & Pole Arm Hordes, which both charged them. Luckily the Humans trembled before my MIGHTY HORDE and caused minimal damage.


My Morax horde on the right flank had been able to reposition & everyone, including the annoying archers, charged into the fray. 40 Morax dice on the flank took out the Pole Axe Horde. But the Ax Horde wasn't quite as Mighty as 1st thought, and did only moderate damage to the Spears.


Those evil Spears returned the favor to the Ax Horde & took them out in the next combat. & the Cannon finally found its range, & was able to Grapeshot my remaining Morax unit off to Valhalla too.

So to review the current forces at the end of turn 4:

Vikorks: 1 Krudger Hero, 2 small archer units (1 damaged), 2 Flagger banner bearers, 1 severely damaged Gore Riders unit

Tricksy Humans: 1 damaged Spear Phalanx Horde, 1 Cannon, 1 Hero, 1 Banner Bearer with Nasty Breath Weapon.

Here are most of the remaining troops


Of course my forces charge in unabated. Unfortunately, LeadFool thought units of 5 or smaller figures didn't multiply flank or rear attacks, so wasn't expecting 15 attacks from my archers. The combine attacks finished the Spear off.


Finally the Gore Riders, limping along, found a juicy target, and got avenge their comrades deaths & rolled 48 dice against the evil Cannon crew.


And it was now that the Standard Bearer with the Nasty Breath Weapon earned his keep. Over the last few turns, he ran back & forth across the field to take out the poor Gore Riders & both of the archer units.


So this was how it stood at the end of turn 7. We both only had 2 characters left. 150 pts Vikorks vs 165 pts Humans. The 15 point difference was merely the cost of the horses to mount the Humans.

My characters were a complete disappointment, due to both me forgetting their Inspiring rule for the whole game (allowing them to reroll break tests), and all 3 of them together only causing 2 pts of damage the whole game. I think I rolled a 1,1 or 1,2 at least 4 times during the game for either Flagger hit rolls, or break tests for the enemy.

I think the MVP of the game was LeadFool's Banner Bearer with the NASTY BREATH WEAPON. The 70 point character took out more than 3 times its points. I'll definitely watch for Human characters whistling & aimlessly roaming the battlefield next time.

Major Wargaming Accomplishment

I've been working on a fantasy Viking army for probably over 10 years. My original intention was to use them as a Beastman army for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. But recently my gaming group has latched on to Kings of War by Mantic Games, which we believe to be a much better army scale fantasy game (at least in terms of the rules). So now I'm running them as the Kings of War Orc list.

I am now regularly playing with my Vikings for the 1st time. & I was getting a bit embarrassed by the painted figures not being completely based. So over the holiday break, I made a major push to base about 120 figures that were painted, & finish the movement trays I'd bought.

Here, in all its glory, is my fully based & trayed Viking army.

Left: Kings of War Orc Ax Krudgiment (Old Glory Dark Age Rus)
Right: Goblin Mawbeast Regiment (variety of GW & West Wind wolves)
Rear: Orc Gore Riders Regiment (West Wind Dwarf Wars Highland Dwarves on Goats)


Front: Micro Studio Arts Chaos bases which match most of the movement trays, used as KoW Wavering markers
Middle: Orc Archer Half-Regiment (Old Glory Dark Ages archers)
Rear Left: Part of Dark Elf Gargoyles Troop (GW Battle of 5 Armies Giant Eagles paints 25mm Ravens)
Rear Right: Orc Morax Regiment (Old Glory Viking berserkers)


Left: Orc Greatax Troop (Old Glory Valkyries)
Right: Same Old Glory Rus unit as above
Rear: Orc Giant (Mega Miniatures Boobarian, yes that's really what it's called)


Front: More chaos bases for Wavering markers
Middle: Orc Archer Troop (Old Glory Dark Ages javelin skirmishers)
Rear Left: Orc GreatAx Regiment (Old Glory Barbarians)
Rear Right: Orc Krudger Army General (Reaper figure), Wip the Half Cast Orc Magician (D&D plastic mini), rest of Gargoyle unit from above

Left: Orc Greatax Regiment (Old Glory Viking Huscarls)
Right: Orc Ax Krudghorde (Old Glory Vikings)
Rear Left: Another Orc Giant Boobarian
Rear Right: Orc Troll Regiment (Children of Valhalla Giant, Dreamblade plasic mini, D&D plastic mini


[Insert picture here that I forgot to take of another Gore Rider Regiment & Goblin Mawbeast Regiment]

So, that's all my painted figures, completely based & all on movement trays, with 1 tray left over. The whole army comes out to be 2160 points as Kings of War Orcs. It'd be almost 2500 if I included magic items & turned some of the figures into an appropriate number of heroes & bannermen for this sized force.

While this is an awesome accomplishment that I'm very proud of, I have only finished off the already painted figures. I still have about another 70 infantry, 20 large monsters to use as trolls, 2 more giants, 10 more wolves, plus 3-4 character figures that need to be painted. So maybe I should make that my main project for 2015.

Kings of War 1st Try

My friend Skrapwelder & I played our 1st game of Kings of War from Mantic Game. It's a simplified, somewhat abstracted army scale fantasy game. I found myself having to unlearn some basic wargaming assumptions to understand the rules. But the simplification and abstraction means it's pretty fast and very little to argue about.

We brought 500 points army list. Skrapwelders was Undead, mine was Vikorcs (Orc list using Viking figures). The lists were:

Undead: Liche Queen character, Wraith Troop (5 figures), Ghoul Regiment (20), Zombie Swarm (40)

Vikorcs: Ax Horde (30), Morax Troop (10), Archer Troop (5), Gore Riders (5) (I choose not to buy a character to have more points for troops)

This is our position after set up. My archers have the ability to make a move before the game begins, so they were trying to flank the zombie horde.

The arrows show the initial moves. I was shocked to find the Wraiths move 10" normally, which means they charge 20". They surprised me by crossing in front of the zombies, catching my archers in the flank & routing them on the 1st turn. So much for whittling the zombies down with bow fire.

The view from my Ax Horde after the archers have just been seen off by the dark shadows over on Weathertop.

On the right flank, my Gore Riders charge the Ghouls, while my Moraxs mess around in the rocks off to the left.

Finally the Moraxs are able to flank the Ghouls and obliterate them in 1 round.

As the Ax and zombie hordes fight back and forth, damage piles up on my forces. But the Liche Queen is able to keep the zombies healed, so it's a loosing battle, especially when the Wraiths attack in the flank.

After blowing through the Ghouls, my Moraxs & Gore Riders aren't able to reposition fast to reach my Ax Horde before they rout.

As revenge, my Gore Riders the disolve the Wraiths in a single attack.

At this point, we had to roll to see if the game ended with this turn, or continue one more turn. With my Gore Riders poised to attack the zombies in the flank, I was confident I could take them out, so wanted the game to continue. Little did I know...

Skrapwelder went 1st by predictibly charging his zombies in my MorAx, & then did the 2nd surprising thing of the night. His Liche Queen Zapped my Gore Riders with a huge bolt, & he rolled high enough on the Nerve test that the Riders melted away. & the zombies chomped through the Morax, destroying my last unit.

I went from thinking the game would end in at least a draw if not a victory for me, to a solid loss. But that 1 Zap spell could have easily gone the other way & I could have destroyed his zombies instead.

Overall, a very good 1st game. We both made sure to read the rules a few times before the game, & we only came across 2 additional questions that we couldn't answer ourselves. So pretty good for a 1st try. Also, the game probably took less than 90 minutes including lots of discussing & looking up rules.

So it gets the "Definitately want to try it again" recommenation. Next week, we'll probably try 1000 pt armies.

Ganesha Games Convention Games

At our local gaming convention, Conquest Sacramento, I ran some of Ganesha Games’ skirmish rules, Song of Blades & Heroes (fantasy) & Song of Drums & Shakos (Napoleonic). These rules tend to work best when played 1-on-1. So since I wanted to be able to have up to 6 people play at a time, I set up 3 1-on-1 games to be run in parallel.

There were 4 players that tried the fantasy games out. 3 of them only stayed to play 1 game, but 1 player decided to stay to try all 3. Everything went well, with the players picking up the rules quickly.

Viking Board
The 1st fantasy board was Viking themed. A Rus bandit gang had somehow enlisted the aid of a Giant which allowed them to pillage the countryside almost unhindered. The local Viking Jarl gathered his Hirdmen and Godi (magic user) to kill the Giant & drive off the gang. There were about the same number of Rus as there were Hirdmen, but the Hirdmen were hardened fighters while the gang was just some ruffians with a Giant to back them up. This was played with 28mm figures & was based on the Kill the Monster scenario from the SBH Arthurian suppliment.

In the 1st game on this board, I played the Jarl & Hirdmen against one of my fellow local gaming club members.

My Hirdmen drive off a screen of his Rus.

His Rus fall back under the protection of the giant.

His giant lumbers forward as my Godi (in the wolf skin) tries to get a Transfix spell off on him.

Even the battle experience of the Hirdmen was no match for a giant. The giant finally killed half of my warband, forcing a morale check & the Hirdmen runs off to lick their wounds.

In the 2nd game, I played the Hirdmen again. & again against another local club member (the one that played all 3 games). But this time, the Rus player's luck failed him. My Godi was able to root the giant to the ground with his spell, while my Hirdmen swarm him. A quick death followed and the rest of the Rus gang scattered.


Beastman/Frogman Board
The 2nd fantasy board had Beastmen raiding a Frogman (Deep One) village. The Beastmen were trying to burn the Frogman huts.

The Beastmen had the skills Forester (ignore brush & woods/jungle movement penalties) & Running Blow (didn’t have to stop to make an attack, but could keep on running by the target if the attack was successful).

The Frogmen had the Amphibious skill (move through water without penalty). This was also played in 28mm & was a simplified version of the Bridge Over MurkyWaters scenario from Ganesha Games' free online magazine Free Hack. Here is a battle report from a solo game I ran of the scenario which was my 1st SBH game.

The 1st game on this board was played between the local gamer who ended up playing all 3 fantasy boards & an out-of-town gamer. Here, the frogmen race to reach their homes before the beastmen.


The frogmen defend their huts against the beastmen's torches.

The beastman leader was finally killed which caused the rest of the warband to run off, saving the frogman huts.

In the 2nd game on this board, a young boy played the Beastmen vs an adult. The game was going fine until the Beastmen were able to engage the Frogman Standard Bearer in combat. The Standard Bearer lost, which caused all the Frogmen to make a morale check.

Standard Bearer at the edge of the lake about to be attacked.

The leader failed so badly that he ran off the table. This caused a 2nd morale check for the remaining Frogmen, most of which also ran the table. The boy was ecstatic since this was the 1st convention he attended & he’d beaten his opponent so soundly. Both his father & grandfather came by to thank me for showing him such a good time & making his 1st convention memorable. In honor of the his 1st convention victory, I gave him one of the Beastman figures to keep.

The young beastman commander with his "goatee".


10mm Board
The final fantasy board had 2 medieval knight forces face off. It was played in 10mm using a single Games Workshop Warmaster stand to repalce a single 15mm figure.

I was curious to see how the 10mm Warmaster stands would work as 15mm substitutes. The only problem is when a unit lost in combat & it needed to “fall down”. We put the whole stand on its back, which did look a little funny. But overall, they worked fine & the game look good. I’ll definitely be using them again since I have such a large Warmaster collection.

Here I played the blue Imperial forces facing off against the purple Bretonnian forces.

My forces move forward and try a flanking manauver.

The Bretonnian Men-at-Arms provide doughty resistance against my knights.

The Bretonnian mounted squires wipe out my crossbowmen & follow up, contacting my Imperial halberdiers. Shortly after this, the Bretonnian Grail Knights thunder forward, destroying the halberdiers and then the Wizard, finally forcing the Imperials to run.



Napoleonic Games
After the fantasy games were done, I set up the 3 Napoleonic games. All of them were 28mm.

The 1st game was a simplified version of Blunt’s Pay Day, a scenario published in the Free Hack magazine, which itself was based Sgt Harper defending the pay chest against the French in the 1st Shapre’s Rifle book. But my version had Portuguese Cacadores (riflemen) defending the pay chests against French Line Infantry.

I ran the full Blunt's Pay Day at the local club a few months ago & here is a report on that game.

The other 2 games were from the War of 1812, so both had British vs American troops, & were on similar boards.

The 1st was set early in the war around Chesapeake Bay. The British were trying to scout out the American naval yards in preparation for an attack to burn the ships. The American were trying to intercept & prevent them from crossing the board to where the naval yards were.


The final game was set in the Niagara campaign. A British commander was travelling to meet with a local Native chief to coordinate their efforts against the Americans. The commander brought 2 Canadian Glengarry Light Infantry with him, and the native chief had sent warriors to escort the British to the meeting place. A detachment from the US Regiment of Rifles were sent to intercept them & prevent the meeting.

Here are the Glengarry Light Infantry and Native warriors I painted for the game.


There was only 1 player for the Napoleonic games, but it was not surprising since it was mid-afternoon on a Sunday, so the convention was winding down. We played the Chesapeake game. The player had already been interested in Ganesha Games & actually left another game early that he was playing in, in order to try out SDS. After we played the SDS game, he was planning on buying at least SDS & possibly Ganesha’s ACW Company level game, ‘61-‘65.

Here is my British seeing off his Americans after killing his Leader.

So overall, a very enjoyable afternoon teaching & playing some fun games. I had to laugh though when I was tearing down the games. One of our local club members was cursing my name when he saw that I had been running Song of Drums & Shako. He’d played in a game I’d run at the club a few months ago. & he was cursing me because I’d cost him too much money. He’d bought the SDS rules & then had to go out & buy figures for it. I guess that speaks well of the rules.

Song of Snow & Slime

Finally tried Song of Blades & Heroes for the 1st time. I used the Bridge Over MurkyRiver scenario from the 2nd issue of Ganesha Game's Free Hack magazine. But since I didn't have Lizardmen & Wood Elves, I turned them into Deep Ones & Vikings. The racial characteristics (Amphibious for the Lizardmen, Forester for the Wood Elves) matched the substitute races well, so it was just a direct replacement.

The scenario is a Deep One shaman leading a scouting part to capture a bridge on the edge of the Viking territory.

Here's the board setup that was specified in the article.


When using 25mm figures, the game calls for a 36"x36" play area. But I played on my collapsible painting table, which is 32.5"x32.5", so it was a bit more cramped, but still worked well.

Unfortunately, I had to raid my daughter's art box to get construction paper for the river & the bridge. I've already got the makings for rivers, but will definitely need to work on a bridge for future games.

Since I'd recently made some huts for another game, I threw those onto the board & turned it into a small Viking outpost.


The Deep Ones forces were 1 Shaman, 2 Warriors, 2 Skirmishers (3" range band Javelins) & 2 Savage Deep Ones (harder to activate, but more violent in battle). The Vikings had 1 Shaman & 5 Long Bowmen. Both warbands ended up being just under 300 pts, the standard size for a force.

Here's the initial force deployment. The Vikings set up around their outpost in the upper right corner. The Deep Ones spread out across the left side, with the Savage Deep Ones inside the wall, the Warriors on either side of the river, & the Shaman & Skirmishers behind the trees in the top left corner.

But after the game was over, I realized it be more interesting to have the 2 forces deployed so the river was a natural barrier between them.

The Vikings went 1st, with the Shaman (figure near the back without a shield) & 3 of the Bowmen rushing to the brush by the bridge (Vikings' racial skill is to move through woods & brush without penalty).


The other 2 Bowmen try to outflank the Deep Ones to gain the high ground on the hill at the north of the board.


The Deep One Warriors dive into the river (their racial skill was to move through water without penalty) while the rest of the Deep Ones advance.


The main Viking party finishes moving into the brush & prepare to ambush the Deep Ones. Unfortunately, the Deep Ones are still outside the Vikings' 7" longbow range (* see note below). The flanking Viking force doesn't get very far due to bad dice rolls.

The Deep One Warriors speed under the bridge & pop out of the water right next to the brush the Vikings are hiding in. So much for the Vikings' long range advantage. The Savage Deep Ones slowly move up, but due to them being harder to activate, they aren't able to make multiple moves in 1 turn like the others, so don't move too fast.


The Vikings in the brush fire arrows & magic to little effect, while the flanking force is still moving slow. The Deep One Warriors reach the Vikings in the brush, but don't have enough actions to attack them yet.


The Viking Shaman is confronted by one of the Deep One Warriors (right side in the picture above), which won't end well. So he tries to run away but gets cut down as he turns around. 1st blood to the Deep Ones. The other Deep One Warrior knocks down his opponent. The flanking Vikings finally are close enough to be of use & shoot down one of the Deep One Skirmishers. The Deep One Shaman & the unengaged Vikings exchange spells & arrows to no effect.


The Vikings continue to be ineffectual in melee, while the flanking Vikings fire with a similar success at the Deep Ones. The fallen Viking is skewered by the Deep One Warrior.


Both sides knock an opponent over, but the Deep Ones are the only ones able to seal the deal, killing the 3rd Viking. This causes a Morale check for the Vikings after losing half their force. The 2 flanking Vikings stalwartly stand, but the 3rd Viking, facing 3 Deep Ones on his own in the brush makes a strategic withdrawal.


After that, it pretty much goes downhill even more for the Vikings. They were able to kill one of the Savage Deep Ones.


But then the Vikings were all chased down & killed to a man.


The Deep Ones gibber in celebration of their total victory.


Overall, a fun, light game, but with some tactical depth due to the multi-activation rule. It took me about an hour to play, with lots of flipping through the rulebook since it was my 1st time playing. But with really only 7 pages of basic rules, the flipping was very quick.

I noticed a big difference in performance between the regular Deep Ones (needing a 3+ on a d6 to activate) & the Savage Deep Ones (needing a 4+ to activate). The affect of that 1 point was quite noticeable.

But, the crushing defeat of the Vikings came down to my usual bad dice rolls. While I could easily activate the Vikings (needing 3+), when it came to hitting, I regularly rolled 1-3s, against the Deep Ones 4-6s. Actually, in the middle of the game, there was a series of about 6 consecutive turns where I failed badly enough activating the 1st figure on a side, that initiative passed immediately to the other side. So effectively, both sides took a long tactical pause, just staring at each other, since I was unable to successfully activate either side.

*NOTE: I also just realized I was doing ranged combat wrong. I only allowed the ranged weapons to fire 1 ranged band. The Vikings were only firing 7". But ranged weapons are supposed to be able to fire up to 3x their range band. So they should have been able to fire almost all the way across the board. It would have been initially at a -4 to hit, but that still would have given them a lot more chances to take the Deep Ones out before they got into melee.