For the Undead, every battle is a recruitment drive...

 Hat tip to blogger Pel for that blog title. Absolute gem. After watching bloggers McBeth and Scotty play yesterday afternoon, he was not wrong! 

I had a really fun game with my Brotherhood Order of the Green Lady against Scotty's Kingdoms of Men but singularly failed to take any photos. Suffice to say that me having a bunch of heals and playing weirdly conservatively, combined with Scotty's appalling dice lead to a fairly solid, if not comfortable, win for the Knights.

Kings of War

So instead, today, I shall report something I had nothing to do with. Blogger Scotty vs Blogger Tank. Kingdoms of Men vs Dwarves. Tank is a Dwarf player from way back and has been looking forward to getting these lads out for a while. The scenario was Invade, in which VPs would be awarded for the most Unit Strength in the opposite half of the table. 

Tank's Khador Warwagon repurposed as Golloch's Fury

Scotty's centre held by The Captain (note capitalisation) and some robust infantry

The first turn was characterised by some seriously cautious advancing:

Cautious advance by the Dwarves...

...meets cautious advance by the Humans

 Scotty's handgunners chalked up some big hits on the Ironguard and his pikemen took a cannonball from Golloch's Fury - experiences I would suggest neither party enjoyed. There was a lot of maneuvering of cavalry to try and expose flanks, especially by Scotty, and Tank was taking great care not to get hit in flanks as that would very much do for the Dwarves.

On turn two, the Berserking Brock riders came from downtown and smashed into Scotty's heavy infantry:

Badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger, badger...

...MUSHROOM!

Yup. Tank hit the infantry hard, getting real benefit out of his Brew of Sharpness and 26 attacks on his Brock Riders to blow straight through the Swordsmen. They did, however, really fail to followup past the front of the nearby pikemen.

Sneaky horsies!

Meanwhile, Scotty's Sergeants appeared on Tank's flank and Tank held back a lot of his force to stop that flank being turned. You'll note the Dwarven general hanging out there on the bottom left. Yeah. That wasn't a great place to stop. 

Over the next couple of turns the centres connected. Tanks Earth Elementals ground into Scotty's Indomitable Willed Halberdiers for a lot of shoving aided by repeated Bane Chants on both sides.

And PUSH!

The Pikemen rolled up the Brocks without too much difficulty as flank charges in Kings of War are really devastating!

We'll get you you rascally badgers...

Scotty's Pikemen, with their ensnare and indomitable will held up the Earth Elementals, at least for a turn or two, while his Knights lined up the out of frame Golloch's Fury.

Charge!

The knights successfully charged the titanic engine and did a decent amount of damage. It struck back in it's turn and obliterated the knights completely. This was a match where units routing in one go was more prevalent than one would normally expect. Meanwhile on the other flank, Mounted Sergeants charged into the Dwarven Lord and after a couple of rounds, rode him down.

"FOR MINING. OR SCIENCE. THEY'RE ALMOST THE SAME"

The Brocks who had been hiding on that flank rode in to avenge their leader (having already chased down and destroyed the other Sergeant unit) and used some very serious handbags on Scotty's Mounted Sergeants. The Sergeants used their marshmallows in reply and a lot of nothing really happened there.

The last few combats kicked off in the last turn and this is shortly before the game ended. The pikemen you can see had charged into the Earth Elementals and smashed them to gravel in one round before leaving themselves here:

The riflemen held on against the Ironguard (because someone rolled snake-eyes on the Nerve test) but the Pikemen were in for a torrid time from Golloch's Fury at which point the lads called time on the match.

It was a great game to watch and the lads had a good time playing it. I really enjoyed watching it swing from the point where I commented in about turn 3 that Tank could table Scotty in a turn to the end of Turn 5 I think where the game was meaningfully over but was still really close!

Ghosties

I've finished the last ghostie model that I had on hand:

GHOSTHORSE

This Knight of Shrouds will be the Dreadfiend in the Nightstalkers Kings of War army. I really love the finished model but I can't say I enjoyed getting here. I glued the whole thing up when I was assembling and that meant that painting it was a challenge to get to some of the details behind the horsehead and things like that. Still he looks really cool. 

After yesterday's games, I'm keen to get these lads on the park in 2021.

Next Time

We didn't manage our game of Gaslands yesterday, but we'll get that in at some point over the Christmas break I'm sure. I'm getting to work starting on next year's 40K slow grow with the startings of a Spectrus Kill Team and a Phobos Lieutenant to lead them while also ticking away at a few old Malifaux models and a few leftover 40K bits and bobs.