Digging about in the sand...

 I'm going to stop writing blog titles in French eventually but for the moment, here's a recap of the recent encounter between my Silver Bayonet French Mehadistes and Blogger Tank's Highlanders at the club yesterday.

But first, for the purposes of the thumbnail, this amazing little vignette made up from a game between Bloggers Tank and McBeth in Kings of War: 

Goat vs Hippogriff

  

I had a very close game with Blogger McBeth at KoW, thinking I was toast at the end of turn 3 and by the end of 6, winning 2 VPs to 1 VP. McBeth's been doing a bunch of work on Kingdoms of Men as an army and I think he's cracked the core of a pretty effective build. And then Blogger Tank stomped them with his rampaging Dwarven goat riders... 

 

To Egypt! 

 

To set the scene, Tank's been investing in the appropriate terrain and models for Egyptian Silver Bayonet and it looks amazing:  

We played scenario 3: The Tomb of Records with some fluff modifications for this table appearing very much to be outside. The two units appeared from the centre of their respective board edges, spreading out across the table to locate the secret entrances to the Tomb.

The French advances in skirmish order across a wide front, with Jean-Francois Champollion taking a brave lead into the desert.

The Scots stuck together, lead into the fray by their brave piper! Tank managed to flip the first couple of objectives discovering some interesing objets including a cursed headdress that gave his sassenach Marine +2 damage! He would have been quite fearsome if he could hit anything...

From nowhere, a series of revenants prowling the desert attacked the two units. 'Amira Shaheeda Abdul-Aziz sent this one packing with a single swipe of her scimitar. Other revenants were similarly dispatched across the board:

Jean-Francois Champollion and his unit uncovered a number of objectives in and around the pillars of the fallen temple and, terrifyingly, attracted the attention of a pair of Werejackals! Mercifully for the French, they seemed more interested in the Scots.

In a wholly ungentlemanly act, Brigadier Guy Beaudouin shot the Scot's piper to attract the attention of another revenant who devoured the poor Scotsman and then prompty felled the next Highlander sent to retrieve his corpse. I won't mention that Monsieur Champollion might have also aided in that particular endeavour.

Jean-Francois Champollion discovered the entrance to the Tomb of Records and sent 'Amira Shaheeda Abdul-Aziz in first (she is very brave, after all) and Guy Beaudouin fell bravely protecting the entrance as he failed to hit a werejackal and it tore a chunk out of him before he was shot down by the Highland Captain.

On the far side of the board, away from the entrances we were all trying to get into, a melee of epic proportions occurred. Theophile Beaudelaire became the first Highlander slayer of this round of Silver Bayonet but couldn't hit the side of a barn otherwise!

His excellent shooting briefly saved the Maltese Hospitaller but the Highlanders saw him on his way leading to a mad dash to the exit for all of us! 

The game was a tie in the end, with both of us getting five models into the Tomb of Records and losing three each on the field. Tank lost a pair to a single revenant and nearly lost two more to werejackals and a MUMMY (sweet Christmas they're terrifying) while I lost all three of my casualties to honourable fisticuffs! The Tomb of Records is a really fun scenario with lots of moving parts and a lot of randomness. Two of my poor soldiers were struck from on high, one by rocks and another by a rain of bones!? Madness, mercifully not for Marc-Antoine Longchambon on that particular occasion.

Once again, Silver Bayonet proving to be a delightfully fun game. We've taken to abusing the 'roll a double, have an event' from just initiative rolls into pretty much any opportunity. It definitely makes for a more entertaining game, if somewhat longer as the units have to deal with both all the monsters AND each other.

Next Time

An entirely reasonable question. I'm going to try and finish up the other four models for this Silver Bayonet unit, I've got ideas about turning some old Warmachine models in to a Kings of War army and a pile of Imperial Agents to paint in advance of the rapidly approaching Codex drop...