Painting in May

 I didn't get so much done in May, real life got in the way for the first couple of weeks.

I did manage to paint a dragon for Midgard Heroic Battles. This was a 3d print a friend printed off for me.

Some frog people, some cheap 3d print off Ebay. I thought they had a lot of character and would fit in with my Boglanders.

Some more tentacled aliens from Ramshackle Games.

Another of Curtis' sculpts from Ramshackle Games, an orc shaman on a dungar. I've no idea what I will use this for, but I am sure to find a use somewhere.

Finally, some more war trolls for Middle Earth, based up for Midgard. These are the rest of a box of 1/72 trolls from Dark Alliance.

June is going to be a bust as far as painting goes for me. I just hope I can get back in the swing of things in July and regain the momentum.

Elves vs Orcs with Midgard

 Mark came over to continue his induction into the Midgard community. I think I am nearly there, convincing him that Midgard is the best rules for us to use for our big Middle Earth games.

I decided to go for a variation on David Hunter's superb Crossings of the Eyewash scenario, moving to a mid-Third Age setting, pitting a Noldor force from Lindon against an orc host out of Angmar.

We went for two 500 point armies, with approximately one third of the elves arriving (or not) later as reinforcements.

Here is the initial dispositions, can the hard-pressed elves hold the fords until their reinforcements arrive? We use double depth units for the orc foot, which makes them look very threatening.

Turn One

The orcs advance across the table. A few units were a little reluctant to mix it up with the elves, and hung back to see what happened. The elves stood their ground, except for the horse archers who advanced to take a pop at the leading warg riders, but missed!

Turn Two

The orcs keep moving forward, mainly due to the use of a lot of Mighty Deeds by their leaders to keep their units moving. warg riders charge the mounted archers, who fail to evade.😟

The mounted archers put up a good fight, but are destroyed.

The rest of the orc horde keep advancing all across the table.

Turn Three

The orcs close in on the fords and one unit charges across western ford.

But the over eager orcs are pushed back with a bloody nose by elf spears.

In the defender's phase the elves launch attacks at both fords.

Whilst out on the eastern flank the elf heavy cavalry charge into the warg riders.

Turn Four

Mixed results at the eastern ford, as one elf unit is forced back, whilst their comrades are reduced to bloody rags in the middle of the river.

At the western ford another orc unit dissolves, while the trolls and elf axemen keep pounding at each other.

Both units are simultaneously wiped out, leaving just the two heroes locked in single combat.

At the end of turn 4 the orcs reputation is now down to zero, but the scenario gives them bonus points for being aggressive at the fords, which keeps them in the game.

Turn Five

With most of the orc riders destroyed the snaga now take on the elf cavalry. At this point Shagbad the orc champion steps up and, insulting Orodreth the elf lord's horse, issues a challenge to single combat. Foolish orc! Level 1 champion vs Level 3 Hero with a Legendary Weapon, it's all over in a single round of combat!

The elf cavalry keep up the momentum, forcing the orcs back with heavy losses.

Fierce fighting continues at the fords.

Turn Six

Finally, the first elf reinforcements arrive!

As the orc offensive on the east flank grinds to a halt.

The eastern ford is held, and just as the orcs start to pour across the western ford, the reinforcement cavalry crash into them, throwing them back into the river.

At the end of turn 6 the elves have a reputation of 1 and the orcs are at -2. A very narrow win to the elves. A great game and a lot of fun. It was so close at the end, it could easily have gone either way!

 Mark certainly now agrees that Midgard are the way forward for our Middle Earth big battles. This was only his second game and, apart from the odd prompt from me, he had no problem handling 500 points.

Revisiting Chronopia after 20 years with Midgard

 Colin was coming over for a game of Midgard, so I thought I'd dust off a collection I've had knocking about for around 20-odd years.

These two armies were for Chronopia, a fantasy game originally produced by Target Games back in the late 90s/2000s. I used to really enjoy playing Chronopia and I have a soft spot for the minis. In fact many of them have seen service in Sellswords and Spellslingers games over the past few years. 

Midgard is great as a toolbox for creating bespoke armies as there are lots of possible options by combining different traits and levels of armour. 

So I came up with army lists for the Devout (chaotic/demonic type faction) and the Stygian (desert-dwelling reptilian faction).

Apologies, I forgot to take pictures until halfway through turn 2!

TURN 1

As Attacker, activated first. I rushed my right flank force forward, whilst the rest of the army plodded forward more cautiously (I failed two attempts to get a second move with the first unit and didn't want to leave a gap in my line). I put my two fast moving units on the two extreme ends of the battle line and moved them outwards to outflank Colin. My Priestess got close enough to the Tormented demon to cast a Weakness spell, which reduced the monster's armour value.

Colin advanced the Devout forward, keeping in a line with the Soul Flayer Demon (flying dragon for rules purposes) in the centre of the army, presumably so it could strike in either direction.

TURN 2

On my right a hero led the Great Warriors in a charge into the Swordsmen unit and threw them backwards with heavy losses. The rest of my forces kept advancing. The Priestess successfully cast another Weakness spell on the Tormented,

In the Defender's phase Colin struck! His Army Commander charged into my Demon Spawn with the (very) ferocious Damned Demon and the Soul Flayer with his Beast Master Hero struck the unit of Warriors in front of it.

Things were not looking good for that unit of Warriors!

With his Army Commander charging Colin is racking up the Reputation points.

Led by a Dark Eyes hero the Tormented and a unit of Great Swordsmen charged on the other flank.

The priestess kept well out of the messy melee. She didn't want to get her robes dirty!

In the second round of melee the Great Warriors kept pushing the Swordsmen back.

A view down the battle line as the blood letting get's going!

That's the way to fight a big demon/dragon. 9 hits with 14 dice!!! That put both unit's at half strength, but pushed the Soul Flayer back.

The Devout had mixed success on my right flank. The Tormented pushed the Warriors back and the hero used his one-off trait to rally a wound off of the tormented. But the Stygian Starved threw the Great Swordsmen back with great slaughter. (The Starved are only armour 2, but when Colin only rolled 3 hits, even with charging re-rolls, that's not a problem).

TURN 4

Now my Guardian Army Commander led the Embalmed in a charge, supported by the Great Worm.

The crashed into the Cursed Axemen, inflicting heavy losses.

Elsewhere the fighting continues all across the battlefield. The Risen (undead) joined in the fight with my Army Commander, splitting the chaos into 2 melees now. The Sygian lost a unit of Warriors, but the Devout lost a unit of swordsmen and a unit of Great Swordsmen. This is the Reputation situation and the end of the turn.

TURN 5

On the left a unit of Warriors had gone and the second unit was being pushed back by the Great Swordsmen. But further out all the Stygian units were winning their melees and pushing their opponents back.

On the other flank the Starved and Tormented had destroyed their respective opponents, but this left the Tormented and accompanying hero rather exposed.

They found themselves in a Stygian sandwich and the Tormented was destroyed leaving the hero battling on alone.

                                       

In the Defender's phase the melees continued, seeing another unit of Sygian Warriors die, along with 2 Devout units and the surrounded hero!

The Reputation scores at the end of Turn 5, the Devout on -5 to the Stygian +10, an overwhelming victory for the Sygian forces. We both had a laugh and a lot of fun. It was at this point we remembered the Sweeping Attack rule, which Colin should have used with his flying Soul Flayer!!! That might not have been enough to change the final result, but would have put the Soul Flayer behind my lines, in a position to charge into the rear of almost any unit. I would certainly have lost more units, and quicker, than I did!

Note to selves, READ THE RULES!!!!

War of the Worlds Survivors 5

 I played through the latest game in the War of the Wolds survivors campaign with Colin, Henry and Mark. Henry's party arrived late (emergency dental appointment), so Mark and Colin had a free hand to begin with.

This was a food gathering scenario, although there were a few points with something else useful might be found, scattered about.

A view across the table, the various crop fields represent areas that could be harvested to food.

From another perspective, there are several shades wandering about.

Colin more forward confidently, perhaps too confidently as he got close enough for a shade to charge one of this men , but he kills after a quick struggle.

Mark was a little slower on his advance, pausing to shoot at two shades in front of him, killing one and knocking the other to the ground.

Colin checks out one of the search points and rolls a 12! he has found some salvage, some food and a Random Weapon. A roll on that table and he has found...a sword! No bad, but not the best for someone short on firearms (because he keeps breaking them!).

Whilst some of his party starts harvesting, Mark checks out another search point and finds some salvage. Perhaps an improvised bomb-making session is on the cards for tonight?

Colin checks out another search point and finds another sword!

In the meantime a Martian scuttler turns up.

Mark's part of the table seems infested with shades. he didn't have chance to harvest much of the crops as he had to keep stopping a fighting off attacks. One of his men went down, out of the fight!

To make things worse a Martian stalker machine arrived, firing at Mark but missing.

Henry arrived at this point, and, seeing all the Martians had been drawn off after Mark, decided to take the opportunity to harvest as much from the closest field as he could, ignoring the rest of the table.

Colin did the same over the other side of the table, while Mark grabbed his fallen comrade and ran his men for cover behind a high hedge. He was able to get everyone safely into cover because I rolled appalling dice and only managed to activate 1 model in two consecutive turns!

After a couple more turns, a Martian hybrid arrived, right next to Henry. This was very bad news for the players, as it was armed with a "proper" heat ray, with a blast radius, rather than the lighter weapons carried by stalkers and scuttlers. Luckily for him, none of his PCs had strayed very far onto the table, so the were all able to escape before the Martian activated. Except for his leader, to duck down behind a wall. Just in time and the cover saved him from being fried by the heat ray. He then ran off the table at double time!

With the hybrid marching across the table, as well as the stalker, the scuttler and some shades closing in, Colin and Mark decided to cut their losses and run!

Except Mark could not resist taking a final potshot...at Colin's sailor!

He missed and the sailor charged him, hitting (and killing) his man, then ran off table! Forgetting he could have plundered the body and lifted his revolver! As all Mark's other PCs had already left the table, this meant the body was abandoned, which would make it harder on survival rolls.

At the end of the game everyone had restocked their larders, at least for the next couple of weeks, so the pressure is off for feeding PCs for the next couple of games. Mark had some useful salvage, as did Henry and Colin had more 2 swords!

Only Mark had PCs out of the fight, the PC he had carried off was wounded, so will have to miss the next game, but the abandoned guy was proper DEAD! So Mark lost the gun and other kit he had been carrying, plus his replacement comes with nothing, so will need arming out of Mark's existing stocks (but he still has at least a crossbow kicking around somewhere).

Thia should make the next game interesting (in the Chinese proverb sense!).