Gaming in the Shed - Game 1

On Saturday I had the privilege of being invited to a day of gaming in the superb shed of Wargames Table chum Steve. Even better, he kindly set up a game of Kings of War, supplying both sides along with Easy Army lists! Thanks mate! :o)

Armies drawn up for battle

Steve offered me the choice of armies, Kingdoms of Men or Orcs & Goblins ... since my WFB days I've always had a soft spot for the gobboes so that was an easy choice! :o)

Steve's Orc & Goblin army is made up mostly from GW Lord of the Rings figures and I think it looks marvellous!

Send forth all legions!!!

For the Kingdoms of Men, Steve used a combination of historical figures. Looking good eh!?

Stand fast men!

I haven't played that many games of KoW yet so I was a little apprehensive about muffing it all up, but Steve gave me a quick refresher of the key points and we set to. One of the great things about KoW is that the rules are very intuitive and elegant, but they're not so simple as to give a boring game. Far from it in fact! I was soon quite comfortable with what was going on. (Please do not confuse that with me actually having a 'plan' or knowing what I was actually doing!!)

Orcs and Trolls take on Men and a Nelly

We both wasted little time in getting to grips with the other side. Steve's men definitely had more fire power in terms of bows and scouting type cavalry so I was especially keen to close the gap.

Can my Orcs (accompanied by a rather inept Shaman) hold off the Chariot horde?

The Orc shaman had a spell that would improve the Orcs combat ability. All I had to do was roll a 4+ on two D6 ... you can guess how that went. Clearly the dullard had forgotten the words!?!

On the left flank the big beasts came in to play. I had the Witch King on a Fell-beast along with a Giant. His Nelly had flattened my Orc horde and readied itself for a second onslaught. The Trolls were taking a real battering but with help from their Regeneration ability, were just about hanging on.

Carnage on my left flank!

The Giant absolutely massacred the Nelly and stormed on towards the ranked up warriors. The Orc flying beastie scoffed a unit of scout cavalry and moved on looking for more.

Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum! ;o)

At this point the Orcs & Goblins had the edge in terms of points but Steve's other flank was going to be a much tougher proposition.

The Orcs and their Shaman (who finally remembered the right words!?) had dealt with the Chariots but were somewhat battered. Steve had a Phalanx of Spearmen, some archers and decent unit of medium cavalry and some mounted Scouts. I've got a couple of units of Warg Riders - quite fearsome - plus some archers. So all to play for!

C-h-a-r-g-e!!!

That's the last of photos (sorry). What happened was that the Orcs and one unit of Wargs charged the Phalanx but ... the dice abandoned my trusty Orcs. This was helped somewhat by Steve's unit having a couple of abilities that really turned the tide. The Orcs were beaten off but by then the big beasties had crossed the table and started munching on Steve's Spearmen. The three cavalry units on the edge of the battlefield had a big melee but the men had the best of it.

After six turns we rolled to see if there would be a seventh but the dice came up a '3' and the battle finished. Totting up the points Steve had edged a win by 270 points. As it was a 2000pt game he needed a margin of 200 to win. Had we played another turn then it might have been a draw as my beasts were well positioned to fall upon his remaining troops.

All in all a superb game. Kings of War is highly recommended. A light hearted game that's easy to pick up, yet satisfyingly and subtle to play. A big Thank You to Steve for sorting all this out. Much appreciated indeed :o)

So with that done we had a spot of lunch and sorted out a game of Bolt Action ... more on that in the next post!