It's the Taking Part that Counts

Once again, it's almost a month since the tournament and I've only just finished the write-up. In January I went to Stockport again for Northern King's Kings of War tournament, four games and a very substantial lunch. Once again I set off without my phone charger, so sadly pictures are only available for the first two games.

Game 1: Abyssal Dwarves

Deployment: I've put my knights in a column (left most) with the infantry and then missile troops to their right.

I think I'm entitled at least one game to "get my hand in" and this was it. I'm not very happy with my deployment, which left most of my troops in the way of each other, and didn't really give my knights a very good charge corridor.

Big infantry blocks (plus gargoyles) hold the Dwarven centre

Forces are dispatched to deter my outflanking werewolves.

The lowest ehb of my game was, just as I had a good charge set up with the Longhorns, the dwarves unleashed their attack doggos (who I suspect were added to the list precisely to counter slightly faster troops like mine) and got a lucky morale roll which which held me up for a turn and lost me the vital first charge.

Battlelines clash and, to my horror, my hard-hitting Longhorns (with the blue dodecahedron behind them) get chewed on by angry dwarf dogs and lose their nerve (and the opportunity to charge first).

My flanking attempt by the werewolves founders against the berserkers and gargoyles

I start running out of knights as the Bull Centaurs rip up my archers. We tried lads.

Despite the ensuing pummelling, I did at least snatch a small victory when the gargoyles landing in front of my cannon took one wound from grapeshot and promptly flew off the field. War machines have had a few nice improvements in this new edition.

Game 2: Human Kingdoms

I was looking forward to a balanced fight when I saw my opponent was another Human Kingdoms player, until I noticed the 3 giants in his army. I don't mind fighting rank-and-file troops, but I'm terrible at building lists to counter big monsters with high defence and nerve.

One out of three giants menaces my left flank. Little does he suspect that my mounted sergeants will just run around him.

Very blurry view of my initial advance.Those giants look a bit worrying.

My lack of experience with monsters showed its hand again when my fantastic flanking movement to encircle the enemy gun line was stopped completely by the flying enemy general. I should have hugged the hill to deny him space to charge, but I didn't and got slaughtered. Ho hum.

My absolutely brilliant flanking movement comes unstuck when I discover the General on Winged Beast can see over the hill.

My beastfolk break through the enemy line, but that giant is about to descend on my knights.

All of my troops have disappeared and the giants are running amok. I blame the dice.

And, well, that's about it for that game. At least I can take away some lessons from the encounter, chief of which is get some more cannons.


Game 3: Dwarves Classic.

Despite two heavy defeats, I went into the third game well fortified by the excellent and invigorating refreshment provided by Northern Kings (pizza) and the Element Games bar (beer). This time, my opponent's army was centred around two big blocks of Earth Elementals (hard as nails but surprisingly light on the attack) and a swarm of angry badger riders (again, much less murderous than the description would suggest) supported by a couple of infantry units, an artillery park and a bloke in robot armour who turned out to be completely bulletproof.

The scenario was about taking control of the 6 2'x2' squares on a 6'x4' table. My opponent aimed to seize my centre with his elementals, while his left swarmed with cavalry and his right held most of the artillery, plus extra badgers. Having vastly more units than my foe, I could hold off deploying my units until I knew where they were most needed. I could thus place my werewolves on my far left for a dramatic envelopment, and my spearmen on the right to counter the cavalry. The knights went in the centre to (hopefully) crack the earth elementals.

It went almost according to plan: the spears and one unit of knights mutually annihilated with the badgers, leaving 1 (1) berserker lord at the end. In the centre I was mashed fairly predictably, but the bloodbath left only one scoring unit to contest table sections to my two, thus securing a dramatic victory. Finally, on the left flank my werewolves took ages to chew through the badgers thereon, which held up the mounted sergeants in a traffic jam, but after that I could run down the artillery and snatch a win on the last turn (thanks turn 7!)

Game 4: Treehugging Elves

Buoyed by my success, I was disheartened to find my next opponent also lots great big monsters and high defence. Oh dear. The elves got off to a very good start in that they were able to move before the start of the game, landing a sizeable contingent in the massive wood in the centre with two of the three objective tokens. This lead to an impasse: I was unwilling to charge and my opponent unwilling to leave safety.

Recognising I had to get the objective tokens off him somehow, I charged with the knights who disappointed: obviously riding in woods invalidates their insurance. Still, with help from the beastfolk I zonked one unit of ambulatory trees while the other got distracted chewing up my archers (who survived much longer than expected due to jammy results on the nerve tests). This left two ent-kings with two objectives ready to score points against me which, despite sitting right in front of my cannon, escaped harm because I got too caught up in the moment and forgot to fire it for 3 turns on the trot.

My master plan of a grand double-envelopment, with the light cavalry and werewolves on my right flank and the foot knights on my left was, however, slowly beginning to fall into place. The "fast cavalry" did a splendid job and swept all before them, clearing the path for my big infantry block to carry their token into enemy lines and into flanking positions of the centre. My left was a little more disappointing as the foot knights are neither fast, tough or particularly killy, so they ended up in a stand-off with the forest queen and a bunch of archers.

In the end, despite taking (relatively) minor losses, I was unable to separate the big trees from their victory tokens and chalked up a defeat. It galls me that, if I had remembered to fire cannon and cast buffing spells on my units, I might have stood a good chance of killing them and snatching a last-minute victory. Ah well.

Final Thoughts

It didn't go great, but I'm back on the scene and getting the practice I suppose. The foot knights were a complete failure and didn't even die slowly, so I'll be dropping them in future in order to add more cannons for heavily armoured foes I struggle against.

Vote Labour!