Kings of War Ambush Game 1

Kings of War Gaming

I had a couple of small games of Kings of War with Bodvoc recently. It's been a little while since we played, but we've both got the new Red Book and fancied trying the Ambush style games. It's not really a new idea for us, we tend to start new armies at 500 points and our Clash games of Kings of War Historical were very much in this vein. Still, it's nice to have the idea formalised.

Small Scale Campaigning

We both took the opportunity to try out new armies, I used my new Kingdoms of Men and Bodvoc has started a Sylvan Kin army, using mostly Oathmark minis.

I based a couple of games on a short campaign I wrote years ago for Warhammer Fantasy Battle where Wood Elves were trying to drive Imperial settlers out of their woods. Nothing special, I simply wrote some story around a couple of the scenarios in the book, but it gave a bit of background and allowed us to develop a story.  We decided that if we enjoyed the games, we could start a small slow grow campaign.

Game One

The first game was an Invade scenario, representing the elves attempting to drive the humans out while they pushed back.  I used the same 500 point force I've used in various training games (Artem, Hero with Inspiring Talisman, troop of Mounted Scouts, regiment of Bowmen and two regiments of Spear Phalanx), Bodvoc had a Master Hunter (unsurprisingly called Emyn Lockharn) to lead his elves, a troop of Silverbreeze cavalry, a troop of Sylvan Gladestalkers and a troop of Kindred Tallspears.  

Both forces deploy, but the sneaky elves have a trick or two up their green-sleeves

The Sylvan Kin amass for battle.  There may not be many of them, but they are all staunch warriors, and damn good shots too!

Emyn Lockharn and the Gladestakers had slunk forwards before the battle (Scout moves) to hold a commanding position raining arrows down on the hapless humans.  By turn one they had routed my Mounted scouts who I had hoped to ride ruin down on the elven flank.

Artem led his Spearmen towards the waiting elves, right into volleys of arrows.  By turn three the first phalanx was routed by the elves' concentrated missile fire.  Artem then decided to take cover in the village.  Meanwhile my Bowmen set off on a fruitless flank march to try and get in position to shoot at the Tallspears.  They fell to the elven arrows before doing anything worthwhile.

The elves dress their ranks and make towards the village.  I try to adjust the colour on my phone camera.

Artem and his remaining troops take refuge in the village.  

The Silverbreeze are able to manouver round to the village gateway and shoot at the phalanx.  Fortunately for me they can't quite get rid of them.

The view of the marauding elves from the village.

Results and Conclusion (I feel like I'm writing up O-Level chemistry experiments)

By the end of turn six I had one hero and one regiment left, and hadn't managed to hurt the elves at all.  The combined elven shooting had seen off all the rest of my force.  However, I had a regiment worth 3 VPs on the other half of the table, whereas only the Silverbreeze were on my half, giving me an unlikely victory.  Clearly the elves found the humans just a little too hard to dislodge (yeah, right) so backed off, no doubt to try some other sneaky trick later.

The revised Shoot 4+ is nasty to face, but highly appropriate for elves.  It certainly held them in good stead, especially when I lined my army up for Bodvoc to focus his shooting on them so effectively.  I also deployed very badly, especially given the aim of the game.  Better tactics would have been simply to march a Phalanx up one flank to safety rather than waste the Bowmen, though I was never going to win a shooting match with them against the elves.

Lessons learned, possibly, and it was still great fun to play.

Bodvoc has written his account of the two games on his blog here, you 'll have to wait a little while for my account, but I can say that we had a lot of fun, and are already planning some reinforcements to our armies.  I'm in a bit of a quandary here though.  The aim with my army is to sell it once I've got 500 points painted up; the money going to a suitable charity working in Ukraine.  My next unit will definitely be the missing Spear Phalanx, that's why one of my old GW Empire regiments made an appearance.  I'm not sure if I should do another force using the Oathmark Humans (I have quite a few, but not enough to re-do this army without buying more), or get back to painting my many GW Empire troops.  Choices.

*EDIT* My report of the second game is here.