Stand Your Ground: MESBG Battle Companies Campaign

Yet another game in our MSEBG Battle Companies campaign. This time the aim was to end up in control of the central hill.

We rolled off to see who was defending the hill and Harad won.  Given that we both had cavalry we decided that the hill would be shallow enough to be easily traversable; apart from the western cliff side of course.

Opening Moves

As the Harad forces look around, the Fiefdoms cluster around the ruined arcade, apart from the knight who rides in from the north

Qayid and the knight clash.  The Fiefdoms had priority, but  Qayid declared a Heroic Move in order to Charge.  The Knight did the same, but Harad won the roll-off.  The Knight won the duel, but was unable to pierce Qayid's armour.

The bulk of the Fiefdoms troops move towards the hill, but leave themselves open to charges from the Harad force.  They manage to unseat Khamsa the Raider

Qayid and the knight continue their attacks, but neither side can unhorse the other.

The Harad Bowmen and the Blackroot Vale Archers engage in an archery duel, but neither side can hurt the other.  The Clansman falls to a combined attack.

Middle Phase

The Harad force tries ganging up on the Knight, but they are unsuccessful.

Both sides' archers continue their shooting, but hit nothing, and a scrappy fight develops around the base of the hill.

At this point there are only two troops on the all important hill.

Disaster for the Fiefdoms!  Qayid finally hits home (with a little help from one of his spearmen) and downs the Knight.  Not Fate nor his lucky talisman can save him.

The Blackroot Vale Archers avenge their captain, downing both the Harad Bowmen on the hill.  With their fall, the hill is unoccupied.

End Turns

The triumphant Qayid rides towards the Archers and the rest of the Harad force pull back to the hill.

They are pursued by the Fiefdoms troops, who now engage all the remaining Bowmen, shutting down Harad's archery.

Qayid survives a hail of arrows, but on the hill one of his Bowmen is pulled down.

By this point Harad was Broken, but only Qayid was at risk as the rest of the troops were on the hill. The Blackroot Vale Archers decide to tackle the oncoming horseman, but his charge knocks both of them down.  One of them is out of action. 

On the hill one of the Men-at-Arms also falls,  Breaking the Fiefdoms as well.

The remaining Archer breaks and runs, bringing the Fiefdoms below one quarter strength (a Man-at-Arms and the Axeman on the hill).  The forces of Harad take the day.

Aftermath

I'd like to say that I deliberately abandoned the hill to draw the Fiefdoms out, then strategically withdrew to safety, but in truth I got carried away with charging, completely forgetting the objective, and was lucky to get the win.

My Battle Company is quite some way ahead of the Fiefdoms, consequently they had four re-rolls for this game* (a balancing factor for less powerful companies).  These were very well used, in one instance to re-roll a failed Fate roll. 

Neither of or Companies suffered much from injuries, though Eashra, one of my Bowmen recently promoted to a Hero now has an Old Battle Wound.  

Arbaea, the Battle Company Banner Bearer now has Bane of Kings (this is a re-roll on all failed Strike rolls, exactly the same as the Harad Master of Poisons ability - I may simply call it this).  Eashra has gained an extra shot per turn, making him a very handy archer.  Lets hope he doesn't end up with an arm wound like Sayaad.

This was a great fun game, and much closer than the report makes it appear.  There were a few frustrating dice rolls.  The Knight needed to roll 4+ to Strike Qayid, but failed to roll better than a 2.  Better luck next time.

We've now played most of the scenarios.  There are a couple more that require a camp, so some terrain building required I think, and the one based around rescuing a lost Hero, which we are saving for when that happens.

*And four bonus Influence Dice, which will allow for some serious spending before next battle.

Organising Oldhammer

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that I've been slowly painting my few remaining Oldhammer minis, especially dwarves. I can use them in Fistful of Lead, but that only needs around a half dozen minis a side, so I don't really have any larger goal.

You may also know that I paint much more effectively if I have a vague hobby goal to work towards, but I've been struggling to find one for my Oldhammer collection. After chatting with Ben (of The Quest for Stillmania) I realised that I can assemble a couple of Dragon Rampant forces harking back to the early days of fantasy wargaming.  In these early games, armies tended to be a mixed bag of Good vs a mixed bag of Evil; I particularly remember a Warhammer scenario from Tortured Souls magazine based around an evil Runesword. The Good side had captured it and had to keep it out of Evil hands while it was purified. Both sides were a mix of the appropriate races, and the story background made it great fun.

I'm unlikely to ever collect enough Oldhammer style minis to field, say, a purely dwarven army, but a unit or two in a Dragon Rampant Good army is definitely achievable - especially with reduced model units. I'll begin with units of four (unless they are obviously heroes, wizards, war machines or monsters). If I get enough of anything I can expand to six, then maybe even twelve (I like to keep the unit size even numbers so it's easy to tell if the unit is Battered).

So now I have a rough plan, and I have enough to make a start with a unit of elf archers (Light Missiles with Sharpshooter), an elven repeating crossbow (Heavy Missiles) and some dwarf warriors (Offensive Light or Heavy Foot).  I'm sure I also have a few old Empire minis that might just squeeze in as Oldhammer, and I know I have an old Bretonnian cannon that will be fine.  That's plenty to start with for the Good army.

For Evil I have a few goblins and orcs, though I'm not sure how many (how I regret selling off my collection years ago!).  I've also got a smattering of Undead, Chaos and Dark Elves, certainly enough for reduced model units.  I've also got some of the original Golfag's Ogres Regiment of Renown, which I'll probably use as a group of mercenaries available to either side.

Here are some examples of what might be coming up.

Classic elves

More nice stuff. The Skeleton knight can lead the zombies. The Necromancer is a unit in his own right. 

The lovely old Empire Flagellants will make a unit of Bellicose Foot 

This is going to be a long term project, and I'm certainly not rushing it.  I will keep an eye out for any interesting minis to add to the collection; I would eventually like to have full model units, which is usually twelve in Dragon Rampant, but that seems unlikely, especially with the way prices are going on evilbay at the moment, and initially I'll probably want two Reduced Model Units of six rather than one of twelve.

Seize Ground: MESBG Battle Companies Campaign

Yet another game in our Battle Companies campaign. This was the Seize Ground scenario, where the object was to be in control of as many as possible of five key points on the battlefield (white counters).

I was missing one of my warriors, still recovering from an injury last time, and the Axeman of Lossenarch was likewise absent.

The deployment.  A couple of the objectives are just off the photograph (doh!), just below the hill at the bottom, and above the ruin at the top.

Opening Moves

Qayid sent a warrior out to control the objective near the hill, while he himself rode off towards the one near the ruin.

The Fiefdoms advanced, spitting their forces into two wings.

The Knight moves towards the gateway, no doubt issuing challenges to the Harad troops.

The Raider claims an objective, as does Qayid.

Middle Phase

Both mounted Haradrim charge opponents.  Despite the advantages, the initial melees are disappointing.  Either I failed to Strike after a successful Duel, or the wound was saved by Fate (in the knight's case after spending two points of Might!)

But a second run knocks the Fiefdoms troops to the ground and the knight is out of action.

The Fiefdom's other wing threatens the Harad flank. 

The End Phase

A Man-at-Arms falls, and the Harad cavalry move to secure a couple of objectives.  The remaining Fiefdoms troops decide that discretion is the better part of valour, and depart the field, taking their casualties with them.

Aftermath

So a disastrous day for the Fiefdoms.  To add insult to injury the new man-at-arms succumbed to his wounds, so the Fiefdoms are struggling with numbers.  The knight has another point of Might, making three, and the Blackroot Vale Archer gained the ability to shoot at targets otherwise concealed.  Since this is most likely from an Elven Cloak, which Harad can't take, it's not that useful a skill for him.

Harad fared better, having no losses to injury.  Experience-wise several of the heroes got interesting boosts.

Another fun game, but one in which luck seemed to play a huge part.  There were several instances of successful duels where both sides failed to capitalise, even with the double bonus of mounted and warspear or lance.  One bow shot I took with a 6 to hit and a further 6 for the in-the-way roll followed by a strike roll of 2 just about summed it up.

Still, I was able to knock the Fiefdoms troops out of contention by the end, and their bad luck trying to take out the Hradrim meant that I suffered very little.

Kitbashing an Abrakhan Guard for my Harad Battle Company

I've mentioned before that I've been stuck for what to use for an Abrakhan Guard, should I roll one, in our Battle Companies campaign.

The GW official model is no longer available, and I not really a fan of it anyway, it is a cliché 'Fantasy Arabian Harem Guard ' and is a complete invention of the GW designers.  It is, however, the only way to get two handed weapons in the Harad Battle Company, so from a a gaming perspective it would be nice to have one.

I looked for alternatives, including a Reaper mini and one of the Crooked Dice henchmen (as I painted here, the chap with the two handed scimitar), but nothing quite worked.  Then I took a while to think; this isn't anything from the books, not even from the films, so as long as I like the look, that's fine.

I still wanted the same sort of look as the rest of the Haradrim, he should clearly belong to the same culture.  I was looking through some of my Frostgrave sprues and realised that the cultists were wearing fairly loose fitting clothes.  I found a suitable head with keffiyeh on the Ghost Archipelago Crewman sprue, and a suitably impressive two handed sword on the Frostgrave Gnolls sprue.  The official mini is unarmoured, but the profile is still Defence 4+, so I went with the torso that I could paint in fancy armour.  Ideally I'd have used different arms, but I couldn't find any others with the relevant sword, so Gnolls it was.  There isn't anything to show that they are non-human.

The guard has the 'Bulky' special rule, represented in the official mini by him being, well, 'chubby'.  The Frostgrave stuff is fractionally larger than most of the MESBG minis, especially if I leave him on his 'broccoli base', so this will have to do.

Now that I've built him I'm thinking about using more of the Cultist sprues to try some of the Watchers of Karna.  Initially I was going to use one of the Assassins, but it might be nice to do something of my own, and, as with the Guard, it doesn't have to be a copy of the GW mini.