League of Infamy Kickstarter

Mantic have launched their latest kickstarter to fund a new board game, League of Infamy.
This is a similar game to Dungeon Saga, but with villains infiltrating (in the base game) an elven stronghold to stop a Dracon breeding project.

I played a test game of this at a previous Open Day, and had a great time; being villains, the characters are out for their own reputations as much as the mission goals.

As always, there look to be some stunning minis in the game, and the two expansions currently mentioned feature some of Mantica's (or Pannithor's) less well represented creatures; halflings and some of the Trident Realm creatures for which we currently have no minis.  I'm sure we will eventually see some of these appearing in Vanguard sets, just as Star Saga minis have been packaged for Deadzone.

Here's the campaign page if you want to check it out.

Kings of War Battle - 1250 points Ogres vs Goblins

I've been off on holiday, and although I haven't done any painting, I did get in a battle with Merlin.  One advantage of 15mm is being able to fit a decent sized army into a small box.
Both Merlin and myself have increased the size of our armies since last time they clashed.  (Here are better pictures of my reinforcements).  As is traditional, Merlin, as sort of host (it's complicated; we were up in his neck of the woods, but actually played at the holiday cottage I was staying in), came up with a scenario that continued the storyline we started a while back.

The Battle of Fyngore’s Keep

Krag hawked and spat. Ogres,how he hated them, even though he had only first met any a few weeks ago; that day they had left him bloody and battered. Today he would have his revenge. He glanced up at the giant next to him; Kral Kral Kan would help him gain that revenge. Surely no ogre could stand against the mighty giant and his huge blood soaked club. 

Krag had assembled a mighty goblin host and headed south. His scouts had told him the ogres were camped near the remains of Fyngores Keep, an ancient ruin west of the River Thynn. Now the two armies were close, the ogres, having spotted the goblin army were hurriedly forming ranks. Drums beating, horns blowing, Krag waved his army forward, this was a good day to kill some ogre...

This battle is played as Scenario 6 (p87) from the main rulebook, ‘Kill and Pillage’ with each army totalling 1250 points.

Objective: At the end of the game each side totals the points value of all enemy units they routed. There are also 3 objective markers on the table each worth an extra 125 points to whichever side controls them at the end of the last turn.

To place the markers each player should throw a d6, the highest throw places the first and then alternate until all 3 markers are placed. The markers should be at least 12” apart.

Game Length: 6 turns, then on a d6 throw, 1-3 the game ends, 4-6 play a 7^th and final turn.

Victory goes to the player with the highest points total as long as that total is at least 10% higher than the enemy total, otherwise the game is a draw.

My ogres consisted of a Warlord, a Warlock, a horde of ogre warriors, a horde of warriors with two handed weapons, a horde of berserker braves, a regiment of  red goblins and a regiment of red goblin scouts.

Merlin's goblins consisted of a goblin King (Krag), a giant, a regiment of trolls, a regiment of fleabag riders, a regiment of fleabag sniffs, a troop of mawbeasts, a regiment of sniffs and a regiment of goblin rabble, an army standard bearer with boomstick and Magwa and Joos.

The two armies face off

The goblins advance.  Early bowfire damages the red goblins

The red goblin scouts charge the fleabag riders

Clash of the goblin cavalry with King Krag looking on.

In exchange the goblin king and his fleabag riders attack the scouts. 

Ogre berserkers take advantage of the Potion of Haste to smash into the mawbeasts, wiping them out.  

The goblin spitters loose their bows, but hit nothing, showing them how its done, King Krag and his fleabags finally destroy the red goblin scouts.  The rest of the goblin line smashes into the ogres.  The giant proves completely ineffective, but the trolls and Magwa and Joos cause huge casualties on the warriors with great weapons, wavering them.

The Ogre line takes the charge

The berserkers charge King Krag, barely pausing to trample him, they continue their rampage into the goblin cavalry, finally turning to face the standard bearer.  The Warlock shifts to see the goblin rabble and casts a fireball, singing them, but they hold. The warriors try their hands against the giant, wounding him, but not enough to stop him. The Warlord also charges in, hurting Magwa and Joos, but not severely.

The goblin standard and the spitters face the berserkers and shoot, but are unable to slow them down.  The goblin sniffs. Magwa and Joos and the trolls execute a neat pincer movement on the great weapon wielding ogres, who fall beneath their weapons, the triumphant greenskins then turn to face the diminishing ogre line.  The giant fares a little better against the ogre warriors, but the rabble are unable to hurt the Warlord, even with a flank attack.

The berserkers advance through the swamp, facing the spitters and the goblin standard.  The ogre warriors charge the giant, and pull him to the ground (I have an excuse to use a giant now, I'll say they captured rather than killed him).  The Warlock once again toasts the rabble, while the Warlord makes short work of Magwa and Joos.

The spitters inflict more damage to the Berserkers, but still can't slow them down.  The goblin standard slinks back, fearing what will happen if the berserkers catch him, he is the highest ranking goblin left.  The Sniffs move to get good shots off at the Warlock, but they only do minor wounds.  Not fancying their chances against the Warlord (and hoping the rolls will sort him out), the rabble turn to face the ogre warriors, the trolls do wound him, but not enough to stop him.

Despite charging through the swamp, the berserkers are able to make short work of the spitters, they then turn to face the goblin army, shouting threats at the standard bearer.  The warriors trample the rabble into the ground and then turn towards the remaining goblins, the Warlord hurst the trolls sufficiently to give them pause, and the Warlock's fireballs waver the Sniffs.

Having had the fight knocked out of them, the trolls retreat.  Similarly, the goblin standard bearer decides to run away, as do the sniffs.

Despite the goblins trying to escape, the ogres finish them off, the Standard falls to the berserkers, who run on towards teh trolls, just falling short.  The warriors manage to destroy them unaided.  The Warlock finishes off the sniffs, the air full of the smell of singed fur.

As the dust clears not a goblin remains standing (again, on either side).  The ogres are triumphant.

This was a great fun game. Despite the eventual solid ogre victory, in the early stages the goblins seemed to have the upper hand, with superior shooting, and taking out the Red Goblins and the warriors with great weapons.  The goblin superior numbers looked like they were going to bring victory, but the ogres hung in there.  The berserkers were especially effective, potion of speed giving them a better chance of making those charges, though by the end they were only just hanging in, Merlin was unlucky not to destroy them with his shooting.

I think we both started out thinking of objectives, but towards the end we were just trying to wipe out the enemy, I did make a token effort to move my units towards the objectives in the last turn though.

As there is a new edition of Kings of War due out soon, Merlin and I decided to do something special.  We are thinking about starting a campaign, more closely linked this time, rather than just having a vague linking story and the same names.

We will probably go for Ogres and Goblins, largely since our other armies, Herd and League of Rhordia don't get army lists in the new rule book, we will have to wait for the supplement in a few months.

We are still very much in the planning stage at the moment, and we will have to play a game or two of the new rules first, just to see what has changed.

Kings of War - 15mm Ogres Reinforcements

You've seen my first lot of 15mm Ogres here.  I've now painted enough to field  a legal 500 point force (and then some).  You can see them in their first battle here.

So what's new?  A horde (or two regiments) of Warriors, this time with two handed weapons rather than shields.

One ogre in each regiment is from the older set of Caesar Orcs, can you tell which?

A horde (or two regiments) of Ogre Braves.  These are all from the first set of Orcs.

As well as the ogres, I've been painting some more red goblins.  Some of these are for base decoration for the ogres, but I also got a regiment (or two troops) of Fleabag Riders done.  These are Ral Partha Demonworld again. 
I like the giant fleas, a great touch, and well within the rulebook description of the unit.  I can see them being the source of many bad puns along the 'hop to it' and 'coming up to scratch' variety, apologies in advance. 

The riders are one pose plus a leader, which I have kept as a Biggit on fleabag.

If I get another set I'll do a little converting so that they have a couple of standards, and the newer troops will go in front of these troops to make more obvious command troops.  But that's a while in the future I think.

Next up for the ogres I have some heroes to finish, including an Army Standard that needs a new standard, and at least one more regiment of Red Goblins.  I have also been looking at how to represent the two ogre missile units, I have a few ideas, but nothing I'm quite happy with yet.
Of course I will probably get distracted by a different army soon, so its a good job that 15mm units take relatively little time to finish.

Bones V

Reapers fifth Bones kickstarter launched yesterday, it's already over $1M!

There's some  nice stuff already, check it out here. and it's only going to get better.

D&D Monsters - Let's Hunt (and paint) Some Orc

As you may know, if your a regular reader, I am slowly assembling a collection of monsters to use in D&D.  I've already done kobolds, goblins and hobgoblins, and have some nice Reaper Bones gnolls, ogres and bugbears in progress.  However, I've struggled to find appropriate orc minis for D&D.

When I'm building a collection of D&D monsters I like them to fit the Monster Manual description, or represent the monster as I've altered them.  Correct depiction of equipment is important, as it gives the players visual clues, such as whether it has high strength or dexterity, which in turn might suggest tactics.  A poorly armoured creature that is hard to hit likely has a high dexterity, thus spells and effects that give it a dexterity save are probably not the best option.
It's also important that the miniatures be either already in my collection, or easily obtainable.
Finally, I'm a big fan of both the old WotC prepaints and Reaper bones, simply because of the durability of the figures when dumped in a box at the end of a session.  Hard plastic minis are great for wargaming where they are to some extent protected by their bases (especially if unit based), and I tend to take more care over the storage and transport of my armies, but the roleplaying minis get a fair few knocks.  Metal minis are pretty much out of the running for this reason.  I'll use metal for characters, where they might be better looked after (they have their own section of my D&D minis carry box), but for ordinary monsters, generally I avoid it.

I've looked at using Mantic's orcs, of which I have a load, unsurprisingly.  I've got even more of the Lord of the Rings orcs from GW.  I got the big collection of orcs in Reaper's first Bones kickstarter, and have also bought a few of the smaller orcs they also did in 'Bonesium'.  Finally, I have a fair selection of the WotC prepaints, in the various different designs (some truly horrible) that they experimented with over the years.

Taking each one in turn, the Mantic orcs are nice, but seem over armoured for the description in the monster manual (hide armour, battle axe and javelin).  They do have the right weapons, but I'd have to lose the shields.  Also being hard plastic, they lack the durability I ideally want.

Mantic orc from my Vanguard orcs.  Too heavily armoured (and hard plastic)

The Lord of the Rings orcs are also nice, and have a pleasing variety to them.   Some of them have heavier armour than I would like, and I'd have to do a lot of weapon swaps, and again, they are hard plastic, so less sturdy than I am looking for.  Proof of this is that my box of Mordor has a lot of orcs with half bows or no swords or spear ends.

LotR orc from my Battle Games in Middle Earth armies

The two Reaper orc types have issues with equipment.  The smaller ones have either sword, spear or bow, and are too well armoured.  They also look a bit skinny and feeble for how I imagine orcs. the larger ones are too big, approaching ogre size, though I don't mind my orcs being big.  They have a lot of metal plates or mail for armour, though the plates could be leather (and the Reaper Learn to Paint Kit does exactly this).

Small Reaper orc

Large Reaper orc

The WotC orcs have a lot of variety, but the first design they did, (way back in 2003) has a fairly chunky orc with a scimitar (which they tended to use back in 3rd edition days).  It wears a strange collection of straps, plates that could be leather or metal with studs, and has fine plaited hair.

WotC prepainted orc

I approached the WotC orc as a 'least worst' choice, though it has since grown on me.  It needs a bit of work to fit how I want it to look.  The scimitar is replaced with an axe, and although I have plenty of  spare axes, such as from Mantic orcs or dwarves, I went for something a little more elaborate with the axe from the Mantic salamanders.  This is pinned into place where the scimitar was cut off.  The mini also has an empty scabbard, which I carefully cut off, apart from the top part and belt on my test model.  I had ideas of adding a pouch from green stuff, or perhaps repurposing it to hold javelins.  In the end I decided to leave it as it was on later models and simply add some wire javelins so it looks like a sort of big quiver (is there a special name for a javelin quiver?)

Repainted and re-equipped WotC orc

I'm now at the stage of having four ordinary orcs finished and am working on a few more plus some 'specials'.  That should give me enough for any encounter, but just to make life difficult for myself, for the next adventure I need a handful of orcs that are recognizably orcs, but look different.

Of course, once the adventurers have finished, I might need the following, another WotC prepaint with scimitar swapped for an axe.

WotC prepainted orc skeleton

If you think I might have missed any potential orcs, bearing in mind the conditions above, please let me know in the comments.

D&D Monsters - Into The Sewers

As part of my long term goal of building up a collection of monsters for D&D (and other) roleplaying, I've recently painted some creatures for some encounters that take place in a sewer.
Amongst other nasties, the party have encountered rat swarms, for which I used the rat swarm from Reaper's Bone minis (I believe it was part of their first kickstarter).

Four Reaper rat swarms

And as seen from above

These are nice minis, and there is a surprising amount of detail.  I hadn't realised until I was painting, that the rats are swarming over a skull.  Nice!  The painting was pretty straightforward.  A basecoat/undercoat of VGC Beasty Brown, a highlight dabbed onto each rat body of VGC Leather Brown, then pick out the tails and noses with VMC Dwarf Flesh and paint the skull appropriately.  The whole lot was given a wash of a 50/50 mix of Army Painter Strong and Soft Tone washes, then the base was painted VGC Charcoal Grey.  I did some of the swarms with a few darker coloured rats for variety.

I am tempted to paint up one or two of the WotC pre-painted rat swarms.  These are much bigger, being on a 'Large' base.  I could use the huge swarm and it could split into up to four smaller swarms, dividing hit points between them, and they could join up to form a bigger swarm again, recombining their remaining hit points.

But I wanted something truly impressive for the sewer, and one monster fits the bill.  The Otyugh.
I have a couple of these minis, so I prepared one for repainting, keeping the other to use in case I needed it in a hurry.  Well I got it painted, and it acquitted itself well last session, nearly killing Citronella, the dwarf cleric, before being badly wounded and slinking off to lick it's wounds.  It's also memorable for being the first time the party have really worked well as a team, and they managed to crank out an impressive amount of damage (over 100 points in two rounds).

The original Otyugh with the WotC paint job

My painted Otyugh

The Otyugh wasn't much more complicated to paint, the effect was a series of lighter drybrushes (khaki, bone white) over a basecoat of VGC Earth, followed by a wash of AP 

Strong and Soft Tone wash, then a final drybrush highlight.

Teeth and spikes were picked out, and the creature seems to have patches of some sort.  I initially painted these as bone plates, but didn't like the result, so repainted them a kind of mossy green.  Perhaps something grows on it's body?  Drool was added to the toothy maw with all purpose glue.

I also painted up a group of undead for the later stages of the adventure. 

Firstly a newly painted undead, one of the Reaper translucent bones minis.  All this needed was a green ink wash and the bones painting in, starting with a dark brown then highlighting up to off white. I really like the ghostly effect.

This is a much older mini from the first or second Reaper bones kickstarter.  I painted it last year, but this will be the first time I'll get to use it.  The paint job is similar to the Mantic wraiths I did here.  I'd love to see undead with the armour of this figure using the translucent Bonseium of the first mini.  the ghost pirates in Bones 4 are kind of like that.

If you want to see the tiles I built for the sewers, you can find them here.

EDIT; oopsie, I realise I've already posted the wraith above before.  The pictures here are better though, so I'll keep them in.

Kings of War Battle - 500 points Ogres vs Goblins

I recently got in a couple of games of Kings of War with good pal Merlin.

The first game was a quick 500 point battle with us both trying out new armies.  I used my new ogres and he used his goblins.

As the host Merlin had come up with the scenario, based loosely on one of the ones in the rule book (or in Clash of Kings 2019).

The Rocky Plains of Babdos.

A clash of 500pts between Goblins and Ogres.           Loosely based on Pillage p86.

Games lasts 6 turns, then throw a d6, on a score of 4+ play one last turn.

Brak-na-Hak sniffed the air, he did not like this eerie place of rocks, something was wrong, very wrong. He had been told that the highly prized Claw-foot, a gnarled healing root grew upon the plains of Babdos amidst the strangely formed rock formations that helped make him feel so uneasy. Brak-na-Hak flicked a hand sideways, indicating to his warriors that they should fan out-it was then that he spotted the goblins. It seems the ogres were not the only ones looking for Claw-foot; Brak-na-Hak hefted his axe and grinned an evil grin at the thought of the fight to come.; there would be blood on the rocks this day. 

Set-up: place d2+1 objective markers on the battlefield-these represent the Claw-foot (not in blocking terrain).

Both players roll a die, highest score places the first objective marker, then players alternate placing markers until they are all placed (at least 12” apart). 

Then players throw again, the highest score chooses table edge and places their first unit.

Players then alternate deploying units until both forces are deployed.

Note: The strange rock formations on the Plains of Babdos are all counted as 'blocking terrain' with a height of 4.

Also: The stones have an aura that affects any unit within 3” of them. The stones have witnessed much bloodshed over the years  causing any unit within 3” to gain +1 to their 'Waver' Nerve value.

Objective: To 'control' more objectives at the end of the game than your opponent. To control an objective you must have a unit within 3” of it with no enemy units contesting it.  

Armies
My 500 points of Ogres consisted of;
Brak-na-Hak, Army Standard (I used my painted ogre leader for him)
1 Horde of Ogre Warriors with the Brew of Haste
1 Regiment of Ogre Warriors with two handed weapons
1 Regiment of Red Goblins

Merlin's 500 points of goblins were;
Krag, Goblin Biggit on Fleabag
1 Regiment of Trolls
1 Regiment of Fleabag Riders
1 Regiment of Fleabag Sniffs

The Battle
Here's the battle report, I'm trying a slightly more concise format than my usual wordy one. Please let me know which you prefer in the comments

The rocky plains of Babdos

The goblin's lair (though they attacked from a different table edge)

The armies prepare for battle

The Goblin Host

The Ogre attackers (red goblins can just be seen on the distant hill)

The goblins advance, keen to drive the ogres away

Trolls and fleabag riders accompany Krag the goblin Biggit

The Fleabag sniffs have seized one objective, while an ogre regiment has another

Fleabag riders charge their red goblin cousins

The red goblins hold out (just), but lose the will to fight

Ogre warriors charge the goblins, killing Krag, while Brak-na-Hak slinks through the woods

The fleabag sniffs swing round to try and flank the ogre warriors while the Fleabags finish off the red goblins

Brak-na-Hak charges through the wood to hit them in the flank, but does no damage.  The ogre warrior units make short work of the trolls and then turn to face the remaining goblin units

The sniffs shoot at the approaching ogres, hoping to break the already damaged unit, but do little to keep them at bay.   The Fleabag riders 'mishear' the order to charge the horde and prefer to hold onto their objective, hopeful of holding it against the ogres.

Ogre warriors and Brak-na-Hak make short work of the sniffs, the warriors advancing further to claim an objective.  The horde knocks the fight out of the fleabags, but can't quite wipe them out.

Unable to do attack, the fleabags hold their position, only to be wiped out when the horde next charges them.  Meanwhile the rest of the ogre force ensures it holds the objectives

At the end of the battle not a goblin is left on either side.  The ogres hold all the objectives, and will doubtless be raiding the goblin caves for more slaves.

A great fun battle, the final result doesn't show that I felt it could go either way for the firs few turns.  The Fleabags failing their 'Yellow Bellied' roll and not charging my ogre warriors was a turning point.  The ogres had already taken some damage and might well have been destroyed.

The scenario helped as well.  I think we were all pretty much focused on the objectives, heading to them (hence my deploying the Red Goblins way out on the flank) and we only abandoned objectives if it looked like we could reclaim them.  The effect of the stones was nice too.