Test of Honour Dice tower and terrain.

 Been awhile since my last post, have been busy making and painting stuff. This is my latest terrain piece which doubles as a dice tower. Tested it the other night playing a game of Pandemic and it works really well. I magnetizes the base so I can remove the top Pagoda and use it as a sperate piece of terrain. Due to the warping of the base print, which wasn't to bad I mounted it on a 3mm mdf board and built it up with clay. Now just waiting a few days to dry and then some sanding.

The Battle of Chancellorsville

This month at the South Auckland Gaming club meet, we had arranged a large game of ACW, and a few of the lads were also playing Bolt Action. The normal practice FOG games were dropped due to Battle Cry tournament failing to get organised in time (which is a shame) 

Saul had done an awesome job of organised the scenario, “The Battle of Chancellorsville of May 2,1863.” for us. 

We laid out the large table roughly according to the map and organised sides

Saul and Mark took the Confederates while Brian, Glen and myself ran the Union troops.

 

The battle map

Leo dropped in and lent his models to the union side, but wasn’t able to stay due to other commitment. (Big thanks to Leo as we needed them to balance out the sides)

Setting Up

deployment discussion 

The scenario called for the Union commanders to be running a command of only 7, while the Confederates had commands of 8 and Jackson of 9. Now that's not a big difference ,but it did make the union troops a bit harder to get going. Apparently that was quite accurate for the battle (Which I don’t have a clue about the actual history of t all) but it made for some interesting dice rolls.

Confederates advance

The setup was really different, with the union troops facing all sorts of directions to start with.

I got commander Schurz and the right flank to look after, while Brain took the center and Glen the left flank for the Union deployment

Both Mark and I had a hard time getting our troops to move by failing lots of command checks, in fact I failed 4 turns in a row to move anything. But thankfully the Confederates came into range and I got to shoot up a bunch,while managing to stay mostly intact.

Union troops pushing back the Confederates on the right flank

The game tipped back and forth for awhile and I ground the right flank of Confederates back into the forest all the while Glen on the right flank was getting massacred. Between Brain’s canons and my shooting we broke the right flank and Marks Confederates had to retreat, but the left flank was an all-out brawl which came down to the wire.

The end result was Glen’s troops folded and ran after taking the brunt of the assaults, then Brian's support also took a beating and finally failed breaking the Union army giving the win to the Confederates.

The Confederates push through on the left flank

Great game, although a little frustrating that I couldn't get my troops moving much.

Next month were back into Hail Caesar, so my Greeks get to make a come back to the table. 

Sometimes... The dice just hurt

Jeepers, the last month has blinked by so quick. So today the usual crew of dodgy looking gamers that turned out for the South Auckland club meeting, on a hell freezing day ...well a bloody cold day at least. The hall was a couple of degrees colder than outside.

Some of the lads got stuck into there ACW game (which I'll get round to playing at some stage) While the rest of us played kings of War. So we ended up with four guys playing ECW and 6 playing Kings of War.

First game up I played Glen with his Abyssal army verses my Abyssal's  in a 3000 point brawl. We rolled up the pillage scenario and ended up with 6 objectives on the table. My winter blue themed demons looked great up against Glen's Red Devils on the winter white table.

 The first few rounds were pretty even, and then things slowly tuned against me as my deployment wasn't that great and my inability to hold up my right flank cost me in the late game. The addition of two regiments of Kin Crossbow men was a good choice and they added that extra range that was lacking in my last army list. In end I lost 2-4 and conceded in turn six with Glen holding 4 objectives

I think at 3000 points game, a few less units and having another horde sized unit would help, but overall not a bad result.

Second game Jason and I tried out he Last Stand scenario from the Destiny of Kings. Jason with his Kingdom of men ended up being the defenders as we played out 2500 points.

Jason's Defensive deployment

With Jasons deployment done and his horde of Knights on the table in open ground I was a bit stumped on how to tackle them. So I gambled on my Arch Fiend a horde of Morlochs along with an Efreet. I attached all three sides with my main push up the center on my table edge.

Sometimes... The dice just hurt

The lost Gamble

My gamble with my Arch fiend didnt pay off as Jason rolled magnificently and utterly destroyed my fiend in the first turn with his horde of Knights. My following tun the Morloch's dealt out 10 points of damage, which wasn't enough and subsequently got trotted over by the knights along with my Efreet.

The Gargoyles snack attack

On my other flank however my hell hounds and Gargoyles did lots of mauling and ripped through Jason's archers and a few other units. We ground each other down over the seven turns and ended up with precision played chess maneuvers, each of us trying to eek out a win. In the end it was a draw.

the last stand

It was a really challenging game, the different scenario made both of us really think,which made the game alot of fun. It also really showed how well balanced the army's are.Each with there strengths and weakness.  I can see myself playing KOW for quite along time to come.

Club Day

Club Day: Unfortunately it's not the day you get to go around with a large spiky club and wallop the retard's driving at night with no head lights on...( that's after you point it out to them)

Club Day, a very relaxing day spent with mates rolling dice, talking crap and pushing models around a table. A.K.A The South Auckland Gaming Club, which was on Saturday.

I got stuck into a couple of games of Kings of War while a bunch of the others played some ACW using the Black Powder rules.

First up I got stuck into Phillip's Kingdom of Men with my Twilight Kin (Dark Elves) and Abyssal allies in my first 2000 point game. Which was a really good size, and think it will be a standard for us in the future.

The battle set, the objective markers down for the Pillage Scenario,  lava pools of bubbling death a.k.a impassable terrain, a few obstacles and a couple of forests.

I rush out my horde of Spear men and some other units to take and hold some objectives down teh right flank and center.

My first running of Hell hounds and some squishy Gargoyles, took on some Spearmen on the left flank...ouch...to spiking for them. 

The Dragon Lord and Dark Lord on a Pegasus eat there way across the table.

  

The Dragon manages to survive the first assault from a large horde of spearmen by the skin of his teeth, and then returns the pain tenfold...Nom Nom Nom ...

 A unit of Crossbowmen hold there nerve and an object only just after a few assaults from a hero.

A pretty good win for my list. I've got the hang of the Kin, but my Abyssal command defiantly needs some work. A fun game which went my way with a few critical rolls at the right time. 

My second game I played Jason, also with his Kingdom of Men. It was Jason's second game of KOW so he only had 1000 points and was still learning the rules, so I put together a 1000 point list of my Abyssal I had with me to try them out. (with a unit of Dark elves to make up the points) Which did't do me any favours with the scenario we rolled up. "Dominate"  Didn't take any photos of the game as I got caught up playing and having fun. The game was a rock and roll affair, as I felt like a pincushion as my units got picked of by his bowmen.

My saving grace was the Efreet and a Chroneas .. both 20 attacks. with those two surviving the hale of arrow to wipe out a few units of Jason's, it came down to the last turn with the Chroneas center stage in the open and Jason's Scout riders taking down the huge Chroneas with the last dice roll of the game.  A hard fought battle for both sides and a good win for Jason.

Looking forward to getting the rest of my Abyssal's put together and on the table for some games.

Here's some of the other pictures of the lad's playing the ACW games.They looked awesome on the table, the photos don't do them justice.

Plastic invasion

Yes, so the plastic invasion begins. The problem of buying lost of boxes of new toy soldiers, is you then have to put them all together. With Mark painting like possessed demon at the moment, I'm going to need to crank out all these boys for him to paint rather quickly. Which now I think about it, it's probably good for me to spend less time looking at screens and more time on my hobby.

I also started pulling out the board games at home tonight and actually managed to win a game of Carrcassonne against my wife. I'm certain that my wife will not let that stand for long.