Kings of War Big Game today at the Mantic Open Day

When Mantic invited us to put on one of our big Kings of War games at the Mantic Open Day I jumped at the chance. It was a great honour to be asked to play Kings of War at the home of the game itself.

Well, today was the day, and myself and twelve other lucky souls turned up at Mantic HQ bright and early. We had access to a 16ft x 6ft table that consumed a huge amount of the space available. By far the largest single game at the open day with over 25,000 points of models on each side.

By opening time at 10:00am we had already started playing and were well into turn 1. Pretty soon the battle lines engaged and troops started to rout. On my flank however the Green Lady and a Unicorn were able to keep healing the three Tree Men I was using to hold back the tide of Jeff's Orcs and Twilight Kin. Further over to the centre Kieran's Dwarves and Ogres were dealing damage to Martin's Undead. Andy's Zulus, Salamanders and Ogres were having quite a few problems with Jonathan's Varangrrrr in the centre. Over on the right flank Ed and Gerald faced off against Justin and Brendan's Undead and Steve's Twilight Kin and Goblins. Though I kept on hearing bad reports of losses from that far flank, whenever I looked over there the battlefield still seemed to be covered generously by the forces of Good.

By 3:30pm we reached the end of turn 6. We checked the available time and decided we didn't have enough to get an extra turn in. On my flank I'd held back and was slowly pushing through the enemy, however there was a fight between my Greater Earth Elemental and Martin's Bone Giant that still had not concluded and as a result the objective was contested at game end

However further towards the centre we'd broken through the enemy lines and taken an objective, holding our own two in that area as well. On the other flank there were two more contested objectives and far, far at the other end Evil had solid control of the last.

With 3-1 in favour of Good we had won the day. Looking over my forces (Nature and Men) I could see that our victory had been relatively cheap for them, with only a handful of units having been routed.

Anyway, here are the photos and a video as well...

"My Kings of War Armies so far" an update for 2016

Back in November 2014, I posted photos of all the Kings of War armies that I'd amassed at that point.

Well it's been 16 months since then and I've been very busy...

To be honest, those are not actually all mine. The Undead at the back are actually Brendan's though I did help him paint them.

Click read more for some close-ups...

After a little break...

3 1/2 months since the last blog post... oops! Sorry!

I guess I got out of the habit of posting for some reason. I'm not entirely sure what, but suffice to say I did continue to Wargame, model, take photos and post them on Facebook, just not on here! So time to make up for the long break with a summary of what happened in that long period of silence.

First up was the large Kings of War game we ran at the Hammerhead show near Newark. This was 14ft by 6ft and had the same models as seen at the Vapnartak show, however this time we had the addition of large force of Twilight Kin and even more of my goody-two-shoes Elves.

Lion Rampant Dark Ages Skirmish

Yesterday I had a trip down to Caliver Books with my friend Ed. Whilst he had a particular purchase in mind I was really going just to see what the place was like. I did however come back with something, a copy of the Osprey Dark Ages skirmish rules "Lion Rampant". I started reading it on the way back home and the snippets I read to Ed made us both quite excited about it.

Anyway, the chance game for a game today, though not against Ed, but instead against my friend Craig. I took along my Normans and Tony's old Vikings and we set up a 24 point a side game. We played on a 4ft x 4ft nicely landscaped table with the addition of my one dark ages building and a selection of trees, bushes, fields and hedges. Following the book's recommendation we played the initial scenario "Bloodbath".

Big Kings of War game at Vapnartak

Today I had the pleasure of putting on a large Kings of War game at Vapnartak along with a couple of friends. It was short notice as we were filling in for a game that couldn't make it, but with things in progress for the game at Hammerhead later in the month we were able to put on a good show.

On a 11ft x 6ft table we used 2 armies of 5,500 pts each. Fighting for Good there was the Dwarves and Elves along with a large contingent of Kings of Men. For Evil we had Orcs, Undead and Nature. We decided on 6 objective markers and used the same scouting system for deployment we used for the game last December. Again that system worked well and gave us an interesting battle line.

COGS Kings of War Big Game Dec 2014

Today was the COGS/GCN bash at the Sanctuary Gaming Centre. We'd been wanting to play a big game for some time and this was our chance. We managed to put together around 9500 points per side with Dwarves, Nature and Men versus Undead, Orcs and Twilight Kin.

Mantic December Painting Oath Progress

Over on the Mantic Madness Facebook page there is a month challenge. At the start of each month members of the group pledge to paint any number of models they choose. As long as the models are going to be used in a Mantic game they can be anything. At the end of the month they must have posted photos of the painted models. If they have they are declared an Oathkeeper, if not they are declared an Oathbreaker.

This month I've been painting 9 Mantic Ogres. As with previous months I was careful to not bite off more than I could manage, but I was quite amazed to get these done as quickly as I have. There seemed to be so much detail. But as usual once I've broken the back of a paint job the remainder flows very quickly to completion.

The Ogres will be used in my Kings of Men army for Kings of War.

Here are a few photos:

My Kings of War Armies so far

So I decided it was about time I saw what all the Kings of War models I've been collecting and painting this year looked like altogether.

To that end I got them all out on the table and took photos.

Note that I have painted most of these this year, except some of the Dwarves, the druids and the cockatrice that were painted in the 90s, some of the Normans that were painted last year, the treeman who is a model used for Lord of the Rings and the Vikings that were painted by my friend Tony Barnes who passed away early this year.

But I've not finished! On my work bench right now are more Norman Infantry. And sitting in boxes dying to painted are even more Normans, Anglo-Saxons, orcs, centaurs, a giant and a griffin. Coming for Christmas are a load of Mantic elves and several boxes of Perry War of the Roses.

Anyway, enough of that... on to the photos!

WAB to DBA/FOG MDF Base Conversion

A little project I've been working on... 

A number of us at COGS now have 28mm ancient/medieval armies based up on the Warhammer standard. i.e. 20mmx20mm bases for infantry and 25mmx50mm for cavalry. However we've been looking at various possible rules we could use them with. At the moment we've been using Kings of War and Warhammer Ancient Battles, but I've been looking around and have seen many other rule sets we could use.

Many are around that use the Warhammer basing standard, War and Conquest, Clash of Empires, etc. The other main standard appears to be that of the WRG systems WRG itself, DBA, DBM and has been used by other systems including Field of Glory. This system works on elements of 60mm base width and varying depth and numbers of figures.