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...

Monsters for Frostgrave and Kings of War

I've just completed few more monsters to add to my collection. Some specifically for use with Frostgrave, some with Kings of War as well.

First of all the "Violent Fungus"...

... then there's the Zombie Trolls...

and finally I realised that I didn't have a Vampire, but I found this old Hammerhead figure in my collection...

"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...

Vapnartak Big Kings of War Game 2016

Last Sunday we (COGS) put on a huge Kings of War game at the Vapnartak wargames show in York.

This had almost 15,000 points of fully painted models per side from 8 people's collections. The models were from loads of different manufacturers with some scratch built and some conversions. There were 11 players taking part.

Some of the models before deployment

The game took place on a 14ft x 6ft table and was an objective marker game similar to Pillage with 9 objectives on the table. We used the Big Game Rules with a change in that deployment was a simultaneous free-for-all after the Patrol Phase had been completed.

On one flank a combined force of Orcs, Undead and Twlight Kin decimated the Elves until only the Elf King's court remained.

Two Dwarf armies and a Nature force held the centre against Kings of men and more Twilight Kin.

On the other flank a combined force of Ogres and Kings of Men destroyed more Undead and a Goblin army.

By turn 6 Evil had taken 4 of the objectives, with good holding 2. The remaining 3 were contested. All agreed to play a 7th turn as we had time.

That was to be a bad decision for Evil as the objectives changed hands. Good ended with 4, Evil 3 and just 2 remained contested.

Victory for the forces of Good!

We'll be running another huge Kings of War game at Hammerhead on Saturday 5th March.

Kings of War Big Game Sanctuary 18th October 2015

What a Day!,,,, 24,400 points of models; 18 foot long table; 8 players!

We played with 6 armies a side. On the Good side we had: Elves, Dwarves (2 armies) and Kings of Men (3 armies). On the Evil side: Orcs, Twilight Kin, Undead, Ogres and Nature (2 armies).

There were 6 objectives on the board to go for.

The battle ebbed and flowed with one side gaining the advantage and then the other. We agreed to play to 7 turns and at the end it was a draw. Each side held two objectives, one objective was contested and the remaining objective had no units near it. Another turn could have given Good a victory.

On November 1st we'll be at Hereward Wargames Show in Peterborough for a refight... Come and say hello, or if you want to help out then contact me in advance!

Brendan's Undead Army. Ready for the Big game next weekend.

We've just finished working on two more units for my son Brendan's Undead army for Kings of War. Another 30 zombies to make the old 1st edition horde up to a 2nd edition legion, and a regiment of revenants.

This will all be ready for the big game we have planned for next weekend at Sanctuary and also the one after on 1st November at the Hereward show in Peterborough.

The Beholder was one of Brendan's birthday presents. I painted up for him with more than my usual care as I knew how much it meant to him. He came up with some rules that we have refined and will be using at the two big games. We wanted something that kept the feel of the original D&D creature. A powerful spell caster, casting multiple spells. Brendan insisted that it should be very hard to kill.

Beholder [1]                                                                       Monster
Unit Size       Sp          Me     Ra     De         At          Ne           Pts
        1             10          4+        -       5+         10         17/21      400

Special
Lightning Bolt (12), Fireball (20), Bane-chant (3), Wind Blast (10), Surge(10), Heal (5),  Multi Spell, Fly, Ensnare, Lifeleech (5), Regeneration (5+), Stealthy, Very Inspiring.                                                                            
Multi spell
The Beholder can cast up to 3 spells in a single turn. Each spell must be different.

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.

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.

Brendan's Undead

My 8-year old son Brendan, has been playing Kings of War with me since I started this time last year.

He wanted an army for himself and chose Undead. For his birthday last May we bought him one of the undead army starter sets and have been adding to that over time.

We've also been painting it. The deal being that I would teach him techniques and do the bits he couldn't, like building the more complex models and painting the details. He's had some part in painting every single model so far except the character models.

The army has now got to a size where it's worth photographing it as a whole. There is a load more to be painted, almost twice as much as this again.

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.

Kings of War Game from a couple of weeks ago

A couple of weeks ago I played a game of Kings of War using my Dark Ages Kings of Men army against my son's Undead horde. Finally I get around to loading the images...

As you can see it's still early days with the painting of his army but what he has got done looks great. I of course helped quite a bit. :)

The game was just a simple "Kill" game without any objectives. In the end we got a draw.

In the first turn my army advances. My knights and Griffon on the left flank counter his Revenant Cavalry and two Spear Phalanx. On the other flank the house produces a bottleneck with the zombie horde proceeding very slowly forward.