More Barbarians & Elementals

Managed finally to get some re-enforcements done for my Barbarian Warband. "Fortunately" my campaign warband have been earning so little money for replacements that I had more painting time than expected.

Figures 1,3 and 5 are old Grenadier sculpts (from EM4 in this case) and 2 and 4 are Hasslefree figures "Conran" and "Wolf" respectively.

And also a couple of Wind Elementals:

The right hand one is an old Citadel Elemental whilst the one on the left is a vintage 1979 Ral Partha figure. They have a slight blue wash to them that the camera (or probably more precisely my camera skills) hasn't picked up.

Urban Education

My learning curve at Urban war continues to progress, with the help of two players at my local club (Bill and Ian). After our quick introduction a couple of weeks earlier they had continued to play the following week and we joined up again for another run through. Despite being "a week behind" the experiences and rule book thumbing the previous week were passed on to me. We also ramped up the game a bit to around 250pts and upped the CAL of some of the figures to see what effect the larger game and the extra CAL boosts had.

Play was still slowed but fun. As a pitched battle between 3 forces (Bill - Syntha, Ian - VASA, myself - VASA) we all ended up fighting on two fronts.

Starting force positions. Syntha top left, Ian's VASA top right and my VASA bottom middle (jump troops on roof and Suppressors hiding in the building bottom left to avoid the gravbike!)

Ian tried to push his VASA across the ruined square to take on the Syntha. Lessons we learned: You can die on turn 1, and remember to hide on the furthest side of the wall from you enemy.

With Ian being pinned down by the Syntha in cover, Bill pushes his biomechs with supporting gravbike) towards the slowly advancing Suppressors. Lessons learned: When a group hide in a crowded derelict building watch for shots coming through the door (Biomech firing through 2 doorways nearly caught out a suppressor!)

My jump troops advance up the right flank towards Ian's sniper post. Lessons learned: Being on a roof doesn't necessarily give you LOS all round the building.

After his initial failed push towards the Syntha Ian regrouped with Neura eagerly waiting in overwatch from a window. Lessons learned: A good cal sniper in a good covered vantage point can be deadly, as Bill found out as Neura took out a couple of his Syntha that were heading towards my forces.

Jump troop rooftop assault. Lessons learned: Archangels can be powerful when the suddenly pop up short range, and if expecting an imminent assault it maybe better to be on overwatch and at least get a shot in.

Time ran out due to book flicking and rule discussion. Ian took most losses (we maybe missed a 50% force morale check somewhere) but the last turn was very experimental with forces being pushed into combat to see what they could do and high cal figures rushing around to see how effective using the cal extra actions was (very as it turned out!).

We look forward to the next game, and maybe even a scenario...

SoBH Campaign 3 - Battle 3

Battlefield: Twisted Bow Forrest

Weather:
Scenario: Tainted Copse
Defender: Dwarve

Forces:
New additions marked in purple italics

Dwarves (363 pts):

• Valgen Maest: DWARF COMMANDER 95 Pts, XP: 2
• Falster Vonlyr: ELITE WARRIOR 46 Pts, XP: 2
• Tungdil Sunbeard: ELITE WARRIOR 40 Pts, XP: 0, Quality 3+ Combat 4Short Move, Fearless
• Halgar Snowbeard: WARRIOR 34 Pts, XP: 2
• Rod Grimiron: YOUNG WARRIOR 24 Pts, XP: 2
• Hono Pickbattler: YOUNG WARRIOR 24 Pts, XP:1
• Cerri Crakshot: CROSSBOWMAN 24 Pts, XP: 2
• Slii Shadesmith: THIEF 24 Pts, XP: 1
• Boindel Beaststrider: BEAR CAVALRY 52 Pts, XP: 0 , Quality 3+ Combat 4Normal Move, Mounted

Barbarians (366 pts):

• Ardaric Blackmaul: BARBARIAN COMMANDER 66 Pts, XP: 2
• Ooko: ELEMENTALIST 34 Pts (+ 50 Pts Summoning pool), XP: 2
  Item: Healing Potion
• Erwig Bonetooth: ARCHER 50 Pts, XP: 2
• Totila Roastlaw: ARCHER 50 Pts, XP: 2
• Rodulf Wolfhowl: WARRIOR 36 Pts, XP: 2
• Remos Arcfur: WARRIOR 36 Pts, XP: 1
• Wolfan Silentfoot: SCOUT 44 Pts, XP: 0, Quality 3+ Combat 3
  Stealth, Shooter (Medium)

Setup:

Both warbands started by heading up the table. Quickly the effect of the shifting forest could be seen.

Valgen and his retinue were propelled halfway up the battle ground towards their objective.

The dwarves tried to regroup, with Valgen et al decamping from their "transport".

The Barbarians were now caught in two minds about what to do. With the dwarven force suddenly so far up the table do they go and stop them or try and rush up the ground? Ardaric decided to send in a Fire Elemental and scout to block any quick passage and skirt round the swamp away from his foes. Unfortunately the forest section they found themselves in rotated and they found themselves closer to their own starting postions again!

The Dwarves headed up the table. Snowbeard found himself out on a limb as the forest section drifted back towards his own starting direction.

A mistake in placement left the new barbarian scout exposed, and the bear cavalry rushed into contact.

The woods drifted again, over the floundering humans...

Before the copse Ardaric & co was in swapped up the other end of the table, right on top of one of their foe.

Meanwhile the action was starting to get tasty. Wolfan the scout had decided that the best form of defence was attack. Unfortunately this left him on the ground, with bear fangs drooled over him. Valgen and Falster had decided that there was some fire needing extinguished.

Unfathomed by his sudden predicament, the young dwarf went on the attack and took down Remos.

Meanwhile, Snowbeard suddenly found himself flanked as another forest movement took a twist,

The end finally came for Wolfan to the bear. His first action was to be his last.

But the Dwarves battle against the fire elementals was going less well. Falster was knocked back, and Valgen's attack left him on his back, looking up into a fiery maw.

To save Ardaric the difficult choice of fighting an equal foe, the woods drifted away.

Valgen, once down, got burned and out.

A quick forest move suddenly brought Snowbeard and his left flank battle into the centre of the table, giving him possible help against the barbarians.

But the Dwarves decided, with no time and no chance of exiting the forest, to group together - safety in numbers and the fighting was over.

Battle Outcome: 4 VP each and no exits, so a DRAW!

Free 28mm Mighty Tomes

(or Library furniture Part 1)

The next Fantasy campaign battle (#4) is set in and around a Library with bonus gold for collecting arcane books. So I thought it would be good to produce a few tome objectives for the figures to carry.

I had planned to fold some printed book covers round small pieces of foamcore, but found that the picture(s) I'd planned to print weren't in my saved files (Doh!). But with a quick bit of google-fu I found some free papercraft necronomicon-style paper craft notebooks from Ravensblight.

Technically they are meant to be fun, fullsize notebooks, but printing them at 25% conveniently makes them oversized magic tomes ideal for objective marking at 28mm scale. Some of them even have pre-filled pages!

Urban War Breaks Out

After a busy week I managed to arrange a wee game with Urban War at my local club. There are a few ex 1st Ed players around but arranged with a newer player who, like myself, had some models from a couple of factions painted up but hasn't actually played much. Just to be clear, it is 2nd Ed that we play now.

Syntha take up position

We also had a brand new player at the table which works well as his questions helped cement the rules that we half remembered (or didn't know).

Casualties on both sides

With initial play being understandably slow we didn't manage a full game, but we did enjoy playing our street skirmish. We all agreed that the overwatch element to the rules made the game very interesting, and by a couple of turns in, with models starting to get into position (and a couple of gaps opening up), we had one or two interesting multiple overwatch activations. Sometimes they came to nothing and the original activated model made their actions unhindered, but the turn interruption and dice rolling gave quite an exciting impression to being in a fire-fight with bullets flying around.

With the initial exchange done
the VASA start to come out to play