Saturday, July 25, 2020

DR Ogres vs Elves


It's been awhile since i've amanged a face to face game so today I took a quick trip to Christchurch for a game of Dragon Rampant today pitting my Ogres of the Northen Wastelands vs Ian's elves.

Ian's elves
Petal- elite foot wizard (10 pts)
2x elven sharp shooters @6 pts each
1x elite elves- @ 6 pts
1x Ent & hurons (greater warbeasts) @ 8pts (cunning defence 5+)

Ogres
1x ogre chief (elite foot) @6pts
2x ogre warriros (bellicose foot) @ 6 pts- shiny armour
2x wargs (lesser warbeasts) @4pts
1x Warg riders @ 4 pts
1x Owlbears (greater warbeasts) @6pts

What do you call a group of owlbears- a hoot.
 

We decided to use a few glory quests, I chose:

  • Half the enemy shall fall to my blades
  • I will make them run

Ian chose

  • I will destroy mre units than I lose
  • Our missiles will rain down upon them


As you can see the shadow of Mordor lies heavy on the land- or in this case shadows from the open garage door.





The Ogre army masses

turn 1, the elves advance whilst the Ent and hurons apparently natter to a couple of hobbits in a tree.

I send the warga on cunning outflanking a=manouvre.

Target #1 a gaggle of elven sharpshooters.

Yep another turn of nattering for the Ents. moving is moot when you roll badly, or is a moot more important so they won't move?

The elves mill around waiting for the onslaught.

Move damn it move. Ian tries to use telepatyhy to will the Ent forward.

Swarming around the woods comes a hoot of owlbears.

And on the other side the ogres look forward to bashing a few elves.

first contact the ogres take on the elte elven warrirors.

Alas the elves slide and dice the ogres who fail their courage test and break,=. first blood to the pointy ears.

howeve, the owlbears hone in on a nice juicy unit of sharpshooters. Woot woot!

A second wave of bellicose ogres charge the elite elves. 

At last the Ents decide the time has come to take part in the battle- but wargs like to play fetch.

The Ent retreat across the river.

Meanwhile the owlbears regroup for a secon go at the elves- and the elite elves are looking a tad, well fragile.

But thanks to their leader are full of pluck and decide to go down fighting

The owlbears continue so slaughter elves though wounds are mounting.

the shadow once mroe falls over the land (well the sun stremaing into the garage on a warm winters afternoon being a pain- sorry about that!).

Once more the Ent and his hurons cross the stream this time sending the wargs packing.

And then there was one- the bellicose ogre is down to only a couple of wounds left.

the elven leader Petal and the Ent are all that are left of the elven force.


The ogre chief decides it is time to step forward and destroy his nemisis, an elvn wizardess Petal and her loyal henchelves. Petal. Really?

Alas, the ogre retreats.

The elven wizardess has lost more than half her force so needs a courage test and promptly flees the field.

Result: 6-1 to the Ogres although they too were badly mauled and the fianl wlbear, ogres and chief all being down to a handful of woidns between them, only my seocnf unit fo wargs being still in fighting condition. 

We both managed to complete one of our quests bu fal the others (I can't quite recall Ianm's third quest).

Thoughts
As with all our games of Dragon Rampant it made for a fast, furious and light hearted game. I really do like the simplicity of the system and the creativity it allows when it comes to force compostion. 36-40 points are probably my sweet spot for the system as it allows for a good varietyof units on table. I am keen to double the numbers and run 2x 36 point commands per side next time we get a chance to have a game.

Sharpshooter was very, very nice on the elves but the elven general at 10 points was proably a bit underwhelming in their impact- wizards are probably a bit too expensive and a wizardling would possibly abe been a better option and if Ian reduced the unit to something like heavy foot he's be able to squeeze in an extra unit. Also it made it a unit that wasn't sure oif it was to sit back and sue spells or better off geting stuck in to combat so see an ption there for Ian to maybe tweak thinbgs a bit.

Ian also had a couple of lovely giant eagle models which did not get on table and would love to see them incorporated in the army sometime in the future.

Shiny armour on bellicose infantry- that upgrade was defintely worth it, armour 3 vs armour 2 made the unit far more resilient than they usually are so was good value for money. I was considering using the Ogres as heavy foot offensive but like the savage nature of bellicose, it suits the ogres temperament.

Possible tweaks
One thought I've had is doubling the base points for units (and also size of the points in the games we play) but keeping the upgrades the same, so a core unit of heavy foot would be 8 points or 10 if the offensive option was taken It would just add a bit more granuality as some of the upgrades do seem more cost effective than others- it might also make light infantry a bit more common in our games.
iaven't given it a whole lot of thought yet but just one of those idea I've been ,ulling over for a while.

Changes to the Ogre army?
I kind of like the up and at 'em nature of it, lots of wild charging goodness- as long as its the ogres, wargs and owlbears on attack all goes well but when forced to defend it is another story. It would be nice to get a spell caster into the army at some point but overall I am fairly happy with it. 

Craig

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Dragon Rampant Ogres


Well, it's been awhile since I've got any gaming in so time to address this. I am planning on popping up to Christchruch next Saturday  hopefully or a game (or two) of Dragon Rampant against my old gaming mate Ian.

No room for subtlety in this army- Ogres from the Northern Wastes

38 point Ogre Army for Dragon Rampant

1x Urakk the Cunning- ogre chief (elite foot)-6pts
3x Ogre Warbands (bellicose foot- shiny armour)- 18pts
1x Owlbears (large warbeasts)-  6pts
2x Warg packs (lesser warbeasts)-  8 pts


 GW Lord of the Rings Wargs
 Wizkids Owbears
 Reaper Bones Ogres

Craig

More D&D Monsters

A few more monsters for our D&D games.

I go a couple of Wizki's owbears- very nice even though I prefer more old school ookng owlbears- no feathers on the fore quarters


an Anmkheg, one of my favourte monsters due to its acid attack. Not 100% happy with this one but it'll do the job. My dark blue highlight didn't work so will redo it at some stage. This model is from  Reaper Bones.

a couple of Wizkids bears- they'll be used as cave bears in my D&D games.

And a gorgon (also a reaper mini).
Craig

Sunday, July 12, 2020

D&D in small town NZ

I've been a bit slack over the last few weeks and haven't done much in the way of gaming related stuff- work, study and a host of other things have been getting in the way. I have been keeping up with our regular weekly D&D games though- nearly 20 years for the main game I run. Nigel and Dale have been along for the ride that entire time and we've had a few players come and go. After a pretty stable line up for the last 7-8 years we've lost a couple of the regulars for various reasons and replaced them with Waimate John and a younger player Daniel. This new line up has gelled pretty damn well and is a bi ore focused than our usual train wreck (er, D&D sessions) but we still have  plenty of laughs which at the end of the day is the main reason I game. 

However, I have recently joined a couple of other games. Caleb, the son of Tony R down at the wargaming club is running a game via discord for a few of us- including Dave and Mike who have stopped our Tuesday game, well for the time being, anyway. Caleb is now back at varsity in Christchurch and so far playing via discord has been working pretty well.

The other game I've joined is a weekly (well, more like fortnightly so far) game down in Oamaru. I joined it as I was looking for something to do during lockdown and as I am down at the bach most weekends thought it would be an opportunity to meet some more gamers. It was run via Roll20 and now we are down to Covid level 1 it is mainly face to face. Most of the gamers in this group are new to gaming being brought into the fold by the 5e resurgence and the online streaming of D&D games. The players bring a lot of enthusiasm to the game and good to see not only new blood but gaming flourishing in small communities like Oamaru.

We've a number of groups gaming here, most of those I know are gaming with our of our regular wargamers and RPGers and stalwart of our Tuesday game (which he nicked named ADHD Tuesday's due to the way we totally screwed up almost every adventure we try- why let the story get in the way of having a laugh at the expense of another player character?) Nigel on various nights of the week, but there are a number of other groups going too. The guys also have a weekly board game night (Friday's) at Nigel's but as I mainly head to the bach after work on Friday I don't get much opportunity to join.

Anyway, the DM in Oamaru, Gavin has recently moved over from Australia. You've got to respect a DM who has a 2ft diameter beholder suspended from the ceiling  in his lounge as well as a mindflayer and a black dragon hanging ftom the wall- picked up from a gaming store that clsoed in Aust apparently. 



As for onlyminiture gaming related stuff I've been involved with in the past few weeks has been painting up a few figures for our role playing games. I got a few drow from Reaper miniatures and have a few other bits and pieces due. It has been interesting to see the new direction WoTC are heading with Drow (and Orcs). I've not really been too involved in the online discussions but there has been a lot of online noise over this by WoTC as they reassess their companies direction due to the current political and social movements.

Anyway just prior to the current furore I ordered a few drow figures from Reaper. They took a few weeks to arrive. I have been thinking about running some underdark adventures at some point (the famous GDQ series of modules are definitely on the radar at present).

I am currently running a 5E adapton of the classic 1E adventure the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.



All going well this may lead us into the Against the Giants series and if that works out an encounter with the drow could be on the cards so time to get a few miniatures...just in case. So lst week I painted up a small selection of drow, a couple of driders and a few spidesr- all Reaper Bones figures.


Craig