Conquest day 2

 

Game 4 v Rodney- Kingdoms of Men- Control

Rodney fielded a Kingdom’s of Men army bult around a horde of knights and a horde of pike backed up by a couple  giants, a regiment of foot guard, some mounted scouts, 2 canon, 2 wizards on pegasi (beautifully painted giant eagles)- one with a boom stick and a general on a winged beast. Rodney is another historica player and has conveted some of his armies inot Kingdoms of Men and it looked shrp- I loved his 1980s era Essex knights. 

Rodney’s Archilles heel in our game was his lack of inspiring which would come back to bite him. Having played KoM myself a bit I also hoped to exploit the relatively nerve of his army. Finally, my ogres melt against shooting so I wanted to neutralise his cannons early and then his flyers if possible.

Deployment- what I noticed when looking back at the photos was that I changed my standard deployment anchoring my line at each end with the siege breakers. 

I focused most of my shooting at his cannons on turn 1 wavering one which was destroyed the following turn. I also wavered one of the wizards. I retreated into the forest nd my scouts redeployed closer to my line this turn. 

Rodney redeploys his giants- using them as thicc chaff. 

To get to the knights, not that Iwant to i need to deal with the giants. 

Turn 3, the manovreing continues one cannon down, the other about to go. 

Rodney stuck his pike too far forward and so I charged them with siegebreakers, beserker braves and just to top it off the mammoth in the flank. The pike were crushed. While the scouts and hunters multicahrged one of the giants. 

The knights got a flank charge on the scouts, supported by the genearl on the winged beast. That was about 80 attacks slamming into the goblins but unfortunately Rodney rolled double 1s and the goblins held!

In my turn my seige breakers hit the sknights damaging them then Rodney sidestepped into the Mammoth but didn't kill it. In my turn my shooters finished off the last of the flyers.

In the end the ogres held and mopped up the last few units.  

Another enjoyable game. Rodney had a bit of bad luck- the scouts holding vs the knights for instance but luckily I was able to neutralise the main shootiung threats early. We discussed regiments vs hordes of knights and Rodney had already decided the horde formation is too unweildy. It hits hard when it hits but easily countered and chaffed up and that was the case in this game. Rodney was another enjoyable opponent and I hope he enjoyed the game. 

 Game 5: Push vs Gordon's Dwarves 

Going into the last game godon and I had both won 4 games. He had had a really tough game vs the Northern Alliance army of Paul's but came out on top in the previous game so I hoped I might have a chance. However, history was on his side with him winning 4 of our last 5 games and he definitely has the measure of my dwarves.

I've only played Push once, my plan was to ignore the dwarves deployment as much as I could try to capture the middle objective and carry my own tokens with the siege breakers over half way. Gordon has a tendency to stretch my army and use his mastiffs and brock lord to get flank charges and turn my lines. I wanted to try to create a wedge to get to the centre and across to the far side. Gordon was always going to  outdeploy me and ended up putting his tokens with an Ironclad and had them flanked by two units of brocks, as close to the table edge as possible which was going to be hard to counter. 

Gordon's dwarves

• 2 regiments Ironclad both with throwing dogs,
• 1 troop of mastiffs,
• 2  troops of brock riders
• 2 regiments of brock riders 1 with brew strength, 1 with brew sharpness,
• 2 troop sharp shooters,
• 1 regiment of rangers,
• 1 berserker lord on a brock.
• 1 lord on a beast with blade of the beast slayer,
• 2 ASB 1 with heal 3, 1 with bane chant 2.
• 1 hero or lord on a brock.

I've fought the dwarves on a number of occasions now and really really like the synergy of the list. Apart from the brocks it doesn't look too dangerous on paper but the sharpshooters and rangers snipe away, the mastiffs and lord on a beast works the flanks, as does the standard hero and Gordon sets up his brocks for the game winning charges. 

Not a great shot but you can see Gordon split his brocks and used the hill as cover. 

Turn 1- I redeployed my scouts to support the flank while off to the left just out of shot lurked the mastiffs and the brock lord. I took a bit of shooting from the sharpshooters and rangers but Nom Nom healed most of it. 

The loot tokens were given to the Ironguard on the far right of the screen, welll protected by the brocks and would be very hard for me to counter- well played Gordon. Seeing this my main aim was to get my tokens over the centre line and grab the central token on the way. 

As you can see by my formation there were dangers on both flanks- the general on a brock and mastiffs on the left, brocks on the right.This is the start of turn 3 and the pivotal move which smashed my army. My beserkers had just killed a troop of brock riders and advanced into the hero on a brock (just in front of them). I was happy to sacrifice my beserkers if it meant they would hold up the brock regiment. However Gordon had other ideas. His brocks were just in range of the siege breakers carrying my tokens and by advancing after combat I had given Gordon an unexpected opening. The brock regiment charged past the beserkers, pivoted 90 degrees and hit the corner of the siegebreakers and then aligned to them. An inspired move.  

The brock lord also charged into the flank of the siege breakers and between the two units the siege breakers were cut down and the dwarves grabbed all my tokens.   

Gordon was well and truely in conrol of the game now and next turn he charged Nom Nom with the brocks but somehow Nom Nom held on- this turn I also lost the hunters to shooting thanks to two rolls   on nerve tests of 11 which was a tad unfortunate.

In my turn I tried a cunning ploy of my own to try to salvage something. Nom Nom withdrew 1" and then tried to charge the brock lord in the rear and altohugh there was some cotroversary here as to if there was enough room- it as close we ended up rolling for it and it wasn't to be. Unfortunately this litle incident probably marred the game a bit for us both as we disagreed on the call but in the scheme of things it was close and the dice decided it. In all likelihood Nom Nom wouldn't have done much to help the goblins vs the brock lord anyway. 

Instead Non nom fought the brocks andi tried to kill another unit or two but conceded at the end of turn 5 as there was no way I could capture enough tokens to sway the result. 

Fianl resuult a resounding win to the dwarves.

Gordon had a good plan and executed it well, my plan not so much and getting units tangled by being to close didn't help my casue either but that was the reuslt of the presure being exerted on the flanks. With a small army like mine I did not feel that I could stretch out across the table and survive a brock charge and this allowed Gordon free reign with his objective. 

A wee controversary in the middle there but that is to be expected in a finals game when we were both tired. I was disappointed at the time but hey, its only toy soldiers and even had I managed that move it wouldn't have made a difference to the result. 

Gordon played well all weekend and I knew I was going to struggle to beat the dwarves- and so it proved. Gordon shielded his brocks with the hills and terrain and in the end quite clinically finished off the ogres and was a well deserved winner of the competition. I really do struggle with the dwarves as I said as they stretch my army wide and Gordon then works the angles and flanks nicely. Probably another hero would help to counter some of the threats but we will see.

I will post my post tournament thoughts on my army in the next few days but was really happy with how it perfomed on the table and thoroughly enjoyed the weekend. Gordon, Josh and I had two really good evenings relaxing at an Air B&B and was good to make some new gaming aquaintances and catch up with a number of old ones too.

Craig