KoW- Orcs vs Kingdoms of Men

 I popped up to Timaru today and had a game of Kings of War vs my old gaming mate Nigel. Nigel hasn’t played since Onslaught IV in 2023 and was using the force he ran then, so no upgrades from the last couple of years of rules/army list churn. Nigel’s army is beautifully painted by Tony Rippin and has am awesome samurai/ Japanese inspired theme. It is truly breathtaking the detail that Tony has brought out in the miniatures and my army felt decidedly shabby lined up against it (which for orcs isn’t such a bad thing)

His list had roughly:

• 2x foot guard regiments
• 1x Pike horde
• 2x regiments of rifles
• 1x Knight regiment
• 2x giants
• 1x war engine
• 2x assassins
• 1x wizard
• 1x captain
• 1x general  

 

I faced him with 2000pts of my newly finished orcs.

• 1x longax horde with blessing of the gods
•  2x greatax regiments
• 1x troll horde
• 1x giant
• 2x wardrums
• 1x Krudger
• Ulpgar the mad
• Gakamak

To keep things simple we played the invade  mission so the objective was to get more units across the enemies side of the table. 

Deployment

Humans await the orc onslaught

Orcs prepare for war. 

 I won the first turn and with no shooting the orc army surged forward to engage the Samurai.

Nigel threw a giant forward to slow down the trolls, while a combination of rifles, lightning bolt and a war engine pt 8 wounds on the gore riders.  

On the far left flank Nigel sent the footgaurd forward to flank my longax while his pikeblock also advanced. 

In my turn 2 I "closed the door" on the exposed giant with my giant and the Oni giant was destroyed. On the far right of the screen Gakamak has charged the knights, done a few wounds and so prevented them from charging next turn. While in the centre the gore riders charge the rifles and destroy a unit. 

In his turn the second giant charged my giant, rolled maximum number of attacks (+12) so had 20 attacks and did 11 wounds but my giant survived. In the background footguard have attacked the greatax. The assassin and general attack the gore riders near the last surviving rifle regiment. 

Poor Gakamak. The assassin got treble attacks and did 11 wounds before the cavalry got invovled and chpped away with another 4 wounds. The assassin then cut poor Gak's 'ead off.

Turn 4 and things are getting messy. My giant did 6 wounds on Nigel's giant. My longax reformed rather than charge the pike block. My greatax in the centre charged a character (a wizard I think), killed it but ended u half an inch short of slamming into the rifle regiment. My great ax on the right did 5 wounds on the footguard- not enough!

A stunning army! 

A slight mistake here, we forgot the pike were hindered so my longax may have survived without being wavered had we remembered. Oops!

My gore riders get lucky vs the giant when Nigel rolls snake eyes for his nervetest. 

Another close up of Nigel's gorgeous army

Turn 5- the trolls charged the pike block not trealsiing they were pikes and not spears and needed 6s to hit. They caused 2 hits then rolled a double 6 to waver the pikes! In his previous turn Nigel ahd charged the pikes back across half way to do 90 attacks vs a wardrum (lets jsut say we hand waved the dice rolling) and with a waver was now too far out of positon. 

End of trn 6- the great ax have beenw avered agaon, everything else papart from them and the trolls were dead but i had 6 unit strength on Nigel's half. Nigel had 6 US on mine and so it was a draw! 

So there we have it. Nigel's first game in 18 months, my first game with my orcs and a well deserved draw. A very entertaining game and thoroughly enjoyed it. i will try to make it up to Timaru a bit more frequently to give Nigel a game

Craig 

Orcs for Kings of War

 A wee summer project.

I have decided to replace my current orc army with one based n GW models. The initial concept was (is) to run an all mobile Gore Rider force based around 4 regiments of gore riders and some chariots but I  also want to build up my infantry forces as well to run a more balanced combined arms force.

Absolutely love the GW Boar boys models, light years ahead of the mantic gore riders, and have been happily putting together a few infantry regiments as well. I picked up some second hand orcs as well as a boar boys set and have been happily hacking arms off the old monopose 2 hand weapon orcs and adding weapons arms from the orcs boyz mob to make the figures more interesting.

I’ve never actually been a fan of the GW cartoon orcs much preferring the LoTR/Mddle Earth/D&D (1e/2e) orc aesthetics and so wanted to avoid the BAH (boring as hell) Goblin green skinned orc look. Tolkien described orcs as sallow skinned or swarthy so I’ve gone with a a sallow skin tone based on Vallejo Ochre green with a wash of GW Athonian Camoshade to give it a greenish hue which is then  highlighted with yellow ochre. I am quite happy with the way they are turning out

My plan to differentiate infantry units is as follows:

• Great ax- Two hand weapons armed orcs
• Longax: Spear armed orcs
• Ax- axe and shield armed orcs.

 The Gore Rider regiments. The boar boys are large minis and 6 fit on the base comfortably and doesn't look too spares. 

The first infantry regiments- a regiment each of Greatax and Longax. In front are two wardrums which are very importnat for the orcs in KoW to boost their nerve. The wardrum on the left is by Mantic the one of the right made out of some of the second hand mini's I bought for this project. 

A couple of characters on gores lead the gore riders.

The army so far. 

Craig