March of the Spider Clan

Emboldened by the acquisition of a whole new hatch of giant spiders and the capture of a mega-spid, His Imperial Arachnidiss King Mighty the First, the goblin formerly known as Soddit the Sneaky, decided to bring civilisation to the stunty lands.

His victorious march down the Great Grey Road, lberating stunty mills and breweries as he went, was somewhat delayed - mainly by the liberation of the breweries - so that the Stunties had time to form a battle line on the plain below their mountain fastness.

Embolded by Stunty ale, Soddit ordered an immediate charge by the crack cavalry formations on the right and centre of his army.

Unfortunately, his wolf rider skirmish line held up the stunty badger riders for about the time it takes a gobbo to scream 'run away' and his crack orange-legs regiment, upon seeing this, somehow confused an order of 'charge ladz' for  'do nowt'.

[I rolled a bleedin' 1 on my first die roll: unfortunately a foretaste of things to come.]

Amazingly the forest gobbo allies on the left flank held their ground against a charge by a giant rock-elemental thingy and a stunty tank. Rumour has it they were too frozen in fear to run away.

Corse it couldn't last.

Soddit discovered that the problem wiv giving gobbos rides so they can get stuck in quicka also means that they can run away fasta.

A couple of rounds of combat and he found himself defending the right flank all on his ownsome.

After careful deliberation, our hero decided to make a tactical withdrawal back to the mega-spid to straighten his line.



Now, no one expects to win wiv a gobbo army but come on! This was embarrassing.

Great Military Disasters - The Liche King in Kings of War

Last week I actually managed to get a game in - my first proper game of Kings of War II against Joe's dwarfs and earth elementals. We both fielded about 1200 pts.

I fielded a Liche King army. I concentrated the weight of my army onto my right wing, intending to refuse my weaker left. So from left to right, front to back we have: regiment of skeleton spear phalanx, regiment of skeleton warriors, regiment of revenant battle cavalry; and in the second rank a skeleton king, troop of skeleton warriors, troop of revenant skeletons.

My left consisted of a regiment of ghouls, a regiment of zombies, a standard bearer to improve their morale and a skull chucker on a hill.

Joe's earth elementals were painted resin models of the Lewis chessmen. This is such a wonderful idea that I shall just have to steal it.

So I duly shambled up in echelon right and had some initial success taking out a unit of elementals - but look how damage markers are building up on my elite revenant units.

At this point, Joe the drawf warlord, sprung his trap and I was well and truly in the doggy do.

I had allowed my units to become to seperated and set myself up for a flank charge from his chariot reserve. Movement in KoW is more flexible than in many of the games I have played and one doubles flank attacks in Kings of War!

My revenant elite and most of my skeletons died: well they were already dead, of course. In desperation I threw my king and Liche Lord into the fray before checking their stats: it turns out Liche Lords have little melee capability.

Woops!

The Liche Lord rapidly accumulated battle damage. He was clearly doomed so I resigned.

He will of course be back, when he has reconstituted his body back in the crypt and raised a few undead.

I enjoyed my game immensely and highly recommend the system.

The world of Mantica.