Fantastic Fantastical Fantasy Battles - Kings of War

I think we have mastered the basics of the game, game play and combat mechanisms of this system now. It's al pretty logical really and you can run an online army builder for your force, which will collate all of the unit stats on one sheet, which you can then print off for ease of access.

In this 2,000 point encounter, the rancid Orcs defeated the blue Ogres by concentrating their force in the centre and punching through in dramatic fashion. The Ogres wasted troops on the flanks that didn't really achieve anything.

All in all, Kings of War is a good fun game that provides the ability to try out different tactical ideas, with enough randomness to make battles suitably unpredictable to generate some excitement.

Kings Of War Wargame

Napoleonics - Saxons are blooded for the first time

Napoleonic Saxons made their debut on the gaming table on Monday night, only to suffer a bloody rebuff. They occupied a village, only to be ousted by determined Austrian infantry, then were harried in their retreat by enveloping Austrian hussars and dragoons to both flanks.

A sorry spectacle for these mere novices, but now they have been blooded, I’m sure they can redeem themselves in future tabletop battles.

 Gggh

Monday Club Games - Ancients, SYW and FoW

 Battle of Delium 424BC

A rendition of the notable defeat of the Athenians by the Thebans (at that time allied with Sparta). The actual battle witnessed the first recorded episode of ‘friendly fire’ when The Athenians broke through the Theban allied lines in several points only to encounter and fight one another in the Theban rear - at this time there were few visual indicators of which side you were on! 

The battle also saw clever use by the Theban general - Pagondas - of light troops and a deeper phalanx, to break the Athenian left and swing round to defeat the rest of the Athenian army. The Thebans really were quite the innovators of ancient Hellenistic warfare....

In our refight, the Athenians completely failed to make any impact. They did break a block of Theban allied hoplites in the centre, but had their flanks stripped of light troops and their own elite phalanx was hit in the flank by some Boeotian peltasts and routed.

Seven Years War

Great to see the SYW make an appearance at the club with the French squaring off against the Prussians. Some clever conversions on display. Not sure which rules were played, but I'm sure we will see the SYW represented again in the coming weeks.

Flames of War

Some great tank-on-tank action with Achilles and Churchills squaring up against Panthers and Tigers. Wrong date on the establishment of the club though!

Battle of Freeman's Farm, Saratoga Campaign, 1777

One of the games from Monday night was a refight of Freeman's Farm. We set the troops up on the table, marched them forwards, then started chatting about old times......You know - days at the Raleigh Factory in Nottingham in the 1970s; going to university in Wales; a discussion as to why John Lennon and Paul McCartney insisted on bringing their bloody wives to work; and other important issues. Then, without achieving any result on the tabletop, we put the toys back in the boxes and went home!