Midgard AAR May 2nd Game 2

 

The battlelines are drawn

Orc right flank

Orc defenders

Hilltop defenders

Dwarf attackers

Opening moves

Assault on the hill, while Dwarf scouts harass the advancing Orcs

Midgard AAR May 2nd Game 1

 

So, we had a game day this past Saturday, two groups of players two games, same scenario. In game 1 the Dwarfs were the defenders vs a horde of Orcs. The scenario was too eager and both sides were built on 499 points. This time around I created my own army list, I built the Dwarf army inspired by a Roman army, for the Orcs I upgraded their armour and made the odd other tweek. The two army lists can be found here Midgard army lists The battlefield was largely devoid of terrain save for the large hill at on the Dwarf left flank. The scenario called for the deployment of an advance unit of Dwarfs on the hill with the remainder of the Dwarfs deploying to the right of the hill. Starting at the end of turn 2, the top of the hill grants one reputation at the end of each turn to whichever army controlled it.

The Dwarf commander deployed two elite units supported by a formed crossbow unit 

Orcs deployed in force, focused on the hill

Midgard Heroic Battles AAR from April 26th

 

Orc opening moves completed

So, I changed up the scenario from my 'Badlands' scenario to the official scenario 3; Take the High Ground. Not too much different really the defenders get to stay in place while the attackers have to march across open ground. Like my solo game, the attackers had a tough time trying to achieve their objective, the high ground. Also the defenders start in possession of three salient points that begin to grant bonus reputation at the end of turn three to whoever holds them. It was an uphill struggle for the Orcs!

The two armies were from the rulebook, built on 400 points. It was the first time playing the game for three of the players, but they picked it up pretty fast.

Some Dwarf units take advance positions off the hill

Goblin cavalry continue their flanking move

Orcs  engage in the centre

Orcs won on their right flank and try to turn the Dwarfs but the Orcs loose in the centre

The Dwarf left flank drive back the Orc attackers while Orc units are routed in the centre

The Orcs, while numerically superior were just no match for the Dwarfs. The difference in armour had a major impact. Interestingly the Brittle trait did not have that big an impact on the outcome like I thought it would. Missile fire was not a major factor though the Dwarf cannon inflicted a lot of damage more than than any other missile unit. 

The inability of the Orc commanders to roll their command for movement was a major impediment and stopped them from being a credible threat regarding the salient points. 

Ultimately we found the scenario was not well balanced. the bonus reputation for the salient points all went to the defenders who really just had to hold their ground, all the effort was by the attackers. The Dwarfs had too much reputation, the Orcs were never going to  catch up, and as they lost units they just saw their reputation in tatters. Giving the attackers more points than the defenders may have been a simple solution to the apparent imbalance. 

Nevertheless we had a fun time playing the game.

Midgard Heroic Battles Solo game AAR

 

Orcs and Dwarves form their battle lines. The Dwarf defenders were in a defensive stance primarily on three hills., while the Orc invaders stacked their centre but also deployed troops on both flanks in an attempt to flank the defenders.

Turn 1

The Orcs had deploy on some hills on their own side of the battlefield. Turn one saw them advance into the grasslands between the two ridges. 

Mounted bows advanced into range to harass the Dwarf left flank 

The Orc centre advanced towards their Dwarf counterparts

On the Orc left flank, two units of Orcs with a Mage try to outflank the Dwarf line

For the most part the dwarf army stayed in place, playing the waiting game. On the dwarf right flank one unit was move off the hill to defend against the Orc flanking march.

Midgard Heroic Battles

 

So, we had our first real test of Midgard today. Last week me and Steve hashed out a small battle based on the first scenario, but it was really more of a walk through of the rules rather than a proper game. This weekend I played GM to two other players as we played the first scenario with 300 points a side. We used the sample Orc and Dwarf army lists as it seemed a good place to start.

Orc light wolf cavalry and Ogre bodyguards flanked by rank and file troops

The Dwarven defensive line, scouts on the left flank and massed rank and file in the centre and right flank.

Something old, very old; Some GW Man O War ships

 

Actually, a mix of Man O War and some of the ships from Mighty Empires.

I was inspired to dig these out of storage after watching a game of Galleys & Galleons run by a fellow named Morgan at a recent OMG meeting. The game looked fun enough(more interesting than I thought it would be) and digging these out was no problem. 

The game is by Nic Wright author of many, many games, most notably (to me at least) Fantastic Battles. GG does look to be more versatile than most other naval/fantasy naval games that I have encountered before. Like Fantastic Battles, GG allows you to customize your ships any way you se fit, but it does include sample ships to help you to understand what you are designing. Anyways more talk about the game after I have tried it out. 

The picture above shows nine pirate ships from Mighty Empires and some Empire ships from MoW. I am missing one of the Wolf ship hulls, but I do have the aft deck should it show up.

More Fantastic Battles ruminations

 

So more ideas, not all of them are mine. 

While I have moved away from Warhammer I still have fond memories of some of the quirky rules and effects. So for your consideration here are some quirky ideas mixed in with some ideas that seem somewhat reasonable. 

For the most part they are untested, but we did try the artillery rules, they worked fine. Some like the oblique marching just seem reasonable as do the marching rules (I think maybe Nic talked about that)

Anyways here they are:

New units for Fantastic Battles done (at last)

 

So, two 2 company units of light Dwarf infantry are done. They were actually fun to paint but kept getting shunted aside for other tasks which is why it took so long to complete. In the end I just wanted them off the painting table so flocked them up today.

Again these are going to be fast moving skirmishers.with decent shooting skills. It should make them fairly flexible.

Fantastic Battles spell & relic cards

Here, despite the lack of demand to see them, are my cards for Fantastic Battles. They are in no order and are a mix of spells and relics. 

Disclaimer: I found these images through online searches and was unable to determine if they were copyrighted, hopefully not. At any rate I, perhaps foolishly, thought I would share these, no copyright infringement is intended & if I offend let me know and I shall remove them.

I have found them somewhat useful as all required information is included on the cards. I tried to make the cards visually interesting and the images matching the spell.If you are using character cards you could clip these to those cards to indicate who has what. 

For the spells you would want to record what level any given spell was selected at. I use plastic card sleeves for these cards, so dropping a damage marker into the sleeve is a quick way to record the spell level.  

Anyways, for what it is worth here they are!

 

Fantastic Battles Dwarf vs Goblin April 21 2024

 

Rematch Goblins vs Dwarves

So, with the battlefield still set up, we thought we would have time to play FB and still get in a game of Pulp Ally. However we were delayed in starting the game and just did not have time or the energy for two games. 

This was another stab at a Dwarf army defending against a horde of fast moving Goblins. I acted as ref for the game as neither player was all that familiar with the rules. The armies were 1000 points each and each army had 5 captains, 3 wizards and a Warlord. The dwarven army was made up of my FB purpose based Roman Dwarves (with a couple of WH based hand-gunner units) while the Goblins, for the most part, were on my homemade movement trays.

Fantastic Battles April 04 2024

Deployment after mishap roles. Not much impact on either army, one Dwarf unit suffered -2 Resolve & one wolf rider unit rushed ahead 4BW.

 

Yet another classic match up Dwarf vs Goblin, was played today. This was a game originally planned for last November, but had to be postponed. Thankfully Craig was able to attend this game despite the resurgence of winter! 

War of the Ring latest great game that we have played

 

So, on a dare and a whim we decided to play this game. We probably should not have tried this game without at least one of us having at least glanced at the rules... Well neither of us had played this before nor even opened the rule book so it was a slow slog of a game. First was the challenge of going through the rule book, then quite a lot of prep work to set up the game, then the actual trying to figure out what we should be doing with our faction. It took some time.

There are a lot of options in this game and a lot of variables, enough to wreak havoc on any plans that you might make. The dice determine what actions you can do. Each turn you role a certain amount of dice, the Good side starts with 4 while the Evil side has up to 7 dice but you are allowed to allocate dice towards the hunt (for the one ring) Each dice face has a unique action associated with it but the rub is that you may not always get the results you need right now. The dice actions are resolved one at a time and in alternating order. So even when resolving the dice actions there is a certain amount of strategy as you may want to delay some actions until you see what your opponent has done, but then again hesitate and they may do something that directly impacts on your side. Choices, choices.

Each player also draws 2 event cards each turn. These cards can trigger events, or allow you to recruit more forces or effect the game in some way. They also can be used in combat, the bottom part of the card grants a bonus to your forces when engaged with the enemy. So do you use the card for a special event or save it for battle? Between the cards and the dice we were presented with a wide array of options every turn. 

So it was a slow game as we carefully negotiated our way through the rules and tried to figure out a game plan. We set a time limit for the game (thankfully) as the time just rapidly ticked away. (We also interrupted play for dinner) In the end we called it a game around 12:30 AM. At that point we had a pretty good grasp of the rules and what we wanted to accomplish. 

So, I have said that it was a slow slog but, it was a fun slog too! This game has a very high replay factor going for it. It was always interesting always challenging and always fun!

Check out THIS review by Shut Up & Sit Down for more details, and opinions that I agree with, I think they covered it very well!

Fantastic Battles AAR for Thursday Jan 26th game

 

 Two 1000 point armies, Dwarf vs Orc.

 

Dwarf defenders

Orc attackers

 

Fantastic Battles AAR July 29th game

 

So, a bigger battle this time, Dwarfs (1,500 points) vs a combined army of Orcs (750 points) and Undead (750 points). I must say I much prefer bigger armies, more scope for variety of units. I felt very restricted trying to come up with the small 50 point armies. I had to make far more compromises than I would have liked. 

We tried to try out some experimental rules*, succeeded with some of them, forgot to use others...oh well. We did use the following:

1. March column
   
2. Artillery variables rules
3. Orc Animosity
4. Undead [Racial] Only remembered part of these new rules

 * These experimental rules can be found at the end of this AAR.

The Battlefield

 

Fantastic Battles AAR June 26th 2022 game

 

 

Great gaming weekend!

So two days of gaming this past weekend was a good start. On Saturday I was involved in two board games, The classic Aliens game by Leading Edge and Sentinels of the Multiverse. Both are easy go to, comfort games that have been played a lot and therefore I have a vague recollection of the rules.

In the Aliens game, despite my best effort all my marines, actually made it off the board, although two of them, Hicks and Dietrich, were both wounded. In fact all the marines were able to escape, something that does not happen all that often.

The Sentinels of the Multiverse game saw Sky-Scraper team up with the Sentinels to combat Friction and Ermine. It was a long challenging game that at times looked like we were going to quickly go down in ignominious defeat and then we would suddenly get a reprieve where we were able to recuperate and then reenter the fray. Sky-Scraper found it very difficult to deploy her arsenal of equipment as Friction and ermine were able to destroy any such items almost as quickly as they were deployed. I could never get ahead!

On Sunday we played Fantastic Battles, a game that none of the players had played before. While the original plan was for a very big game the plan was changed to a standard 750 point conflict we me acting as GM.(I had more familiarity with the rules) The game lasted just under 4 hours and unlike many other fantasy games that we have played we were able to finish the game with a decisive winner.

It was great to get the boys back together to roll some dice and swap some tales, overall a good time had by all!

Fantastic Battles a rambling review part 1

 

So, I recently joined the Facebook page for the game Fantastic Battles. You may have noticed that I had posted a brief synopsis of the game, really just my first impressions of it back in February 2021. I liked what I read, but I confess at the time I had some reservations. Well I have recently decided that I would like to start gaming again and that some of that gaming will involve fantasy armies fighting it out. So I pulled out a number of different fantasy games and this one made it to the top of the pile.

Now it may be the lack of gaming in my life, I may not be completely myself, or it may just be that they are not that bad a set of rules but I am interested in them! Your troops are assigned traits, traits that define what they can and cannot do. What traits you select are entirely up to you. There are no preset lists of troops, not preset army lists build what you want to do emulate the type of troops you want to field. There are 50 different traits to use, some are mutually exclusive (for good reason after all you cannot be both fast and slow) but most can just be blended together as you see fit. You can select up to four traits for any given troop, one being used as a racial trait (mindless for undead for example) while the other three slots further define your troops. The racial trait is a nice touch to add some thematic cohesion to your forces. If selected at least 50% of your forces must have that trait/be of that race..

This of course can be both bad and good. Sometimes when confronted with too many choices you can wind up in analysis paralysis. With only being able to choose three there is a certain amount of trade off required you need to select the best traits to represent your vision. But the fact that you are not constrained by someone else's interpretation of how best to define something is a good thing.

To help  you out the author has included sample historical and fantasy army lists as suggestions. Nothing is codified so they really are just suggestions, his idea of how one might build certain units. Technically there is no right or wrong way. So that being said I submit these sketches of what dwarf warriors might look like, some taken from the authors list. I whipped these cards up very quickly more of proof of concept. As such the points may be off but I do think they look nice.