Andy's Kingdoms of Men army is almost finished, and we'd promised a game again for some time. For a change I chose to use my DBA/HotT based Barbarians, very suitable for Varangur, one of the new races in Kings of War. The DBA/HotT basing doesn't quite match, but it is close enough for us.
The Varangur is a pseudo celtic race, and I took a warrior horde, two warrior regiments, two regiments of heavy horse and two of light horse (the mounted looked suspiciously Hunnic and Gothic in nature) and a unit of cave trolls (a mammoth proxying for the third troll. There was also a character as general.
Andy's KoM army had a regiment of foot guard, one of spear wall, two of heavy pike, supported by two regiments of those fearsome knights, and three troops of archers. These were lead by a captain and supported by an army standard bearer. Each army was approximately 1500 points.
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| Initial deployment, KoM on the left, Varangur on the right |
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| KoM knights on Andy's right |
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| KoM heavy pike |
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| Tentative advances |
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| The KoM knights rushed forward and hit the lighter Varangur horse... |
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| The lighter horse fled, and the heavier Varangur horse came along to play |
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| First contact - we hadn't realised how effective the Varangur heavy horse were .. ouch |
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| Trolls and heavy horse hit a unit of heavy pike, eliminating the pike |
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| Closing the gap in the centre - the warrior horde closes in |
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| The heavy pike gone .. |
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| argy bargy with the infantry masses in the centre |
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| The trolls are hit a unit of foot guard, and the heavy horse are caught in the flank by a unit of archers |
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| The mad melee of infantry in the centre |
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| The second unit of Varangur heavy horse hits Andy's second unit of knights..and routs it |
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| The other unit of heavy horse hits the foot guard in the flank, and routs it |
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| But the Varangur warrior horde is in turn routed. Gaps are now evident in both armies |
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| The second unit of heavy pike hits a Varangur warrior regiment in the flank.. that was never going to end well for the warriors |
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| Andy turns his left to close in on the Varangur, and claim some loot counters |
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| Not a lot left on the battlefield at this stage... a very bloody affair all round |
The game was 'Loot', and I managed to sneak across in my last turn and capture a third loot counter to Andy's two.. he'd slightly mis-judged and was about a centimetre too far away from his third counter.
We both felt that the game was an honourable draw, but a really exciting game, with lots of laughs.
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| One last close up of one of Andy's knight units. |
So, I managed to make good use of an historical army of 20/25mm figures to create some interesting variety in our games, and visually it didn't look too bad despite the scale difference. The game was 'bloody' in casualty terms, but a really exciting affair which swung backwards and forwards from turn three to turn six. Along with the beers and food overall it was a great evening.
