Impetus Battle Report - Romans vs. Parthians

Two things. First thing. Stu and I finally had our fourth game of Impetus after a month's hiatus and I won. Second thing. Stu won the first three games, but I never took photos, as our units weren't all completely painted and based. Don't the winners write the history books?

We played 400 pts per side, with each army divided into three commands. I tried something different this time, with a faster, more mobile centre to my army, and the legions, archers and light cavalry filling out the two flanks.


The Parthian force deployed in three lines. The battlefield was flanked by terrain, and to compensate, Stu attempted to attack in waves.


The start of the battle from the Partian lines.


The start of the battle; firmament-view


After the armies get mobilized, the Parthian force starts out with disorder in the ranks. A sign of things to come perhaps...

note: the red circles were used to mark disorder, while the green circles were used to mark units on Opportunity.


Battle joins near the lake. Numidian cavalry trade fire with the horse archers.


You can see here that Stu used one command (composed entirely of light horse) to move ahead of the main Parthian army and start harrassing the Roman infantry.


Action heats up on the centre of the field. The photo shows (wise or foolish) my faster centre leaving the slower flanks behind.


A view from the Partian side of things. Notice the group of three cataphracts ready to charge the Roman line. Stu rolled abysmally for charge distances. Two of the cataphract units were left standing in front of the Roman army disordered. The unit that made it rolled nine dice and scored zero hits; yes that's right, none. The Auxilia unit won the combat and drove the heavy horse back.


Right before the fateful charge...


...and then distaster struck. The finest of Parthian's nobility struggled to reform the lines.


The Roman general took advantage of the momentary confusion in the Parthian lines.


After all was said and done, the command lost over half of its VD and routed at the end of the turn.


A shot near the end of the battle from above...


...and from the flank... When the horse archers facing the Roman line were destroyed, the entire army routed, and the Romans were victorious.


Afterthoughts:

The terrain was set up to favour an advancing-line army like mine, and it showed in the outcome. Most of the other battles we've fought were far more open, and gave Stu lots of flanking and sniping opportunities. From now on, we've decided to use the terrain set-up rules in the book and let generalship and the gods decide the rest.

In any event, we both had a great time, and reminded ourselves once again what a fantastic game Impetus is. It's sure worth all of the painting.

Thanks for reading,
JET

Major Victoria Haley - 750 point list for Warmachine

Saturday night past, Ken, Marc, Chris H., and I had the opportunity to play three games of Warmachine/Hordes each. I was too lazy to take photos during the play, and all of the games were great, but I thought I would take some shots of the 750 point list I used against Marc's Cryx list.

Major Victoria Haley w/Squire, Lancers x 2, Centurion, Ironclad, and Defender.


Journeyman Warcaster w/Sentinal


Support units: Chief Mechanik w/Goblin Bodgers x 3, Arlen Strangeways, Stormsmith x 1


The grand total was 15 models at 749 points - quite a low model count by many standards to be sure. However, I've been wanting to try a list like this for some time. The key was Haley's high focus stat and large control area (both improved thanks to the newly-painted squire.) I knew she would be capable of controlling all of those jacks, and it turns out I was right.

Gameplay:

Without photos, I won't go into detail describing the play-by-play, as I think many blog readers are mostly interested in photos and short blurbs. I will say I had an amazing first turn, where Haley cast Domination on both Marc's Deathjack and Harrower. This allowed her to take control of the heavy Cryx jacks, walk them back into the Cryx lines, and take out the Skarlock and the Necrotech. It was quite enjoyable.

The game was very dynamic, and was shaping up to be a big jack brawl in the middle of the table. However, on turn three, Marc forgot to move Skarre, and left her on the hill. Even though her defense was high, Haleys' magic attack score of 8 meant that two arcane bolts found their way home and ended the game.

I wouldn't play this type of list all of the time, but every once and a while it's fun to take all of your big models off of the shelf, put them in one list, and march them across the table towards the enemy.

Thanks for reading,
JET

On the Edge of the Darkwood - Song of Blades and Heroes battle report

Chris and I played a warband engagement and decided to try out some new ideas for the game. Since the first time I played SBH (a week ago solo; look back a few posts - J), I got the feeling it could be used to recreate the storytelling feel of a roleplaying game, while maintaining the competitive feel of a standard wargame. It turns out I was right.

The abandoned tower at the edge of the Darkwood holds great secrets. The plains beyond lie barren and lifeless.


The Random Encounter System:

I wanted to create a simple means to allow our warbands to interact a little with the environment around them. While I was waiting for Chris, I came up with this idea - As other games have done before, designate certain markers or pieces of "searchable terrain." If a model was in base contact with the marker, it could spend one action to search and roll on the table below.

Roll 2D6:
2-4 -- nothing of interest
5-6 -- small treasure (2 VP)
7-11 - roll again:
------ 2-4 - nothing of interest
------ 5-10 - monster (roll D6)
------------ 1-4 - D3 Skeletons
------------ 5-6 - Giant Wolf
------11-12 - large treasure (4 VP)
12 --- magic item (SBH pg 19)


Monsters:

When a monsters were rolled, the models were place on the table. The monsters activated as a third player, so when I failed two rolls, play passed to Chris, two fails for Chris passed to the monsters, and the monsters fail passed back to me. During the monsters activation, we rolled a D3 to determine the number of quality rolls.

If a monster was in base contact with a player model, it used it's successes to attack, and if possible, to perform a powerful attack.

If a monster was one (or less) of its movement distances away from a player model, it used its first success to move into contact with the closest player model, and any remaining successes as above.

If a monster was more than one of its movement distances away from a player model, it used all of its successes to move its full distance in the direction of a scatter die until one of the two conditions above were met OR until it roamed off the table.

A Chaos Dwarf Gunner gets more than he bargained for when searching near the borders of the Darkwood.


Men from the border patrol are surprised by roaming skeletons. Perhaps stories of the tower housing a necromancer are true.


Gro-ghall uses the speed of his mount to ride through the forest and search the temple ruins. We decided that when searching the ruins, a player could roll three dice and choose the two he preferred when consulting the table. It turns out that the ruins had been well picked over by others and contained nothing of interest.


Treasure:

We handled treasure in a very simple manner. If a model found something of value, a marker was placed in base contact for the rest of the game. If the model was defeated in melee combat, to the victor went the spoils. If the model died from a ranged attack, the treasure stayed on the table, and any player model could use an action to pick it up. If the carrying player was alive at the end of the game, the treasure's VP were collected by the warband and added to their total.

A border soldier finds some small golden trinkets buried. The stone must have been the burial mound of an ancient warlord.


Game Highlights:

The game fought was between two opposing warbands; my Chaos Dwarf Hunting Party and Chris's Human Border Patrol Force. The idea was to defeat the opposing warband, but the five "encounter markers" provided some nice distractions, and encouraged models to move about the table.

The human patrol advances toward the river. The Chaos Dwarves have been spotted!


Hans the Steadfast demonstrates his skill at fighting the undead.


Dwarves near the lake, ready to engage the interfering humans.


An overview of the action on the plain. Notice Gro-ghall's absence. He was busy searching the ruined temple.


The human captain gives all present a hands-on lesson in swordsmanship...


... and a Chaos Dwarf Savage returns the sentiment with his warclub, taking the captain down.


In the meantime, Gro-ghall returns from the forest and heads for the battle.


However, the Savage's gruesome kill sends most of the men fleeing towards the warchief.


The border soldiers try to crowd the mighty chieftan. Obviously, the death of their leader has shaken their confidence. The first model's quality roll is a dismal failure.

Finally, the remnants of the humans are driven off, leaving Gro-ghall's hunters victorious!


In closing...

I encourage all of you to try this simple approach to playing Song of Blades and Heroes. My goal is to create a map of the campaign area, and I mean localized, not the size of a continent or anything here. We could easily create a terrain guideline and a different encounter table for each locale on our campaign map. In this way, we could bring the feel of role-playing and storytelling to our table without the need for actual scenarios or a referee.

Thanks for reading,
JET

Human Border Patrol - Song of Blades and Heroes

I had an opportunity to take a few shots of Chris's Empire warband. The models are constructed from GW's newest Empire infantry boxed sets. The warband contains eight models and adds up to 298 points.

Border Patrol (298 points)
Human Leader x 1, Human Soldiers x 5, Human Crossbowmen x 2


Captain - Human Leader (60 points)
Quality: 3+ / Combat: 3 / Special: Leader


Human Soldiers (30 points each)
Quality: 3+ / Combat: 3 / Special: None


Human Crossbowmen (44 points each)
Quality: 3+ / Combat: 3 / Special: Shooter (Long)


About the Models:

Chris painted these in the traditional colours of Nordland in the Empire (GW's Old World, for the WH crew). We are still roughing out our campaign world, and may go with a more generic fantasy setting. If we devise our own, this warband will be the one small spark of human civilization on the map (in an otherwise monster-ridden part of the world.

According to Chris, after the campaign gets underway, all of his models will be named after characters in the Sven Hassel novels.

Finally, as I stated earlier, all of the models are built from GW Empire plastics. However, the captain model is a kit-bash made from Empire infantry body, sword-arm, and shield. The armoured shield-arm is from the Empire militia kit, and the head is a spare Reiksguard knight head.

Thanks for reading,
JET

Chaos Dwarf Warband - Song of Blades and Heroes

After recently purchasing, playing, and falling completely for Song of Blades and Heroes, I decided it was time to make a concerted effort to construct a couple of warbands from my unused miniature collection. I started by using these Chaos Dwarf models to construct a standard size 300 point warband.

Gro-ghall's Hunting Party (300 points)
Chieftan x 1, Savages x 2, Hunters x 3, Gunners x 2


Gro'ghall - Chaos Dwarf Chieftan (92 pts)
Quality: 3+ / Combat: 5 / Special: Mounted, Tough


Chaos Dwarf Savages (40 pts each)
Quality: 3+ / Combat: 4 / Special: Short Move, Savage


Chaos Dwarf Hunters (24 pts each)
Quality: 4+ / Combat: 3 / Short Move, Shooter-medium


Chaos Dwarf Gunners (28 pts each)
Quality: 3+ / Combat: 3 / Short Move, Shooter-short


About the models:

These models were originally built and painted as a chaos dwarf race for my WH40k Lost and the Damned army. The models were fielded as Traitor units, and the rest of the collection displays various types of futuristic pistols, assault weapons, and even act as crew on my vehicles. When I read the SBH rules for the first time, I stumbled upon these on top of the model shelf, abandoned and forgotten.

The models are built primarily from GW's previous incarnation of dwarf models. The various arm and weapon combinations are made by mixing and matching bitz from goblin, catachan, and chaos marauder sprues.

Even though the paintjobs are not that hot, it's great to have an excuse to field these models, and I plan on playing this warband regularly over the next while.

Thanks for reading,
JET