Battle 13: Ankle Biters Unite

Work has been bonkers lately, so I gladly embraced some escapism and played an intro game of Kings of War. The game was to be a group game: me and some Ratkin vs a large host of Undead. I decided to bring the Halflings along, to see what they could do. Here is the list I ran:

Halflings-only is a bit rough for a list. Their “knights” are only Thunderous Charge 1, and they lack any units with Crushing Strength, as well as access to Bane-Chant. Dealing damage was going to be an issue for me. Good charges with the knights had potential, but most of the heavy lifting was going to need to be done by the Halfling Volley Gun, as it has piercing. My general plan with the army was to stick the infantry and volley gun together, and then deploy my cavalry on a flank to try and intercept the enemy.

My Ratkin ally brought his splendidly painted army, though I am hazy on the details of the list. The gist should be a Mutant Rat-Fiend, a Warlock, some regiments of Blight and Shock Troops, and I believe a Crier. I think a magic item was taken to cover the last few points, but I do not know which item.

Our Undead opponent brought a rather legendary army. (Possibly as a result of me forgetting to remind him that I have some undead units sitting around for him to borrow… my bad.) Mhorgoth the Faceless and Lady Ilona, along with an undead ASB let the host, which consisted of a regiment of Skeleton Archers, a regiment of Soul Reaver infantry with Blessing of the Gods, a horde of zombies with the Brew of Strength, a horde of Werewolves, and a Balefire Catapult. Totaling that up, he too likely had another small magic item to cover the difference, though again, I do not know which item.

Long view of most of the table.

When I arrived at the shop, the board was already set up, so we quickly got down to it. Deployment was a bit of a mess, in that we decided to alternate deployments… but also decided that each player would drop something in each round, so that the Undead player didn’t get too obnoxiously out-deployed. The Undead took the center of the field.

The center. Undead left-to-right: Werewolves, Ilona, Soul Reavers, ASB/Catapult, Horde of Zombies, Mhorgoth and Skeleton Archers.

The field had a fair amount of obstacles, which looked like it would serve to funnel the action into corridors and the middle of the map. My early deployments were my knights and mounted halfling ASB on the far left. I figured my ally and I would have a bit of a my-side/your-side thing going on, but that was not the case, and I soon had some rats near my knights and in the center… so my infantry and remaining forces took the other side of the board. As a result of me occupying both flanks.. the pictorial reporting is a little rough, as I spent most of my time on the right flank.

The ranging cavalry quickly found themselves surrounded by a chittering swarm of rat-folk, cut off from the trudging infantry. However the ratkin seemed more interested in eliciting the aid of the halflings than fighting them, and the reason was soon made apparent. Shambling into view on the other side of the grassy field was a large host of undead! With no time to reform into their respective armies, the halflings sounded their war trumpets, falling into line, shoulder to shoulder with the rat-folk…

Turn 1: Ankle Biters

Not wanting to get immediately flanked, the Undead player elected to go second, hoping we would meet him half-way and his large units could slog it out.

The view from the hill. The Halfling ASB forgot his flag.

On the left, the halfling knights took the hill, with some rats in tow, trying to methodically take that flank away from the speedy werewolves. The center, with the regiment of Blight and Mutant simply held, while the halfling braves inched up to occupy the rocky terrain just ahead. The Warlock loosed lightning at the Undead ASB, but the distance was too great, and the slack-jawed skeleton remained untouched.

The Ankle Biters have a cautious center...

Too far away to hit anything, the war machine and archers elected to hold, though the halfling sorcerer inched forward, eager for an opportunity to contribute to the fighting.

Turn 2: Undead

The Undead advanced trying to maintain a line of battle as much as possible. The speedy werewolves repositioned to try and scare off any flanking actions from the Biters’ left flank, while the Balefire Catapult lobs a shot and connects with some Ratkin Shock Troops, dealing 4 damage. A high neve check threatens to route them… but the Crier prevents disaster.

.... almost as cautious as the center of the Undead. 

The Skeleton Archers advance, but find that the stealthy halflings are really hard to hit with all the penalties involved. However, the practiced undead sorcerers bring their skills to bear; and Lady Ilona zaps the Mutant Rat while Mhorgoth does the same to the halfling sorcerer, each suffering 1 damage. Both hold.

Turn 3: Ankle Biters

The halfling sorcerer sped up into the flank of the undead. At this point, I don’t really have a plan for him. I had deployed hoping that something would be gunning for my Archers/Gun, and that I could push it away with Wind Blast. That wasn’t happening, so the vague goal was to get him in the flank this turn, and into the thick of the undead next turn to hopefully mess with things.

Softening up the zombies was an option… but they were supported by two casters, so I figured anything I did to them would be undone in the next turn, so the Archers and Volley Gun unload against the Skeleton Archers, dealing a fair amount of wounds. Following the halfling’s lead, the Ratkin Warlock also shoots at the archers, though the unit holds.

The center of the line stays put, and the left flank continues to inch forward, claiming territory bit by bit while staying outside of the range of the speedy Werewolves.

Turn 4: Undead

The Werewolves again reposition, looking to protect the powerful regiment of Soul Reavers as they move onto the rocky terrain to anchor the undead line. If charged, the Soul Reavers would prove very hard to move from here. The Zombies shamble forward, and two Surges from the legendary casters are aimed at them… but the grasping horde falls far short of connecting with anything.

The Undead approach!

Turn 5: Ankle Biters

The two regiments of halfling braves charge the zombie horde, and the Mutant Rat Fiend follows them in. While the braves hack at the shins, the Mutant lays into the rotting host, and the zombies are obliterated in one go. We discover later that the zombies had the Brew of Strength, so it was really fortunate we were able to take that out in one go. Victorious, the Mutant Rat repositions, and one unit of braves advance while the other falls back to the safety of the rocks.

A crushing multi-charge against the zombies.

Meanwhile, the regiment of Blight advance into the rocks to face the Soul Reavers. I don’t remember if it was a tactical decision not to charge, or if it was a range issue. Regardless, they stopped directly inform of the vampires, taunting them will all that rat blood flowing in their veins…

Unfortunately, the left flank is just too slow to do much. With battle starting in the center, one regiment of knights positions to try to make a break for the balefire catapult next turn, while the other inches forward as well… both units still trying to avoid the larger charge range of the werewolf horde… The rats on the left continue to shuffle around, probably mulling over whether they really want to attack the undead or take the halfling knights from behind…

On the right, the mounted sorcerer gets directly behind the skeleton archers, though is too tired from the quick march to do any casting…. Still, he is around now, and in the thick of the undead as planned. In the coming turns, I’m thinking that he may be able to push away a source of inspiring, or push the werewolves or soul reaves into harm’s way and force an engagement. The ineffectiveness of my left flank is starting to frustrate me… as we have a lot of points tied up there doing nothing.

C'mon guys..

The Volley Gun and Archers take another go at the skeleton archers… though both fail. I don’t think the archers hit at all, and the Volley gun only gets 3 hits/2 wounds. A low nerve check, and the archers stick around for another turn. Shucks.

Turn 6: Undead

Losing their nasty tarpit, the Undead are forced to hastily counter attack. Lady Ilona charges the Mutant Fiend, and will slip 6 damage through.

Before combat... unfortunately

The Werewolves and soul reavers decide to charge the Blight regiment, do an amazing amount of damage, and easily see them off the table. Both undead units victoriously advance.

Mhorgoth zaps the Ratkin Warlock for a few points of damage, and wavers him.

End of turn 6. Not bad for the Undead... though the left flank is starting to wake up.

Turn 7: Ankle Biters

On the right, the halfling archers and volley gun make up for the last turn and really lay into the skeleton archers, dealing over 10 new damage, and routing them.

The mounted halfling sorcerer is just having a rough go contributing to the game. Now, with most fot he undead in combat… I opt to have him push the Balefire Catapult towards the advancing halfling knights. Whoopie.

The Mutant Rat regenerates much of the inflicted by Lady Ilona, and strikes back. One regiment of braves charges the Undead Standard bearer, and slips 3 damage in, though is unable to rout him. The other braves advance and pivot, hoping to somehow get in on the action next turn.

On the left, one unit of knights goes wide, hoping to get to the enemy catapult soon… but they are robbed of the last few inches this turn by the wall. Meanwhile, the last unit of rats slowly swings towards the center...

Sportsmanship claims another victim. Poor Werewolves.

The werewolves are within charge range of the injured Ratkin Shock Troops, which slam into the flank of the hairy beasts. It’s too close to call on the halfling knight regiment, and my opponent graciously suggests a roll off to see if they can charge in too or not. I win the roll and in they go, contributing 8 damage to the fight. The Ratkin also connect, and the werewolves are routed!

Turn 8: Undead

The Undead standard bearer counter charges the halfling braves, but is too busy holding the flag to connect with his single strike.

The braves watch as the Mutant Rat is cut down. It's creepy, so they are kind of glad it's gone, even though it was technically on their side.

Lady Ilona is healed my Mhorgoth, and she and the Soul Reavers charge the Mutant Rat and eviscerate the writhing beast. The Soul Reavers reform to face the finally-advancing left flank of the Ankle Biters, and Lady Ilona reforms to threaten the halfling braves.

The balefire catapult lobs a shot, but misses. The war machine has struggled (well, failed) to hit anything after that first resounding impact.

Turn 9: Ankle Biters

The positioning of the outriding halfling knights is rough. They would clip the edge of the stone wall obstacle… preventing them from moving at the double towards the catapult, and are just of of range for charging. They canter past the wall, and pivot to face the flank of the war machine, getting out of its line of sight. There actions against the enemy artillery have been... underwhelming.

With nothing much to do, the halfling sorcerer pushes the catapult closer to the knights with Wind Blast.

There he is. The super awesome sorcerer everyone has been ignoring all game.

The volley gun and archers fire at Mhorgoth, land some lucky 6 hits and inflict a few wounds, but the master necromancer easily holds against the nuisance.

The halfling braves continue their scrum against the undead standard bearer, again dealing three wounds, but roll just shy of seeing him off the table this turn.

The other regiment of braves spy their chance, and rear-charge the Soul Reavers. Unfortunately the positioning is such that their charge is over the rocks, and they are hindered. Despite rolling lots of 5s… only 3 damage slips through.

The Braves are stoked. A rear charge means lots of Achilles tendons just waiting to be played with!

Other units also charge the Soul Reavers, hoping to bring down the vampires with a hog-pile approach. The halfling knights charge… but are hindered by the other grouping of rocks, and contribute little to the fight.

With the Halflings hindered, the Ratkin Shock troops are left to try and carry the fight, but it is too much to ask. The Soul Reavers hold (on the reroll though, it was close).

Turn 10: Undead

The balefire catapult fires off a last, desperate shot, before the halfling knights can overrun them.

Ilona attacks the flank of the reckless braves, and cuts the halflings down. Meanwhile the Soul Reavers trounce the Shock Troops. A combination of Lifeleech and Heal from Mhorgoth sees them recover most of their damage…

The Undead are clawing their way back, and even the Undead ASB scores a hit against the braves who have been stabbing him, though the halflings hold.

End of the game.

We started the game a bit late, so with the shop starting to wind down for the night, and us not remembering what turn it was, we decide to call the game here as a draw. While I do lack the exact lists… a draw is fairly accurate. The Undead lost about 505 (Archers, Zombies w/ Brew, and Werewolves) and the Ankle Biters lost about 535 (Braves, Mutant Rat, Blight, Shock Troops). Not a bad outing for some rusty players!

Much of the Undead were back in the ground where they belonged: hamstrung by their tiny foes. But their champions still stood tall. Unable to prevail against them or their last contingent of mighty vampire warriors, the short fighters disengaged, fleeing and withdrawing to the safety of their respective burrows, while the necromancers began the tedious and gruesome work or raising a new army…

I am always happy to get a game in, and we all had a good time.

I will concede that it was an odd game though, mostly stemming from a very odd deployment phase. The Ankle Biters deploying 2 for every 1 Undead drop was goofy, but not terrible. I think the Undead player did himself a disservice by deploying in the center... but that may have been due to group dynamics. Turtling isn't fun. The Ankle Biters had our own deployment woes, namely having the rats deploy all willy-nilly. If the two units (and hero) that deployed with my knights had deployed more towards the center instead, nearer the rest of the rats and making a solid battle line, or a line with reserves, I think we could have had far more decisive moves against the Undead, particularly against the Soul Reavers.

I forgot to remind my opponent that my Undead collection was available to him, so I think any of his list’s shortcomings (using legendary heroes; using only a few huge units) can be pinned on me. Downgrading even just those heroes for more units would have served him well I think. Hopefully he has more units next time!

Given my limited understanding of and experience with the Ratkin, I felt my ally brought a good list for game. Likewise, I was happy with what I brought, even if it didn’t perform as well as I would have liked. I attribute the under-performance to user-error. I think playing objectives, or deploying differently would have let the list perform much better. Oh well. I’ll just have to play it again sometime I guess!

Wind Blast: Wind Blast still intrigues me… but this was a horrible test game for it. The split deployment really messed with my general plan for the list, and the sorcerer ended up facing off against nothing I wanted to push around. Putting him with the Knights or even in the center to push the Soul Reavers away/around would have been a far more interesting use of him. I’ll try to do better next time…

Halfling Knights: These were sort of frustrating to use. I felt I had to play very conservatively here to contain the werewolves, and with their little ponies they always seemed to be an inch short of what I needed. I think if I added some Ranger Cavalry or a troop of knights to help screen the larger regiments I could be bolder with them and would probably have more success. Despite the lower speed, they are still cheap light cavalry, and should have been more useful that they were. I’ll have to use them better too.

Halflings overall: As units, they struggle to deal damage, though I think they could be a simple, viable army on their own with some tweaking. I still have tons of models leftover from my original purchases, so I will likely expand the army eventually.

The main goal for the halflings right now though was to have a fun army for me to play for intro games with, and I’d say I nailed that. The halflings were definitely fun to play despite their *ahem* shortcomings, and provided a lot of amusement for us. They also got some nice comments from 40k players at the shop, who dug our game.

It was a good game and a fun evening. Can’t wait for the next game!

Hobby Update: Varangur Monsters

Whenever possible, I like to hobby in batches, gathering up some (hopefully all) the models or units I have that need something done, and then doing it. The biggest con of this approach is that it can take a lot of time to get things finished off, particularly if you have a lot to do, since everything inches towards completion together. Fortunately, I managed to get a little over 1k of Varangur across the finish line recently! Unfortunately, these are the low-hanging fruit. The rest of what I painted up recently is going to be a slog.

Bloodsworn Horde

These dudes have been in-process for about a month. Being a bit lazy, I didn't really want to repaint them, so the red armor stayed. However, they did get a good amount of touching up: repainted cloaks, touched up weapons, and shading effects all around. The banner will likely get something down the line, but I haven't quite decided on what just yet. We'll see.

Hot dang, a horde!

This is the last of the Bloodsworn. I still have a sizable contingent of old Warriors of Chaos models, but I have enough big halberd-like things (mostly Chaos Knight spears or conversions using the Warrior's banner man arm) that the rest of the models will be run as 3 regiments of Sons of Korgaan infantry... which I probably won't get to for a while.

Regiment of Reavers

These guys were originally done up for Warhammer, then converted over into Age of Sigmar. My intent was to do a spawn-themed Tzeentch army, but that project collapsed. These guys managed to get finished up though, so they've been dutifully guarding a shelf for two years. When I went to box them up and make room for other things, I realized I had 11 models... which meant I could field them as a regiment of Reavers, and all I'd need to do was rebase them. Done!

Lots of kitbash conversions here. I liked building these guys back in the day.

They are a bit of an odd unit, in that they are an infantry unit with Thunderous Charge, and a good number of attacks relative to their unit footprint. Provided they can get the charge, they should deliver a lot of damage.They should be pretty versatile, and look like they will be able to be run anywhere I need things to die. Looking forward to seeing these in action!

Monsters!

I've been wanting to add some monsters to the Varangur for a while. They are single models worth over a hundred points each, so they are a nice way of boosting my overall army total for not a lot of effort. Since they are plastics from Reaper Mini, they are also a cheap way to expand the army. Wins all around!

Om nom nom...

The Devourers (Great Worm) ended up being real wins. Not having seen these scaled up against anything else, I was concerned that they might be too small, but they ended up looking great. I painted them up with a light flesh color, then a blue wash to try and get a "chilled" look. The paint job turned out ok (hard to get a good pic of the model's mouth, but you get the idea) and I'd highly recommend the models!



The Cavern Dwellers (Ankheg) models also ended up being really nice too. Paint-wise, I went for a dark blue body with tan plates, and I think the scheme turned out ok. I may give them a blood effect or something down the line (they seem like they are missing something), but they are perfectly fine for now.

These newcomers push me up over 4000 points of Varangur, so the army is coming along nicely!

Hobby WIP: Vacation Edition

I just got back from a splendid little vacation. Being gone a little more than a week, I decided to bring along a box of things to potentially hobby on. As it turned out, I ended up making a ton of progress on a bunch of models across a variety of armies. All told, about 1500 points is now ready for basing. Add to that number the projects that got a little paint, and also the nearly complete Bloodsworn horde I left at home... and close to 2000 points of things will be appearing in the blog as "updates" relatively soon.

Most of the progress. Some KoM Foot Guard got some paint after I snapped this picture.

Most of the progress was due to a curious girlfriend. Near the end of our respite from jobs, we were due to meet up with another couple for some 5e Dungeons and Dragons. As the DM, I kicked around a few character ideas with my girlfriend, as she was new to the game. As a hobbyist, I picked up a few models to potentially represent those ideas. In the end we went with a model from Reaper to for rascal soldier known as Lareo Qindi. While I hobbied on some other things, she set to work on her model, and as she worked, she found that she really liked painting minis.

Lareo and some zombies. Not bad for your first models!

Fortunately, I had brought along just the thing for her to cut her teeth on: Zombies! I picked up a Mantic Horde probably close to two years ago, quickly assembled them... and let them sit in a box since. With the exception of a few test models, she did all the painting work, and did an amazing job. Now, I just need to figure out how to base them... I'll think of something. Anyways, much, much more to come soon!