Recommendation: Any Wargame Any Time and Master Sight

I was really hoping to be posting some more substantial updates by now, but life has not quite settled back down for me yet, and my free personal time is still quite limited. So instead, I bring you two more recommendations!

Any Wargame Any Time

This channel is on a bit of a roll, playing all sorts of wargames, posting battle reports, and looks to be launching a podcast as well. If you like my blog, you might like this stuff too. You can find their youtube channel here.

I have not caught up with the podcast, but for Kings of War youtube battle reports, Dan was the main player, and mainly playing the Kingdoms of Men, which is what initially caught my eye. Like me, he tends to run some use of Militia regiments and Heroes on Horses. However he is a more "serious" player than I am, taking more hordes and playing around with and relying on probabilities much more consciously than I do, though he has still had some fun and interesting lists, exploring Chariots and Beast Cavalry, neither of which I have played with yet myself. 

In addition to recommending for the content, and the alternative approach to the army, Dan's use of the Captain bear's special mention. The Captain has Rallying 1 and the Master Tactician rule, which lets you redeploy 1d3 units. While the redeploy ability was around in 2nd Edition, and was really intriguing, my MSU style did not mesh well with the ability, and I never had much success with it. As it turns out though, the Captain works nicely with a more typical playstyle, you know, one that utilizes hordes and proper hammers and such. Paraphrasing his words: "The Captain isn't about fooling your opponent. You use the Captain to put them in a lost-lose situation." That is to say: you aren't going to redeploy one wing to the other side of the table in an epic psyche out. Instead, you put down something scary and significant very early - like a Horde of Knights - and dare your opponent to react. The redeploy will let you adjust. If your opponent does react, you can move your threat elsewhere, and their deployment should be a little more awkward. If they don't you can use the redeploy to press your advantage. This usage makes sense, but was hard to actualize with my MSU, where the 1d3 was unreliable, and no single unit was threatening enough to get real use out of the redeploy. In short, the Captain needs threats to play with! I am interested to see more from Any Wargame Any Time in the future!

Master Sight

Adam aka Master Sight is also playing Kings of War, but is even more of a serious player, with his channel focusing more on tournament prep and play. I stumbled upon his Lady of the Lake coverage recently, and really enjoyed it. Right now he too is rocking Kingdoms of Men, and playing them quite effectively. The lists and style have been very interesting to mull over, and he could be worth a look if you enjoy this blog, but want someone more competent fielding the home team armies! You can find his channel here.

Right now, his list has a lot in common with my old lists, fielding some Giants, some Flying Generals, and some Pike Regiments. Like Dan from AWAT, he is also using the Captain, but at least at Lady, was using it more for Rally than redeploy moves. His more interesting list picks have been cheaper hordes of Pole-Arms and Bowmen, some Ballistae, and Heroes on Pegasi.

While all three of these will be interesting threads to pick up in the future, I think the Pegasi Heroes are the thing most worth mentioning about his approach to the army right now. The disrupting Heroes on Horses are good, but the Pegasi Heroes seem to take everything up a notch at the tournament scent. Intrepid fliers jumping your lines doesn't seem to be that common, so swapping the 360-degree charge arc for some scenario-influencing Unit Strength seems well worth the additional cost in those more competitive arenas.

Both players have been delivering some good and interesting games regularly, and give a fellow Kingdoms of Men player a lot to consider! I'd highly recommend checking them out.

Hobby Update: More Herd Rimewings (Scorchwings)

While I did have some posts go up in July, the painting was done a few weeks prior. With packing, moving and then unpacking, my hobbying time was nonexistent from the end of June up to about the middle of August here. A lack of time didn't stop the desire to hobby though, and while the brushes were packed up, I foolishly kept picking up things...  August hasn't slowed down much for me, but I apparently did sit down long enough this last week to get some more Herd Rimewings (Scorchwings) off their sprues and ready for the table!

The new pair.

I picked these up via ebay. At the time, on-the-sprue proved to be the cheapest way to get the 6 additional models I was after. Assembling the kit myself this time around, I am still pretty impressed with these minis. There isn't much by way of extra bits or customizability, I still dig the combination of chaos motifs and overall design riffs of these.

The new pair, again.

The original unit of Rimewings has yet to see the table, but hobbying up another horde's worth still seemed like a safe bet to me. Their versatility is just bonkers on paper. They have good height, good melee stats coupled with a long charge range and TC, plus a decent number of ranged shots, even if these do lack Piercing. Overall they seem like a versatile unit that should help the Herd out. I have some older list ideas to test still, but hope to explore the Rimewings soon!