Chicago Skirmish Wargames

In an unsurprising development, It's taken me a month to get around to putting up a brief overview of our first KoW campaign night. Better late than never...

Being something of a terrain nut I enjoyed quite a bit of fun setting up the tables in preparation for the evening. Modifications were made by the players, but here's the base setup:

An eerie abandoned village was laid out on the skirmish table. This is almost entirely Mattias' terrain set that I call the Blighted Barrow. I think he has a more evocative name that I've forgotten.

Some ancient ruins next to a fortified river crossing:

An important intersection in a pastoral setting:

To start the evening we got a basic introduction to the campaign mechanics from campaign-runner Michael, then we proceeded to select our territories on the map, continuing until we had reached a good amount of the map covered and then conflicts were instigated. The starting positions of the various factions are below on the lovely map that Michael provided:

 

Now a few words and galleries of 3 battles that occurred:

On the far table, I (Karl) and Jon faced off with each vying to control the 6 sections of the board. It was a nice swingy fight and at the end Jon actually had more units in more sections than I. However, when the "US" (Unit strength) the various units in each section was tallied, I had taken the day. Neither of us expected this and it's something we'll have to keep an eye on.

....word has reached us of another battle to the northeast between Perfidion’s, Lord of Chaos, Night Herons of the Black Crown and Queen Dahzail Nakta and her Chaos/Abyssal Dwarfs, The Wardens of the Red Queen.    In a hard fought melee at an important crossroads, the Chaos Dwarves found themselves in less control of the battlefield than they thought and the Night Herons claimed this important supply line. The face of the Border Princes appears to be facing major realignments of power in the region.

 

Mike and Michael were on the main table. Michael included a nice brief play-by play:

The scenario had three objectives to take; these were items that could be carried. The first photo after the map photo is my initial setup. Mike moved quickly and took one or two of the objectives early on in the game. My left flank moved forward to try to capture an objective, but the two units making up the flank were taken out by Mike. I shifted other units to the left flank to hold against any counter attack. I tried attacking in the center and on my right flank. On my right I had units charge across the bridge. Both the center and the right flank had various amounts of success with both of us losing units. Towards the end my units were gaining strength, but Mike had taken the objectives and retreated. He won the scenario, but with retreating he left the section in my hands.

In addition it has been learned that a major battle took place between Samira the Salacious’s ‘The Debauched Ones’ and King Joffrey of the houses Baratheon and Lannister’s Westeros in the abandoned outskirts of the town of Aldium. This was after Samira established herself in lands south of the Old Silk Road. This may be in an attempt to control travel along this trade route. The Debauched Ones held the field after great losses, but King Joffrey’s army retreated in good order with valuable objectives.

 

On the small table Chris and Mattias were fighting a skirmish battle. Per some basic guidelines that Michael had laid out, for a small skirmish battle, the present major factions roll to determine who has "hired" each faction in the skirmish game and a minor reward (a magical item in this case) is given to the major faction whose side wins the skirmish. It's a small thing, but a nice way to include folks who either do not have a full KoW army and/or aren't able to commit to full participation in the campaign. The rules used were Mattias' own homebrew "Ye Dogs and Ye Dust" and he has written up the skirmish battle in his inimitable style...

...Meanwhile rumor reached the war councils of an ancient tomb somewhere in the wastes. Supposedly entombed there was a legendary warrior, along with the legendary blade that was his downfall.

Samira the Salacious dispatched riders to find a band of sellswords brave or foolish enough to attempt to recover the Daemonic Sword. They were lucky enough to happen upon Aulrig (himself a bored prince in exile and in no small measure foolish) and his disgraced retinue. A deal was struck over gold to be exchanged and Aulrig's band set off into the waste.

After many days' search, guided by the wyzard Glendywyr's daemonic consorts, they came to the forgotten vale where stood crumbling the ancient memorial. Unfortunately for Aulrig, there also stood around the base of the tomb an opposing warband, the Gravel Wolves, already pulling the Daemonic blade from it's ancient resting place.

Aulrig gave the order to charge and his armored warriors advanced on the tomb. The strife was great; the mighty knights of both bands opened each other's veins with vicious strikes and fell dying to the primeval stone; Geezer the orc tracker sent arrow after arrow thudding into his foes; arcane lightning sizzled from the sky; and in the carnage it looked like Gravel Wolves were going to escape with the Daemon Sword. But at this dire moment Glendywyr, darkest sorcerer, summoned forth the daemon Z'bthZ'thoth--yea, the very daemon that helped guide him to the tomb--and the remaing Gravel Wolves were forced to abandon the sword and flee. Aulrig, good enough to his word on his best days, delivered the blade to the forces of Slaanesh and collected a bounty that would fuel a fortnight's extravagant revels.

Summary:

So that's the first session of the campaign in the bag! An updated campaign map will be presented in the next campaign post. The simplified win/loss/tie records are as follows:

Karl 1/0/0

Jon 0/1/0

Michael 0/1/0 - Lost, but controls the map section as the opposing side had retreated

Mike 1/0/0 - They also have the magic sword as their sponsored warband won the skirmish

Chris 0/1/0

Mattias 1/0/0

Thanks to all those who participated and especially to Michael for his management of the campaign and for the battle write-ups, pictures and narrative that were provided by other players.

Til next time!

Karl