Chicago Skirmish Wargames

Last month we gathered for the second night of our Kings of War Campaign.

There were 3 of us gathered so we settled on a 3-Way battle for control of a town that just happened to already be at one of the only places on our campaign map where our 3 factions could meet. What follows is unfortunately not the thematic narration of the past, but just a brief overview of the course of battle and a lot of pictures:

So the Lady Samira's Debauched Ones  (Michael's Varangur)...

...Lord Perfidion's Night Herrons (Karl's Varangur)...

...and the Boy King Joffery's Lansiters and Barratheons (Mike's Kingdoms of Men) met to vie for the town of Aldium

Having had some experience with 3 way battles we scaled back our army lists slightly and played a simple scenario where victory would be decided by which player had the most forces-determined by the Unit Size (US) stat- in or partially within the Town Square as represented by the grey courtyard in the upper middle of the table. I setup the table as best as I could to provide equal access to the town for each player and provide a slight buffer for the double-flanked middle player, all without sacrificing the look of the battlefield.

The Battle.

After Deployment the forces were arrayed as below:

As usual the first turn was primarily maneuver:

By the second turn combat had been engaged!

It continued through the third:

By Turn 4 Skirmishes were raging on all fronts.

By the beginning of Turn 5 the minor conflicts had been mostly fought through and all factions were pushing forward to the village square:

At the end of the first player of the 6th turn we called it. Lady Samira had failed to get enough units into the town square to take the victory and even if he'd had a perfect turn, Lord Perfidion did not have enough units in range to contest the victory of the Boy King Joffery.

Thus, the Town of Aldium went to Mike and the status of the campaign map is as seen below:

The Campaign results so far are now:

Karl : Night Herons of the Black Crown (Varangur) 1/1/0

Jon: Wardens of the Red Queen (Abyssal Dwarves) 0/1/0

Michael: The Debauched Ones (Varangur) 0/2/0 -

Mike King Joffery's House Baratheon and Lannister (Kingdoms of Men) 2/0/0

Chris: Gravel Wolves (Skirmish war band) 0/1/0

Mattias: Aulrig the Disgraced (Skirmish Warband) 1/0/0

 

A Few Observations.

After the experience of playing La Maisontaal we were much better prepared to adjust the battlefield and the size of forces for a 3-way battle. The game moved along at a good clip and we were able to come to a decisive finish in just over 2 hours. The battle had a nice flow to it and I think it's fair to say that until the beginning of the 5th turn it was still very much a toss-up who would win.

I (Karl) don't think I would have won either way as my generalship isn't top-tier, but I told them from the beginning that the middle position I was a disadvantage and wow, was it true! Despite placing a bit more terrain to the advantage of the middle player (before I knew I would be that player) it was very clear that having two flanks threatened the entire game is a hard hurdle to overcome. I think though that perhaps the only way to solve this would have been to get out my 7x6 table setup and create 3 deployment zones equal distance from each other.  It would have been quite interesting for each player to have access to each other's flanks through the entire battle. Perhaps something to try in the future?

Notably, Mike had added a set of heroes (Wizards I think?) to buff up his infantry units and it was interesting to see how they performed. I didn't feel that they gave him an unfair advantage, but it was beneficial to his force. It seems that within the scope of the Kingdoms of Man list there are some solid synergies that are useful for boosting what doesn't seem at first glance to be an impressive army, but those combinations do not appear to be game-breaking. That's exactly the sort of balance we expect from Kings of War. A few tricks to be gleaned in each army list, but overall it's still a game that seems to reward maneuver (and Mike did maneuver well) and tactics far more than list building.

It has caused me to wonder if I should at least investigate adding some heroes and magic to my Varangur army. Aside from my Dragon (Chimera) breath attack, the army currently has none of either and is all based around blocks of hard-hitting units and rolling lots of dice. This is the rather facile way I've always played KoW and 3 editions in, perhaps it's time for me to grow as a player. We shall see.

Til Next Time,

Karl