Battle Company - Defeat Druzhag!

With their main leaders resting after the previous battle, The Falcon's Honour (minus the Falcon) hear word that an evil goblin who can control beasts is terrorizing the locals and seems to be consolidating a base in some ruins nearby. Eager to prove their worth, the company sets off without The Falcon, The Fang, The Tiger or The Wolf!

I also have a new, very bright, lightbulb which I think has made the colours all a bit funny and for some reason the photos seem a little bit fuzzy, but at least we can see things!

Here is Druzhag, surrounded by evil monsters, two giant spiders and a swarm of giant bats!

And the slightly depleted Falcon's Honour battle company enters only to find that there are some goblins lurking at the top of the way up to the ruins.

The humans all charge forward!

The Haradrim are excellent horseriders and The Hawk spurs his steed up the stony steps and takes on four goblins at once! Rolling double 6s he wins the combat, knocks two to the ground and slays a goblin!

Meanwhile, "The Serpent" trades bowshot with three goblin archers who have scrambled up to the top of the ruins. He misses and their arrows scatter around, one thunking into the statue he is taking refuge behind.

Druzhag lurks around the back of the ruins, biding his time.

The Blademaster climbs up behind the goblins while The Hawk charges forward again and kills two more green goblins!

The goblins all miss their shots at The Blademaster, but The Serpent makes his shot and takes out the first of the goblin archers!

The Hawk and The Blademaster take out the last of the goblins guarding the bridge with ease! My brother rolled sixes in just about every battle of the game!

The bats swarm forward to attack The Serpent, but he beats them back!

Now the bridge is wide open and The Pincer uses his double-shot to hit the two goblin archers at long range, one of them is slain!

The Pincer takes aim and two arrows thunk into the last remaining goblin archer as the humans start to step carefully onto the rickety bridge!

Druzhag casts enrage beast on the green spider as it scurries forward, eyes glowing a menacing red! It paralyses The Hawk and takes him out, then the spider suffers a wound from the after effects of the spell (a strength 10 hit)! The orange spider scurries up The Blademaster and brings his time in this battle to an end as well!

Here you can see Druzhag lurking in the background and The Serpent riding his white horse around towards the back steps.

Druzhag then enrages the bats and they swirl up, flying over to attack the Bearer of the Sunstone and The Fox, enraged by the evil spell the bats win the fight and wound both Harad fighters! The Talon, further along the bridge, uses both of his points of might to take out the green spider.

The Serpent has now galloped around to the back of the ruins, seeing Druzhag hiding up above.

The orange spider has scurried back to keep out of bowshot of the human archers.

Druzhag uses the last of his magic power to enrage the orange spider! It scurries forward, but The Fox takes out the enraged beast with a lot of 6s! Meanwhile, the bats have charged at The Panther. The Pincer shoots into the combat, hits both the bats AND The Panther with his double shot but even with the poison arrows, no wounds are made. The Panther, an arrow now sticking out of the back of his cloak, wins his melee combat, but fails to wound any of the bats.

The Serpent dismounts and tries to climb the rocky slope, but slips back down!

The bats swarm forward over The Panther and this time take him out of the fight! Around the back of the ruins, Ibrahim rolled a one again and still fails to climb the rocky outcrop!

Druzhag is set upon now, but manages to beat back his foe, while The Pincer wounds the bats, shooting into combat again and using his lethal aim and master of poisons the bats are left with just one more wound. The Fox stabs his spear into them and the bats are no more!

Finally Ibrahim walks a little further around the base of the outcrop so he can just walk up instead of trying to climb! He arrives just in time to trap Druzhag from the rear and between the rest of them The Talon and The Fox strike the final blows to clear the evil goblin shaman from the ruins!

Druzhag and his band scurry away to maybe find somewhere else to cause mischief!

And after the battle The Talon gains the Hero Slayer special rule, The Pincer obtains the Fell Sight special rule and everybody is all healed up (except for The Sparrow who is going to miss the next match). Most importantly, The Fang's arm is healed up and he'll be able to use his bow again!

Another Watcher of Karna, impressed by The Blademaster's efforts in this battle, has joined the Company!

Dragon WIP

Just thought I'd better pop on and fill in on what's been going on!
We went away for a week, so not much happened there, and my current project is to put together a model we can use for a Cave Drake or a Dragon...

I really wanted the actual Cave Drake model, but I couldn't find one anywhere in stores or online. This is the Blightfang model and orginally I was going to do it without wings, but my modelling skills weren't up to the task when I saw how big the gaps were going to be and the way it was already sculpted near the wings.

Anyway, I'll do a full report when it's all done. It's getting there, but this is a much bigger model than I'm used to painting!

Here she is next to a goblin warrior for scale.

My son and I were reading a Tolkien Bestiary and saw that there were different types of dragons, including Cold Drakes which were every bit as terrible as others, but for some reason could not breathe fire. 

So my blurry photo of this old skink shows the paint scheme I'm going for...

So far I've done the base and most of the body and head with the wings still to go. Here's the base, you can see some flat sections where the feet will attach.

And I'll leave the teaser at that for now =)

Battle Company Battle Report - Hold the Line 2

Well, after playing Hold the Line with the Harad trying to cross the board, this time we swapped and it was the dwarves turn to try and get across.

The dwarves split into three squads to force the Haradrim to split their forces!

Brynmor led the shielded dwarves up one flank, the archers stayed in the middle to try and snipe horses and Rocky, Boggle, Etako and Freya headed off near the beach.

The Fang shoots and hits Etako, fortunately his fate saves the wound! Rocky is not so fortunate and The Pincer shoots him down.

Freya then takes out The Hawk in melee, dwarven sword and axe out performing the charging horseman and his warspear.

Archie manages to shoot down The Fox!

Turn 3, the Haradrim get priority and the Haradrim spur their horses to attack the dwarves. Freya wins the fight against The Falcon and scores a wound, but fate saves it for the lieutenant of The Falcon's Honour. Etako parries to win his fight and kills The Fang!

In Turn 4, the Haradrim get priority again! They attempt a charge against the shielded dwarves. Diva takes out The Serpent with help from Brynmor while Hilda Trollslayer with backup from Kara's spear wound The Talon twice, fate saves one wound but the other gets through.

Freya uses a throwing axe to take out Sunstone. 

Rhoda the elf takes out The Falcon's horse! He falls flat on his face! For the most part all of the shooting (including the throwing axes) has been pretty poor! Every round I would hit but then roll a 1 or 2 for the wound!

In turn 5 the parties all reposition, all shooting misses and there are no combats. As you can see, the Harad have not fared well. Their usual tactics do not involve taking on dwarves in 1-1 combat, but the scenario this time works well in favour of the dwarves.

In round 6 the dwarves finally get priority, mostly they charge forward towards the other end of the board. The Talon charges in and knocks down Mighty Monty spearing the dwarf and taking him out of the match.

The Pincer shoots Boggle (shooting into combat, hitting the dwarf in the back, rerolling thanks to poison and wounding him - though it is saved by fate). Taking similar risks, The Wolf shoots as well, but the arrow flashes past the dwarf and wounds The Falcon!

Boggle, arrow in his back, smashes down The Falcon with help from Etako.

In round 7 the priority is returned to the Haradrim (who have had priority 5 times so far). Brynmor calls a heroic move to charge The Talon, who uses two points of might to win the fight but fails to wound the high defence dwarves.

Etako parries and takes out The Sparrow while Boggle kills Black Cloak after both a parry and using his blademaster skill! Freya loses her fight, but is not wounded.

In the final rounds the dwarves mop up the surviving Haradrim. Kara Longspear kills The Talon.

Freya's charging axe throw removes The Tiger from the match while Boggle and Etako take out The Wolf...

Before finally dismissing The Pincer and his double shot poison elf bow of nastiness!

At the end of the match, only two dwarves were removed and all the Haradrim were sent home!

We commented many times about how this match-up was a really hard one for the Harad force. They usually like to use their horses and archers to focus on dwarves, but because I sent a squad in each direction they had to split their forces and to top it all off they kept getting priority, which hampers the cavalry as I can counter charge to swarm them.

In other words, the dwarves FINALLY won a game! In fact, when I told my son that my brother was coming over he said "Oh, is he coming over to beat you again?"

With the bazillion xp the dwarves got, Etako got an extra attack, Brynmor got parry, Boggle got an extra point of strength, Freya the iron guard is now a hero in the making (and easily dwarf of the match) and I've saved up enough influence over the last three games to guarantee that I got another vault warden team to cap off my squad at 15 troops.

Unfortunately after that mission, The Falcon, The Tiger and The Wolf will be sitting out the next game! Potentially worse, The Fang got an arm wound, which means he can't shoot his bow! The Fang upgraded to a Keen Eye and The Pincer is now a Master of Poisons.

Battle Companies Battle Report - Hold the Line

This week we were back to The Falcon’s Honour, who were trying to break through a narrow mountain pass held by Etako’s Expeditionaries. We each had one normal troop sitting out so had the same points.

The objective is for the attacker to get a third of their army from one end of the board to the other. The defender has to stop them!

We rolled to see... and the Harad force got to be attackers! Uh-oh, dwarves are a bit slow. But if I could engage them my combat skills might help, and I have three archers now!

We started off quite close to one another, with the dwarves deploying in the center. Arrows and throwing axes all missed until we were quite close to one another in turn 3 when Archie finally got an arrow into The Fox. Etako’s force were concentrating all fire on the horses, knowing that they held the best chance of escaping.

In turn four the dwarves get priority and go to charge at the horses within reach, but The Falcon calls a heroic move! Etako’s also calls one... the die is cast... Etako wins out! The dwarves charge as many horsemen as they can.

As arrows and axes fly, The Fang takes out Archie while Loki perforates the Watcher of Karna!

Coming down the hill, Boggle throws an axe, takes out The Hawk's horse, then he and Diva send the Haradrim out of the fight too. The Falcon is surrounded by Etako, Skodi and Rocky and Skodi hits the man on the horse, but fate is with the human and no damage is done! Freya, the Iron Guard launches an assault at The Pincer and only a lucky fate roll saves him from her flashing blades!

In round 5 the Haradrim take priority! Some begin running (or galloping) away from the dwarves towards the far end of the mountain pass.

Thanks to his special archery skills, The Fang gallops along AND looses a shot that takes out Loki! Rhoda (the elf) misses yet again!

The Falcon shows why he's in charge of an elite battle company as he uses all his skills (including deadly poison) to knock down four dwarves and remove both Rocky and Skodi from the mission!

In round six, priority was key, as the Harad force really needed to break away further. Dwarves won priority! The Falcon uses his second point of might to call another heroic move, this time Boggle counters it... the die rolls... the dwarves win again! 

Rhoda finally finds her elven archery skills and shoots The Sparrow in the back!

Kara Longspear skewers The Wolf over Hilda Trollslayer's shield.

 Meanwhile Freya takes out The Wolf. Boggle dodges the horse hooves and gets a strike in on The Falcon, who has managed to tie up quite a number of dwarves!

In round 7 the Haradrim get the priority, but nothing can save The Falcon who is completely surrounded and falls to Diva after sacrificing himself for the rest of his team.

And the rest of the game plays out as a bizarre chase scene as Brynmor chases after Black Cloak across a board and a half! Finally he manages to both catch up AND wound the Harad archer. All the other Harad force have made it to the board's edge... but did they get four there?

Yes! Each of them gains a bonus point of xp! Yet another Harad victory! We think next time we might play the same mission, but with the opposite roles, just to see if the dwarves can walk that far!

So at the end of the game The Falcon's Honour rolled on the various tables and...
The Falcon gained Terror.
The Talon gained an extra point of might.
The Fang increased his shooting to 3+
The Pincer rolled a 12 on his injury chart, gaining a point of fate and also gained Expert Shot.
The watcher of Karna will miss the next game due to injury.

And here's a photo of the current dwarven battle company. From left to right we have Loki Lightfingers, Mighty Monty, Rocky, Archie Longsight, Brynmor Deepminer, Freya, Etako Ironfist, Skodi Strongarm, Rhoda, Boggle Bootmire, Mighty Monty, Kara Longspear and Hilda Trollslayer.

Etako's Expeditionaries...
Etako gained the special rule for Dwarves (which is useless!)
Brynmor gained an extra point of might.
Boggle gained Parry.
Skodi will miss the next game due to injury but has been promoted to Iron Guard.
Hilda Trollslayer gained an extra attack!