The Wizard's Bookshelf

Basilea rides out: first thoughts on the Hegemony in their first game of the new edition

I’ve mentioned a few times over the last couple of years that I was unhappy about my Basileans. There were a lot of minor contributing factors that just meant I lost interest in playing them. A big one of those was that having played a competitive alpha strike list for a while I really wanted to settle into something a bit more thematic and narrative.

In my mind’s eye I’ve always seen Basilean armies being based around their men-at-arms and knights, with the odd Elohi or Phoenix to support. Not only that, but I have a retired priest character, Sha’leis, who had several intriguing adventures at the beginning of third edition who I’d quite like to bring back into the fray. Happily, the new army lists require players to put humans on foot at the heart of your lists, and this appealed.

One of my favourite Mantic models looks at home on her bigger base

Of course, this means I’ve given myself a bit of an uphill struggle from the outset because of the three armies I own, this is the only one that requires units adding in order for me to get it onto the table. It’s also quite battered and has been very unloved for a while. Fortunately, I have a couple of regiments of generic human infantry painted up that meant I could at least field a painted army for my very first game.

Approaching list building

After a brief reading of the rules and watching a couple of battle reports on Death By Dragons I felt that, with the exception of shooting, things hadn’t changed so much that there was a pressing need for me to deviate from the guidelines I’d followed when army building in third edition. Over the past couple of years I’ve found reasonable success by sticking to a rule of thumb where I will only pick a maximum of 4 units that cost 200 points or more, 3 of which should be really punchy. The rest of the army should have a bit of shooting, a bit of healing and a decent number of drops.

For the core I decided to go for a horde of spears and 2 regiments of swordsmen. Yes, this was partly because I had the models painted, but I also think it’s an efficient way to get some bodies on the table and they open up plenty of options in what has traditionally been a fairly elite force. The next choices were 2 troops of Gur Panthers, amazing chaff before and I can’t see them being anything less than that now.

The big hitters were up next. I love knights and in particular the new mounted paladin sculpts, I just need to get them painted. I like what has happened to heavy cavalry in the new edition, I want them to be good, so I decided to start out with 2 regiments, 1 with Sir Jesse’s Boots, and then the iconic Elohi. The angels are now pretty monstrous and will only benefit from having a Brew of Strength. Now I needed to allocate the final points.

Characters went next. I’ve always loved priests, I think they are really versatile support pieces for infantry, and as I mentioned I wanted to get my narrative character back on the table. Support comes best in the form of strength and healing, so Sha’leis took healing and Banechant.

Thematically I think High Paladins are fantastic, and their new stat line is interesting. An additional attack and thunderous charge 2 when on a horse should give him a bit more umph in combat, and I thought his commands would be a helpful source of healing for the mounted paladins, so much so that I decided to provide him with the Banner of Command for extra healing and maybe a shot at elite.

One difficult choice was between the Dictator and the Ogre Palace Guard Captain. I really like the Dictator model and am a massive fan of rallying, however given I was intending to bring a couple of Phoenixes I felt there was quite a lot of healing in the army and rallying was unlikely to add much. The ogre’s better movement and extra point of nerve won out in the end. Finally, after the 2 Phoenixes were added I had enough for a troop of Sisterhood Scouts, which became a requirement to ensure I had the right number of unlocks to have 3 characters and 3 support units.

The first game

This was an interesting kick off as it was against a Dwarf army with a rather large amount of shooting, spread across 17 drops. I’ve never bought into the idea that shooting is not going to be effective, it still has a role, and playing this sort of army I worried shooting might impact my ability to deliver effective charges by wavering units and generally blocking things up.

Fortunately, this didn’t happen because of the sheer volume of healing in the army, but without that healing things would have been very different. My own shooting had a great couple of turns, taking an Ironclad regiment to waver before a troop of Gur Panthers nimbled their way around a wall to deliver the knockout blow with a single extra point of damage.

Sticky combats were easy enough to navigate and felt oddly familiar. I tried out a withdraw movement that led to a Gur Panther troop routing but allowed the Elohi to execute a flank charge on another Dwarf regiment. All in all, I was pretty happy with my list. The Elohi carved their way through 2 regiments of Shieldbreakers, 1 troop of Sharpshooters (which took 2 turns with the obligatory double 1 on the first nerve test) and 1 regiment of Ironclad.

The Phoenixes were also brilliant, impossible to shift and utterly annoying. I also thought the High Paladin put some fantastic work in turning the mounted paladins into a damage sponge. In fact, so resilient was the army that I only lost 1 troop of Gur Panthers to my opponent’s forces, whilst I deleted 11 out of his 17 units. Unfortunately, a poor decision on charges (made by me) gave him the all-important scenario victory.

It was a massively fun game, with only two slight issues that were both army related. The first was the elite command order, which was hard to get off. Despite having a character with 4 command dice I only managed to bring it into play once, and that was a lucky roll from the Ogre Captain. My issue with this is simply that it makes the command unreliable, which is a bit frustrating. The other issue was with the heavy cavalry, whilst the additional attacks and thunderous charge make it appealing, the impact of being hindered feels like a much bigger punishment. I’m going to stick with my paladins with the boots, but I am going to give some thought to swapping the other regiment out for Ogre Palace Guard.

I’ve provided some pictures from the game, but none from the army, as I intend to refresh the entire thing, possible with a view to taking it to Clash of Kings in September, so there’ll be plenty of time to share progress in later posts.

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The Last Moon: a Kings of War tournament report

Last Saturday the final third edition tournament for Kings of War took place in Bristol. It’s been an absolutely fantastic few years and now the rules and army lists for fourth edition are out in the world it was great to give the edition a final send off. Having started to work through the new army lists I decided my rats would get the honour of playing the final games. There’s quite a lot changing, mechanics-wise, for rats in fourth edition so I wanted to savour the joys of plague pots and multiple sources of rally before it all disappears.

I took the same list I’ve used for most of this year it’s been that enjoyable. The one thing I did notice this time around was that it still included a white command dice, completely irrelevant now. There wasn’t much to be done with twenty points, so I added Sir Jesse’s Boots to one of my Shock Troop hordes (which I failed to use in the first two games as my elites were in the wrong places) and Fire Oil to my Scurriers (that actually managed to do one wound on a regenerating unit that I may have been far too excited about).

Playing this list has been really fun and through it I think I’ve found the sort of play style that works best for me. Having a mass of rats that push forward to claim objectives whilst around them nimble characters and war engine teams cause chaos has become the order of the day. I’m hoping it’s an approach I don’t have to change too much in the coming days.

The first game was against a classic third edition Elven shooting list. Shooting is changing quite a bit in fourth edition, and I get why. I haven’t played against loads of these types of lists, by when I do there’s always a feeling of trepidation. The match up feels a little one-sided, loads of mobile shooting against quite slow-moving infantry with short ranged guns. The scenario went in my favour though, we were playing Invade, which meant my opponent needed to move units forward, so couldn’t keep moving his archers backwards to keep my troops at arm’s length for as long as possible.

The game started predictably enough with the elves shooting off my warrior horde in the first turn! Not a great experience. I would go on to lose the Vermintide and a Brute Enforcer before I could get stuck into the Elves properly. I’d deployed all of my troops on my left flank, whilst the bulk of the Elves ranged from the centre to my right. Only the dragon and a regiment of Gladestalkers challenged me for the left. In the second turn the dragon charged my Mutant Rat Fiend, which resulted in the dragon getting flank charged and routed by Shock Troops, whilst my spear horde dealt with the Gladestalkers. It was a great moment to have a couple of units over the centre line and some safe space for them away from the main battle, but the bulk of the enemy still needed to be dealt with.

As my battleline crept forward towards the centre the surviving Brute Enforcer managed to stop one of the Sea Guard hordes shooting. As the Elves were also trying to get units across into my half of the table to score, their ranged attacks were watered down, allowing me to get more units into charge range. An attempt to slow my advance by the Drakon Riders was firmly rebuffed and combat started to be joined in earnest. One of the Sea Guard hordes went down, the two charioteers were both lost, and the Stormwind Cavalry were pulled apart by Shock Troops. Despite them retaining three of their units, Silverbreeze, Gladestalkers and Seaguard, the Elves weren’t able to do enough damage to the remaining blocks of rats or their Brood Mother resulting in a win for the rats.

Game two was against the Twilight Kin and the scenario was Fool’s Gold. This is quite a familiar match up for me and pretty much sums up 2024 where I was regularly playing against these fiends and found myself facing off against them no less than three times at Clash of Kings.

These Elves were the defensive sort, with a lot of ensnare and defence six. With a meagre defence of four and low melee stats rats really don’t like grinding with the kin. That meant having to be a bit cagey. Although I wouldn’t say I have a lot of shooting, what I have can be pretty reliably game changing, and since my opponent’s shooting was significantly less than mine, I decided to lead with the guns. Over the course of the first three turns the Scurriers and War Engine Teams wore down the enemy on my right flank, allowing me to secure four points worth of objectives and take a lead. However, the Impalers had formed a solid line across the centre, blocking access the objective that would make the game either a win or a draw for the rats.

Knowing how tough they can be I wasn’t keen on the idea of rushing into a straight fight with them, highly unratlike. The turns kept going though and eventually I knew I would have to face them. Fortunately, by then a cunning plan had been formulated and an opportunity was opening. Shooting had knocked a few wounds off one unit, whilst the other remained undamaged. Cunning manoeuvring managed to allow me to get a Shock Troop horde into the damaged unit and the War Engine Teams in a place where they could shoot into the side of the undamaged unit, avoiding their big shields. A bunch of dice rolls later and neither unit remained. My Shock Troops then ran forward to claim the objective the Impalers had been holding.

Now it was the Twilight Kin’s turn to unleash their own shenanigans. Pre-empting the carnage in the centre the remaining Soulflayers had made their way back in from my left flank and now unleashed a windblast to push my Shock Troops away from their scoring position. The sneaky tactic worked, but in their delight in their underhand strategy, the sort of thing that noble Ratkin would never stoop to, they overlooked an opportunity to move the Soulflayers onto the objective to claim it, denying them a chance at a draw and letting my Rats steal the win. Karma.

My final game of the day, and the edition, was against the cunning Jon Gunns and his menagerie of aberrations from the Abyss. I’ve played a couple of versions of this list (although not piloted by Jon) and know exactly how hard it can hit. It can clear out hordes of rats far too quickly, especially if the demons don’t get taken off quickly. Fortunately, the side of the table I ended up on had a reasonable amount of rough terrain, which is probably my best defence against this sort of army.

Unfortunately, the large piece of blocking terrain in the middle of my deployment zone created an immediate issue. My army likes to function as a single blob, making the most of its synergies and superior number of drops to swarm around opponents, wear them down and pick up cheeky flanks. Deployment forced me to split my troops, and it became apparent early on that I hadn’t got the split right.

In the centre Cryza, Shock Troops and the War Engine Teams stood with their backs against the terrain as demented entities encircled them, before tearing them apart. The battle group did manage to pull some of the creatures down with them, in particular the War Engine Teams that made a mess of any Bezerkers that got close to them. On my right things were a little more tentative, with the Succubus attempting to test my Scurriers and the spear warriors. They should up to her temptations and the Brood Mother drove her off with a nasty shot of Drain Life.

With so many speedy units aligned against me I didn’t quite know the best way to capture the loot counters despite starting out with some reasonable opportunities. Indecisiveness struck and rather than using one of my Brute Enforcers on the right to grab counters he wondered around aimlessly before getting rear charged by Ba’el. This lack of focus synergised perfectly with Jon’s careful play to craft a more than palatable win for The Forces of The Abyss. The rats certainly weren’t slouches and did manage to hold on to a couple of loot counters, but it was too little too late, and a brilliant game to end the day on.

Mulling over what worked and what didn’t seems a little redundant, although I will say now that I wouldn’t change my list for the world. It’s been an absolute blast playing Rats over the last few years, and the time feels right to move on to pastures new. Perhaps the most exciting part of the whole weekend was seeing my son’s finished Nightstalkers in action, this was his second event and he’s now contemplating life without Bloodworms and really isn’t sure which way to turn… Twilight Kin anyone?

Goodnight sweet bloodworms… until we meet again.

That just leaves space for a massive thank you to Andy for organising the event and the great people I got to play against.

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Happy new year: it’s 2026

After an action packed 2025, it’s time to lay out the route map for 2026 that I suspect I will instantaneously deviate from. But for the next few minutes please indulge me.

Kings of War has been my main gaming system for a number of years, and I don’t see that changing. Having now read through the new fourth edition books I’m really looking forward to getting my first games in. Many people have already played it by now, and there seems to be a consensus that it’s change for the better, although I get the impression there are some murmurs of discontent around the revised army lists.

Will this crew make it back to the table?

Personally, I don’t have any, at least none that would make me walk away from the game. My collections feel transferable, and change is always a great opportunity to try something a bit different. I really want to dive into Basileans, but the call of the rat is proving too much, and I’m currently playing around with a 2,000 point list for my first tournament of the new rules in February.

The call of the rat is strong, but not harmonious.

The one consistency around the changes is that my beloved Scurriers (rat skirmishing infantry) have taken something of a kicking on their stat line. This seems to be a thing that happens at edition changes now. Playing them for the last eight months has been massively fun, now they’ve changed I’ve got to get used to them again (and remember that they’re no way near as good in a fight).

Ratkin have had a lot of mechanics changes, although I think their core value remains very similar, so I’m not expecting the feeling of playing them to change. That’s not a discussion for now though. I’ll be doing something a bit more detailed in the coming weeks. Yesterday we saw third edition off with a final hurrah tournament in Bristol, and it was absolutely brilliant, a great start to the year and a great way to round off the edition – also more on that later.

Something I do want to address this year is my growing discontent with the handful (!!?) of models I don’t really use. Over the past year in particular I feel I’ve matured a bit into my hobby and know exactly the sort of games I want to play, and so what I need. I have a habit of being a bit of a hoarder and this is something I really want to change. I might do a couple of posts on this if I can make a success of it, and if I can find a decent angle to consider it from.

There will always be room for more beasts.

Finally, I’ll be playing more Burrows and Badgers, Silver Bayonet, and hopefully getting around to painting a few more models up. I also want to get back into doing occasional book reviews. I’m hoping to run another narrative Kings of War day later in the year, although that feels a long way off at the moment. It’s just a quick one today because the start of the year has been considerably more hectic than I’d hoped!

Happy new year people.

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Time for a Christmas break: wishing everyone health and happiness

The last twelve months have flown by and brought a lot of enjoyment with them. Much has happened, but the overarching theme has been about pushing boundaries. The biggest one of those, has been getting a steady flow of blogs posted, and the metrics are looking healthy for it so there’ll be more next year.

Hobbywise I think my greatest achievement was getting an almost full model count Halfling army to Clash of Kings this year. It was a very last-minute decision to go, and an even more last-minute decision to take my Halflings. I’m not someone who gets overly excited about painting, but Clash is a great source of inspiration and motivation, so once I’d decided to go I wanted to do something that was a bit of a personal challenge on the hobby front. That turned out to be filling in the spaces on some sparsely populated bases and finishing an Iron Beast conversion I’d started a few months ago.

In the last couple of days running up to the event I found a cheap picture frame in a charity shop, and a very quick display board was made. I can say, without a doubt, that I ended up having my best Clash so far, by just about every metric possible, qualitative and quantitative. This will definitely feed into next year’s hobby goals.

Obviously, we’ve had the release of Kings of War’s fourth edition. I’m not going to say anything about it here as so far, I’ve only just received my books, not had a game and still have a final third edition tournament to go to. I’ll be taking the rats for this, it’s the one faction I own where things feel like they’ll really be changing in terms of army selection (for me at least) as we move into fourth, so one last hurrah is now mandatory.

The second edition of Burrows and Badgers has been the other big highlight of the year. There’s definitely been an up tick in the number of games I’ve manged to get in over the past few weeks. I’m absolutely loving the new version. So far, I’ve given the Witch Hunters ago and took a Kindred warband out for their first encounter last week. A few new models are definitely going to be required in the coming months as I’d really like to give the Routierres a try as well, but this is quite a complex warband to create so a bit of thinking time is required. I believe my increasing familiarity with the Major Injury Table will help as the warband allows you to upskill warriors, although it comes at the cost of extra injuries.

The other interesting discovery I made towards the end of this year was a Warhammer Fantasy Battle 5^th Edition tournament that took place last November called Misfire. Some lovely photos were taken of OG square-based wholesomeness. Given I have a few rats from this era kicking around I think there’s a project kicking around there somewhere, it just needs a bit of shape, and some sort of playing based objective.

All in all, it’s been a pretty full-on year, and a rest has been earned. I look forward to more excitement in the new year.

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The Shroud of The Reaper: Kings of War Tournament Report

For me Christmas doesn’t really begin until I’ve popped down to Bexley Heath for three games of Kings of War with a special character and some unusual scenarios. This year the event seemed relatively calm scenario wise. The traditional first scenario was the hunt for the opponent’s Reaper, but after this, traditional scenarios straight from the book were the order of the day.

The Reaper is a special character, created by the organisers, Mark and Grant. This year though we got to make our own using a monster creation chart. The creature would be a titan, but pretty much everything else was up for grabs though. As someone who doesn’t over think this sort of thing I decided to create something along the lines of a Mutant Rat Fiend, with a little bit of extra healing and some mindthirst. The main drive for this was because the first scenario required that the reaper survive, and Mutant Rat Fiends do this spectacularly well.

The rest of my army selection was similarly underwhelming. I took my 2,300 Clash of Kings list and added the Brew of Sharpness to one of the forest troll hordes to bring the points up to 2,345, the event limit.

The first game I found myself playing the amiable, yet brutally brilliant, Chris Lynch and his shooty Nightstalkers. Whilst I was under no illusions that I would come anything but second in this game, I generally set myself the challenge when playing Chris of not getting tabled (and if I’m feeling especially cheeky scoring a point or two). I did think the game would go reasonably well as I’ve played against a few similar lists and have got a bit of a theory as to how to deal with them. Unfortunately, Chris’ titan was not something I was ready to deal with.

In the limited time I’d spent playing with the monster creator I hadn’t given much thought to the shooting options. I’d kind of assumed they would be limited to a bit of fireball or lightening bolt. Not the case. Chris (and a couple of the higher ranked players at the event) had created living artillery capable of delivery up to around 30 shots, with piercing 2, range 24” and the height of the titans meant they could pretty much shoot at whatever they wanted.

What followed was an absolute blood bath as the titan proceeded to dish out an average of around 9 points of damage to a different unit every turn. Add to that Chris’ aptitude for the game and a couple of unfortunate nerve checks that just feel short of taking enemy units off the table and by turn 3 the game was basically over. Not only did I lose everything, but I only managed to kill a single Mind Screech. Not the best start to the day, but an interesting game none the less.

For the next game I found myself facing the Twilight Kin, playing Stockpile. I think this is the first kin army I’ve played with actual elf infantry, and there was quite a bit. I thought this would be an interesting game as I believe it’s a bit of a glimpse into what kin lists might look like as we move into fourth edition.

I’m starting to get the hang of Stockpile. My preferred approach is to let my opponent pick up the counters and then steal them. Happily, the loot counters all ended up on my right flank, which focused my opponent’s forces around them, meaning my flyers and cavalry could make use of the relatively empty left flank to position themselves to roll up elf line.

I have to admit I had some pretty decent shooting in the first couple of rounds. Whilst the Planar Apparition stopped any of the damage sticking I did manage a useful waver on the Mutants, which made my advance on the right flank a lot less stressful.

In the first half of the game the grenadiers, muster captains and Juggers played an absolute blinder, pulling apart the handful of units that sought to hinder their progress. However, if was a stunning flank charge from the Wild Lancers into the flank of an Impaler horde that one shotted the beasts that really exposed the elves’ proverbial tender bits. Not long after this the Halflings began gathering their first loot, before stealing another lot off the beleaguered Mutants, as the void pirates started to vanish from the table leaving the Halflings with a win.

Game 3 was against the Herd and the scenario was Protect and Raze. The Herd are a pretty aggressive army, and my opponent didn’t disappoint. The wild denizens of the forests pushed forward hard, although possibly a little too recklessly on the right flank. An opportunity to get EJ grenadiers behind the Herd presented itself very early on. Unfortunately, shooting from the Troll Captain and one of the Iron Beasts wavered the troop of Gur Panthers, which were stood in front of the Stampede. This made for a bit of an awkward start and some badly damaged chariots as the grenadiers were able to take a rear charge the next turn and the troll captain a flank charge.

The right flank very quickly became a grinding melee as the Halfings sought to take advantage of their good fortune, whilst the Herd did their best to fight them off. A lot of poor charge options meant the Avatar of the Father flank charged one of the troll hordes, and whilst the trolls dissolved in the face of the mighty creature, the Avatar found himself facing an Iron Beast and the remaining trolls. His demise was quick, and despite the Chieftain’s best efforts, the rest of the flank started to flee back towards the forests.

On the left flank Greedyguts and the Juggers managed to ground the beast of nature. The beast managed to hang on for a couple of turns, allowing the earth elementals time to amble up at their own pace. The mighty constructs reached the battle lines but just weren’t able to dish out the damage quickly enough. A flank charge from the flying muster captain smashed the Greater Earth Elemental to pieces and handed the cavalry the initiative. Following their captain’s led they closed in on the central scoring zone whilst the EJ Grenadiers swept up the remaining objectives, snatching a win.

Christmas has now commenced, and mince pies have finally been eaten, I even treated myself to a KFC stuffing burger on the way home. As always, the Crimbo reaper event was a great way to finish off a pretty packed year where I’ve managed to pull together a halfling army that’s been both a joy to play, and has delivered some great results. There’s definitely going to be some changes ahead for my little guys and girls over the next few weeks, and I’m going to miss third edition quite a lot. That being said, it looks as though there are some pretty exciting times ahead for the little dudes with some very beautiful new models coming. I’ll definitely be settling down over the holidays with the new books, and I have no doubt there’ll be at least one blog on the way. All that remains for me to do is thank my opponents for some fun and relaxing games and thank Mark and Grant for running another great event.

Merry Christmas.

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The critters return: second edition Burrows and Badgers reviewed

Burrows and Badgers is a pretty good package. It’s a great game, with a brilliant miniature collection, powered by a family company that has recently launched its second edition. So, did it need a second edition? And did it need this second edition?

The answer to the first question is simple… absolutely. Over the last few years, the game has evolved massively. Not only have successive kickstarters swollen the miniature range but the creative minds behind the game have tried to breathe life into those miniatures in the game with more factions. This manifested an ever-increasing number of warband rules published in a number of journals that, along with some really fun random event tables, spread the rules far and wide.

Bringing all the factions, with a few minor changes, into one book was definitely needed. It makes life much easier to see what’s available and choose what you want. Whilst there are a couple of different ones I really want to try, like the mage faction, or the road wardens, I’ve decided to make a start with my beloved witch hunters. I’ve already written a bit about the faction in a previous blog, and my first couple of games have led to a few changes being made. The main change to my original line up was to remove three attack grubs because of the control tests that now need to be made which always seemed to fail at the worst moments. Although that has led to the inclusion of my mousketeer though, so now regrets there.

In game terms I think the biggest changes for me, has been that fate points are now assigned to individuals rather than pooled. I really like this, and it has completely changed the dynamic of their use. With Burrows and Badgers I’ve always found myself getting more attached to each warband member than in other skirmish games, where the focus is on just one or two models with the rest of the group being made up of interchangeable retainers and hirelings. So having to think about the fate points of each shrew or mouse builds a bit more personalisation. There’s also a fun mechanic when you roll a one in a roll off that get’s the brain working as well that can increase a creature’s fate points.

The other change that I’ve found fun is the introduction of random charges. It’s still possible to reliably get into combat in a turn, but the new approach builds in a bit of risk and reward decision around getting that all important combat modifier for a charge. The roll off mechanism has always kept combat interesting, this change adds to the fun.

However, it feels that the decision to go into combat in the first place has gotten a bit harder. This is due to changes in the way long term and serious injuries are assigned to combatants at the end of the game. The campaign system is my favourite of any game, and I’m really excited by the way it’s been expanded. Whilst the injury tables feel far more brutal that they were previously, new wandering tables that allow characters to explore between games to find riches, artifacts and adventures (not always to their benefit) enrich the post-game phase. To offset the added brutality of the injury tables there is now a pension system, making additional funds available to a warband to replace injured members.

The final thing I wanted to mention are the new scenarios and secret missions. It’s great to have a few more options for scenarios and the enhanced list of secret missions is brilliant. In the last game I played the scenario was to take ownership of a building at the centre of the table, however my opponent had a secret mission to set fire to buildings, which led to some fantastic drama in the central objective building as my fearless mousketeer parried the blows of a smoke intoxicated badger, whilst a racoon with a packet of matches and a wicked grin escaped from the flames. This sort of chaos is exactly what keeps me playing the game.

I love a new edition that builds on the success of its predecessor, and this one certainly does. I’m now wondering if it’s the right time to think about releasing the moles?

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Progress is a fat dragon

Baron Nosferus, Commander of the Grand Mercenary Company of Mimos, watched the embers framing what had been the back wall of his tent burn brightly. His gaunt face gave no indication of what he was thinking, but his pin prick ruby red eyes glowing in their dark hollows made it clear that he was thinking. The demonstration had been impromptu and convincing. Whilst the acrid smell of burnt animal hides hung heavily in the air nothing of the actual wall, or the two tents that had been behind it, remained. Nosferus’ particularly well-developed sense of smell allayed him of any concerns that anyone had been in the other tents. Burnt flesh was something he had become all too familiar with over the centuries.

He sat calmly, looking through the hole, and out into the camp beyond. The silence of shock had subdued the camp. Several hundred halflings were collectively readying themselves to either give, or receive orders, just as soon as they had worked out what those orders should be. He smiled, as he tried to guess how long it would take his captains and sergeants to decide how best to deal with the accidental discharge of a swamp dragon in their commander’s tent.

Of course, none of them would be worried about his personal safety. His condition was an open secret amongst most the company. They would be weighing up how far they could believably say they were from the incident at the time and why the clean-up, and any paperwork, was best carried out by anyone other than them.

“So that’s progress is it?” He said quietly to himself, reflecting on the rather surreal experience. As a celebrated sell sword, he was regularly approached by inventors and engineers claiming to have developed the latest kill-o-bot or corpse mangling machine for the battlefield. Frankly, on many occasions the contraptions’ names were more fascinating, and more effective on the battlefield, than the actual machinery. In spite of this he would always make time for them to see him, it was important to know what you might be facing the next morning. Especially if it worked.

He had sat through a number of demonstrations and presentations that had started out strongly, with impressive machines quite beyond anything he could ever have come up with. They were generally covered in spikes, blades and steam canons, and many demonstrations ended abruptly as it became apparent the machines were ill thought out and would never live up to the boasts of their creators, especially not in the face of an angry giant that was upset that its next meal was trying to kill it. Today’s demonstration had gone quite the other way. It had not started well, even the apprentice Sauceror with the vegetable grenades had started better than this one.

When the chefs had wheeled in the bloated dragon Nosferus had wondered if it was a practical joke. He wondered if some new recruit had not believed just how little of a sense of humour he had these days, but then the incident had happened. The older of the two chefs had been mumbling away, all but inaudibly, when suddenly the reptile had gagged, then choked a little before releasing a massive burp. Clearly the chefs knew exactly what that meant as all the Baron could really say for sure of the next few seconds was that the dragon, or rather his attendants, or maybe the chair the obese lizard was nestled in just a little too comfortably, was remarkably manoeuvrable.

In the blink of an eye, the beast had been turned to face the tent’s back wall, which subsequently disappeared, evaporated by a great gout of super-heated flame. Then a rapid retreat was beaten accompanied by a flurry of fearful apologies.

Nosferus’ thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Anya, the company’s mistress of gastromancy, staring into the tent through its absent wall. Her bright red robe with its broad golden yellow hem made her instantly recognisable around the camp. Her eyes traced around the frame of fast fading embers before meeting the Baron’s gaze.

“Progress.” He explained.

“Aaaah.” She hummed quietly, “been a lot of that recently.”

The words caught Nosferus, and for the briefest moment his gaze broke from her intelligent eyes. They still burnt with the same flames of excitement and optimism that he had seen in them on the first day she had appeared at the camp in her thread bare, dirt covered dress, selling potions that could barely get a brave out of bed before midday. It was hard to believe there had ever been a time when she hadn’t been with the company. He tried to stop the thought before it took him to a time when she would no longer be there but wasn’t quick enough. He swore age had crept up on her. How had he not noticed those bright eyes were now surrounded by the scars and shadows of age, that more than the odd thread of silver ran through her once vibrant purple hair?

“Indeed.” He replied, realisation dawning on him. In the distance a guttural cry could be heard. The comrades continued their silent exchange, both acutely conscious of the pained exclamations of the Greedyguts as it shook its cage. They both remembered Gaston before he had stolen that bottle of Anya’s, the one no-one was meant to know about, the one she swore no one would ever consume. The mischievous wild runner had been popular throughout the camp, and was a natural with a rifle, yet no one had spoken his name since that day.

“I’m sure it will be for the best.” She paused, before adding, “in the grand scheme of things.”

Change, Nosferus had realised centuries ago, was inevitable, and yet despite his acceptance of this it still managed to catch him off guard. Long ago he’d gotten over what he called the small changes; days turning into weeks, weeks to months, that sort of stuff. He’d come to terms with his condition, his death and his rebirth. He’d even navigated the introspective navel gazing that led the more conscientious of his kind (and by that he meant vampires rather than halflings) to confessional conversations with bards where they compared their tales of woe to the great Dwarven epic Dagrid Copperfeld. He’d fought a thousand wars and razed a thousand cities to the ground, only to watch them grow back, making him question whether what he did really changed anything. Time, he often considered, was a bit like a goblin mincer, a relentless whirring machine that pulled you towards an inevitable, and invariably messy, demise. That had certainly been the case for the brave, yet reckless, Muster Captain Stryder. The formidable cavalryman had led the Juggers on many a cavalier charge, somehow managing to navigate challenging terrain and delivering hammer blows that few enemies could stand up to. But all things came to an end, and in Shamus Stryder’s case it had been his luck.

It hadn’t been that long ago, a few days at most since the funeral. Nosferus forced his brooding thoughts away. Now was not the time, after all it was not every day that someone wheeled an overweight dragon into your place of work, with breath that could melt the walls of the inner circles of the Abyss. He stood up and walked purposefully towards Anya.

“You know, I have a feeling things are about to get quite interesting.” He said with a smile, “but right now, we have a couple of chefs and a rather large reptile to track down.”

This is an unofficial short story based in the Kings of War setting and is a narrative account inspired by my Mantic Halfling Army.

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The Hinckley Heist (number 2): a Kings of War tournament report

After a couple of months of playing Halflings, I decided to go back to Rats for the second Hinckley Heist event. Three games at 2,300 were the order of the day. With fourth edition looming I’ve found myself at a bit of a hobby loose end. So, with no real inspiration to try out new lists I decided to give the list I took to Gloucester earlier in the year another go.

Not only did the list perform pretty well, it includes a couple of my favourite units, the Death Engine Spewer and a troop of Scurriers. I have to admit that the Scurriers didn’t perform massively well at Gloucester in every game, but they had a couple of moments, and I wondered if a few more games might give me an opportunity to work out how they should be best employed.

My first game was against the organiser’s Forces of Nature. Nature is a naturally grindy faction, and Martin’s list had a healthy helping of fliers with two beasts of nature and two Greater Air Elementals. I kept a keen eye out for surge shenanigans from the outset, but fortunately none materialised. Because of some aggressive scout moves with the Hunters of the Wild I found myself making turn one charges with my Mutant Rat Fiend, spear warriors and vermintide. The gamble paid off, with one of the Hunter of the Wild being routed and the others blocked up. In the following turn the rats struck another decisive blow, with the war engine teams removing a Fire Elemental horde. Then a Greater Air Element went down.

Despite their best efforts, and several double one’s in their favour, the Forces of Nature just didn’t seem to be able to make a decisive impact on the vermin. Fire and Water Elements did manage to combine forces to wipe out both hordes of Shock Troops, but as the elite rats died, their comrades circled the elementals and finished them off and ending the game on a strong win.

Next up the rats faced off against the Order of the Brothermark, another grindy list, although with some very killy bits hanging around. The game started cautiously, with ratkin shooting removing two of the villain penitent regiments. The armies circled, creeping closer on the flanks, until the Brothermark made the first contact in turn four, charging an ogre captain into the mutant rat fiend and the Palace Guard into Mother Cryza. The fiend survived, but Cryza was smashed to a pulp. This meant the ogres were now free to start rampaging through the rat lines, taking out the fiend with a flank charge in the next turn.

On the other flank, at the bottom of the table, the humans were held in place by swarms of vermin fighters, whilst in the centre the ratkin weapons teams went to work. Bursts of flame cut through the foot paladins, making them easy pickings for the shock troops to run down.

With the Brothermark centre collapsed the shock troops prepared to overrun the scenario scoring zone in the centre (we were playing Hold the Line). Unfortunately for the rats they needed a seventh turn for that, which sadly never came, giving the Brothermark the win.

The final game was against the Orcs. I was really interested in this match up as I’ve had a lot of games against the green menace over the years where the rats have really struggled to break through. Since playing my horde heavy army, I feel like I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough, and I seem to have found an army that works well for me. This game felt like a good litmus test.

The scenario was Fools Gold, and I took no chances, positioning all my scoring tokens within easy reach of my troops. The rats don’t want to move much, and I wasn’t going to force them to. I was quite surprised by the orc’s set up as it meant it would take a couple of turns for the cavalry to reach my lines. That gave me time to break down their troops on my right flank in relative peace.

Orcs always seem to take longer that you’d expect to kill, but slowly and surely, they were rolled back. The weapons teams made an absolute menace out of themselves wavering infantry, removing already damaged units and shutting down orc movement. Much to my joy Gak got distracted by the Death Engine Spewer and the orc cavalry charge never materialised in the storm of hoof and tusk I had feared.

As the dust settled very few of the orcs still stood, although in a final act of defiance Gak smashed up a weapons engine team, causing twenty points of damage. Despite this the rats carried the day.

All in all, it was a thoroughly enjoyable day. The rats performed admirably, taking sixth spot, and three highly enjoyable games were played. The best thing is that I think I have finally worked out what to do with scurriers. They are a bit counter intuitive to play, although I find that with a few rat units, but the troop has been absolutely legendary at this event. The vermin scouts took a Greater Air Elemental off with a sneaky flank charge, contributed massively to shooting off the penitents and holding up a phoenix in the second game and then smashed orc face with more flank action in the final game. Those melee three attacks hit hard, especially with some bane chant from the Tangle to complement their vicious. Now I’m getting used to them I’m looking forward to playing them at the next tournament.

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Thanquol’s Raiders: return of the snappy dressers

The hiatus in hobby as a result of the countdown from third edition Kings of War to fourth has given me too much time to overthink other projects. For a while I’ve been trying to work out what to do with a growing collection of metal rats from way back in fourth edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle.

I’ve been cycling through some many different ideas and systematically finding reasons not to do them. I’ve done my best to try and be positive, and rather than dwell on reasons not to paint them a certain way or base them another way, I’ve tried to string together my thoughts about what I want the project to become. Truth be told though, that kind of made things worse as I complied a contradictory wish list which was only going to be solved by collecting the same miniatures several time over.

Then, a couple of months ago I stumbled over a picture from a White Dwarf battle report. The image hit me between the eyes. It was a riot of colour and ratty weirdness. In short, all the reasons I first got interested in Skaven, and dare I say rank and flank wargaming. This has now become my north star and the first staging post on my adventures with these thirty-year-young works of art.

Having debated with myself for some time now on what colours to use I now realise the answer is, of course, all of them. Whilst I know there are some people who love the more realistic (an utterly relative concept when dealing with fantasy races and their fashion choices) 50 shades of brown rats of more recent times I want my vermin big, bold and brassy. To that end I’ve made a start on the plague censor bearers. Exact replicas they won’t be, but they were never going to be.

The one model I’m most interested in doing is the Doomwheel. As a rule I don’t use a lot of black, so it should be a bit of a learning experience (I also need to get me hands on a Doomwheel, and if anyone could point me in the direction of the original White Dwarf I’d love to know how Thanquol’s raider actually did, and who they were up against).

I’ve tried to suppress practical gaming questions, like what are the chances of me getting a game in with these? Although I have had a cheeky look at The Old World legacy factions and worked out that by splitting the warriors into two separate regiments I’m well on my way to a couple of thousand points, so there’s always that. At the moment though I’m very much trying to getting the basics done.

That’s all for now. Have a great week.

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Finishing the narrative: reflections following the Field of Kings

I’ve been running tournaments for about three years but last weekend I felt like I was doing my first event all over again. It’s been a bit of a journey to launch the Field of Kings so finally getting people onto the tables and playing felt amazing. Although I was not without a twinge of nervousness that at least one person wouldn’t have read the pack (super important for this event – you read it, and the army lists, here).

I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to play, as I wanted to see how people reacted to the scenarios and spend my time looking at what people had brought along to demonstrate the theme in their armies. Interestingly, of the eight players who attended half of the armies were human and three were drawn from the former order of the Brotherhood. I think the theme, in and of itself, might have nudged one or two people in a particular direction when it came to choosing factions.

The Kingdoms of Men army that attended was composed of undead, which I thought played with the theme nicely and made me think of those scenes from the Pirates of the Caribbean that cut between the pirates being human and skeletons as the moon reveals their cursed forms. It was an interpretation that landed Andy Marshall in second place overall, not to mention his beautiful king model and some lovely banner work, along side some strong gaming skills.

Andy was pipped to the post by Simon T’s Order of the Green Lady army, that he had pulled together for the event. Some busy bases framed the army marching to war over the corpses of fallen warriors and a well developed back story put Simon over the edge and into first place. What made my day was that Simon and Andy weren’t the only ones who had leant into the theme in some way or another. Both the Brothermark armies had great King and Bodyguard combos that showed clear connections to one another, and the ogres had been scavenging Basilean battlefields to craft a nice-looking Bodyguard. All in all, I was really impressed with the engagement on the hobby front.

The homebrew scenarios seemed to be well received. I’m please with that because I wanted to build scenarios that both rewarded playing out the story but also didn’t break the natural balance of Kings of War. I like to think I achieved that balance in the second themed scenario (confusingly the third game of the day) but not quite so much in the first themed scenario. There was still balance, but one of the key thematic objectives, capturing the enemy standard, was too easy to avoid doing, so only one person did it! With the benefit of hindsight I probably should have realised this might happen and find a way to disincentivise it – a future me issue.

What was really interesting was that most of the players were experienced players, I had thought this event would appeal to less experienced players which is why I set the points level quite low. The unusual points limit of 1,600 turned out to be an interesting challenge in itself. Combining that with the scenarios made the whole package feel a bit different and brought a new challenge, which I felt was reflected in players’ choices in their army lists.

I decided to take my Halflings for the spare list and give an engineer a try. Trying out a new model and some new synergies in my army was really enjoyable, and although the games might not have gone my way with a loss and two draws, I certainly had a lot of fun, which I believe was shared by other attendees.

So far, I’ve had some really positive feedback, and there’s definitely some lessons to be learned. I can’t thank the players enough for engaging with the spirit of the day and providing some constructive thoughts on how the event could be improved. Those comments have mainly been around the hobby scoring. On the day, as I feverishly tried to judge the relatively small number of entries for that component, I knew that having only a few more players would have made that part a much bigger ask. So, there is definitely something I need to have more of a think around.

I’ve already decided I will be running another one of these events next year, but the edition change means I’m going to take a bit of time before announcing times as the pack will need some work. That being said, a theme is already starting to call to me like demon screaming in a fiery fridge, and I can’t help but ask myself who am I gonna’ call.

That’s all for now. Have a great week.

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