Kings of War: Otters and Goblins

So I decided to do my own themed army – the Riverbank Alliance – it’s basically a re-skinned herd army with the heroes being Wind in the Willows based characters backed up with forest spirits and some anthropomorphic otters and mice.

The figures above are from the delightful Northumbrian Tin Soldier boxset. I may use the others in the set as commanders on some of the regiments.

I haven’t ruled out putting Toad on a chariot either.

The otters and mice will be prints from Duncan Shadow.

I also intend to ransack a boardgame for the ‘harpys’ which will be bird riding mice.

The herd army list I have based this army on features centaurs, and I wanted to include some at some point. Then I thought what about half horse and half otter.

So I set about searching for modular centaurs I could potentially do a head swap on, no joy

I found some 3d editing software online and downloaded it to try and mash two models together. I got there and had a very rough and ready file.

Unsure if it would work I saved it as an stl file then put it into a slicer to add supports and create a file to print.

Printed 10 got 8 good ones, my bed needs relevelling so not unexpected.

I had a break from goblins and started putting together some of the larger units I had acquired. I somewhat under estimated just how big the maxmini giants were. They will have to be rare one-off monsters if I’m going to shoe horn one into any army list

I have also put together some of the cuddly forest friends that will feature in my Otter themed Herd army, if I can get Gerry to approve my army list of course!

Quite excited about making my own themed army, it’s a freedom I haven’t had with Bolt Action.

So my plucky goblins left their snow caves (terrible roofing) in search of a ransacked caravan, having found the wagons, they discovered a rampaging group of Nightstalkers, why they wanted 200 cases of dwarf energy drinks (crimson minotaur, not the cheap stuff) was anyone’s guess.

Let the fighting and looting commence!

We played a control scenario with five point scoring objectives. I split my forces with a cavalry force out two the right to worry that flank, I had two troops of Fleabag riders and a mounted king. There was a convenient hill there too, so I popped a regiment of archers over there for balance.

My infantry took the centre along with the mincer mob and a regiment of archers. My opponents one ranged unit began to make his presence felt, my archers returned fire, it took a while and he popped one regiment of sharpsticks before my archers took him out of play.

Both archer regiments actually punched above their weight, in spite of a permanent to hit penalty because of the Nightstalker filth…I mean stealth.

On the right flank I faced a regiment of hounds and some flying wraith things, I was concerned that the king and cavalry were going to be overwhelmed. So in some ways the placing had worked, I had gotten my opponent to commit his strongest units to take over the flank pulling them away from the centre. In the last game I threw the mincer in straight away, on this occasion I bided my time.

Full disclosure, my opponent forgot to attack one turn, which would have been a significant attack, but the game had progressed too far by the time we realised. Just mentioning because obviously that went in my favour. I also got pretty lucky with the dice and we got flank attacks with individual units wrong, again, in my favour.

So , more through luck I managed to  inflict a good amount of wounds before the cavalry fell, the king held the line and between him and the archers I managed to pop his scariest units

In the centre of the table my spearmen and mincer units began a slow advance to the middle objectives up against doppelgangers and scarecrows, emboldened by the loss of his ranged unit we surged forward. First round was a little disappointing in terms of damage done but the grinding down had begun.

Again my opponent was pretty generous with me being able to flank with the mincers. However in terms of point scoring I really needed a turn 7 to try and pop one or more of his units , end of turn 6 he had more unit strength  on objectives , meaning a win.

Turn 7, everything changed. My archers on the right managed to pop the butchers on one of the objectives, then my mincer tore into the flank of his scarecrows, straw and guts everywhere. Then the spearmen polished off the doppelgangers. I had cleared the table.

Lets be real though, without an error and gratuitous sportsmanship from my opponent this could have been a very different story. It was close right up until the end. Great game.

I had a fairly productive week, with three infantry regiments to show for my efforts. More units for the coming game.

By the fifth turn while I still had more units on the winning side of the table, the combat had turned grindy and attritional, which suited the dwarves better and my units got ground down, my troll gave a good account of himself but eventually got wavered and then felled. While there was a clear advantage for the dwarves at this point I never felt completely down and out.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable game and looking forward to expanding the army and playing again.

I ventured to the Wargaming club that predates the FLGS that focuses mainly on GW. They are just around the corner and I’ve never been.

They were mostly long standing D&D groups and some guys doing 15mm ancients. A friendly bunch and they were intrigued by the shiny and colourful fantasy armies.

It’s the first I had met my opponent, he’s got back into the hobby and only knows one guy who plays KoW. His miniatures were beautifully painted, apparently his friends are ‘better’ and they won ‘Best Painted’ at a big Mantic event.

We opted for the invasion scenario. The mat and the snowy trees are mine, the rest was club terrain.

I moved my spitters (archers) onto higher ground to cover the advance. Then my mincer mob went through the centre its flanks protected by the sharpsticks. Meanwhile on the right hand side my fleabag riders tried to wheel around into a flanking position.

My centre units engaged his two main units, a risk as the dwarves are a lot tougher, but everyone bar the archers were over on his have of the table due to our not heaving little stumpy legs.

Unfortunately the cavalry got wavered from missile fire and so the flanking charge would have to wait. Meanwhile my Troll hero lumbered into the fray.

When the cavalry made their charge they combined with a unit of sharpsticks to take out a dwarf hero. Between then, even with flanking and a mawpup cage they failed to register a single wound. The cavalry didn’t see out the turn.

On the other side of the field the archers switched from peppering the cannon to his stone priestess and popped her first go. I guess I used all my luck on those.

I took it easy at the weekend having hit my hobby target for last week. I still found some time to prod a few goblins with a paintbrush

This week I am aiming to finish three regiments and start some sci fi terrain for the meme project

Ahead of schedule I managed to complete my Ambush starter army for next Monday’s game