Bloodstone Marches – The Escape

ByDankelzahn

Bloodstone MarchesThe Escape (Castle of the Keys)
Sunday, October 28th, 2007

After their victory over the dragon Pyromalfic, Everblight’s escape required his scattered forces to escape the ruins and regroup. Thagrosh had located a promising escape route through an unstable tunnel below the ruins and lead what forces were nearby away from the castle. Before the blighted forces could completely withdraw they were sensed by Balder, who quickly gathered what constructs were nearby in an attempt to cut off the dragonspawn’s escape.

StonefallThe Escape is the Legion’s second Strategic Objective of the Bloodstone Marches theater of war, and the first fight of our second round. Although the victory conditions were the same as a standard assassination game, the fight was contemplated by the unstable cavern it took place in. To represent this the table was divided into 8 12″ x 18″ segments as shown here. During the Legion player’s Maintenance Phase he would check for a cave-in by rolling a d6 for each section, starting with section 1. If the roll was a 6, that section would suffer a cave-in at the start of the Legion player’s next Maintenance Phase and stop checking sections for that turn. When a section suffers a cave-in every model in that area suffers a POW 15 damage roll and is knocked down. All terrain is removed from the section and the entire section becomes rough terrain.

As with the rest of the campaign proxies were allowed, and Saultydog took the opportunity to let a Warpwolf stand in for the second Woldwarden which is currently in pieces on his painting desk. I was hoping he wouldn’t pick up a second one but it’s not like it’s unexpected. I hate those stoopit things.

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10/20/2007: Hordes Stampede! Event

ByDankelzahn

On October 20th we had a Hordes Stampede hosted by Miniature Market locally here in St. Louis. We had a large turnout for this event – large enough that we had to run out for an extra table so that we would have enough. In addition to a fair number of regulars we had a couple younger guys who were back in town for the weekend from college and a few other locals who aren’t regulars but came by anyway. Between the sixteen participants, two employees, and the pressganger the store was packed.

Unlike the Swiss tournament format that is typically used for Privateer Press game events the goal of the Stampede was to claim a table by defeating its current defender then defending the table against new attackers for as long as possible. In addition the defender would suffer attrition, forcing him to hold on for as long he good with his dwindling forces. To help offset his mounting losses the defender’s side of each table had a few extra pieces of defensible terrain – a couple trenches and a couple linear obstacles to seek cover behind.

My other tournament reports so far have centered more around the games I played and their results. This time I want to take a break and instead talk about observations regarding the Stampede format itself, including some of the things that worked and some that didn’t.

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Bloodstone Marches – Prevent Blight Outbreak

ByDankelzahn

Bloodstone MarchesPrevent Blight Outbreak: Castle of the Keys
Sunday, October 14th, 2007

The second and final fight for a strategic objective of the first round in our Bloodstone Marches Theater of War campaign was Saultydog’s Circle trying to contain the outbreak of Dragonblight at the castle of the keys. Unfortunately for the druids they ran afoul of a group of Prorpger’s trolls who, still bitter over the Circle’s betrayal of Madrak Ironhide and unaware of the Circle’s goal decided to take the opportunity to strike at the Blackclads.

This game was fought on a table bisected from left to right by a 4″ stream of Blighted Shallow water. The blighted energies in this region had two effects: first living non-Legion models in the blighted water suffer -2 MAT, RAT, and STR. However we made a mistake and only played this as a -1 penalty. Second, all Tough rolls in this scenario only succeed on a roll of 6. The Circle’s goal was to damn this river by collapsing six of the eight columns surrounding the river and using the rubble to stop it. The columns were positioned with four on each side of the river, each 1″ from the river and 8″ from the columns to its right and left or 10″ from a table edge if there was no column to that side of it. The columns were ARM 18 structures that could take 20 damage points before being destroyed. This scenario used the Siege Attrition rules for the campaign, meaning if any columns were destroyed but Circle lost, the next time they attempted the scenario whatever columns had been destroyed in previous attempts would remain begin the game already destroyed.

Other than the river and columns, each player placed four terrain pieces but could only select obstructions, obstacles, and structures. We also allowed open pits to be used, feeling it felt in theme with the ruined castle. These terrain features had to be at least 6″ away from the channel and 3″ from each other. Both players primarily selected linear obstacles for their terrain pieces, resulting in a relatively open table with regards to LOS. Saultydog did place a couple pits on the Trollblood side to try to slow them down while Prorpger put a couple of structures over on the Circle side for the same reason. In addition we wound up using P3 paints for columns again. We really need to add some more variety of terrain pieces but time to make terrain always seems hard to find.

Blight Outbreak Table Layout

As I mentioned in the previous post about our campaign we were allowing proxies so both players took the opportunity to break out some new models and try them out. They fielded the following:

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Warmachine Battle Reports

ByDankelzahn

Some of you may have noticed a sudden jump in post counts over in the category listings but no new articles on the front page. This isn’t a mistake – I’ve recently ported roughly a dozen battle reports that I had written up on other forums here. There were a number of reason contributing to the decision, one of which was to actually have content to post over here going forward. 🙂

I decided to backdate the entries to the dates that I initially posted the reports in their original locations. I felt that that having the commentaries in that order would help make them easier to understand as some of them reference and build off of earlier reports. To help people find this new content I’ve included an index of the new battle reports below, though they’re still accessible through the usual archive-browsing methods.

12/28/2006 – Fear the Boot and the Fight for America Hill (350 pt. Multiplayer)

1/3/2007 – Fear the Boot and the Fight for America Hill, Round 2 (350 pt. Multiplayer)

1/17/2007 – Fanatic Alliance vs. Cygnar (350 pt./each Teams Game)

1/24/2007 – America Hill, the Final Solution (350 pt. Multiplayer)

2/7/2007 – Mirror Match: The Battle of Dead Man Flats (500 pts.)

1/31/2007 – Yet Another America Hill (350 pt. Multiplayer)

2/14/2007 – One More America Hill (350 pt. Multiplayer)

6/27/2007 – Trollbloods vs. Legion of Everblight – Not America Hill (500 pts.)

7/18/2007 – Circle Orboros vs. Legion of Everblight – Cat Fight! (750 pts.)

7/25/2007 – Legion of Everblight vs. Protectorate of Menoth – Battle of the Frail (500 pts.)

8/15/2007 – Spontaneous America Hill (350 pt. Multiplayer)

8/22/2007 – Trollbloods/Circle Orboros vs. Legion of Everblight – A Family Affair (1000 pts.)

9/19/2007 – Trollbloods vs. Protectorate of Menoth – Smoke in the Skies (500 pts.)

Bloodstone Marches – Battle of Hawksmire River

ByDankelzahn

Bloodstone MarchesAfter talking about it for a while but never committing, my gaming group finally decided to start up the Theater of War presented in the Hordes: Evolution book. For those unfamiliar, the Theater of War is a map-base campaign system Privater Press has created for their miniature games. The first two theaters were created for Warmachine – The Battle for the Thornwood (in Apotheosis) and The City of Sul (No Quarter 8 ) – before the Bloodstone Marches was released for Hordes in Evolution.

Players create detachments from which they can draw their forces to attack each other’s territory. In addition to lands claimed, players accumulate Victory Points each battle which they can spend for various boons. Overall victory is achieved either through claiming a certain number of territories or winning the three Strategic Scenarios for your faction.

For our campaign Saultydog would be manipulating the druidic order of the Circle Orboros (the blue territories) Prorpger would be rallying the scattered Trollblood forces (the purple territories), and I would be leading the draconic Legion of Everblight (the red territories). We decided to allow proxies for the length of the campaign to allow us to try out some of our new models and see how they worked for us.

For the first round initiative was determined by a die roll. I won and elected to use my attack against the Circle to try for my first Strategic Objective and my attack against the Trollbloods to attack the long purple mountaneous area in the center of the map to try to get closer to my third Strategic Objective. Josh declared the final attack of the round against Prorpger at his own first Strategic Objective.

I decided to go ahead and do a battle report for each of the Strategic Objective battles, starting with my first one (the only game we were able to play). At th very least it would give me some more content to post up here. So without further delay…

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Trollbloods vs. Legion of Everblight – Smoke in the Skies

ByDankelzahn

Smoke in the Skies, 500 pts.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007

About five years ago or so I was starting an Earthdawn RPG campaign for a group of friends. I decided to start the campaign off with the published adventure titled Terror in the Skies which would feature some airships and expose the PCs to that quickly. One character was a Sky Raider so I felt it was appropriate, plus I had run the adventure before and was comfortable with it. The group like using miniatures for combat so I got a crazy idea. The adventure had deck plans for the two large galleons that were in the adventure and would inevitably wind up in a battle in the skies. So one day I scanned the two upper decks into photoshop, resized them to scale for 25mm miniatures, and printed them out. I then took the pages, glued them down to cardboard, and cut them out for use on the table top. The group loved them and they made the boarding actions really fun, but then the ships got tossed into the closet and remained unused until recently. After debating what scenario to play for a little while, Prorpger, Superduck, and I came up with the idea to use the cardboard ships to do a variation of the Smoke on the Water scenario from the campaign in the back of Escalation.

The rules of Smoke on the Water were pretty simple – two barges pass each other on the table. Each barge was its owner’s deployment zone and moving d6″ during its owner’s maintenance phase. Each barge can be damaged like a structure and is ARM 16. When either barge touches the opposite table edge, both barges immediately stop and whichever had sustained the most damage immediately sinks. Whoever holds the last barge wins. If a model was knocked off the barges, it was removed from play.

For Smoke in the Skies, we added a few rules based on the ships we were using.

Shadow Skulker Cloud Skimmer

  • The blue edging was deck railing, which provided cover and was effectively an obstacle. It also meant you could get slammed into the wall but not over the edge. However the main deck had weaker railing – no obstacle, and you could be slammed right through it. Basically it was all open ground.
  • The red areas were the raised decks and counted as higher ground.
  • You could cross between decks of equal height or from higher to lower, but not from lower to higher. So no going from main deck on one ship to the forecastle on the other.
  • The green locations were the ships masts that were impassable terrain, provided cover, etc.
  • Since the ships weren’t flat and weren’t going to line up perfectly, a model could cross the distance between the two ships as long as the distance between was less than 2″. They were either leaping across or swinging on rope or whatever swashbuckler imagery you wanted to apply there. Yes, jacks too. 🙂

With that we put together a couple forces to do battle.

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Trollbloods/Circle vs. Legion of Everblight – A Family Affair

ByDankelzahn

A Family Affair, 1000 pts.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The gauntlet was thrown Sunday – a team game where Prorpger and Saultydog would each bring 500 points against a 1000-point Legion army. We had to make sure to arrive at the store early so we’d have time to get everything set up and get started quickly, and it’s a good thing we did. There were quite a few models on the table and a lot of strategic decisions to be made each turn.

The table was set up as pictured here and Saultydog and Prorpger won the initiative roll and elected to go first.

A Family Affair - Table Layout

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Surprise, It’s America Hill!

ByDankelzahn

Spontaneous America Hill, 350 pts.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007

While Prorpger and I were finishing up some delicious food court delectables a couple local players asked me to set up an American Hill battle for them. Considering how long the last oversized America Hill game went I was surprised people still wanted to play but what the hell, right? So four of us sat down for yet another rumble for bragging rights up on high.

America Hill Setup

For those who haven’t read an America hill report yet, the rules are as follows:

  • At the end of each turn, the player with the most models on the hill gains 1 VP.
    • A unit counts as 1 model, regardless of the number of members on the hill
    • In the case of a tie, VPs are awarded to all players tied for most models on the hill
  • At the end of a turn where a player has his warcaster/warlock on the hill, the controlling player rolls 1d6 and gains the following bonus:
  1. Immediately activate the Yellow Woldwomper
  2. Immediately activate the Blue Woldwomper
  3. Immediately activate the Red Woldwomper
  4. Place any one model currently on the hill or within 3″ of the hill within 6″ of its current location. Model may not be placed more than 4″ above the table surface. There must be room for the model’s base at the destination.
  5. Place 1d4 3″ cloud effects in play anywhere completely within the warlock/warcaster’s control radius. These clouds remain in play for one round.
  6. Place 1 3″ fire storm template anywhere within completely within the warlock/warcaster’s control radius. The warcaster/warlock must make a magic attack roll against each model in the AOE ignoring LOS, cover, concealment, elevation, Stealth, Invisibility, or intervening models. Each model hit suffers an unboostable POW 12 damage roll and the Fire continuous effect.

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Legion of Everblight vs. Protectorate of Menoth – Battle of the Frail

ByDankelzahn

Legion of Everblight vs. Protectorate of Menoth, 500 pts.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

After I finished trying out a round of Infernal Contraption, Prorpger asked to play a game and actually commented that he wanted to try the Legion out. I was hesitant to let him borrow my models since obviously once a troll player experiences the awesomeness that is Everblight, they’ll never want to go back to their old faction. But what kind of a friend would I be if I didn’t give Prorpger more and more reasons to spend money.

Table Layout

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Circle Orboros vs. Legion of Everblight – Cat Fight!

ByDankelzahn

Circle Orboros vs. Legion of Everblight – Cat Fight!, 750 pts.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

This week one of the local players and I threw down in a 750-point Hordes smackdown. I hadn’t gotten the chance to play him much yet other than in a large multiplayer game so looked forward to the opportunity. We both brought out one of the ladies of Hordes and set them at each other in a fury-filled cat fight.

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