Age of Fantasy: Rearguard Action at Tor Sigil

Posted by Comrade on July 2, 2022
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John and I got together last month for another installment in our periodic fantasy campaign inspired by our homebrew fantasy setting.

Dubbed the War of the Coins, the campaign represents a years-long clash between the duchies of Vladisport (a collection of human fiefdoms led by House Begovic) and the dwarven city-state of Miravec, which includes the titular city as well as a collection of holdfasts and walled cities located near the northern edge of the Fellhammer Mountains. The map below displays the city-state of Miravec and its surrounding regions held by the dwarves at the outset of the war.

We developed this setting (the world of Uthdyn) during a collaborative game of Microscope a number of years ago, and it’s since served as the  backdrop for Paul’s D&D campaign as well as our Frostgrave campaign and these periodic fantasy wargames.

The complete setting spans several continents across multiple different time periods. This game focuses on one specific turning point in the history of this particular corner of the map.

For tonight’s game, I set up an urban battlefield representing the town of Tor Sigil, a dwarven trading outpost south of Miravec. Before the war, Tor Sigil was a prosperous hub that served as the gateway for merchants and traders heading toward the dwarven city-states of Miravec and Kjelvaskur.

Now, Tor Sigil is the front line of a sustained and bloody campaign of conquest against the dwarves. This game focuses on a last-ditch rearguard action of a small contingent of dwarven defenders as they held the defensive lines in the city to allow the bulk of their army to withdraw and prepare to defend the approaches to to Miravec.

(I may have been channeling a bit too much zeitgeist from the Ukrainian war when writing up this battle report. You be the judge.)

I hosted this game, and took the opportunity to pull out my medieval village terrain pieces, including two beautiful centerpieces from Tabletop World that I painted last year, plus a couple more pieces from Miniature Building Authority. I have a solid collection of medieval village terrain that doesn’t get a lot of action unless we’re playing at my place. Before John arrived, my kids had a lot of fun invading the village with dinosaurs.

You can see our initial deployment in the photo above (and below, I’ll just repost it so you don’t have to scroll).

My dwarven defenders are on the left, and John’s fast-moving skirmish force is on the right. My army featured four hard-hitting artillery units, which I positioned with decent lanes of fire toward the central plaza in the center of the village. John had two cavalry units positioned on the two flanks, ready to ride down by heavy guns and scatter the poor crew. In addition, he had a unit of infantry hidden in ambush – these guys would pop out on from hiding during the game.

The first turn featured a lot of maneuvering as we sought to advance on the four marked objectives on the battlefield. My cannons opened fire, with marginal results.

Turn two was when things started getting interesting. The dwarves, advancing at a stately pace with lots of clanking armor and jingling chainmail, suddenly found themselves facing an ambush, as John’s halberdiers sprang their trap and came pouring out of the alehouse where they had been holed up, nursing hangovers since the night before. Talk about dedication to the war effort!

The same turn, my elite dwarf warriors (in the gold armor) were stunned when a unit of winged pegasus knights swooped in and crashed like a wave, wiping them out to a man.

It was a dire turn of events for the dwarf army. Moving as quickly as they could, the dwarfs pivoted to deal with the ambushing infantry that was running around their backfield. Neutralizing those pesky units definitely took my attention away from the objectives.

Eventually, the flanking force was more or less dealt with, and we resumed our plodding advance toward the central objective (represented by the patinaed statue). In the photo below, you can also see my dwarven berzerker champion (newly painted!) and my blue-skinned frost giant (painted 15 years ago!). Both units played a pivotal role in the final turns of the game.

Opposing them in this clash were John’s stout spearmen. Take it from me – John loves his spearmen. The phalanx rule in Age of Fantasy, which represents units armed with spears, pikes, and other sharp sticks, is absolutely brutal.

While the frost giant carved up the human attackers, gaining a little breathing room near the central plaza, the spearmen formed up to receive a charge from my fearsome bear-mounted dwarf lord. Frothing with rage from the ambush that took out so many of his fearless countrymen, the dwarf lord urged his mount on like a furry missile missile that crashed headlong into the forest of spears.

Stunned and repulsed by the fury of the dwarf lord’s charge, the spearmen fell back. Into the gap stepped (or fluttered, as the case may be) John’s pegasus-mounted champion. The stage was set for an epic clash of HQ-vs-HQ, as the leaders of our two armies traded blows while their foot troops looked on and cheered.

The impact of their mighty blows cracked the stone masonry of the surrounding buildings and ripped up the cobbles in the street. In the end, the pegasus-mounted champion stood triumphant, and the dwarf lord ambled off as fast as his bear buddy would convey him.

That clash actually represented my last gasp at a tactical victory. If the dwarf lord had done his job and defeated the pegasus champion, I could have battled John to a draw and maintained a tenuous grasp on the village of Tor Sigil. With the champion defeated, John had secured a majority of the objectives, and with them, the victory.

The final turn featured a little more action, including some savage combat on the other size of the plaza between my dwarf warriors and another unit of those accursed spearmen. My berzerker champion also carved up several units, more than paying for his points. But tactically, the game was decided when the bear lord was defeated.

Once again, Age of Fantasy gave us a great game with lots of tactical decision making and flavorful results that helped advance our narrative campaign. The dwarves were driven from Tor Sigil – can House Begovic pacify the trading outpost before the dwarves muster a solid counterattack? Stay tuned for more!

Nightwatch: Mystery at Heerselt Manor

Posted by Comrade on June 14, 2022
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Earlier this month the crew mustered at the War Room (John’s garage workshop / game area) for a new campaign of Nightwatch.

Nightwatch is a fantastic, rules-lite skirmish game focused on low fantasy monster hunting. Think the Witcher, or Conan. Each player controls a powerful hunter who specializes in some sort of monster-hunting task. The game is intended to be played as a multi-part campaign, where your hunter attracts thugs and hirelings along the way as they battle ever more ferocious monsters, culiminating in what can only be described as a boss battle. The monsters are controlled by a simple yet satisfying AI system, which also supports solo play.

We were excited to try out this campaign, as we love skirmish games with low model counts that are focused like a laser on achieving a singular tabletop vision. Nightwatch (written by P. Todoroff, the same guy who wrote Zona Alfa) fit the bill perfectly.

We set the game in Heerselt, a border hamlet north of the dwarven empire of Miravec in our homebrew fantasy setting. The hunters were summoned to investigate some mysterious goings-on in the village. Heerselt is in the northwest corner of this map of a portion of our setting.

The scenario called for the players to explore four bent, twisted trees located on the four corners of the play area. Scenarios and objectives vary from game to game, but in this case, most of the game focused on the edges & corners of the game, which meant that the center of the board, with its gruesome trophy outside the ruined manor, didn’t see much action.

Seeing as how this was game 1 of our campaign, each player controlled just their own hunter, with no backup or lackeys. They’d have to do all the dirty work themselves…

Vincent’s alchemist and Jim’s swordsman took the left flank, creeping around the perimeter of the village to get to the twisted trees. Unfortunately, the bad guy deployment zones were also located on the perimeter of the battlefield, and each turn two of the four spots were selected at random. Foul vermin and hordes of evil poured forth!

As it happened, the majority of the monsters that arrived in our game randomly spawned near Vincent and Jim’s characters. They quickly found themselves scrambling to the high ground while fighting off an ever-growing horde of desert raiders and beastmen!

Over on the other side of the battlefield, Paul’s elf archer and Daniel’s wizard had a much better go of it. The elf archer loped across the board and secured both trees, though it took a little time – you have to make a successful dice roll to secure the objective, which the elf failed repeatedly to do, leading to many, many jokes about how the elf just can’t figure out these trees, etc.

And Daniel’s wizard almost certainly won the team player award. He crossed the entire battlefield, flinging lightning bolts left and right, and ultimately helped the party secure the final objective and win this particular scenario.

Towards the end of the game, there were some real questions whether or not the players would be able to win the scenario and escape alive. Nightwatch intentionally ratchets up the danger by deploying more dangerous monsters in the later turns. So while the game started as a cakewalk, with the players easily dispatching the vermin that emerged in the early turns, they were scrambling by the final turns and absolutely needed every last trick that each of the four characters could muster to secure the victory.

Here’s a peek at the action as they reached the final tree and closed out this game…

Nightwatch gave us a smashingly fun game for our first outing. Our adventures will take us deeper into the badlands known as the Hattendorf Border Marches. I’m particularly excited to see some hirelings show up … this game starts with a very low model count, but I was jonesing to get more toys on the table! Thankfully, the players were already scheming about how to spend their hard-earned silver pieces.

The Hunt continues … stay tuned for more!

Age of Fantasy Skirmish at C3 Game Con

Posted by Comrade on June 3, 2022
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Back in February I volunteered to run a game at C3 Game Con, a brand new local game convention in Corvallis, Oregon. As it was the first year for this event, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Corvallis is home to Oregon State University, so I knew we had a captive audience of students and young adults who were likely to check out an event like this.

The convention was heavy on anime, cosplay, RPGs, and board games. Age of Fantasy: Skirmish seemed like the perfect way to to give them a little visual spectacle and maybe rope in some new gamers.

I set up a basic four-player scenario centered on Bayard’s Holdfast, the nifty little dwarf fortress I painted up last year. Two players would command the dwarf garrison tasked with defending the holdfast. The other two players were in charge of undead raiding parties tasked with smashing through the defenses and sacking the charred remains of the fort.

As you can see, I had a round tabletop, which actually helped the scenario – I was able to plop Bayard’s Holdfast into the exact center of the table and then arrange the attackers and defenders around the perimeter.

My players were fairly new to miniature wargaming. Only Parker had dabbled in painting & gaming before sitting down at the table. I selected Age of Fantasy: Skirmish because it is a simple, easy to understand ruleset for people who are fairly new to this sort of gaming. I whipped together some unit cards for each player’s warband, and of course they got their own copy of the rules to look over before the game.

The game started with a general advance by the undead players. They had to occupy the courtyard in the fortress and outnumber the defenders by the end of the game to secure a win. They could also gain a minor victory by slaying the dwarf artillery crew, which started the game in an outbuilding far from the tower and had to hustle to safety.

The dwarven defenders quickly understood their role in the scenario, and they mustered a stout defense that saw their elite troops meeting the undead near the crumbling stone walls on the perimeter of the fort’s territory. Fearsome blows were exchanged as the undead forces gradually pushed the dwarves back.

But! The dwarves had an ace in the hole! If they could get their artillery crew back to the fortress in one piece, they could load & fire the mortar mounted on the parapets. Thankfully, they were able to achieve this goal by the closing turns of the game, and they rained thunderous devastation down on the undead that were swarming around the walls of the holdfast.

By the end of the game, the undead legions had reached the walls (in fact, the ghoul king shown here was actually able to breach the defenses and begin rampaging through the courtyard). However, the stout dwarven defenders had succeeded in waylaying or defeating the bulk of the undead warbands, which meant that the defenders had secured the victory. The surviving undead warriors retreated in good order back to their nefarious swamp hideout.

Age of Fantasy: Skirmish is a great game to try out with new players in a convention setting. It requires some prep work – I don’t think the game would have been nearly as successful if I hadn’t put in some hours making the unit cards and handouts. But the ruleset is solid and it definitely ticks the boxes in terms of what a new player will expect from a wargame experience.

And I’m pleased to report that C3 Game Con was a wild success! We had more than 500 attendees over two days, which was way above our expectations and suggested there’s a big demand for this sort of event in Corvallis. I’ll be signing up to run some games next year for sure!

Age of Fantasy: Daemonic Onslaught

Posted by Comrade on May 25, 2022
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Here’s a quick write-up of a game that Lawrence and I played a few months back back in January, actually, which I forgot to log on the blog.

I recently spotted the photos on my phone and noticed that they featured some of Lawrence’s fantastic Nurgle daemons as well as my (at that time) newly painted dwarf lord mounted on a bear. Plus my newly painted medieval buildings from Tabletop World!

We played an small, introductory game of Age of Fantasy since it was Lawrence’s first outing with this particular ruleset. I set up a compact battlefield to showcase my snazzy new buildings, and then we commenced our battle.

I don’t recall the ebb and flow of the game, but it featured plenty of brutal fights between my stout dwarf infantry and Lawrence’s ghastly daemons.

That gnarly chaos spawn ended up rampaging up my flank before eventually falling in single combat versus my bear-mounted dwarf lord. Twas a melee for the history books!

Elsewhere the daemonic hordes continued their assault to seize the settlement and drive back the dwarven defenders. My iron warriors proved to be a particularly effective speed bump as they held the gap against a Great Unclean One.

In the rear, my artillery piece peppered the smaller daemons with lead shot, reducing their ranks even as they closed with the dwarves.

The details of the game’s conclusion are a bit dim, but I recall that I pulled off the victory. All in all, it was a small yet visually stunning spectacle – a perfect weeknight game!

Warhammer Skirmish & Mordheim Scenarios Converted to Song of Blades & Heroes

Posted by Comrade on May 23, 2022
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I’m doing a bit of public service here by re-publishing the beloved fan supplement entitled (you guessed it) Scenarios from Warhammer Skirmish & Mordheim Converted to Song of Blades & Heroes.

The original PDF supplement (all 172 pages of it) was created by James Diemer and hosted on his now-defunct Hour11 Wargaming blog. The supplement has been gone from the Internet for at least a few years, maybe more. All that’s left is a wasteland of broken links on gaming blogs around the world that had been inspired and energized by the crackling creativity in this massive tome of scenarios.

Of course, I had already downloaded a copy to keep handy on my computer. Little did I know it would become a rare artifact! I reached out to James via the email address in the scenario document and asked for permission to re-post this supplement on my blog. He never responded, but judging by the generous notes from the author on page 2 of the document, I don’t think he will mind.

So there you have it – a legendary lost resource has been rediscovered! This supplement takes Song of Blades & Heroes – one of my all-time favorite skirmish games as well as the game that single-handedly kickstarted my resurgence in this hobby – and adds in all of the glorious Warhammer and Mordheim scenarios you remember from your younger years. Share it, adapt it, enjoy it … above all, have fun with it!