Mortal Gods: Who's in the House?

Introduction

I've had a copy of the Mortal Gods rules as well as the Mythic expansion for quite a long time now, but have not done much with them.  Until now, that is: recently I dug out these rules and my Ancient Greek models and played a game at my local club (Helensburgh Alternative Hobby Association, or HAHA for short).

I enjoyed that game so much that I decided to buy some more models, group bases &c. and to host another game at the club.  This time I recorded some of the action, so you can read about it as well.

Scenario

I pitted forces of Hades (on the left, mostly skeletons and necromancers, but with a phalanx of temple guard) against Heroes (on the right, led by Jason and Heracles, with a few minor names heroes and an odd assortment of warriors).  Each side came to about 660 points and was split into two allied contingents, so that we could accommodate two players per side.

The scenario was simple: there are 5 objective markers around the table.  Each of these is controlled by whichever side has the largest number of models within 3"; whichever force controls most objectives at the end of the game wins.

I did add one twist: a Cyclops inhabits one of the three central terrain features and would appear at the end of turn 1.  It would be controlled by a 5th player.  What I didn't tell the others at the start was that should this be slain then another cyclops would appear; once again it would appear randomly from one of the three central features.

The Game

So, how did it go?  Turn one was spent mostly with each player moving their forces forwards.

At the end of turn one, the cyclops appeared from the house, right in front of three Greek heroes.

The monster reacted before any of the humans: it tossed a large boulder at Jason.  The missile overshot the hero, but landed right in the middle of a group of approaching peltasts, flattening most of them!

Atalanta shot the cyclops full of arrows, before Herakles and the other heroes finished if off.  Almost immediately, another cyclops appeared at exactly the same position

After this, the heroic side became a bit fixated on monster hunting!  Most of their forces converged on the second cyclops, leaving very little to face off against the onrushing skeletons.

Again, Atalanta wounded the creature, but not enough to knock it out.  With a bellow of rage, the cyclops charged, injuring her and a nearby unarmoured hoplite, before Meleagros stabbed it from behind and felled the brute.

Whilst this side-show was happening, Hylas was the only Greek hero left to stem the undead tide.  He held his own to start with and even destroyed some skeletons, but eventually he was overcome and killed.

The heroes then caught an incredibly lucky break: At the start of a turn Hades drew one of the worst possible omen cards for the undead side.  Why was this so bad?  Well, all the skeleton groups have just a single die for Courage rolls, thus giving each one only a 50:50 chance of moving in the intended direction.

Predictably, much of the turn was spent with the skeletons milling about, whilst the heroes tried to reposition to a slightly better location.

Then, something unexpected happened.  Meleagros attacked a skeleton group, wiped them out and scored a critical hit in doing so.  This is extremely easy against skeletons with a base Resistance of 1; the hero rolled 5 or 6 attack dice and only needed to inflict 2 damage on the unarmoured group to score a crit - and that would then entitle him to another action (which could be used to make another attack).  Rinse and repeat...

By the time that Meleagros had run out of skeletons near enough to attack, he had destroyed two entire groups of them and badly injured a dark temple guard in (if I remember right) 3 follow-on attacks.

The same thing then happened in the centre of the table.  Herakles, driven to grief by the loss of Hylas, went on the rampage and destroyed everything within reach.  Badly wounded, he was only stopped by failing a Fear test to charge a Neukadaimon (sp?), else the damage would have been much greater.

At this point, the forces of Hades were considerably shaken and thought they had lost the game.  However, in a quick reversal their priests then summoned more groups of skeletons - and dropped these right beside three of the objectives!  The game ended before the heroes could respond to that (presumably by rampaging through these new groups as well).

At the conclusion of play, the heroes controlled 2 of the objectives (one isn't visible in this picture).  However, the last-minute summoning of more skeletons meant that Hades now controlled 3 objectives, thus making them the winner, by the narrowest of margins!

Conclusion

Well, that was fun!  The heroes became a bit distracted by the cyclops (both of them) and devoted the efforts of four named heroes to fighting the creatures.  They killed the creatures with relative ease, but this concentration of force left them short-handed elsewhere and I think they would have been overrun by the dark forces if it had not been for two things:

1. The very unfortunate Siren Song omen; it affected the skeletons far more than it would have affected pretty much any other force.
2. The rules for critical hits.  Once we realised that even a mid-level hero (like Meleagros) could run amok through multiple bases of skeletons in a single action, we were scouring the rules to see if we had made a mistake.  But (a) critical damage occurs on double the base resistance [so, 2 points of damage], (b) a critical entitles the model to another action, (c) that bonus action may be an attack and (d) there's no limit on how many times this can be repeated.  Am I wrong about this?

As it was, the late game saw the skeletons decimated, but a last minute summoning after the heroes had used all their actions for the turn and couldn't respond saw fresh skeletons swarm over the objectives and win the game.  Truly a lot of emotional swings!

Man of the Match: probably Meleagros, in my opinion.  He struck the killing blow against the second cyclops (after Atalanta had weakened it) and then went berserk against skeletons, destroying a considerable number.  For a not-quite-top-rank hero, that's impressive!

Most Useless: I think the phalanx of dark temple guard was very disappointing.  It looked impressive, but hardly moved during the game, never fought anything and never contested any objectives.  A waste!

HotT: Night of the Bats!

Introduction

We've played more games than usual recently.  Indeed, this last Christmas/New Year holiday period has been quite busy in that respect.  The practical consequence of this is that I'm falling behind in writing my reports!

Maybe you're thinking "Why does it matter?  Does every game need to be written down for posterity?"  Well, I do wonder this myself sometimes.  Here's my thinking: I wish to describe what happened as a (hopefully) entertaining tale, but I'm also recording the scenario used, the figures available to each side and the way the terrain was set up.

These data enable me to decide what worked well, what needs improvement for the future and so on.  In addition, the historical record permits me to calculate how long it has been since we played a particular set of rules.  Finally, if such tales of glory and woe are appealing to you (the readers) as well then that's a very welcome bonus!

What I've described in the paragraph above is (I think) part of the creative process.  For miniatures-based games, that is a large part of the hobby, for me at least.  This introspection helps me to understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

Note that I do not attempt to document board or card games such as "Race for the Galaxy", "Cluedo" or the like.  These aren't in the same category as miniatures; board & card games are fully-formed in themselves and have no creative input from me.

On with tonight's report!

Night of the Bats!

Our visitors (Steve and his son) had enjoyed our last game of Hordes of the Things so much that we decided to play another.  This was a straight-up fight between the Knights of Lyonesse and the Cabal of the Black Hand - Necromancers and their undead servants.  Each side had 3 x 24AP "armies", so this was definitely a big battle variant of HotT.

The Knights of Lyonesse

All 3 brigades were very similar in composition, dominated by Knights (strangely enough) and with a significant scattering of Heroes, Paladins and the like.  Oh, and a few yeomen as well (Shooters, Spears or Riders), just to cheer on the better sort of people!

The Cabal of the Black Hand

The Cabal's 3 forces were quite different from each other, though all included magicians and at least a few hordes of zombies or skeletons.

• Aerials: The northernmost force had large numbers of bats (Flyers), plus a Lurker and a Dragon.  Note that these latter two elements aren't deployed on the table initially, but instead require some occurrence to trigger their appearance.
• Infantry: A huge number of Horde elements!
• Cavalry: This command was a mixture of (anti-)Knights, Riders, an evil Hero, Sneakers and the like.

How It Played

From the very beginning, the knights charged forwards, mostly leaving their infantry and lesser cavalry behind (wow - who saw that coming?).  Some sparks of evil magic disrupted their lines slightly, but this was not much of a hindrance to the impetuous chivalry.

The men and woman of Artenay over-reached themselves, though.  The end of their first attacking line was flanked by undead cavalry and destroyed.  Following this, the evil Hero beat the Paladin in single combat, casing the latter to leave the table [Paladins are extremely powerful in HotT, but they take umbrage at being bested in a fight.  Rather than just giving ground and continuing to fight, as almost anyone else would do, they tend to stalk off the battlefield in shame, perhaps to seek penance at some remote monastery or to flagellate themselves for not being worthy enough].

The magicians were all delighted to see the Paladin go; the presence of Saint Florence of Artenay had a subduing effect on black magic.  Her absence should enable them to be a bit more destructive!

On the other flank, the Knights Errant charged forwards towards the undead Hordes.  As planned, the first line of bats leap-frogged them, thus putting themselves into position to sandwich the foolhardy men and destroy them next turn.  Still no sign of the bone dragon appearing, though.  That would have been quite useful right about now.

The power of the knights' thunderous assault caught the undead hordes completely by surprise, if indeed they were capable of feeling any such emotion.  Most of the ghouls and zombies were simply ridden down by the young knights, who pursued right into the magician general himself.

OK, that is something of a setback, but it's now the Necromancers' turn.  Time to roll for PiPs/command points: a '1'!  If ever there was a bad time to roll that low, this was it...

[For those readers who aren't familiar with Hordes of the Things, it costs 1 PiP to move a contiguous group of most types of models.  However, if the figures are flyers or magicians then it costs 2 PiPs instead.  With only 1 PiP available, almost all of this command couldn't move for the entire turn].

The Knights Errant took every advantage from this lapse of concentration by their enemies.  They couldn't touch the high-flying bats, but they carved their way through the Magician general and the last remaining ground troops in the Aerials command.  With their leader destroyed, the Cabal's right wing brigade became demoralised and started to slip away.  [I guess that the bone dragon won't be arriving after all...].

D'Alencon's forces in the centre were also making steady progress, crunching through hordes of skeletons as if they were no more than stalks of corn.  Even as they did this, a strange vortex surrounded the Red Knight.  When it ceased to shimmer, the hero had vanished, ensorcelled by the Cabalites.

The hero didn't stay captive for long, though.  As the forces of D'Alencon continued to press forwards through the disintegrating hordes, the Red Knight burst free from his prison!

He might have chosen a better time to make his escape bid, though.  As soon as he had left the Dark Tower, the necromancers raised fresh hordes of skeletons from the ground around him.  Even the mightiest hero is in danger when surrounded.

In a shattering series of combats, the brigade of D'Alencon was savaged.  Both the evil magicians zapped and obliterated their over-eager foes and the Red Knight fell beneath a mound of undead warriors.

Slightly surreal: in the centre of the battle line, the Knights couldn't beat the [supported] Ghosts.  The undead spirits couldn't affect the knights either, even though they won the fight [Sneakers cannot affect most troop types; they're really only useful against Generals].  This carried on for quite a few rounds of combat, with both sides deadlocked.  I suppose that knights just don't have enough imagination to be afraid of ghosts; they just keep on swinging their swords ineffectually at the phantasms!

By now, most of the nice, neat starting formations had disintegrated.

• The Knights Errant were sweeping forwards towards the Dark Tower.  Although this appeared to be undefended, fresh hordes of undead were springing up constantly as the central necromancers poured most of their energies into replenishing their forces.
• In the middle, the forces of D'Alencon were teetering on the edge of collapse; they had lost many fine nobles to the unspeakable black wizards.
• The Cabal's cavalry wing and the army of Artenay had all but fought each other to a standstill.  Losses were heavy on both sides; it wouldn't take much to push either side into despair.
• In a final flourish of magic, 2 necromancers co-operated to cast a black web over Roger the Castellan, D'Alencon's last hero.  He was dragged away by spectral furies, screaming all the way to the Black Tower's dungeons.

The Knights Errant charged the stronghold, but fresh skeletons clawed their way out of the ground to oppose them.  Time and time again this happened; whenever the knights retired to regroup, more enemies would appear in the spots they had just vacated.

Then, like a ray of sunshine appearing from between dark clouds, Sir Alain de Fleury swept in on his mighty winged horse.  He smote the nearest magician so hard that the necromancer was split in half down to the waist.

By now, only the only forces still fighting were the almost undamaged Knights Errant (for Lyonesse) and the very battered infantry and cavalry brigades (for the Cabal).  Either of the latter could have broken at any moment if they suffered casualties; only the continued raising of fresh skeletons - that were destroyed as fast as they came on - was keeping this force together.

Again and again, the Knights Errant surged forwards, but they were just unable to breach the tower's walls.  Every time they fell back, more defenders would arise to take the place of the fallen.  Just how long could this go on?  Quite a few turns, it seems...

In the end, it was Sir Alain de Fleury who triumphed.  The hero and his winged steed led a further attack by the Knights Errant and the Dark Tower fell, its defences finally exhausted and overcome.  Victory (at a price) for Lyonesse!

Conclusion

As the leader of the defenders, I planned for the infantry and cavalry wings to hold up the attackers whilst the aerial wing obliterated its immediate opponents before using its incredible mobility to attack the remaining forces of Lyonesse from behind.  It didn't quite work that way, though, did it?  So, my bats and dragon refused to engage and the knights stomped all over my ghouls, whilst the terrified necromancer just stood and watched!  Bah, humbug!

Oh, well.  It was a well-deserved victory for the good guys.  We gave them a run for their money, I think.  The first two brigades of Lyonesse were pretty much stopped dead in their tracks, although the middle one very nearly reached the defender's stronghold.

And there's also this: as the knights went through the tower's innumerable chambers and rooms, they came to one that was far from sunlight and fresh air.  Huddled in a corner was what the victors at first took to be a pile of rags, but which turned out on closer inspection to be a person.  He flinched from lights and shrank from human touch; his speech was slurred and broken.  In all ways, the man seemed a shadow; barely a remnant of a human being.  It took the rescuers a long time to realise that this husk was all that was left of the captive hero, Roger the Castellan...

Frostgrave: the Undead

Introduction

I'm continuing to hunt out old miniatures from my lead pile and paint them up for use in games of Frostgrave.  Last week, I showed my wizards, but I've also been working on monsters.  Indeed, I seem to have a lot more of these than I do humans - I'm quite short of ordinary soldiers.  Still, all things in good time.

Right, monsters.  I've painted up (or in a few cases, rebased existing models that seemed suitable) quite a few undead creatures.  They say that Frostgrave is a desolate, haunted place that is roamed by lost souls.  Let's see...

The Vampire

My vampire is an old Games Workshop miniature who has been "re-purposed" from my never-used Warhammer Vampire Counts army.  I think he's a Von Carstein or something like that.  This is one of the models that I had painted years ago, but the base is new and hopefully is more appropriate for a ruined, snowy city.

He wears classic vampire 18th/19th century costume - and is therefore several hundred years ahead of fashion in my medieval Frostgrave setting.  I could replace the model with something more contemporary in due course, but it's a very recognisable vampire look and so he might just stay.  I haven't fully decided yet.

The Spectre

If this guy looks somewhat familiar then it's because I painted up some models just like this to act as apparitions in a Scooby Doo game, not that long ago.  He's another model from the same Black Tree Design set, but painted up slightly differently - especially the base!

The Wights

These are my armoured skeletons, though if you prefer to call them "wights", "doom guard", "grave knights" or anything else then that's OK by me.  The red/black model in the middle is another Games Workshop figure that I painted long ago, though the basing is new.  However the other 2, recently-completed wights are from Black Tree Design.

Zombies

These zombies are a mixture of old Games Workshop and Black Tree Design/Harlequin models.  I'm not even sure that I can remember which is which, despite just painting then recently!

The guy on the left has a strange assortment of odd pieces of armour and a big, goofy grin; I'm not sure that I like this model very much.  However, the other 2 look very much like shambling, undead warriors to me; pretty much what I'd expect from medieval zombies!

The Skeletons

Finally, here are some Black Tree Design skeletons, though I don't think that the shields that I've fitted to them are the ones which were originally provided with the models.

As with the wights, these old BTD models are quite large; they'll tower over some of my humans.  Still, no-one ever said that skeleton warriors have to be average in size, right?

Conclusion

I've got a number of terrain pieces under construction or planned, as well as other monsters & creatures (demons, wolves, trolls and the like).  But I'm really short of suitable humans for the wizards' warbands.  That's probably where I should be spending my model-making effort, but I'm having too much fun painting up the wandering threats!  For now, at least...

Jason and the Argonauts

Introduction

Once again, I've let my imagination run away with me.  A few months ago, Warlord Games had a sale on individual plastic sprues.  I bought some ECW cavalry to bolster my Witch Hunters, but I couldn't resist also buying some Ancient Greeks.  Since then, I've extended this set with a few metal models from Black Tree Design as well.  I can now present to you my latest project: Jason and the Argonauts!

The Good Guys

4 Heroes: Front view

4 Heroes: rear view

First up are 4 Greeks with swords.  3 of the 4 are in heavy, decorated armour; these are the main heroes Jason, Meleager and Augeas.  On the other hand, Iphitos is just dressed in a linen tunic.  I imagine him as the servant or camp cook who has grabbed a weapon when all seems lost (i.e. he turns out to be of noble birth after all!).

The next 4 models are minor heroes (or grunts, if you prefer!).  Amphion, Laokoon and Pheidippides are equipped in classic hoplite style, with large shield, long spear and sword.  Philoctetes is something of a rarity: an ancient Greek archer.  As far as I know, the Greeks looked down upon archery to some extent, yet had some renowned archers amongst their heroes (Odysseus, for example).  I've never really managed to figure this out...

All of these models are plastics from Warlord Games, apart from the archer (he's from Black Tree Design).  I'm a bit annoyed about the silvering of the decals on the shields, since I spent a lot of effort preparing the surfaces in the hope of avoiding that.  Still, these's not much I can do about it now...

The Bad Guys

The leader for the enemies of the Argonauts is King Aeëtes of Colchis.  I've used another model from Black Tree Design here: Aeëtes is a Greek civilian to whom I have added a simple crown made out of green stuff.  Obviously, he's something of an ascetic monarch.

Aeëtes himself doesn't look very threatening, does he?  Well, in the legends he was the one who sowed the dragon's teeth, each of which grew into an armed warrior to oppose the Argonauts.  In the 1963 film Clash of the Titans, these were depicted as skeletons in one of the classic Hollywood fight scenes: here.  My "dragon's teeth" are faithful to that vision!

These figures are old Games Workshop skeleton warriors.  Those that had spears have been used unmodified, but I've cut down the oversized swords and scimitars to something more suitable for the ancient world.  I've added shields; I thought that these came from Magister Militum, but they've reworked their website recently and I cannot find the shields on the new site.

Another part of any ancient legend is at least one huge monster.  So far I've just got the one: a cyclops.  This is another Black Tree Design model; he looks exactly like the Harry Harryhausen version from the film mentioned above.

I've photographed the cyclops besides Jason to give him a sense of scale.  This critter is big!

I couldn't really find an angle from which the cyclops' eye could be seen clearly.  I suppose that's because he's used to fighting creatures which are much smaller than he is, so he's always stooping and peering downwards.

What's Next

Now that I've got some basic forces, I need some terrain.  I have some broken fluted columns that I bought many years ago, so a classic ruined Greek temple seems like a good idea.  The good guys probably need a few lighter troops - maybe some slingers and/or javelinmen.  For the monsters I would very much like some harpies, maybe a brass bull and a hydra (Foundry, I'm watching you!).  Then some cliffs, olive groves, a labyrinth or 2, a few forbidden islands...