A small break from Warhammer

 Last weekend we had a different kind of game, same players, same mat, but different game.

This actually was a re-play of a game I had a couple of years back, a Rogue trader game, using my old Grenadier Star Wars miniatures (the part I have here in Canada).

The next game in the Warhammer campaign is supposed to be the Slaanesh battle against the defenders of Praag, but I realized I need to paint about 50 figures for that army, so it will take me at least a few weeks to be ready.

In the meantime, to avoid loosing steam on the gaming side, I decided to get my players (all young Star Wars fans) to try this game. The scenario saw a group of rebel and local mercenaries, try to delay some imperial troops while a clandestine freighter was trying to get ready and take off with some refugees and stolen droids.

Needless to way that they loved it and were caught in a star wars frenzy and went out and bought some Star Wars Legion stuff. I guess we will be giving that a try, but it won't feature on this blog for obvious reasons.

Here there are some pictures of the game we played. I was GMing and the players involved fought it out to the end, but the imperial forces could not find the right timing and the most powerful unit (the stormtroopers led by Darth Vader) couldn't get in the fight in time to be decisive.

The space ship took off while most of the rebels managed to escape unpunished.

The second battle of Praag

This week we played the second battle of Praag.

This battle took place in the planes North of Praag. The chaos army managed to secure the services of a group of renegades from Lustria that traveled all the way to the north and through the chaos wastes, to join in the siege. The mercenaries were a group of Lustrian riding in howdahs on war dinosaurs, they would be a huge asset for the forces of chaos during the siege.

The forces of Praag abandoned the protection of the walls and tried to intercept the column to try and rout the shaky mercenaries.

There would be three dinosaurs moving just behind the Khorne line(controlled by Cyrus) and just charging them would score the humans a VP. For each dinosaur that crossed the table and exited on the south table edge, the forces for the Blood God would score a VP.

The side with most VP at the end of the game would be the winner.

These are a few pictures of the action.

The starting setup

The forces of chaos start to march forward to block the human's advance

The knights on the northern flank start to advance to intercept the dinosaurs as soon as they show up

On the South flank, another unit of slightly less fancy knights starts to move forward to try and gain the Chaos line and act as an obstruction

But the champions of Khorne are of a different advice

 

The table at the end of turn 1, both advanced towards the center, the followers of Khorne more aggressively than the men of Praag.

The mounted thugs of Khorne charge the hesitant knights, while the gray wizard uses a flight spell to move in cover of the mushroom wood, in the meantime, the big block of goblins gains the center of the field ready to face off the spearmen.

The dinosaurs lumber forward under the protection of the giant that the warband of Khorne subdued in a previous game.

The thugs are no match for the noble Imperial Knights and they rout leaving the giant to deal with the problem.

On the other flank, the Fleshhound sneaks in between 2 units of state troops aiming towards the cannon that has caused a lot of damage so far

In the center the goblins loose to the spearmen and start fleeing, while on the North side the knights gather their guts and charge the giant.

The brave humans advance along the center, trying to get closer to their objective.

In the South end the human swordsmen defeat some chaos orcs belonging the the warband of the Khorne troglodyte, but they now risk to be surronded, at the same time, the helbardiers loose a combat to a unit of beastmen and start running, followed by the braying goat men

A couple of rabid chaos hours charge the spearmen, but are quickly dispatched and sent running for the hills

On the North end of the board, the knights manage to put down the giant, but suffering great losses, when the giant falls on the survivors and kills yet another one, even the army general turns tail and flees.

Now it all rests in the hands of the wizards, with another Flight spell and a sudden charge, he gets one of the huge beasts running, the javelins and arrows falling all around him are not enough to discourage him.

The first dinosaur makes it off the table in the same turn, so now it is 1VP per side, the last dinosaur will decide how the game ends.

The fearless wizard realizes he is the las chance the defenders of Praag have to avoid these creatures to take part in the siege, he uses hos flight spell again to get close to the last beast and gets ready to charge...

...but to his dismay, Arnold the Crusher, the champion riding the Juggernout, has a chaos sword that lets him bring some of the fallen back from the dead and they appear right in between him and his target.

Summoning his last ounce of power, knowing it will be his last act before being slayed but the magic hating followers of Khorne, he casts a Vortex of chaos, winning the game for the humans, at the cost of his life.

So ends the second of four battles for the defense of Praag, and it is the second win for the humans, will the forces of chaos manage to wrestle their way to victory?

We will see how the next two games go.

Next should the turn of Slaanesh, maybe the prince of Pleasure will be more effective.

  

The first battle of Praag

 We had another game in the Siege of Praag campaign, this time it was a proper battle that saw the troops in Praag defending the outer wall, while an army of Nurgle accompanied by Max's warband, trying to take positions inside the defenses.

The army of Nurgle didn't have too many fast troops, but had resilience and a good amount of cheap expendable troops on its side.

The attacking army taking position 

The defenders of Praag

The opening moves of the battle

The chaos troops start to take position

A cannon hits and kills a chaos spown (infortunately on the wrong side of this picture), the manticore fails a panic test and flies off the table on turn 2, big loss for the chaos army

The imperial knights sally out to slow down the chaos advance

A couple of views, from both ends of the field of the centre of the Nurgle army advancing steadily

On the Empire left, the second unit of lighter knights lines up to charge the chaos hounds

As the knights charge thunders in, the zombies in the center start taking losses

The knights smash through the chaos hounds, losing one of their number, but they end up in a very threatening position behind the chaos lines

The brave (or reckless) imperial battle wizard flies behind the chaos lines close to the knights and with a terrible vortex of chaos spell, wrecks havok in the unit of bestigors. In the meantime, the general of Nurgle and the Chaos dwarf champion face the knights in an attempt to save the rear flank.

The zombies advance is slow but relentless

The vortex of chaos sweeps through the fight sucking the general of Nurgle and half of the imperial knights into the warp, at this point the game is called and it is clear that the forces of Pestilence are unsuccessful.

So it is that the first game of the actual siege of Praag is concluded.

There will be three more games, one for each of the chaos powers, after the four games, we will see if the armies of the ruinous powers will succeed in the invasion of the northern regions and gain access to the Dwarven and Imperial realms.