By Eck - a 1,000 Goblin v Ogre game of KOW

Today I enjoyed another splendid day of gaming with my good friend Chris. We were playing Kings of War again, slowly preparing for our campaign between his Ogres and my Goblins, this was another practise game with time left over to discuss our campaign plans. 

We like to theme our games and add background detail and this was today's scenario...

The faint pencil cross by the river shows where the battle took place. 

'By Eck', Grab the Loot: adapted from 'Push', from p76, COK 2019.

Pulling hard on the reigns, Skrel hauled his mighty wolf to a halt. Sent out to protect the goblins new secret weapon by King Krag, Skrel and his large patrol had come across a band of merchants trying to cross the lower slopes of the mountains undetected by the goblins. Before him now, the human merchants fled dropping their goods all around. Beyond the humans, Skrel watched what had caused him to halt. Appearing over the river Eck was a large force of Ogres, now seen by the panic stricken humans who fled in all directions, their merchant goods scattered and forgotten in their rush to escape both Skrel's goblin host and the ever nearing Ogre Warband.

By Eck was where the spoils would be fought over. 'By Eck' thought Skrel 'my blade will taste Ogre blood this day' and urged his wolf forward.

After both players have deployed their forces, roll a D3. Each player places that many Loot counters within their set-up area; giving them to units to carry if they wish-rolling a dice to see who places a counter first.

An additional Loot counter is also placed in the exact centre of the board. The aim of the game is to capture as many Loot Tokens as you can.

Victory Points: are awarded as follows...

2xVP for each Loot token you hold in the opposing side of the board

1xVP for each Loot token you hold in your own half of the board.

(use the rules on p75 regarding Loot Tokens, maybe using our Frostgrave tokens for these?).

Game Length: is 6 turns, throw a dice at the end of turn 6, on a score of 4+ play a final seventh turn. 

This was the goblin secret weapon, fairly useless for the points, it only ever hit on turn 2.

The game started well for my goblins as the ogres forgot to move some of their troops on the first turn allowing me to manoeuvre into good positions. Once combat began it was amazing how many Nerve tests were passed by both armies, thus causing more rounds of melee than expected. 

Initially the goblins were giving as good as they got, however...

The ogres had a new secret weapon themselves, a unit of heavy crossbows which were far more effective than the goblins catapult. 

Melee was close during turns 2 to 4 with fortune swinging both ways. Sadly, a poor turn 4 from the goblins allowed the ogres to gain the upper hand and eventually they were able to grab 2 of the loot counters in the goblin half and the third counter in their own half, thus scoring a 5-0 win and not a single goblin left standing. 

I think that by now, having lost the last 3 games to the ogres, my goblins have  lulled them into a false sense of superiority so that we can surprise them with our tactical genius and fighting skills once the camapign begins. 

It was a great game once again, really close up until the end of turn 4. We are looking forward to getting 3rd edition KOW soon and plan to have a couple more practise games to get used to them before we start the campaign proper, we both also need time to paint a few more units.