Theseus and the Minotaur : Dragon Rampant

Well not quite exactly the legend but perhaps the sequel ? Theseus and his band of Athenians having escaped the labyrinth are now travelling home laden with treasures. As they make their way through the mountains they are ambushed by a fearsome Beast Herd their objective is to cut their way through with as much of their baggage as they can.

Struggling with the booty (each unit laden with booty has an extra free move but is then restricted and they can only fight defensively)

Theseus seen here leading his band of Athenians 

But there is trouble ahead and out of the trees the sound of cloven hooves

The beasts come on from all directions, fast moving centigors......

Theseus sends out his light cavalry to scout ahead

An overview of the ambush, Theseus is attempting to get to the far left corner of the battlefield

Some of the Athenians form up into a phalanx, shields to the ready

They have made it half way to the ru8ned temple but now they are going to have to fight for their lives

........and more winged beasts arrive from the rear !

While light cavalry hold back the herd with javelins the infantry prepare to be charged

Theseus urging a second unit forward

Then out of the woods charges a Minotaur Theseus immediately charges in hand to hand combat honours even

When the beast is pushed back it then charges the infantry

At this point in the battle it was all going the way of the Athenians..............

And then it all changed so quickly I didn’t even capture it on photo, somehow the Athenians snatched defeat from victory and lost all three objectives in a single turn ?!?!🤔😩

The beast herd reunited......we debated what the herd would do with the catch when they got them back to the herdstone eat them or marry them ? Perhaps best not thinking too hard 😀

A very enjoyable game, something different and great fun.

The Dark forces of the Dead : Kings of War

Somewhere in a fantasy land not so far away the good and true men of the world scare their children with tales of dark forces from the abyss and the undead that walk the land. Whilst most children only half believe such stories we know there is more to them than legend. Occasionally every man may be called on to defend his home from the Dark Forces. One such occasion occured one Dark evening in the North.

(Ok enough of the preamble...really just an opportunity to have a multiplayer game of KoW Fantasy and to introduce a new player to the dungeon) we had 1500 points per general, with the objective of capturing the central skull pile/dark magic totem thingy, and killing the three most expensive units on the enemy side. The stout men of the Empire against Evil, Dark abyssal dwarves and dead stuff. I managed to get a few photos.....

The start, Empire of men all down the left, a mixture of stout infantry with pointy sticks, knights in shining armour, some wizards (much use they will be!) and as many cannons as I thought we could get away with (much use they were!)

Shiny knights, unfortunately we had two units of these and as our most expensive units we would have to be very careful not to get them killed off in rash and foolish charges......advice I should have listened to !

Stout infantry and cannons, the skull pile in the centre is an additional objective

After a couple of turns the evil dead at this end of the battlefield are surging forward, small units of squashy stuff which was remarkably easy to kill followed by really scary tough stuff that was almost impossible to kill 😱

The men pour volley after volley into the oncoming dead stuff but the cannon balls and shot just seem to go straight through without any damage ?

Must have been exciting as I missed quite a bit of the far battle....all I could hear was moans from the abyssal dwarves as first their general and then more and more of their troops seemed to get killed off....apparently the men were particularly heroic when fighting close to their banner which prevented them from routing several times. Here much closer to the end of the battle much of the abyssal army has disappeared with only the stone trolls holding the centre of the battlefield.

Of course what goes well at one end goes badly at the other and the gallant knights and their general are wiped out by dead guys in bandages and werewolves. Ooooowwhhhhhh !

An overview of the battle at this stage......the key factor was the spearmen to the right who managed after a tough fight to see off the wights who were particularly unpleasant...don't want to see them again !

The General on the griffin was then able to fly upto the central skulls to claim the extra victory point for the good guys.

As the game was up the werewolves, mummies and the big angry skeleton thing slunk away into the night.

By some complete fluke the men had pulled it off even though their cannon fire had been almost completely useless for the entire battle. We had a fun time 😀

The Rise of the Undead : KoW

Some more fantasy madness in the dungeon with a horde of undead against and even bigger horde of stoic men looking to defend their homes against the vampires, zombies, ghouls and skeletons.

Who knows where the artillery will hit, in fact if it will hit at all ?

The army of Men aligned through the village

At the far side of the village the General on a giant griffin, more cannons, wizards and pretty much everything in between 😀

Ghouls come crawling across the fields....give them a volley...but they are dead already!

On the right flank and initial charge by our knights has failed, the infantry have gone in, and although they hold eventually they too are attacked in the flank by fiendish blood hounds !

The guard armed with great swords march forward.....to their doom ?

An over view of the battlefield, despite our best efforts and some lucky shooting the vast horde of skeletons, zombies and dead stuff force their way across the battlefield. Our heroic cavalry is hindered by the ploughed field so turns away to protect the centre where they charge a regiment of skeleton cavalry, who eventually crumble to dust....

But it is all too late the forces of Men are being overpowered, as the end of the battle draws close the spearmen finally break, and both flanks begin to collapse.

Get one more shot off before we flee !

The Zombie 'legion' shambles across killing all in its path.

A fun battle, but when the count was added up a major victory to the undead, the remains of the men fled the field...any who survived screaming in terror as the undead ate any that remained on the field !😱

Snake Eyes in the land of the Grey Elves : Kings of War

As regular readers know the Dungeon sees quite a range of games on the principle that variety is the spice of life. So we put away my Brits and Germans (back soon) and played a game of Kings of War. The rule set is gradually replacing WHFB for us, it's not perfect but seems to give fun games. John brought his 'grey' elves again determined to seek revenge for the previous defeats at the hands of my ogre army. I never seem to get many photos of these battles, the grey elves being somewhat camera shy !

We rolled a random scenario with dominate being the objective for both sides, requiring us to get into the no mans land between forces and hold it to the end. The ogres with limited ranged weapons and lots of strength needed to get moving so pretty much rushed across the table whilst the elves held back pouring arrow fire and bolts at the oncoming horde. Only the Elven Lord came forward on his massive grey dragon, unfortunately having wiped out the ogre mammoth he strayed too far forward and was caught in the flank by a yeti giant who seized the opportunity for a good meal, I wonder what dragon actually tastes of ?

The bulk of the ogre horde rushing / thundering/ lumbering forward

A giant, a mammoth and a yeti all looking for a good meal, unfortunately the mammoth is eaten by the Elven dragon before the yeti can eat the dragon 😀

The grey horde await their doom

Ogre shooters wrestle to the ground some Kentucky fried chicken

Sadly not enough photos, but what, you ask is the reference to snake eyes all about, well the battle as usual ebbs and flows losing the mammoth early on looked bad for the ogres but then the dragon lord was also taken out. Things were reasonable balanced on the right wing but as we approached turn 6 a huge horde of grey elves charged the Abyssal Daemon in the wood, already heavily wounded 19 plus wounds, he completely failed his nerve test as expected....... but he has the inspiring special rule which means a failed nerve test can be rerolled......and would you believe it the only possible result to keep him on the table popped up out of the shaker.......whilst I deeply sympathise with Johns short lived disappointment I haven't laughed so much in ages 😀😀😀 we had lots of fun, which is what it is all about, and just to assure readers it was John who asked me to record the Snake eye event on the blog, he took it in great spirit. In recognition of their great feat I am determined to get the ogres bases finished off.

Beast vs Dark Elves : Dragon Rampant

Another run out with Dragon Rampant this time back to fantasy and a chance to get my Beastmen army on the battlefield. This sadly doesnt happen so often these days as we are playing less fantasy.

Still sticking to the ipad so i havent worked out how to do captions yet and cant find quite the right app to do bubbles but I have a separate keyboard which is making this post much easier. Our first scenario as it was our first game for a couple of weeks was a simple blood bath. We played 40 points again which still feels about right for the 4x6 battlefield. For those interested I have listed my beast army at the bottom.

In our first battle which was very close and where the two armies literally fought each other to the death, the Beasts just about came out on top. The Beasts played quite cagey with the spellcaster using the bemuse/hold spell several times successfully on the hydra to keep it from advancing until the Bestigors could hack it down. The centigors ran out and round the right flank of the dark elves whilst the minotaurs in true style charged about head on till they were all dead !

Our final shot of hte battle shows the bestigors eventually getting the better of the Hydra.

It was a close game but we still had time for another scenario, so we tried the "find the crystal" scenario. Crystals are distributed across the table before you set up then to attempt to capture them. Whilst the set up and the initial part of this game was interesting it proved a rubbish scenario as after 2 turns it was absolutely clear that only one side (DarkElves) could win. Slightly disappointing but not the Elves or the Game's fault....we wouldnt play this scenario again without changing it somehow.

Overall some more fun with Dragon Rampant.

Here is my 40 point Beastmen Army

1 Elite foot lord played by Large minotaur

1 unit Elite foot - Armoured Bestigors

1 unit Bellicose foot - Minotaurs

1 Unit heavy foot - gors

1 Elite mage/spellcaster

1 Light cavalry unit - Centigors.

1 Large Creature/giant 

Greek mythology : Dragon Rampant

Following other successful games of Dragon Rampant we thought to try it out with some of my Greek collection. So we set up a small scenario of around 40 points. It seems appropriate that the Greek contingent led by a Jasonesque type character  had been on some form of expedition and need to cross the valley back to safety. This being a land of mythology their path is blocked by an ambush of mythological creatures.

The ambush is sprung with fiercesome minotaurs, half man half horse creatures and a mountain giant.

The Jason contingent has elite units of hoplites, together with some lighter troops. Their objective is easy get through the valley to safety.

Minotaurs are not all brawn. As they have the wild charge rule the Centaur commander cleverly tries to keep them under cover and away from the hail of arrows coming their way.

The mountain giant attempts to charge in but is weakened by accurate arrow fire.

This final shot is close to the end of the battle, although the remaining Greeks don't seem to have got very far they have in fact managed to get one full unit off the table out of shot. Jason can be seen facing behind the orange tree and his army has pretty much wiped all of the mythical creatures off the field. I think when we added it up the Centaurs had won by a whisker....but it didn't really matter.

I didn't take that many photos.....but it was another fun game to play with Dragon Rampant rules.