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| The venue. |
To induct my new setup, my friend, Chris, came over for his first game of Wrath of Kings. This game was the first game of Wrath of Kings that I have played casually -- my games to-date have all been tournament games. Tournament games are not my first choice, but, so far, they have been the only opportunities I've had to try out the game.
I much prefer a casual game at home, as opposed to what feels to me to be high-pressure, fast-paced tournament games. Not only is a casual game more relaxed, with access to food, booze, and music, but I can ensure that my opponent is a person that I'm going to enjoy spending my time playing with. And, of course, it's a lot easier to accommodate the dogs at home!
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| The eager and excited spectators.... |
Chris just finished assembling his Hadrossian force. I like how he solved the issue with the "deep-well" bases, by filling the bases with green stuff and then imprinting it with the texture stamps from Happy Seppuku.
Chris' Hadrossian forces were tasked with the Motivation, 'Burn it Down'. His Leaders had to control and Interact with the grey columns, which mark his objectives. Controlling an objective requires having more models within 1" of objective than the opponent does.
Since I was allowed to place one of the columns, I placed it on the chokepoint on the bridge. That ensured at least one of his objectives was out of the water, where the Hadrossians would have had a movement advantage. With very lucky Deployment and Initiative rolls, I was able to swarm the bridge and take control of it right away.
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| Teknes swarms the bridge and blockades the first Hadrossian objective. |
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| Rampaging piggies! |
The Teknes Motivation was 'Steal Intel'. An Infantry model must individually Interact with an enemy Leader.
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| The forces inevitably meet near the Hadrossian objectives. Battle commences! |
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| The Teknes vanguard control the Hadrossian objective, hopefully surviving long enough to bait Hadross forces into position for a counterstrike from the main force. |
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| Hadross emit a wave of the dreaded, mind-numbing "Resonate" effect, weakening the Teknes forces and strengthening the defenses of the Hadrossian forces. Teknes troops drop like flies, and the game looks grim for the Teknes side. The tide has turned! |
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| Teknes retaliates with its Leaders, who lay down the pain. But with the Leaders wounded, it's anyone's game now. |
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| Using some positional trickery with her 'Rescue' capability, a Teknes Defender Lineman (Linewoman?) slips through the fray to Steal Intel from the Hadrossian Gutter Friar. Teknes squeaks out a victory! Teknes: 0 points Hadross: -2 points |
Wrath of kings has some awful pretty mini's. How long do the games normally take? More skirmish like malifaux, or warmachine?
ReplyDeleteYup, definitely more skirmish. It can vary, of course. Especially since the official game-size varies across 3 options: Intro, Skirmish, and Battle. I think I read that the game is designed for the Battle-size game. However, all of the tournaments I've played in are at the Skirmish level, and 2 hours is typically plenty of time to get through it. Two well-practiced players could knock out a Skirmish game in less than an hour-and-a-half, probably even an hour, if you don't count set-up and tear-down time.
DeleteChris and I are both slow players, so we stretched out an Intro game for an entire afternoon! But we didn't even start playing until mid-afternoon, after we had hung out and chatted for an hour. We had some rules questions along the way, of course, and that slowed us down a little bit, but not too much.
The game is pretty tight in balance, mechanics, and game-play. There are a few things about it that I would like to be different, but there are no deal-breakers. It's definitely worth checking out, as a lighter-weight option to Malifaux and as a more multi-dimensional option to Warmachine/Hordes.
Thanks for taking the time to respond Mike! When Todd and I were walking around, we came across the display with the WoK models and I about melted from their gorgeousness. I'm definitely interested in playing a game at some point, and if nothing else, painting up a small force cause my goodness they are pretty...and pretty mini's is always what I go for first!
DeleteAnd there we go, there is now a gortisi in my amazon cart...
DeleteOnly one Goritsi? ;-)
DeleteWhat attracts you more to Goritsi -- the vampires or the werewolves?
I quite like the daemon head guys as well (very samuriesc), but Todd basically called them already. I really loved the pale purplish skin they got on the vampires for the goritis in the display. Looks like it would be really challenging to paint, and very unlike any of the other models I've worked with before. Plus it said "hit and run" and all my 40k armies are "charge and hit" Want some new play styles. Will see how my amazon points shape up in the coming months!
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