The Battle of Bogenhof – pt 6 – The Battle!

So the day of the show arrived and I was out of the door at 7am to drive to the north of the city and got to the venue just before the doors opened to the other clubs putting on games and the traders.

This year, we had moved the show to a new venue, Lee Valley Athletics Club, in North London. Previously it had always been held at Crystal Palace and for me the new venue was much better. I will say that although as a building, it was less interesting the setup meant that everything was on one floor with traders predominantly round the edge and all the games in the middle. It made it so that no one would be missed or pigeon holed to one side (and the loading bay was much closer, so the distance to cart stuff around was much less!). Overall, for me, it felt much better though I can’t comment on footfall etc.

Whilst waiting for the other chaps involved (Greg and Pete) to arrive and the 2 mats for the table, I was able to assist the club by going round and labelling up all the tables, so everyone else putting on games, would know where they should be!

After being a bit useful, I grabbed a club shirt, and we were able to start setting up the table.

This won’t be my normal style of report more of a photo dump with some commentary!

Deployment

The board before kick off.

The game commences.

First spell of the game, brutal!

The cannon swiftly removed the stegadon and in the distance, the Wildriders were wiped out by 40 crossbow shots, leaving Orion and the hero on Stag rather exposed!

The Ironbreakers made short work of the pistoliers.

Eeeekkkk. This was not going to end well.

Combat troops ably supported by massed archers.

And thus commenced the biggest grind of the game.

The knights started their run of failed charges across the river into the thunderers.

Facing down the steam tank!

Orion with the help of the now dead captain on great stag (and a heal from the Highweaver), butchered his way through the horde of great weapon quarrellers!

The Eternal guard are joined by their Forest allies in combat vs the Longbeards. The Captain on Eagle joins Orion to finish off the xbow dwarves.

The steam tank was taking a toll on the hammerers but not everything was going it’s way as the great weapons tore chunks out of its hull. The halberdiers were less effective in support. Karl Franz and his one man show vs the Irondrakes wasn’t going to plan as Deathclaw was burnt to a crisp and his silver seal went into overdrive, warding off the various blows that breached his armour.

The carnosaurs had blown through the miners but at quite a cost, with both monsters down to a single wound and the scarvet having been slain. The Oldblood was now threatening the rear of the ironbreakers.

The saurus had been whittled down by the organ gun, before the poisoned arrows of the elves destroyed it. The way was now clear to the runelord awakening the Golem!

The hawks bypassed the other xbows to take out the organ gun. The engineer was proving to be a tougher proposition.

The slayers gave a good showing against the greatswords but the superior numbers of the Empire elite ensured an honourable death was met.

The Oldblood joins the combat, though the Carnosaur is swiftly bought down.

The golem finally awakens!

And after 6 hours of game play (10-4) and a total of 3 or 4 turns! the show finished and we had to call it there.

It was immense fun. It was as different and enjoyable as playing triumph and treachery. Pete enjoyed it so much that he wants to play another game of 8th again (and he hasn’t played pretty much since the old world was destroyed). We had loads of former fantasy players drop by loving the mass battle and even a couple of youngsters joining to roll some dice.

Would I have done anything differently if I were to do it again? Probably very little as in the main, everything went pretty smoothly. The couple of things that come to mind are:

• Balance the size of the forces a bit more. Mainly as the dwarves could have done with a few more blocks, in order to cover the whole width of the table.
• Awakened the golem earlier. Not having run a game this size, I’d not considered how many turns we would be able to complete in the time available.
• Refine the magic phase. On the fly we did the magic phases as: The Empire and Woodelf each rolled 2D6 (so 4D6 in all), with the dwarves getting the highest dice of each of the 2D6 rolls. In the dwarf turn, just 2D6 were rolled. This seemed to work fairly well but if it was done again with a different army (that used magic), it may not work as well.

So overall it was a complete success and although involved quite a bit of work to set up, was fully worth it and I definitely recommend large games (though I understand why they normally are an all weekend job!).