Sunny Sunday gaming

Taking advantage of some much-needed downtime, I introduced JB to Ganesha Games' Of Armies and Hordes and PSC Games' Battle Ravens over the Easter weekend.

JB brought his huge 10mm dark elf collection and trimmed out 1500 points worth of pointy wee b@stards to harass my halflings for our first game of the day. We set up the table with about 32 areas, sticking to relatively simple open terrain, light woods, hills, marsh, ruins, a burial ground and a village.  

Feeling viscous, the dark elf wolf pack went straight for the village in the first turn. They encountered 10 stands of villagers who they overran quite easily, but not without suffering casualties themselves.

The halfling artillery on the hilltop - first time I've used artillery and it seemed pretty effective -  bombarded the village, killing more wolves, before the halfling militia marched in and dispatched the last of them. In the distance the treefolk explored some ruins and discovered an poorly concealed and undefended treasure, while the artillery continued to bombard dark elves at every opportunity.

It ended up being a pretty one-sided affair I'm afraid, and the dark elves were driven off the table quite quickly once we got going. That is kind of true to form when these two armies meet - regardless of the rule system. OAaH worked pretty well again, but there were certainly a few of times when we questioned how on earth JB was supposed to remove me from the defensive positions I had holed-up in...

We then got in a very enjoyable game of Battle Ravens. Much more a board game, it is simple to pick up, but can be really quite challenging. We stretched the game out until there were very few men left in either shieldwall, and then my poor Saxons collapsed in a flood of vicious vikings. I have a Scottish army in the box unused, so I may have to give that a try some day soon.