Kings of War - Siege

A half dozen of us got together a little back for a giant game of Kings of War.  George, who organised the game, decided on a siege combined with a relief force attack.  Myself Richard, Alan and Stephen were the valiant allies trying to rescue the city from the rising forces of undead, led by Rich and Mark.

A large chunk of our forces faced south as a relieving force was know to be on its way.  Indeed it turned up pretty much straight away (funny that) under the command of George, Darren and Gaz.

For my part I took principle command of the cavalry and pike force tasked with blocking the swarm of Orcs, whilst Richard led the attack on the castle.

The relief force was effectively blocked straight away.  Not least by the extraordinary performance of the stars of the battle, my light horsemen, who managed to stop three giants from getting close to the rest of the army, holding in several attacks.

The centre of the Orc attack was blunted against our masses of knights.

One thing we couldn't blunt was the castle walls, which stood firm against all attacks.  Our sole siege tower managed to make the walls, and a general on a winger lion managed to clear the battlements.  But progress in making a breach was painfully slow.

Still, with the help of Stephen's Dwarves, we we grinding down the relief force and allowing our besiegers time to force their way in.

Indeed the Orcs were starting to look so thin on the ground as to be a defeated force...

But it would be too little too late.  Finally after seven turns we had made a breach but the blocking force was broken just as much as the relief force, and so unable to really support the now clearly outnumbered besiegers.  The undead force inside the castle was unlikely to be harmed by what we had outside.

In the end the game swang to the bad guys favour, there just being too many of them to shift.

Personally I'm not a fan of siege games, they don't tend to make good, punchy games in my view.  The visuals may be interesting, but the result is two sides stand facing each other in a slow grinding match where manoeuvre is irrelevant.  To that end I was glad to get the role I did, but even then it was pretty much straight forward.  It was still an entertaining day, and always nice to pop hundreds of painted figures on a nice big table.