At the Temple of Prothero

Eschewing all that 'End of Year Review' nonsense, lets get down to some gaming.  Over the course of the Xmas period I managed to get two games of Kings of War in, so lets begin with the first of these.

My Orcs were once again to face Ross' Ogres.  A tough nut to crack.  We rolled off and got the Dominate scenario, one of the new ones that involved gaining control of a central feature.  To that end we set a Temple to the centre of the board and declared only the victorious army would be permitted entry by the gods.

I had an Orc army with a small number of Goblin allies, able to deploy both deeply and wide.

Orcs, Trorcs and Goblins in depth

 For Ross' part numbers were light but made up for in strength.  He was also able to provide depth of cover to his flanks.

Ogres only have two colour of pants

 I had the benefit of first turn and made a general advance.  It was clear that with large portions of my force being formed of substantial horde formations it was going to be difficult for my troops to manoeuvre around the impassable building and the troublesome woodland terrain.

 Goblin bows unleashed a deadly storm of arrows on the Ogre scouts, destroying one unit straight away.  Simon the Giant advanced to the space resulting looking to encircle the Ogre main line.  My deployment as a whole had placed several large units on my right to face Ross' limited cavalry, but this was only due to bitter experience in the past of my own cavalry being unable to hold their own against them.  Therefore 40 goblins and 20 orcs with a giant in support seemed provident!

 But laying additional troops to the flanks meant that the centre was at risk.  Ross was able to coordinate the attack of two behemoths and a horde of Ogres onto my one horde of Orcs.

 The result was an absolute hammering, and the start of a phase of the battle that saw the Orcs simply suffer.

 Goblins would have to fill the gap, a prospect that filled me with little hope.  Orc chariots and flank attacks in the woods tried to contain the Ogre assault, to little effect.

 Only the right flank seemed to be mine at this stage, and given it as a minor concern for the Ogres it wasn't particularly a worry to Ross.  Simon had taken some damage and Ross fully expected him to fall to blows in the first combat he entered,  My goblin cavalry rounded on the rear of the Ogres but thanks to Ross' abundance of cannon armed infantry, they achieved nothing.

At great loss the Orcs managed to destroy a unit or two, but the appearance of encirclement, was actually the shortened interior lines of an army securing its' objective, as the Ogres encircled the temple.

Somehow, my goblins had survived and prevailed where troll and orc had failed, and I was able to bring more from the right flank to try to bail out my diminishing numbers.  Somehow I had made it past turn three, when it all looked to be over.  But still With Simon seemingly on his last legs it looked like a forlorn hope to continue.  Ogres charged in to finish him.

 But not for the first time in the game, Ross' dice betrayed him, and when 'anything but a one' would ensure Simon's demise Ross rolled two of them, a double one allowed Simon to stand, and proceed to smash the Ogres to dust.

 Still, now my chariots had gone, and the Orcs were mainly a collection of characters trying to plug holes.  A troll hero was doing a manful job of supporting the goblin spears whilst the last remaining Orc infantry were divided between a fight near the temple and playing a supporting role to a goblin bow unit.

 Another stellar round of shooting from the goblins caused the Ogres a surprising amount of trouble, whilst the goblin spears found victims on their left all too ready to scatter in the face of their jabby sticks!  Simon did his work of stupefying vengeance.

 Somehow, the Orc and Goblins, well mainly the Goblins were right back in the fight.  The gods must have favoured them for the battle had turned around to our favour, and suddenly it looked more like a complete collapse for the Ogres.  Ross was bemused, frustrated, and left cursing his dice.

 They were able to finish off one of the remaining Orc units however, and felt they could hang on if they simply got rid of Simon.

 It was not to be, Simon got the drop on them and with great vengeance and furious anger managed to destroy another unit.  Goblins and Orcs rallied to his aid forcing the remaining Orges to retire in the face of too many targets for them to deal with.  As the battle drew to a close, it was clear they had little left to offer.

 Rather the battle had swung to the greenskins rather than the guts.  Already the Orc Krudger was making his way to the temple.  Two great masses of Goblins had, along side various heroes and a handful of their larger brethren carried the day.

 Like all the best games of Kings of War it was a close battle, and swung from one sides control to the other.  Ross was justified in feeling a little betrayed by the result, he seemingly wiped out half my army in a couple of turns and should've destroyed more.  But certain units just would not die, unlike his die rolls, which would not comply!

So a rare win for the Goblins (and Orcs I guess!) against the might of Ogredom.

But what would happen in the rematch...