The Fifth Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash

This evening was the Fifth Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash – for the last five years I have had an evening of wargaming on my birthday. Last year I extended the festivities into an entire Wargaming Weekend! The Previous Year I ran a Savage Worlds Pulp Adventure Game: The Mask of Amenakken IV. The year before that was a Flames of War game set in France 1941, and the year before that was The Raid on Bruneval (also using Flames of War – before we even HAD the FoW books – we played based on the QR sheets and army lists downloaded off their website!).

This year we played Hordes of the Things. I didn’t take a lot of notes as I was mostly having fun and also playing referee for a four player game with three guys who had never played before!

First off, we had cake:

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)


Yeah, well… I’m no professional cake decorator or anything.... can you tell I'm a bit of a BIKE GEEK too...!?

Then we wandered down to the War Room for some


FORCES

Elves
1x Blade General
2x Blade
2x Knights
2x Riders
3x Shooters
1x magician

Dwarves
1x Hero General
1x Artillery
7x Blade
1x light Infantry

Orcs
1x Rider General
3x Beasts
2x Behemoths
1x Warband
6x Hordes

Vikings
1x Blade General
8x Blade
1x Warband
1x Magician

THE GAME

We had Orcs and Vikings against Dwarves and Elves. Christian took the Elves, Tim Miller took the Orcs, Gary took the Vikings, and Darrin took the Dwarves (until he had to leave, then Amanda took over).

As I said I didn’t take many notes or pictures and having stayed up way too late the night before and way too late tonight… I don’t remember much other than good times were had!!


Orcies and Vikings across the table from the Dwarves. Tried out a Hero General for the first time. Didn’t really DO much…


There was a whole little side battle going on across the river – two forces tried to out flank each other hoping they could cross over behind the enemies lines and harass their rear areas. Alas neither side even had enough PIPs to really do much and they spent most of the game eyeing each other up…


The Battle lines approach.


Big Giant about to eat some Shooters. Then the “big bang thing” scared him off for a while.


Some parts of the line approached each other a bit more slowly…


Dwarves thrash some Hordes of Goblins.


The Elves and the Vikings had a bit of shoving back and forth. Gary knocked out a stand on the flank and turned to flank more. It looked like he’d roll up the line for a bit but then Christian came back – and it went back and forth.


The Dwarves got lucky and got on the Orc Generals flank. For a turn he held them off (a tie) but on his own following bound the Dwarves finished him off. Would the Orc command panic and run on their next bound!?


A six on the PIP die saw Christian finally making some moves on the other side of the river. Unfortunately the elf archers got ate in the woods.


What a mess.


Back in!


On Tim’s next bound he rolled a one – the formation panicked and broke and he didn’t even have enough PIPs to keep a single stand on! That was pretty much it for the game.


Close up of the Elves and Vikings..

It was good fun! I hadn’t seen Gary or Christian for a few months and though I’ve had a few painting nights with Mr. Miller he haven’t thrown any dice in anger for some time.

Everyone seemed to have a good time and thought the game was quite fun – hopefully it will be easier to get them out to play again sometime!

I think the vikings only lost two stands (both blades)... Now that I think about it the losses on the Elves flank were actually Dwarves that happen to end up there and I think they only lost one stand of shooters. I know the Dwarves lost a stand of two of Blades, the Halfling Light Infantry, and their shooters. Before the General was lost the Orcs had lost a handful of hordes - a few of which had returned to the battle... maybe a beast...? Hmmmmm...