Orc Triumphs in Talisman

I had a great game of Talisman (2nd edition) with the kids on Saturday.

 

 

Mighty Kyle played the Inquisitor and found himself turned into a toad not once, not twice but three times... To say he wasn't impressed about loosing all of his followers, objects and gold is an understatement!

 

 

Since it was so hot in the conservatory we played on the kitchen table and space was therefore a bit limited. We therefore decided to play with only the dungeon expansion. Erin played the Orc but refused to be seen in a photo (just in case I posted anything either on the blog or in Facebook....). Following the unfortunate toad incident, my Highlander picked up Kyle's booty and made it all the way through to the den of werewolves. Unfortunately the kids rolled a 10 for the werewolf's strength. Since I had stumbled through with just 8 strength I was a bit underpowered and the Highlander fell.

 

Erin decided it would be easier to win simply by squashing the toad - much to Kyle's continued anguish...

 

It's always good fun to play Talisman and we managed to finish this one in less than four hours!

 

Anglo Dane Six Point Warband Complete!

Well, complete in the sense I have finished painting 6 points worth. Now need some more Dane Axe huscarls, some more warriors and a couple of Heros. You know, just for variety!

 

 

Mighty Kyle faces me across the battleground. Face grimaced and ready for the fight ahead. This isn't going to be a battle-report though (mainly because I lost). Kyle used our unpainted Vikings to play Pagan Rus for the first time. Since neither of us have either played with or against this faction we agreed I would not review the battle board before the game. Yes, that was a mistake... My levy were basically out after the first turn after aquiring 4 fatigue due to some battle board shenanigans! No warlords were injured in the writing of this blog post and since we were playing Clash of Warlords it was therefore only a technical victory for the Rus ;-)

 

Anyway on to some photos of the star attraction, my completed Anglo Danes. Hmm, a banner would be a nice addition as well...

 

 

All shields supplied by Little Big Men of course...

 

 

The pond/marsh is a very nice eBay acquisition.

 

 

The warband includes my warlord with an eight strong unit of huscarls, two four man units of Dane Axe wielding huscarls, a unit of spear armed warriors and the just finished painted unit of levy slingers.

 

Warriors (Ceorls) are useful to place in front of hearthguard (huscarls), to take the initial charge before the better armed troops move in.

 

 

Levy can be surprisingly effective. I used them in a single unit of 12 today, but have had success deploying them in two units of six.

 

 

Here the levy are taking refuge behind some rocky ground, with the warlord standing between the huscarls.

 

 

The Anglo Danes like to use terrain to slow the advance of their enemy! Didn't help me in this game though...

 

Anglo Dane Levy WiP

Just a short entry to prove that I have indeed started work on my Anglo Dane Levy.

 

 

It you look carefully you'll also see that I've made progress with the three wraiths. In fact the latter are just waiting for some varnish and they'll be all finished. Photos to follow later this week.

 

Wrath of Ashardolan

Mighty Kyle enjoys playing X-Wing, SAGA and the odd game of Warhammer. He's also up for playing games such as Drake and Doctor Who. However, it's more of a struggle to encourage my daughter Erin to participate in what she sees as pure geekdom. That said she does enjoy Talisman - and when I say Talisman, I means 2nd edition Talisman. Hmmm.

 

Unfortunately The Commander in Chief isn't fond of playing games that take 4 or more hours to play (try playing Talisman with all of the expansions & advanced characters...). I have therefore been on the lookout for a Talisman like game that can be played in a relatively short period of time. After a bit of research here's what I decided on.

 

 

It's a sort of simplified Dungeon Crawler based on the D&D universe. As it happens both Erin and the Commander in Chief were out with friends so the first game was just me and Mighty Kyle. We viewed this as a learning game though, so I'll post a more thorough review of the game another time. The game was much (much!) simpler than Talisman but we both had fun and Kyle definitely wants to play again.

 

 

 

 

Full House at the Club

Had a really great evening playing SAGA at last night's Friday Night Fire Fight Club. I was playing Anglo Danes against Joseph's Vikings. We played the Homeland scenario using three of my recently acquired Dark Age buildings ( purchased from Adrian's Wall). Joseph was defender of the village with a 5 point force and won on turn 5 by killing my warlord. I managed to occupy only a single dwelling and by turn four it was clear I wasn't going to win (I needed to remove Vikings from all buildings and it just wasn't going to happen). It's the first time I've played this scenario and trying to remove 5 points of Vikings from buildings they don't want to leave is fairly challenging!

 

Anyway, it was really great to see so many folks at the club, I counted 7 games in progress: SAGA, X-Wing (with Mighty Kyle playing two games against James and scoring one loss and a draw), Muskets & Tomahawks, Kings of War (two games), Hail Caesar and Warzone. Here's a few photos.

 

 

 

 

Next week I'll be playing Kings of War with Mike, so I'd better get my wraiths finished...