Kings of War – Shadowed Horizons Campaign

In recent months, Kings of War has been my main hobby focus thanks to my Nightstalkers and now the Feegle project. In a gaming sense, Woodstock and I also had a wee intro game to Armada using her lovely painted fleets. It’s been a Mantic year.

Having said that, I don’t really follow news closely so I forgot that September is the Shadowed Horizons global campaign until Gerry mentioned it in the UHH this week. The next morning I messaged Woodstock and now we’re planning to get as many games as we can into the schedule for the next month.

There are some issues that need addressing first though. 

• There’s no way my Feegles will be done in time but I also need to add some units to my Nightstalkers now that the list has changed to include the 2023 version of the army. Getting them painted to match the army is going to make those inevitable battle report photos all the better
• We want to play some games of Armada but my ships are still sitting in boxes, unloved lumps of resin. So wash them, build them, prime them and paint them.
• The place we have played so far really sucks for fantasy terrain. Grim dark sci-fi? No problem. Anything else? Not so much. We loosely agreed after our last game that maybe playing at home might be a better option going forward so I need to drag out my scenery collection and see how it will fit and what needs made to get a decent table together

Now the terrain stuff will take more effort than the painting so breaking them into two parts makes sense. Thankfully I already had plans to be around for the 2k for 2k charity stream this weekend so a silly painting challenge was already in the schedule.

When it comes to Kings of War Armada, I was sure I was going to be an orc player. I really liked the look of the ships in the starter box and I’ve a love for green skins. 

All of my childhood I wanted to be a marine biologist and, though regrettably I didn’t go down that career path, I’m still fascinated by underwater life. So when the Trident Realms fleet came out looking like this, I was a goner. I’ll take one of everything please!

They’ve sat in boxes since I got them but the campaign is the perfect reason to get them painted up. By and large the resins are gorgeous. There are a few bubbles and one or two nasty mould slips but overall, they were easy to put together and look good. Each fits the bases neatly so there isn’t a lot of extra work to be done on them.

Just needed to get them primed for 6pm Friday and we can get started on the streaming madness. Please come visit with the Miniature Frontier channel over on Twitch for 2k for 2k. There’s some amazing guests lined up and it is raising money for a great cause.

2k for 2k is still going but I’m officially finished. In total I got 315 points painted and it was a joy… even doing all the filigree 14 hours in.

The list of paints is too long and to be honest there was very little planning in mind. Partly copying the box art, partly looking at my paint wrack and picking what I hadn’t used in a while.

That’s one of the things off the to do list. Next up is probably some terrain as a break from mini painting.

After a sleep.

Nightrunner was asking on the last post for photos to give an idea of scale. The ships are 1/700. Here is a photo of each size of ship next to a current Ork Boy and a Mantic Dwarf

Tiny

Small

Medium

Large

Extra Large

We’ll be playing Armada first in the campaign month so that’s getting the priority.

There are resin terrain kits for Armada but I’ve spent my hobby budget for this month and next is already spent so, for September at least, we’ll need homemade. After going to all the effort of painting up the ships for Armada, it would be nice to not have to use flat cardboard islands.

1. First step was to take some mdf board that I was given a few months ago and trace the island tokens from the starter box onto it and cut it out. Why not just us the original token as the base? I dunno, “just in case” I want it in the future I guess. I managed two of the bigger islands before I gave myself a blister using the Stanley knife and remembered I have a pack of pre cut pond mdf bases from Warbases that would work perfectly well.
2. Rummaging through the cupboard, I came up with a couple of options for the landforms. I decided to go for this sheet of packing material. It isn’t polystyrene but some kind of foam stuff. It is easy to carve and should be enough for my purposes. For the smaller sand bars, I found a scrap piece of insulation foam that was easier to get suitably thin.
3. I decided that I wanted some version of a cliff face so I grabbed for the first thing that came to mind, tin foil. Not the best material for getting paint to stick to it but it did in a pinch.
4. The cheapskate hobbyist’s toolkit is never without poundshop pre-mixed filler (spackle in other countries). Mine is a bit thick so needed a little water added to get it on spreadable but not so runny that it would just soak into the foam. A little bit of water over the top smoothed out the surface for the next step.
5. A sprinkle of bird sand  to give a decent texture for drybrushing and the land is done.
6. I made some big rocks to stick up out of the sea with scrap piece of insulation foam glued to a couple of plastic bases. Is the glue going to be enough to keep them on there? Time will tell.
7. Everything got a coat of cheap acrylic paint from The Works mixed with pva.
8. More cheap acrylics were going to be used next but I forgot to dig around in the darkest corner of the cupboard to get them out and it was too late at night to start. So I used hobby paint used to paint the rest. Drybrushing was my friend here.
9. Once everything was dry, a coat of gloss varnish for the sea and a layer of fine flock for the land. I think I was a little too generous with the flock on the the bigger islands 
10. Lastly I wanted some trees but given the scale for Armada is 1/700, there wasn’t a lot of effort here. Some toothpicks painted brown for trunks and clump foliage glued on top. It looked awful so I ripped it all back out and just glued down clump foliage. 
11. Using a pipette, watered down pva was applied to everything to make it a bit tougher for gameplay and it is done.

Other than drying time, this wasn’t a very time consuming project and I got through it over a few days. As I say, there are some resin packs for Armada available from Mantic that tie into extra rules in a supplement (or just to make the table look prettier) but for our needs right now, this will do. I’ll likely swap to something else when I can afford it but as I was working on them, we got our Armada game day booked in for this weekend so time was limited. “Done not perfect” strikes again.

After catching up with the UHH, yes Gerry, the ocean texture is just filler. There is some texture cast around the sides of these models so I was just trying to match that. Simple and cheap. Much like myself.

Mantic link for how to take part in the campaign: https://www.manticgames.com/news/how-to-take-part-in-kings-of-war-shadowed-horizons-global-campaign/

Technically the campaign doesn’t start until this coming weekend but we got our first game in this past Saturday. Here’s how it went.

Woodstock and I have only played one demo game before (and that was several months ago) and so we just went with the recommended “normal” sized game from the rule book of 200 points. We couldn’t find a larger sea mat in the gaming café we were in so just used the one from the starter box. It’s a little smaller than the 4ft by 4ft recommended but we made it work. Getting a decent mat is definitely on my list for “next steps” purchases. It was a little slow going but the game was a lot of fun – definitely would speed up with experience. Or if I just had the kind of brain that could remember anything for more than one turn.

I ran out of time for proper list building so just sort of threw things onto the table that matched the points of Woodstock’s list. It ended up being a lot of ships, with no upgrades being used. Trident Realms have several themed fleet rules that are fun to play with. The main drawback to them is they only have front arc weapons so no broadsides, no chance at raking fire. To mitigate this, they have weird maneuvering rules and a fleet wide –1 to hit (which became known very quickly as “because fish”).

We played Scenario 8 from the main rule book; Flotsam and Jetsam. 9 loot tokens were placed after we put out the terrain. All with their value side down so we didn’t know which was worth what. At the end of a ship’s activation, you could gather loot tokens within 3″ and at the end of each turn, whatever loot tokens were still loose on the board floated 3″ whichever way the wind was blowing. The scenario lasts 8 turns and the value of your loot was what defined the winner.

The wind was placed in the west for turn one and the tactics of each of us was clear from the outset. The orcs wisely played the objective and moved to pick up loot. The fish picked up a couple but mostly held back and started peppering fire from turn one.

For anyone who hasn’t played, Armada uses d10s for weapons with the base hit being on a 6. Crew experience, distance, speed etc modify this. Damage is static by weapon type (indirect, light, heavy and close). Crits do damage and then roll 2d6 on a crit table which mostly just adds varying levels of extra damage.

By the end of turn one, most of the tokens were on board ships. Turns two to four was really us getting to grips with the rules and the fleets. There was a lot of failed grapples (both fleets are big fans of a grapple and boarding actions), particularly from my side. Regular crew needing a 5 on a d6 to pass a skill check held me back enough that I’ll definitely consider spending the upgrade points to go for a veteran crew next time.

Turn five and the orcs ganged up on a poor turtle and it ended up grappled on two sides and promptly surrendered. The largest of the orc vessels also surrendered after prolonged attacks from multiple fish. One fish all but sunk itself with a stray indirect fire. The direction your misfires go is dependent on which way the point of the dice is facing –  I need to get better at remembering to not picking up my dice too fast. It was around this point that I forgot about taking photos cos I was chatting too much… story of my life.

Turn six and the Trident Realm’s need to stay facing front arc for shooting started to cause some issues as, with some good maneuvering, the orcs managed a few raking fire shots. These are double damage if in the bow (front) and triple if the stern (rear).  The stern rake was particularly brutal with multiple critical hits in addition to the triple damage. The second turtle ship misjudged a movement and ended up going off the board. Unlike in other games, this doesn’t kill you; at the end of the turn, you just come back on in the same spot but with an activation token already on you. In effect it means you lose a turn but are on the board and therefore can be shot at. This is going to be a problem.

Turn Seven and the table was looking a lot less busy. Only one sinking on the orc side, three for the fish. Both sides had several ships limping along but the fish were closest to being able to sink the orcs and steal back some valuable loot tokens. 

Turn eight and two things happened that set the tone. We finally remembered the repair rules were a thing that exists and the orcs gained back more health than the fish could dish out. No sinking and snatching up the loot for me. The second thing was the poor turtle from turn six was the last to activate and was sunk before getting the chance. Taking with it a valuable 2 point loot token. The orcs won 4 points to 1.

Overall a slow game but that was entirely us and not a reflection on the rules. All in I think it was around 3 hours for 8 turns but I could easily see that dropping as we play more games. I know I spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about the game, and planning out future fleets. The next morning I got a text from Woodstock saying she has caught the bug and wants more games too. Then the local gaming group discord had a couple of people mention an interest in giving it a try. Time to get that two player starter set painted up!!

We needed some difficult terrain for this weekend’s Ambush game so I knocked out a couple of swamps yesterday.

1. Using pond bases from Warbases, two for swamps and one for a field
2. Beveled the edges with a knife.
3. Air-dry clay to make the basic topography
4. Some bits of cork for stones
5. Pva and partisans play sand for texture
6. Primed with a dark brown spray can from TTCombat
7. Dry brush ground
8. Paint the rocks with London Grey and give a wash of Nuln Oil
9. Tufts are some Army Painter Swamp and some dead grass from an unknown company
10. AK Still Water with some Death World Forest mixed in with a toothpick

I’ll add some more flock but this was all I had time for before the game. I’m pretty happy with them; they look good, flat enough for bases to sit on top of them and easily transportable which is handy cos they’ve to fit in my bag for the game

I’ve tried twice now to do a step by step post for this one but this POS website continues to suck all the joy out of the project system. So here is my proxy Mindscreech.

Sadly Shadowed Horizons is in the past and we didn’t get another game in. Both of us suffered bereavements and the idea of playing games just didn’t feel right. I’m happy with what the project managed and there will definitely be more games of Armada and Kings of War to come. But those are for another time and other project logs.

Let’s just leave this here and close it out properly.