Renegade Knight reprise

I would like to be able to five you last nights battle report, but numbers were down so I ended up running the rules and setting up so totally forgot photos to jog memory of the epic events; so a quick resume will have to do and will do a full battle report with pictures next week as all being well Will have a full team leaving me free to take photos and make notes.

Sir Pentyn in the Castallan moved into the end of one street and waited for Sir Rupert and Squire to make there appearance, Rupert bravely moved forward to engage whilst the squire attempted to move round flank and snipe.

Sir Rupert quickly found that he was outranged  and only Sir Pentyns ropy shooting (even with aimed shots) saved him from going down in move 1. but he lost his head location and so dropped to only 2 actions and could not return fire with his standard shot has did not have enough actions left.

Next move he continued to moved the squire into cover hoping that sir Pentyn would move forward, unfortunately he stayed put, and again shot Sir Rupert as he moved forward, chewing up another couple of locations, again he survived due to Sir Pentyns lousy shooting, His own shooting was worse as he could now only snap fire.

on move 3 he ran for it and moved out of line of sight, as Sir Pentyn had not moved nothing else happend.

On move 4 Sir Pentyn finally moved forward to get a shot at the now lurking Sir Rupert, and moved into the sight of the squire who managed to do some damage.

Move 5 the Sir Pentyn turned and engaged the squire, and managed to take out its head unit reducing it to 2 actions .

At this point Sir Rupert withdrew and the game was called.

We have yet to use these Knights in a full 4ok game so at moment cant tell if I ave overpowered the Casatallan, only way is to play same game with full rules.

But the player are happy and next week we intend to try The Castallan vs a Crusader/Warden and Armiger. hopefully I shall be able to do full report.

Well we have tried Std Knights and Armigers, so for the next game we shall have a game using a Castallan.

For this grid I have put an increase of at least 1 pts in most locations as below

In addition I’ve put the following conversions of the std 40k wpns for the Knigh Codex

Again a lot is guess work and may need tweeking at some point.

The plan is to put one Castallan against Knight Crusader and an Armiger Helverin, and see how balanced it is.

Assuming our Wednesday meeting happens, will again do a report but rather than the Keith vs Pete description I’ll opt for The Following Knightly names

Castallan – Sir Penytn De Grasse

Crusader – Sir Rupert De Beir

Helverin – Squire Makin Upde Numbers

I may change the table layout and put some blocking terrain in the road to stop the just stand and shoot idea , an Idea that comes to mind is put my newly finished Baneblade in road, disabled that each side is trying to capture.

Oh and if any eagle eyed person has spotted that the upper right arm has 5 ht pts rather than 4, yup it was a mistake, but given how big volcano cannon is , Think I’ll let it stand.

I was going  to add to the battle report a Jim Oriskany style Battle map with all the intricate movement, but there wasnt any, it litrally became a old fasioned medieval style slug fest, appt I suppose for Knights.

Couple of ideas have come up from game and Kevins observations.

One of the thought was using the ranges in Renegade as std but allowing out to 40k ranges if applicable, but they would  down a level , so aimed on sdt shot, std on to snap and no snap at long ranges.

Also thought about a pt blank (after 3rd game and the lack of manoeuvring) at 6″ with them going  up a level, for aimed using an average dice if I can find one.

Also melee wpns have a range as to why isnt mentioned in base rules and normally can only attack in a charge, and then they dont roll for scatter, pretty much automatically hitting. So we are going to allow melee wpns to attack if in range, but will roll for location as normal, Ignoring the sheild modifier only.

And so we reach the final curtain, Pete had 4 locations on the King gone and 2 chewed , so the cards were played, Keith gave 2 charge orders to his. Warglaives,and an aimed shot to his crusader. Pete also gave a charge order and a std shot to his surviving Helvican.

Who would charge 1st, if Pete he may grab some token glory and destroy a location on his opposite no, if Keith he was going to be chainsworded it to death.

Well the dice gods luv a joke, it went Keith, Pete , Keith.

Keith charged and promptly took out Location 5, Pete stuck in place removed its head unit, and Keith then moved in and finished the King. At which point Pete conceded .

Cards were placed again, Pete went for a run with the King and an aimed with his Helverin, Keith went for snap shots with all,

His King had lost leg location and was slowed and Pete continued his dice rolling only rolling one to move a total of 9″ leaving him in the crossroads.

Both sides sides subsequent shots on the whole were lousy apart from one heavy hit by Keith on the Kings head reducing His actions by one.

This stopped the King charging this move leaving him stuck in place as he did not have enough actions.

Bated breath awaited the next move , cards were played, and Keith opted to move his left Helverin forward to bring it in range, also into cover from its opposit no. His two other Knights went for std shots, Pete went for aimed . His lousy luck held as Keiths initial fire destroyed the Wounded Helverin. His Crusader then began to pound his opposit nos, knocking out two armored locations.

Pete returned fire with his survivors and again his luck failed him, if anything major hit, it failed to penetrate sheilds, again peperring Keith in various scattered locations with odd hits.

1. Well after choosing activation for Move two and King Tyrrol had cleared off all the dead pigeons of his hood, they continued.

Pete decided to open with standard shots for his opening gambit with all his Kights and Keiths despite his disadvantage went for aimed shots, so nobody moved and they just slugged it out.

As he was completing the quicker action Pete went 1st and his shooting was only marginally better in that occasionally he hit, but then failed to get past Kieth’s shields only succeeding with stubber for one damage on Kieths left hand Warglaive.. Keith then returned fire, again concentrating on Pete’s left Helverin and took out the right cannon and  the head plus chewing up all but one point on another leg section.

Kieth having used all his activation’s with the aimed shot sat whilst Pete revealed his hand, 3 snap shots, and well only did marginally better than with the standard for hitting but even worse for penetrating.

End of move 2 and so far despite it was not going well for the King!

Well here we are chaps my 1st Battle Report with the addition of Helverins to the line up.

As for a Battle Name  I’ll go with a comment from a  local Pigeon !

‘Ere I’d like a word with you!

A title that should become more apparent later.

The previous 2 games really ended before anything happened , plus I’d been busy umpiring an running rules to record much, by the latter was happily done by the Returning hero ‘Kevin’.

This time we decided to dispense with scenarios other than they were to beat the living snot out of each other!

Our victim…err players were club member Pete and Keith

Pete had King Tyrrols Knight (gallant I think) and two Armiger Helverins

Kieth  had a Knight Crusader with two Wargalves

This I hoped would balance long and melee wpns int their forces , wpn breakdown below, which also give my best guess on the Armiger wpn conversions for Renegade.

Keiths killers

Armiger Warglave 1

Armiger Warglave 2

Knight Crusader

Petes Perils

Armiger Helverin 1

Armiger Helverin 2

Armiger Warglave

Knight Crusader

Each had Ace to 7 in cards for each mech to select their activation , which they would reveal at same time , rolling off for any similiar pointed activation’s.

If anyone is wondering why they are using 2d6, its simply because of our heroes to roll of identical roles on multiple occasion on anything but a d20.

Pete got the lowest rolls on all but one, this somehow we felt didnt auger well especially as his total role on 6 dice only just hit 12!

For bootcamp attenders, lousy dice rolling is a club thing not just me!

Move 1

On 1st activation both players went for a cautious advance, followed by a standard shot from each mech.

This pretty much put both of Kieths Warglaves out of range other than 1 heavy stubber, so all he had was his AA guns and his 2 autocannons  and 2 heavy stubbers in range, Pete had all 4 of the Helverin Cannons ,  His Auto cannons and rocket pod plus heavy stubbers., so in theory should have got the best of it, but the Dice gods though differently

By the end of the 1st exchange Keith had take out a carapace section and a leg space dropping on Peters left hand Helvirin in exchange he managed to shoot up a passing pigeon flock for no hits hence the game title.

Played 2nd game, a few images below. The scenario really didnt let game develop  as one player had to get to location hit to gain data and won.

Only a handful of shots made and really didnt test game.

Will see how wet get on with game 3 and and the addition of Helverins.

With mulitple Knights you have to be aware of side shots so suggest rather than making new grids from side, you halve the locations and only allow hits on the relevant side.

One of the things I first amended was how the actions  works, not the system but how the players picked their orders for the move, rather than them writing them down, gave each player 7 card for each of the the different types of action and got them to bid them , In the game the player has 3 actions pts for his Knight with the various actions costing 1-3 pts to perform , snap shot is one, but aimed is 3 , which they pick before any movement is made, when they bid any single action order goes 1st ties, are rolled for, then the 2 and 3 etc. As some actions like an aimed shot only need one card and that would give the game away to the opponent, each player picks 3 card with the unused ones being blinds and are discarded once shown.

At some point it may be an idea to produce our own cards with the orders on them so player dont have to look at table…….hmn!!

If it wasn’t for the fact there are 7 options @avernos blank dice would be ideal.

I have a couple of Armigers painted, and may by next Wednesday have two Helvicans completed so decided to have a go using images of Google and paint to draw up new grids reducing locations for the smaller knights and converting wpns stats from 40K for the new wpn types both for the Armiger and the Castallan type

Their didn’t seem to be an exact science to the way they were converted on the game so generally halved values/ranges etc rounding up , other than meltagun which for some reason has same range in Renegade Knight as in 40k.

As an update to above, something I forgot until we were playing 3rd game.

In the base game, an Knight is destroyed/put hors de combat if 6 locations are destroyed. Decided that for the Armigers it would only need 4, but on the larger Valiant/Castellans it would be 8.

Also most loctation on the the base knight have been between 3 and 4 armour pts, for the Armigers I reduced this to 2-3 and on on the Valiant/Castellans increased it to 6. 7 or 8.

There is no science used to work out above, it was done as a trial to be adjusted. but in 3rd game (report later) seemed to work. The Castaellan will be tried in next weeks game.

Apart from the Bolt Action bootcamp things For the Tanyard Trooper little group has been a bit lax with the sudden Hospital Stay of our Rules Guru the Infamous Kevin’. Not helped by own little brush with A&E due to me developing an irregular heart beat. Plus the Keith our resident re-en-actor of things historical being on a dig in the Orkneys.

We finally managed to get a meeting last Wednesday (10/10/18) and with nothing planned decided to let Keith have a play with the big stompy Knights I finished over the summer. Although not the models int the Renegade Knights box (not even built those yet) laid out a table with random Gothic terrain and used two of the city boards from the  Killteam range (pics to follow).

The rules in the book consist of 2 pages of modified stats , with an interesting activation sequence and a sheet for each knight with a grid for hit locations.

It looked a bit basic but we need a no brianer game for our return and…….

We had a blast, the simple rules worked and the way the grid and shooting is resolved removed the need for shooting modifiers , if you hit a point on grid behind cover you missed, easy.

So know we have played the game  and wondered how to develop it and add Castallan and Armiger knights.

Now the game is basically designed for two players with one Knight a side, in with only one piece of terrain , and when of the Knights has primarily melee wpns it does look abit one sided, untill you play it and realise his advantage is he doesnt have to role on the location chart to hit the location he wants, so if he gets in he really upset his opponent.

The denser terrain may give that player an advantage so with the following ideas of using more than one Knight a side, I don’t want to put to much complication into a game that seems to work.