Miniature Wargaming in Rural Japan

 On Sunday the 24th of September I hosted a Warhammer 40k team tournament. I had hoped to get 5 or 6 teams of 3 players each, but due to Corona and the release of Armored Core 6 we had only 8 players spread over 3 teams. The system I made for this had the team Captains rolling off and then the winner choosing 2 armies to fight, one from their team and one from another. The other team's Captain could then choose which table was used for the game. All the tables had set missions.   The system worked better than I had hopped and made for an interesting event, though the team captains were very casual about their choices and could have made more tactical decisions. There were a good mix of armies. Imperial Agents, Chaos, Tau, Tyranids, Necrons, Space Wolves, Thousand Sons, Adeptus Mechanicus.    This was the first 10th edition event I have run, and everyone was still getting used to the new rules. I had felt less enthusiasm for 10th as the army creation side of the game ...

  The final game of the Karl Franz Cup 2 was a doubles game with 4 players on 1 table. I was playing with my partner for the event, Kobayashi-san and his Ogres. He had a BSB, a butcher, 6 bulls, 6 iron guts, 4 leadbealchers, 3 mournfang cavalry, 2 sabre tusks and an iron blaster. I felt they would add some muscle to my flimsy elves. We faced Rodion and Aki who had High elves and Empire respectively. Rodion's High elves were all cavalry with 4 units of Ellyrian Reavers and then 10 or so Dragon Princes led by a mage a BSB and a frost heart phoenix. The Empire were a traditional style list with 2 blocks of halberdiers, a few hand gunners, some knights, pistoleers a general, BSB, warrior priest, wizard and a cannon. It was the Meeting Engagement scenario and the empire pistoleers and 1 block of halberdiers started off the table as well as my archers. The high elves/empire deployment was focused on the centre and deep on the left side of the table and looked quite spacious. With ...

 The second game was against Nagai who also had dark elves. This time the list was more traditional with 3 big units of spear men, black guard and 10 cold ones led by a item heavy lord and also a sorceress on dark steed. I was on the same table as last time. Turn 1  We were playing the watch tower, I got the tower but declined to put any units in it, we deployed and Nagai went first. He moved his units up but was out of range for magic and the little shooting did nothing. In my turn I moved up 1 unit of silver helms to block the spear men, and put the dragon in between them and the tower. The rest of the army moved up, except the white lions which kept the barricades in between them and the cold ones. The dragon mage then buffed himself with flaming sword and Nagai saved his dice to stop fireball and the bound spell. The dragons breath weapon then killed 14 out of the 20 black guard after some poor saves from Nagai, he failed all 14.  Turn 2 The spear men charged the sil...

  On Saturday the 29 th of August 2023 I attended the Karl Franz Cup Team Tournament in Hachioji. This is the second Karl Franz Cup in Hachioji this year. Having won the last one back in April, which was a singles event, I decided to bring a slightly more unusual army. My 3 monster high elf list is as follows. Lords Prince (140) Lance (7) Heavy armour (6) Enchanted Shield (5) Griffon (150) Khane's Ring of Fury (25) Swooping Strike (25) 358 Heroes Dragon Mage of Caledor (350) Level 2 (35) Dragon Armour (10) 395 Core 15 Archers (10x15) 150 5 Silver Helms (21x5), shields (2x5) 115 5 Silver Helms (21x5), shields (2x5), Champion (10) 125 Special 10 White Lions of Chrace (13x10) 130 Rare Flamespyer Phoenix (225) 225 1498 I had some doubts about this list, especially around is killing, and surviving power, but at least it would be fast. The event had an unusual style as the first game was a singles...

 Continued from part 1 Lady Angelica lead her demigryphs in a bounding charge and crashed into the blood knights, 2 were slain by the impact as well as the claws and lances, but one of the demigryphs was wounded by the vicious vampires. The remaining two vampires snarled and fought on. Now the wraiths on the eastern wall charged at the halberdiers, who, without anyway to harm them, turned and fled down into the town. The eastern wall was now completely lost even as the first unit of ghouls scrabbled up. The spirit host on the western wall floated down into the town while the zombie horde began to awkwardly clime the walls, ignore the few who were basted by handguns on their way up. At the same time a volley of arrows from some bow armed skeletons struck one hand gunner from the wall. Sir Dan and his hand gunners beat the zombies back, though another hand gunners was dragged over the parapet. Count Pavel commanding his troops from the rear The blood knights faithful hounds ch...

 We have started a narrative campaign to string our games together. The setting is North Tilea and South Bretonnia as well as the mountain range the runs between them, The Vaults.  The number of players and factions will surly change over time. But it should be fun! The first game is the siege of Udolpho as a new undead threat emerges from the Blighted Marshes.   The actual start of the 'Northern Troubles' has been debated by scholars of far greater learning than myself, however, the most commonly cited event is the siege of Uldopho, so that is where I shall begin my account. Since the summer of 2491 there had been talk of undead abound in the blighted marshes. The foul influence of this cursed region seemed to once again be reaching out into Tilea, less that a century since the previous incursion had nearly swallowed the whole of the North. There was not to be any substance to the rumours until the Autumn of 2492 when a vast horde of shambling dead was seen emerging f...

Game 2 Matt Riley- wood elves Treeman Lord Dryads glade guard glade riders x2 sisters of the thorn Way watchers Game 2 was against wood elves and I had gotten quite lucky as the army had arcane bodkins on the glade guard, which would do little to me as my best armour save was only 5 plus, also the treeman had lower initiative than the giant and my black orcs had the flaming attacks banner. The only real threat was that I would get shot down to low enough numbers where the dryads or riders could finish me off. The scenario was 2, dawn of war. Due to random deployment most units of both armies were on the left or center with only the goblin wizard on the right.   Through out the whole game I was lucky with my saves and shooting, with the savage orcs only losing about 6 of their number on their way across the board after I made at least half of their 6+ saves. My war machines wiped out the way watchers and most of the glade guard. The only bit of bad luck I had was t...