Last Sunday, we played 15mm Kings of War Historical outside! The smaller scales of miniatures lend themselves perfectly for outdoor gaming since they use way less real estate on your table and are quickly set up.
Setup
We set up a small table in my garden, got some drinks, and went to town setting up the small battlefield.
We played scenario “Dominate!” from the rulebook. The aim is to have the 10% more points of units within 12″ (12 cm for our 15mm scale game) of the table’s center point than your opponent by the end of the game. That meant exceeding 200 points in our case since we both fielded exactly 2000 points.
We used a small 90 x 50 portable board to set up both our 15mm 2000 points Punic Wars armies. David played his Romans, and I fielded my Carthaginians. We placed a bit of an oversized hill on the center of the board, with the odd forest here and there. In the end, the hill turned out fine sizewise since our armies would, of course, clash at this precise location. The whole hill was then declared difficult terrain.
Running up that hill
Starting round one, I sent my troops to the top of the hill. Having put my heaviest and fastest units on the front-line seemed to be an obvious choice at first. But I should have added some of my cheaper, expandable units in front of my hordes of spear men and warriors, Gauls, and elephants to harass the Romans. Especially my chariot was (again) completely wasted on me. David gave me the friendly tactical advice to use it for harassment on the opponent’s flanks. In a way, similar to cavalry.
Anyway, soon, most of the troops would be gathered on top of that acclaimed hilltop. There would be the main clash on the small board. Some skirmishes were happening here and there off the hill. But all of the more expensive units would be on top of the hill.
Also of importance is the fact that since the hill was declared difficult terrain, all charges were hindered charges, except for skirmishers and my war elephants.
That 7th round
I thought I might have more, or at least equal, points than David by round 6. But since we threw a 5 on the D6, we would play for a 7th round.
And that’s when the tides changed again.
And the winner is …
In the end, we counted the remaining units’ points within 12 cm of the center of the board, which happened to be exactly in the center of the elephant unit.
I had 905 points left, whereas David had 1075 points. That was 170 points more than I had, but 30 points below the 200 points threshold to win the game. Thus, this game ended in a tight draw, which we didn’t expect to happen.
After a long 15mm battle in Kings of War Historical, we ordered some Chinese food and had a quick game of Brawl Arcane 28 to finish off the evening.
All in all, it was nice to change our gaming venue for once. We highly recommend playing miniature wargames outside for a change.