Kobolds vs. Aliens

Time now to revisit the Kobold warband for SoBaH and a brief recap of the recent skirmish. Unfortunately, I did not take any photos of this game. I was just too wrapped up in the excitement of the game to actually stop, pickup the camera and snap some pictures. I've substituted some photos from previous games involving the same warbands.

This was a LSHM Tuesday night event and was coordinated by Chip. He planned a large six-player, battle royale on an enormous map. I should have expected problems for my Kobolds right from the beginning as most of my warband was made up of short movers and the battlefield was large. If that wasn’t bad enough, Chip decided to throw an extra wrinkle to the game. He required us to split up our warband into two groups, and deploy them separately on different quarters of the map.  For most warbands, this meant the leader was deployed with one group and the other group was leaderless. Separation from the leader was a major problem.

At the center of the big map was a ‘place of power’ where a magic-using figure could take advantage of the added power.  The six players were split into two team; myself, Johnny, and Ralph represented the good guys, while Brian, Grant and Brooks represented the evil hordes. The objective; destroy or rout 50% of the opposing team.

The split forces really hurt my kobolds. Most of the group was of poor quality and depended on the leader to make successful activation rolls. At the beginning of the game, I understood from Chip that the forces should be split as close to 50/50 as possible. I tried to adhere to the spirit of the scenario and split the kobolds into two nearly equal parts. However, most of the evil team separated a single unit as one ‘half’ of the warband. Leaving the other ‘half’ of their warband at slightly less than full strength and in a unified group.

My kobolds were split as follows

King group

Kobold King; Q:3, C:2 Leader,Short Move;;

3 x Kobold Infiltrators; Q:4, C:1 Free Disengage,Normal Move,Stealth;;

5 x Kobold Warrior w/ shield; Q:4, C:2 Gregarious,Shieldwall,Short Move;;

Shaman group

Kobold Shaman; Q:4, C:2 Magic-User,Short Move;;

7 x Kobold Skirmisher; Q:4, C:1 Gregarious,Shooter: Short,Short Move;;

Kobold Standard Bearer; Q:4, C:1 Gregarious,Short Move,Standard Bearer;;

To start the game I dropped the Shaman group on the far side of a large hill with a plateau, to avoid possible ranged attacks from opposing shooters. Here I made a serious mistake. Figures with short move required two move actions to move through terrain, including a hill! Combined with poor quality this made for a long day on the battlefield. Only after the game did Chip mention to me that the Kobolds could move down a hill as a single short move and could move across the plateau as per normal movement. The Shaman group barely made it down from the hill and was never a factor in the battle.

Kobolds fighting uphill

On the opposite side of the map, was the King group. The infiltrators moved quickly into a nearby wooded area for cover and I pressed my Kobold King and warriors forward toward the middle of the map.

I should introduce you to our local SoBaH ‘villians’. They are a generally despised warband comprised of Xenomorph aliens (from the ‘Aliens’ series of movies). This warband was nigh-invincible during our 2011 SoBaH campaign. I only know of one encounter where they lost and and in all the others they’ve won easily.  Kudos to Grant for assembling such a tough warband, but it really brings down my spirit to see the Xenos appear on the opposite side of the map as was the case in this battle.

The loathesome Xenomorphs

Johnny and Ralph took heavy casualties from shooters as they charged the enemy.  I crept ever closer with the King group while the Shaman group on the far side of the map continued to fail the activation rolls. Grant turned his vile Xenos toward my little kobolds. I considered ordering the Kobold warriors to create a shield wall but that would have slowed their movement.

Alien Queen takes another victim

The Xenos approached. Grant must have felt over-confident because he sent the Xeno warriors into the woods to munch on my Infiltrators. This left his wretched Alien Queen alone and in the open! On my bound, I sent the warriors and the King into contact with the Queen! IIRC,the Queen had a combat factor of 5!  Versus my King with three shield-kobolds helping, the combat factors were even. My combat roll was a six (on a 1xd6)! Grant groaned and rolled his die which ended up “cocked” (house rule: if the die lands on the map in such a way that it is not clear which face is up, the roll is considered “cocked”, the die must be re-rolled).  Grant “cocked” the die roll two more times until he finally found a smooth area of the table; with a result of five.  This caused the Queen to fall! On Grant’s turn, he brought up his Xeno warriors to the Queen’s aid. He made a ‘gruesome’ kill on one Kobold warrior, forced a morale check which most of my warband failed.

At this point, Ralph and Johnny had lost enough units from their warbands to meet the victory conditions for the opposing team.  Although we lost the fight, the Kobolds very nearly took out the hated Alien Queen! The mighty blue warriors will definitely return to the fight another day.