Padre's Friday Valley of Death Game

Here are a few pics of today's game.

This is the Necropolis Valley of Norochia, which bizarrely was somewhat differently laid out in Tilea's past compared to when seen in Tilea's Troubles .... (continuity be damned in a just for fun game) ... (Also, phone pic, over lit big time) ...

1786820244252.jpeg

Below is the Living's left, where the Verezzan mounted men at arms rode at the flank of Brother Meredith's dwarves ...

1786818369533.jpeg
Brother Meredith's dwarves were a 3rd ed army cunningly converted to an 8th ed list. Small sized units, yes, but hey, Dwarves like to think they're special. And they are!

And here is the overpowering but unwieldy strength of the Living centre-left, being Mr. Moustache's 70 pikemen, led by 5 characters!

1786818658478.jpeg

You can see the Verezzan galloper guns on the other side (without Captain Pandolfo) and one of Mr Moustache's brace of great cannons.

Here is the Living's centre-right, with Verezzan Halberdiers and the elite gentlemen of Mr Moustache's force.

1786818920066.jpeg

You'll be able to see the Living's far right in a later photo, I promise.

The undead right had Jamie's swamp zombies (who have yet to see a tabletop battle, as they were modelled and painted for summoning up in the Miragliano marshes - but they were never summoned!) and my loverly Black Knights (yes, I say so myself) ...

1786819120691.jpeg

This is a shot of the same two units from a different angle taken by Alex (who must have been sneaking about with a camera behind enemy lines!) ...

1786819204833.jpeg

The undead left had Damian's horde of ghouls, as well as a varghulf who would later have a lot of little fellers very worried and his equally scary crypt horrors.

1786819572669.jpeg

I didn't get a pic of Paul's PC, Lord Mongalieri's army, but no matter, for here is a loverly pic of them marching to Norochia which Warlord Paul put on the Discord. Huzzah!

1786819986488.jpeg

3x1600 pts of Living troops, versus 3x900 pts of Undead. That's a 2100 pt advantage to the Living, balanced (we hoped) by the silly amount of opportunities to raise regiments and monsters and all sorts from the valley.

1786819241470.jpeg

The guys are deploying above - you can see Warlord Paul putting down another disgusting mass of rotting flesh. I mean, it's just rude!

And below you can see some of the gang (those my badly aligned camera shot reveals) around the time of final deployment ...

1786819390282.jpeg

Believe it or not, but Lord Cralk (IRL) and the Barone Iacopo Brunetti, Lord of Poliena, Regent of Verezzo and Capitano del Popolo, are both in this picture. Brother Meredith is on the viewer's far left, once again behind the enemy lines, but not being very sneaky this time.

In the next post I will tell you about some of the 'moments' (of which there were a few) and throw some more photos at you.
 
It was loads of fun! @Padre ‘s enthusiasm for the game is quite infectious. 😉
It was hard to see which way the battle was swinging with the undead sweeping into the generating locations and taking out the human artillery. A charge from a unit of undead cavalry was looking bad for a unit of brave horse riders who stood their ground, but their power greedy necromancer had a disastrous miscast which wipe him off the battlefield with half his unit! The horse riders battled on, but lost out letting undead charge towards my low flying Gyrocopter.
Meanwhile a vampire general got to the main central chapel and managed to summon all of six zombies… My mysterious white bearded Thane lead a unit of warriors into the building letting them soften the vampire up first.
The lone Gyrocopter pilot stood his ground against the undead cavalry and gallantly fought them off, shrugging off the few attacks that got past him. The allowed him to pilot the rickety flying machine to steam fry units of zombies.
Back in the central chapel, the Thane waded into challenge with the vampire as ghouls poured into the building but failed to cause any significant damage on the dwarf warriors. The vampire and Thane locked in combat, but he had already been injured and a final crucial wound was inflicted by the white bearded dwarf hero!
Seeing the tide of battle turning against them, the undead conceded defeat.
Needless to say, many other epic encounters occurred elsewhere on the battlefield, but these were the tales told in the dwarf beer halls afterwards…
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1544.jpeg
    IMG_1544.jpeg
    2.3 MB · Views: 4
  • IMG_1546.jpeg
    IMG_1546.jpeg
    2.6 MB · Views: 4
  • IMG_1548.jpeg
    IMG_1548.jpeg
    2.4 MB · Views: 4
  • IMG_1552.jpeg
    IMG_1552.jpeg
    2.4 MB · Views: 4
  • IMG_1555.jpeg
    IMG_1555.jpeg
    2.3 MB · Views: 4
  • IMG_1557.jpeg
    IMG_1557.jpeg
    2.4 MB · Views: 4
  • IMG_1558.jpeg
    IMG_1558.jpeg
    2.7 MB · Views: 4
  • IMG_1563.jpeg
    IMG_1563.jpeg
    1.6 MB · Views: 4
Last edited:
Regarding the events of the game, here are some (not necessarily in chronological order) ...

The Verezzan mounted men at arms and the hero with them were charged by a vampire and his Black Knights, equal in number, and decided (bravely) to stand! Tom understandable concerns that he might be wiped out were somewhat eased when the vampire miscast in the magic phase, killing more than half of his own unit, only two of the gentlemen Verezzans, and then promptly vanished into the realm of chaos.

1786831140935.jpeg

Huzzah! (he probably cried inside his mind, reassured now that he would surely win the combat. But no, he failed his fear test, and then the undead somehow won the combat. His knights broke, fled and were run down, and the Black Knights hit the gyrocopter caught off-guard further on!

1786831388973.jpeg

They fought a while, until the gyrocopter(!) finished them off! One single bloke in a cloth contraption whose gun didn't work in combat, did what the destrier mounted, armoured nobility of Verezzo could not do!

I myself felt a certain sadness, for I had lavished care and attention on them when painting them, to create (I think) one of the prettiest units in my collection.

1786832163115.jpeg

BTW, I wish I had paid care and attention when putting my army boxes on the tables, for one slid off, scattering about 120 figures, and smashing a 1980s Grenadier Skeleton chariot, chipping paint off umpteen, knocking bases off several blokes (including Biagino's old Fraternitas vampire thralls), breaking spears shields and even heads off several others, and even bending Biagino's staff. I have been repairing for some while now in my cellar-pit this evening! (Turns out Damian is thinking way ahead of the GM, for he has modelled and painted a ghoul-like vampire, in the ragged remnants of clerical robes, who look like he might have gone feral and mad having been hiding in the Blighted Marshes too long!)

The infamous Pettirosso and his band of brigand archers survived the game (always a tricky one, that fellow), dancing about in and out of the graveyard ruins to employ his ruby ring of ruin and his lads' accuracy with bows.

1786831466713.jpeg

When you see what was approaching the ruins you can understand why 11 halflings were not keen to be caught in hand to hand combat ...

1786831626291.jpeg

Yet another vampire general died when he occupied the large church and thus boosted the magic spells of all the undead wizards. The trouble is, a dwarven Thane and his ten warriors charged into the church too ...

1786831732840.jpeg

... and despite the help of a large regiment of ghouls who also crowded in as best they could, and even though the Thane kindly refused the first challenge to 'Let the lads have a go!', eventually the thane knocked the vampire's head off!

Tired of various undead units slipping around and thus past them, to cause havoc to the artillery in the rear, the pike decided they would get stuck into whoever they could, and spotted the zombies shambling around in from of them.

1786831893841.jpeg

So, in they went. Ooomph!

1786831937408.jpeg

Having consulted a large tome filled with all the special rules that applied, we had to order a bucket for all the dice that needed throwing, with 5 ranks 10 each, always striking first (etc etc). The zombies were all dead before any of the characters with the pike men even got within reach of them!

Now for the bit that made me feel daft: As well as all the other prep, including painting extra figures for added options, I had spent - no exaggeration - two full evenings making truly 'oldhammer' style information cards, with all rules and stats, printed in paper and glued to cardboard, so that whichever of about 20 options was summoned from the various magical sites in the valley, I could give the player the information in a handily accessible form. I had also lugged umpteen boxes of undead in, as had Damian, so that all the results rolled could be represented accurately in painted form on the tabletop. Crypt horrors, GraveGuard, bats big and small, Vargheists, Black Knights, Wight Kings, Tomb Banshees, Mortis Engines, dire wolves, etc etc etc. And what happened? The undead only raised 1, that's ONE, and I mean one, single, solitary unit in the game. And what was it? A regiment of 30 zombies, quickly Neheked into 41. In other words, another regiment of what they all had in their armies anyway!

1786832729300.jpeg

And a the player who had summoned them already had zombies listed and detailed in his starting army information, he not even need the information card! I still gave it to him though, with a bow.

(It is for this reason, and this reason alone, that we HAVE to play the Valley of Norochia again sometime.)

Still, it was a fun unit of old, cartoon style zombies.

1786832838015.jpeg

Who then promptly got magicked (twice) and artilleried and halfling multi-shotted to oblivion, leaving not a zombie standing. Which gave that flank of the Living army something to do I suppose, after they had a terrifying close shave with an approaching Varghulf.

Eventually the three undead forces had but one vampire general, and one necromancer - the latter trying to keep both his own dead master's undead army upright as well as those of the vampire who had 'popped' on the flank, while cowering behind the cairn so that the enemy woudn't shoot him.

1786833161955.jpeg

Meanwhile, just before he turned to leave the field, the last vampire was heard to mutter something along the lines of "[Rude word] this for a game of soldiers, I'm off!"

Thanks fellers for coming and playing, and for chipping in to help with the costs. And please, don't forget, we need to return to the valley and try again. I have the scenery. I have the (repaired) models. I have the long cloth. I even have the information cards, with not so much as a smudge on them.

Huzzah!
 
Padre said:
I wish I had paid care and attention when putting my army boxes on the tables, for one slid off, scattering about 120 figures, and smashing a 1980s Grenadier Skeleton chariot, chipping paint off umpteen, knocking bases off several blokes (including Biagino's old Fraternitas vampire thralls), breaking spears shields and even heads off several others, and even bending Biagino's staff.
Click to expand...
Disaster! That besides, looks like all had a great time. Some lovely miniatures on the battlefield.

Padre said:
The zombies were all dead before any of the characters with the pike men even got within reach of them!
Click to expand...
I don't want to get all technical on you but...
 
orkwrangler said:
Disaster! That besides, looks like all had a great time. Some lovely miniatures on the battlefield.


I don't want to get all technical on you but...
Click to expand...
Many hundreds stayed in their boxes on the side and never got summoned!!!!!!!

And yeah, Mr Technical ;) ... in my defence, they were about to be dead instead of un-dead. Quite the opposite of dead. If not exactly in the way that alive means the opposite to dead.

On that note, if there are 'dead', 'undead' and 'living', then what exactly is 'unalive'? Or is the argument pointless because 'undead' makes no sense either? Something like saying that a colour is orange-blue.
 
Padre said:
On that note, if there are 'dead', 'undead' and 'living', then what exactly is 'unalive'? Or is the argument pointless because 'undead' makes no sense either?
Click to expand...
Unalive is a term made to drive depressives and people with... issues, insane and want to self harm more just to show them what the hell they are meant to mean..

sorry, I'm okay, it's just the use of the term... kinda triggers me a bit... it's SOO insulting and trying to belittle a serious problem ¬_¬...

okay.. I'm fine...

Undead is what was previous dead being returned to a state which isnt back to being alive but with some form of unlife. Though undead get really confusing these days because of idiots who don't appear to know who Richard Matthewson, George Romero and John Rosso are and what they did. Seriously, modern takes of 'Zombies' are soo stupid and you get lazy poor stuff by people like Kirkman with a 'I'm so great' attuite for ripping off what people did 50 years ago.

erm.. yeah.. sorry ^_^;
they are undead, not dead, so while they can move, they are clearly not dead, so it's technically fine ^_^ and undead makes sense cause 'un' means 'not' so its pointing out that they are NOT dead. So being alive is the same as being undead.

And depending on the richness, the colour 'orange-blue' is also called Brown. Brown is... an interesting subject due to optics and... I'm derailing too much right?
 
ManicMan said:
Unalive is a term made to drive depressives and people with... issues, insane and want to self harm more just to show them what the hell they are meant to mean..

sorry, I'm okay, it's just the use of the term... kinda triggers me a bit... it's SOO insulting and trying to belittle a serious problem ¬_¬...

okay.. I'm fine...
Click to expand...

Ooops! ;) Genuinely never heard the term, and thought I had just made it up!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top