Last weekend Lewis and I went for a weekend away at Centre Parcs. This is an annual family get together, with 30+ of us meeting up. It is always a lot of fun, and I normally take a couple of board games to play some time over the weekend. I have over the last few months been working on building a ‘Mini Wood’ for gaming away from Home. The idea is that everything (table covering, terrain, miniatures, rules, dice, tokens etc.( fit’s inside a single Really Useful Box. You can read about the project in more detail on this earlier blog.

The battle is a straightforward, one 350 point brigade a side, ‘meeting engagement’. The battlefield is set up on a 3′ square gaming mat with a towel (from the lodge) crumpled up and formed into some high ground on the left flank. A river and a road run North – South with some small settlements, woods and broken ground.

Lewis is playing the Orcs and has placed the strength of his army on the far side of the river, In this picture we can see one of the units of trolls has already reached the bridge. The Dwarven infantry hurry forward as fast as there short little legs allow, under the direction of the Brigade Commander to get in to position to cross the river.

On the left bank of the river, the dwarves have prioritised moving there cannon as far forward as possible before unlimbering. The Dwarf Slayer Cavalry mounted on giant boars moves forward to protect the guns.

The Dwarf Infantry continue there manoeuvre’s, preparing to cross the river. The unit to the left are ‘Housecarls’ armed with crossbows as well as hand weapons, the unit in the centre are standard Dwarf infantry with hand weapons and the unit to the right are spearmen. The longer reach of the spear is a great bonus, allowing the spearmen to cause wounds before the enemy when fighting units with a shorter reach,

The Trolls charge the Dwarf Artillery. The little triangular marker is used for recording hits taken. The side in contact with the base indicates current hits being carried, so the trolls had taken 3 hits, each base can take 4 hits, so when another hit is taken a base will be removed. The Trolls were halted ‘disorganised’ by the casualties taken from the artillery. They latter reform and try again, but the dwarf gunners excelled themselves and eventually rout the attackers with close range fire at the point the trolls charged home!

A fierce cavalry battle was fought on the hilly area on the Dwarves left flank between the Wolf ridding Orcs and the Boar ridding Dwarves. It was a tough fight that lasted several turns. The Dwarves were hampered by the fact that they were fighting an opponent that was up-hill of them. Eventually the Orc cavalry is routed. The Dwarves reform and threaten the Orc Archer unit, but as the Dwarves only have two stands remaining they do not have enough resolve to charge the Orcs. They do however force the Orcs to redeploy.

The game was declared to be a Dwarf minor victory. We could have played a few more turns, but Lewis had an important prior engagement with his long running D&D campaign.

The game was a lot of fun. Everything fitted neatly into a 9 Litre Really Useful Box, using a couple of Sally 4th RUB Trays.

If you are not familiar with Wars of Orcs and Dwarves, the mass fantasy battle system by Buck Surdu, click here to take a look, or join us here at the Facebook Group.