AAR: Holiday Season on the Tabletop

 It's not what you're thinking, this is a real battle of holidays! Christmas versus Halloween!

Wifey and I played a long-delayed game of Dragon Rampant on Saturday evening. The featured armies were of course her undead horde repping her favorite time of year, Halloween. I was commanding the forces of the North Pole, Santa's own, the Christmas Army. I actually painted up the Christmas crew a few months ago and just never posted their pictures on the blog so this was their big unveiling.

Most of the models are Alternative Armies (snowmen and trees) while the reindeer and workshop elves are Splintered Light Minis.

We played on a bifurcated 4 x 4 table, decorated to match our forces' themes.

The chose scenario was the Crystal Gale. Ten crystals were scattered across the battlefield. Each was worth a victory point in addition to whatever we might score slapping around each other's armies. We typically do no fiddle around with quests.

Both armies had very successful activations in the early going. The Halloween army's speed was on full display as the griffons, spirits and nightmares swept out capturing crystals swiftly. On my side of the table, well, things were moving as slow as Christmas!

This isn't good. The blasted spirits capture a crystal on my side of the table.

My wild-charging reindeer weren't too put off though as they charged up the hill smashing into the host.

Action in the middle really starts to get going.

The spirits' own wild charge leads them to a dark place - my elves (bellicose foot) are assaulted and moments later return the favor, wiping out the ethereal host.

More underhandedness as the nightmares snatch up another crystal on my side of the table! Fortunately for me, they halted just in front of a mob of snowmen who pelted them mightily with snowballs!

Seeing the fun that their brothers were having, the snowmen on the other side of the frozen pond also heaved rock-laden snowballs at the vile riders!

Back on the right side, the reindeer make a feast of the griffons!

In the center, those psycho elves crash into skeletal heavy infantry. The skeleton host was up to the challenge.

The reindeer make it into the Halloween backfield and crash into the archers.

But alas, the archers were up to the challenge and ran off the mighty elk, pin-cushioning them as they fled.

In the center, the skeletal infantry made mincemeat of the workshop elves and the remaining nightmare rushed over and finished them off. Skeletal beastmen cause major problems for my snowmen off to the left. This isn't going well for me all of a sudden.

The nightmares are wiped out, my snowmen, trees and the Wizard of Winter figure out how to deal with the skeletal infantry.

Well that sucks. They had roughly a snowball's chance in hell of success. Both snowman units are in retreat now!

The right-hand unit flees off the table, while the other unit rallies, then takes out the remaining beast skeletons with a fusillade of snowballs! The celebration didn't last as they were quickly run off by the other skeletons.

The Wizard of Winter steps in and needing 5's and 6's to hit, produces the abomination you see here. Wiz was run off.

The trees show up and finish the job.

It's down to the skeletal archers on Halloween's side. They have little trouble running off the Wizard of Winter. Gah!

The trees gradually make their way to the killing machine that is the skeletal archers, nickle-and-dimed the whole time, losing strength points as they lumbered they way over.

Those archers were fill of piss and vinegar and fought like sugar-buzzed seven-year-olds. The trees..

Were no more.

A solid win for the forces of Halloween. This was a quite enjoyable game with two evenly-matched armies. I had nothing for the undead's early speed and being a net -4 of crystals early in the game was brutal. I was pleased to get some great results out of the snowmen's "short-ranged projectiles." They were a thematic addition, representing snowballs but I ended up with many opportunities to use them. My wizard this game was the discount "Wizardling" with which you only get to select three spells instead of having the full slate available. I think I preferred that in all honesty; in my experience spell casters don't spend a ton of time successfully casting  spells in Dragon Rampant and saving the two points worked out nicely.FWIW, I selected "Almighty Prod," "Stronger Shields," and "Heal Thee."

Next Saturday is Stargrave. Looking forward to that for sure!