The Battle of Ravenswood: The Conclusion

If you've been following the Mantic blog and social media during lockdown, you'll know that Ronnie has been working on something rather special - a massive 10ft x 4ft Kings of War board that was absolutely packed with terrain.

Throughout lockdown he's kept himself busy - and the dining room table covered in flock - while building this epic hobby achievement. What's more, he's even managed to finish some of that dwarf army he's been threatening to paint since first edition.

A table this magnificent required an equally magnificent clash! And thus the Battle for Ravenswood was born. This would feature Ronnie's dwarfs and Duncan's Northern Alliance going toe-to-toe against Rob's goblins and Martin's Abyssal Dwarfs.

With such a big table, Ronnie wanted an equally BIG number of points. Each side aimed to get to around 10,000pts (a massive number considering a typical game is around 2,000pts) and both sides pretty much got there. Rob and Martin managed to just squeeze to 9,345 (with Martin's Abyssal Dwarfs coming in around 5,000pts without artefacts).

Meanwhile on the 'good' side Duncan had exactly 4,000pts of Northern Alliance - an amazing achievement. Of course, with Rob and Martin at just over 9,000pts, you would expect Ronnie to have about 5,000pts of dwarfs. The exact number is forever lost in the mists of time (and Ronnie's memory), however some printed army lists retrieved secretly on the day reveal Ronnie had approximately 8,525pts of dwarfs (many goblins died to bring us this information).

The battle itself featured a special scenario written by Kings of War expert Matt Gilbert. It featured several small objectives that, when held, would generate points at the end of each turn, and four large objectives that would score points at the of the game. A nice touch was the fact each side could bring in 1,500pts of reserves at the end of round two... a good job seeing as we're not sure much else could have fitted on the table at the beginning of the game.

And so with everyone ready - the battle could commence! Many of you watched live on the day, which was a good job because you could tell us the rules when we (mainly Ronnie) forgot them. We thoroughly enjoyed the company on the day and it helped keep us (mostly) sane. You can watch the full video below... WARNING SPOILERS AFTER THE VIDEO.

Hopefully now you've caught up on the video and have seen that, unfortunately, Ronnie had to step out at the end of round three... just when things were starting to get tasty. Without Ronnie to steer the coalition of dwarfs and Northern Alliance to victory (snigger), they sadly lost on VPs - the final tally was 15VPs to the dwarfs and 32VPs to the goblins. The actual kill points were far closer though, the dwarfs/Northern Alliance lost units worth 2,055, while the goblins/Abyssal Dwarfs only lost 2,050pts! Just five points in it.

This dramatic conclusion will be part of the upcoming Halpi's Rift supplement, which is due for release later this year. Along with some absolutely bonkers magic rules, which are great for narrative play, the book will also continue to move the story along for Kings of War... and this battle will be part of it.

Of course, despite the fact that Ronnie lost on both VPs and kill points, he's disputing the outcome. He initially called it #fakegoblinnews when told. So, with that in mind, he's actually demanding a rematch! His reasoning is as follows: the dwarfs didn't actually lose that many units (it was only about 600pts... out of 8,000) so they'll simply retreat and prepare to fight again. Yes, the objectives were lost but they can easily get those back. Likewise the goblins didn't lose a lot of points either, so the dwarfs should face them across the battlefield once more. Only Ronnie could somehow turn a convincing loss into a draw.

We're currently preparing to start shipping the TerrainCrate 2 Kickstarter, so the gaming hall will be out of action for a while. However, once it's back up and running, you can bet Ronnie will be itching for another game... and everyone might even know the rules by then.