The first batch of figures straight from the oven onto the cooling rack. Note the carefully measured bases for cavalry figures.
There is an old swedish tradition of celebrating the end of Christmas by "plundering the tree" on the 20th day after Christmas (13 january). This is usually a convivial get-together featuring glögg and decorated gingerbread figures, but this year, inspired by a recent discussion on the Miniatures Page about the wargaming potential of chocolate santas and bunnies, I decided to make it something special. I therefore aquired a number of interesting cookie-cutters (on sale after christmas), a couple of packages of ready-made gingerbread dough (ditto), powdered sugar and food coloring and set to work.
Oh, I downloaded the ARES Demo rules from Majestic Twelve Games, too.
The first batch of figures straight from the oven onto the cooling rack. Note the carefully measured bases for cavalry figures.
Another batch of figures primed and ready for a second coat of colour.
The figures are carefully painted to exacting standards according to the painstakingly researched originals. (Ahem.)
Santas Home Guard consists of Santa himself, a unit of five elfs mounted on reindeer and a flight of three angels.
Yes, to an untrained eye those mounts might look like moose, but they are reindeer. On steroids.
The Army of the East are the Three Wise Men from eastern lands, come to put a stop to the overly drawn-out celebrations. They form one unit mounted on camels, and are accompanied by a lone elephant with mahout and three individuals on flying carpets.
Father Frost is Santas bad neighbour, who this time is attacking with two units of five Snow Golem. These are raised by magic and can be repaired and reanimated should the need arise. (The golems are made from almond paste.)
The Left army is made up from three groups of tree-hugging pinko animal-rights activists, intent on liberating reindeer and other enslaved beasts of burden, preaching the gospel of unionized labour to the elfs and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
The battle begins with the Eastern army cautiously advancing in cover of the pine trees. The green cards under the carpets indicate that they are Flying: we discussed various means of indicating their being airborne, and concluded that "at least they can't break falling from a piece of paper".
Our figures are almost twice as large as the one inch (25 mm) tall figures ARES is written for, and their bases are correspondingly larger. This, coupled with the fact that I could not find my tape measure graduated in inches, led us to translate all movement and ranges as 1" = 4 cm. At this our resident USAmerican player wrinkled his brow and said: "Now I understand how you feel about playing in inches." His usual skill at judging distances had been thoroughly confused.
One unit of the Left army, being quick on their feet, rushed the stables but the angels and two of the reindeer riders mount a counter attack. Three of the cavalry had been frozen in place by Father Frost's Snowstorm spell.
The little round things on the bases are "Non-Stop", a candy made of chocolate lens-shapes with a sugary covering in various colours. We used black ones to mark wounds, yellow for shaken figures, and green and red for held or borrowed actions.
Two of the flying carpets attack the snowmen advancing over the snowdrifts. Father Frost retaliated by bringing one of them down with his Snowstorm spell, but could not follow up his success. Darn those card draws!
The Demo rules do not explain about magic, so I made up some rules and a couple of spells. "Heal Snow Golem" would, as the name implies, heal one or more wounds. "Raise Snow Golem" would put a killed one back up fit for fight. Both these had range touch. "Snowstorm" would affect one or more figures within a 30° cone of effect freezing them to the spot (i.e: causing them to lose their next movement action). A flyer would either be forced to land or be pushed away from the caster a distance equal to the difference in dice rolls in inches. These were not as effective as I had envisioned, the short range of the healing spells coupled with low movement scores made them almost impossible to use. The Snowstorm worked nicely against the reindeer cavalry (of course, since I played them) but only managed to push a flying carpet back a measly two inches.
On the other flank, Santa goes down under a concerted attack from all the Three Wise Men. Christmas is over!
Now all that remains is to plunder the tree, but who will get the most loot? The Three Wise Men have an agitated discussion with the remaining snow golems. The golems lost.
The rules worked well, once we had cleared up some of the initial confusion (I was the only one who had actually read the rules before we started playing). Having the snowmen without ranged attacks made them extremely vulnerable to flyers, and my idea of offsetting that disadvantage by giving Father Frost magical means of bringing flyers down didn't work out as intended, partly because of the random turn sequence, and partly because of the fall of the dice. Also, the reanimation spells were less effective than I had hoped. The Quick ability proved very effective, three actions to the ordinary two can make a large difference especially when using ranged attacks.
All in all, an enjoyable game was had, and I have now purchased the full rule set. And yes, we did eat the casualties. Or at least tried to, that almond paste is filling!