Battles of Medieval Britain: Gnome Wars

     This week I have been helping the wife do some gardening. Spread throughout her gardens are garden gnomes. I like teasing her about them, as no one else in the surrounding neighborhoods have gnomes.  I jokingly call her "the neighborhood crazy gnome lady".  While working under the gaze of the gnomes, I was daydreaming of using different time periods or figures for Mike Lambos' different solitaire games. While trying to ignore the gnomes staring at me, I thought it might be fun to play a game using the Peter Pig gnomes.

The Garden Gnomes prepare to defend their garden against invading Wood Gnomes.

After some initial success, the Garden Gnomes was flanked on both sides and were wiped out.  Somehow I can't see gnomes actually killing each other; instead when they take a hit they run home to their gardens.

The inspiration for this wargame.

Horde of the Things Armies for Battlelore

  I have been searching for using Hordes of the Things armies with  Battlelore, with little success. However, last week I found this website;  www.rogercooper.com which has some Battlelore variants.  I wanted to try these rules out.  I picked the Garden Gnomes army, although without Magician or Behemoths units, vs. Ants.

Garden Gnomes are protecting their garden pond, the Ants their ant hill.

The ants with brown spots are army ants, which are considered Warbands. The gnomes "shooters" manage to kill a few ants by throwing rocks at them.

Gnome spearmen (armed with fishing poles) come forward to support the rock throwing gnomes.

The ant general sends forward his worker ants to support the army ants.

Disaster for the gnomes! Using Roger Coopers' rules,  a warband moving forward into contact at full strength gets two extra dice.  This is the result of one roll. One spear unit wiped out. In my games if a unit is eliminated or forced to retreat, the winning unit can advance to the vacated hex. Otherwise, the retreating unit can simply move forward to the just vacated hex. For a solo game, this can make for a stagnant game with little movement in the front line.

The ants are starting to infiltrate the gnomes' line.

The Gnomes start forcing some of the ants back. 

One gnome spear unit moves within striking distance of the anthill.  The Hero General ant strikes out against them, the  gnomes suffer the wraith of the enraged general!

One woods gnome unit (far left) is cut off from the rest of the gnome army.

The ant general keeps attacking.

The wood gnome unit that was cut off drives back one ant unit, and quickly moves to join the rest of the army.

The ants drive forward relentlessly. The wood gnomes on the left are once again cut off.  The general ant (the ant that is almost all brown)  had suffered two hits. Using Roger Cooper rules, a Hero can suffer 6 hits. At first I was going to mark the hits with a dice, but somehow having a swarm of ants looks better. 

The wood gnomes slips between two ant units to try to link up with the other gnomes.

On the gnomes' right, the ants drive one rock throwing unit off the field of battle, and the hard luck wood gnomes fall back two hexes.

The gnome general consolidates his line for a last stand.

The ant general summons forward more hordes of worker ants.

The relentless ants kill two more gnomes.

The gnomes, exhausted by continuous battle with no relief, finally give up and fall back.

The pathetic remains of the gnome army.