Splintered Light: Pride of Lions

The last series of photos from the Pride of Lions demo game at Cold Wars 2010. You can see my earlier post on my Orcs & Goblins for more pics from the game. Jeremy and I only played a few turns before having to return home that evening to see my dad. The fellows were very understanding. Dave McBride and Rebel Mike graciously took our places. OK, let's get into the pics and the game. Captions are below each photo.

Photo 1: Here you can see my right right hand side of the table. Not much going on. We were just getting ready to deploy our forces. I liked the small 'islands' of scenery and want to use the same idea for my games. The rivers looked great as well. I learned it doesn't take a lot of work to make a good looking game table.


Photo 2: We played with six players. John McBride, author of Pride of Lions, had several armies prepared and let us choose and then deploy as we desired. Deployment is hidden, hence the cards some of which were 'dummies.' Picking and deploying sucked up a lot of time, followed by a rules summary. Though I'm a con newbie, I suggest game masters have the forces pre-assigned to each player and deployed ahead of time, maybe giving us a few options of placing a unit or two. This really speeds up a demo game when most of us have no idea what we are doing. Also, we had so many units in play all we could do is plow straight ahead. Maybe smaller armies or wings of a single army might be better? All lessons I learned if I ever run a mass combat game at a con. Still, I love John McBride and had a lot of fun regardless!


Photo 3: Jeremy (aka Rover Dill) played to my left. I was in the center. And another fellow played to my right. We each had a different army. I played Orcs & Goblins, Jeremy played Dwarves (the original smaller dwarves, not the larger Druid's Children dwarves), and the fellow on my right played the Leonines army. Here you see some of his cavalry. (Sorry, but I can't remember anyone's names!) Terror Birds lead the unit followed by Hunting Cat cavalry. Neat stuff!


Photo 4: Jeremy's army on my left. The stubborn dwarves, commanded by Jeremy, hold the left flank. Little did we know that Jeremy's was about to unleash his 'blitzkrieg' strategy using dwarves.


Photo 5: Jeremy is about to kick off his blitzkrieg attack with his Dice Roll of Doom! He plowed into the enemy and got amazingly lucky with his dice rolls, sending the enemy reeling. John McBride, in the overalls, looks on in anticipation.


Photo 6: John gives Jeremy some more advice on how to follow up his charge of doom. As you can see, my orc force in the lower right was having some 'issues' with getting the lead out, preferring the let everyone else plow ahead while they watched. Lazy bums! Ok, so I kept blowing my command rolls and having people clobber me with 'slow' spells.

We had a lot of fun playing with great miniatures and nice fellows. I haven't said a lot about the rules because I was having some trouble keeping focused (nothing new there!) and was a bit overwhelmed by it all. I've tried focusing more on the miniatures. If you like them, be sure to take advantage of Splintered Light's 20% off sale until the end of July.

Update On My Dad
My dad is doing well after the surgery. A couple days ago he left ICU and is in a step down unit--Jefferson's old ICU. He'll be there awhile yet. Still a couple more weeks in the hospital. The new liver seems to be doing well. All is going great. Thanks for your continued prayers!