26) Rodent Mathematicians: They Only Multiply

I had picked up a few little things here and there, but really hadn't made any major purchases. Unbeknownest to the assembled nerds and vendors, I had smuggled two friends into the event without paying.

Old blind Palamedes was snoozing peacefully in the pouch of my hooded sweatshirt, nested upon my money like a tiny white dragon. Her young protege, the hairless rat named Creature was prone upon my shoulder, peering out from the folds of my sweatshirt hood. As I perused a table covered in zip loc bags of various bits, sprues, and partial kits, the little Creature squeaked excitedly in my ear.

"There, there! Yes yes! No, left. Right. East by NorthEast. Leftish but stay rightly! That one. No! Warmer. Colder. EEEEK! Oh, come on! Fine, I'll show you!"

If you have never heard the noise that a hairless rat makes when they plop down onto a hard surface, let me assure you it is a singularly raunchy sound effect.

"Creature! NO! Someone will see you!" I whispered, grabbing her off the table as quickly as I could.

Unfortunately, her tiny hands had already closed around a ziploc baggie, and as I hurridly snatched her up, she lost her grip, sending the bag tumbling to the hard floor below. The tinkle and crackle of vintage pewter models breaking apart was unmistakeable.

I stuffed the rat in my sweatshirt, picked up the bag, and gritted my teeth.

"Um, how much for this?" I asked.

"Fifty bucks." the vendor replied.

Once everything was packed up and the swapmeet was over, I investigated the bag to see what I had bought. It was artillery. Four cannons, a volley gun, an organ gun, and the classic GW Empire Steam Tank. All complete minus the crews, but in pieces.

"Girls," I said to my little friends, "What am I supposed to do with this? I don't run artillery. I like melee lists."

"Artillery good! Artillery nice, yes! Shoot far, be safe!" said Creature.

"Rat tank! Tank protect us, yes!" said Palamedes.

"Ok, ok." I said, "Future projects. I'm not working on another rat list right now. I have other projects to finish."

The rats however, begged me to at least repair and paint two of the cannons that night. As I painted them up and based them, Palamedes suggested that I leave the crew separate from the base so I could swap them from army to army on a whim by just changing out the crew. This seemed like a great idea, but I still wasn't sold on the idea of spending army building points on unpredictable and unreliable units like warmachines.

I was assured by these tiny salesrats that I needn't worry. The rats had run the numbers, and these two cannons were guaranteed to perform admirably in my next battle. That's the thing with rats, though. The only math they are good at is multiplying. They are dreadfully inept when it comes to probability and statistics. I'm also fairly certain that their opinion on the effectiveness of artillery is skewed by the lucky opening salvos of a recent game, where my opponent blew away my brand new Ratkin shrine with the opening shots of the battle.

So against my better judgement I painted up some zombie crewmen and added two cannons to my Undead list.

I played two games the following weekend. Each game was six turns. Each cannon gets two shots per turn. That means that 24 shots were taken in the course of an afternoon. The artillery battery had two kills.

Rats.

I really do feel that shooting is only good if you go all in on it and make a full on shooting list. Oh well. Eventually I will make a shooty rat list. In all honesty, that old Steam Tank model was probably worth the fifty bucks I paid for the bag. It will make a fine Death Engine or Tunnel Runner for the rats sometime in the future. I also sold one of the four cannons to a friend and made a little bit of my money back, so it wasn't a bad deal.

I finished my 2300 point Abyssal Demon army! I'm very pleased with how it turned out. One unexpected challenge was my model for the manifestation of Ba'el. When I received the model, her face had been terribly miscast. Not just a blemish. About half her face was screwed up and there was a hole in it. I'm assuming there was an airbubble in the mold or something? Anyway, my solution was to have her wearing a mask. I found one in my spare bits box. It's a metal wolf mask leftover from when I made rat ogres out of armored werewolf kits. It looks great on her.

For my big legion of Abyssal Larvae, I needed some kind of maggots or worms. Mantic has never actually produced models for this unit, because almost everyone simply uses artificial fishing bait anyway. I did the same. I bought 100 plastic fishing grubs for less than 6 dollars. I glued them down on the base, but it was kind of boring, so I added some corpses and body parts off of the zombie sprues. I also stuck some toy rubber flies on the base, with their bug heads replaced with demon heads. The Larvae unit looks great. This unit can't really HURT anyone, but it is really hard to kill, so it basically just serves as a moving tarpit for game purposes, because it can hold up just about any unit in the game for multiple turns. Possibly even an entire game, depending on the unit.

Now that the army is done I officially have four complete playable armies; Ratkin, Bretonmark, Undead, and Abyssal Demons. The next project is Salamanders. I have already acquired a few units through trades and swapmeet purchases, as well as a box of snakemen I purchased from Gamer's Realm in New Berlin. I did some test models for color scheme already. Everyone else does jungle lizards with aquarium plants and greenery, so I'm going to do something different with mine. I'm going to do desert lizards, instead.

On the gaming side I networked with another Kings of War group in Illinois, ran a demo game at a new local game store in Mukwonago (called Oddwillows), and applied for the Mantic Pathfinder program. If I am accepted, I'll be able to get prize support from Mantic for tournaments and events. Our club has grown large enough now that we really do have enough local players to start getting serious about running a tournament later in 2024. It would be great to have sponsorship and support for that. If we do manage to get enough participation to warrant a one day tournament later this year, I think Oddwillow's Game Haven may be an ideal venue. The gaming area is much more spacious and has more tables than other local game stores.

2024 is off to a great start for Kings of War in Wisconsin!