Of Gods And Mortals: Clash of the Gods Event

Tom WD and I are big fans of Osprey’s Of Gods And Mortals game, published ten years ago but still getting played by us on a fairly regular basis. Fortunately Kev Moon and friends at the ELMS club in Leeds are also regular players, so we like to get together every so often to throw dice and deck each others’ gods.

In case you missed it, OGAM is a skirmish game where you play a mythological pantheon. Each player controls a God, several Legends (heroes or creatures) and around 20 Mortals (who fight and pray for their deity). Written by Andrea Sfiligoi and using some of the mechanisms from A Song Of Blades And Heroes, it’s published by Osprey as one of the ‘blue book’ series. Games last about 90 minutes and are invariably fast-paced and somewhat wacky.

Although we usually pit Gods from the same pantheon against each other, Kev had decided that this event was going to be ‘open season’, so we saw Greeks, Celts, Norse, Egyptians, Japanese and pre-Islamic Arabs taking to the gaming table. With 11 players, we each played three games against different opponents.

I took the opportunity to pull out some of my Celtic mythological figures that don’t see the light of day often enough. Crom Cruach, the Bloody Crooked One, is a Celtic god of death and destruction who features heavily in 2000 AD comic’s Slaine series. Fortunately I had recently painted a mini for him, so he became my God.

For followers, I didn’t need to look any further than the Skull Swords from Slaine. Warlord Games produced a superb range of models for these for their Slaine Miniatures Game last year, also including a fine Drune lord (Slough Throt).

Following on with the Slaine theme, I also added two units of Half-Dead warriors from the Alternative Armies range. These weren’t going to have much fighting impact but would provide valuable power for Crom Cruach during the games. Forces for OGAM are usually built to 900 points – I managed to bring this in at just less than that. Here’s the roster if you’re interested:

Once gathered at the venue, the eleven players put out their Gods for a quick photo shoot. There were other Celtic pantheons alongside Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Japanese and pre-Islamic Arab – quite the variety!

The ELMS club had kindly provided all the tables and scenery. Each table was set up with a different scenario and ready to play, so all that was left to do was to pair off and get started.

My first game was against Dean’s impeccably-painted Greek warband, led by Zeus and featuring Herakles backed up by some Spartans, Dryads and Centaurs.

The scenario was a fight to the death around some barrow-mounds, one of which had an undead inhabitant who wasn’t pleased to be awoken. This chap could be activated by the opposite side as a reaction during the game, but didn’t make much impact as things turned out.

OGAM has an unusual deployment rule in that, in most scenarios, units can be placed anywhere except within a certain distance of enemy units and objectives. This led to a situation where Crom Cruach ended up in fairly close proximity to Zeus. When I won the initiative – and knowing from previous games how powerful Zeus can be – I mounted a pre-emptive giant worm strike to try to peg back the big guy.

This was successful beyond all expectations as Zeus was banished on the first turn! He didn’t stay down long as his followers prayed to summon him back, but I managed to resist his lightning bolts and then send the Lord Weird Slough Feg on a mission to take out the Dryads with his ‘Culling of the Weak’ ability. This was, once again, unusually successful (it needs to be said that Dean’s dice were absolutely shocking throughout the game).

Turn 3 saw a very premature end to the game as Herakles mounted an attack on one of my Skull Sword units. I was hoping to get off lightly with just one casualty and a retreat, but Herakles rolling a 1 vs a 6 saw the great hero laid out on the deck. OGAM is very fast-playing, but the Legend characters can be vulnerable, and this was a case in point.

A further attack from Crom on Zeus saw the Olympian God banished yet again, and his followers fleeing the field, so Dean decided to call it a day. A tough one for the Greeks.

Game 2 was ‘The Stone Circle’, a variant of the ‘Sacred Grove’ scenario from the OGAM rulebook. The scenario involved trying to get possession of the eponymous ancient monument, although the first unit entering would face an attack by the guardian spirits.

My opponent for this was John with his Norse warband, followers of the lesser-known deity Vidar.

Predictably, pretty much everyone hot-footed it for the stone circle, resulting in an epic scrap between the Gods and Legends in the area.

My Skull Sword Champion went down fighting, but Crom quickly gobbled up both Valkyries in short succession.

A moment of black comedy occurred as I spotted an opening and rushed forward the Drune Lord Slough Throt into the stone circle. Naturally, I had forgotten about the guardian spirits! Once dodgy dice roll later and Slough Throt was toast…

Slough Feg once again unleashed his Culling Of The Weak on to the enemy Mortals (Troll-Wolves in this case), and the Viking warriors scarpered en masse as Crom took down Vidar.

Another victory for the followers of the worm!

At this point, I had to get a couple of photos of other games. Frost Giants vs Samurai was on the table next door.

I like my Frost Giants but this mini was absolutely insane! He was being fielded as Utgard-Loki, inside whose glove Thor and Loki sleep in one of the Norse tales, mistaking it for a cave.

Here’s Tom’s Epona-themed Celtic force taking on the Undead Egyptians – more on these later.

The final game of the day was Pandora’s Box – a scenario where you have to get to the centre of the ruined temple and then randomly determine what treasure lies there!

My opponent for this one was going to be Anubis and his Undead Egyptians, played by Oliver, who had some lovely Warhammer models making up the bulk of the force.

Undead can be a tough nut to crack in OGAM as they are immune to morale tests. I therefore decided to adopt the tactics of taking out as many Undead as possible before going for Anubis himself.

The tactic worked, although those Undead were damned hard to shift, especially with Anubis using Raise Dead every turn! Crom Cruach eventually crunched his way through enough skellibobs to turn his attention to the jackal-faced deity.

Slough Throt got through to Pandora’s Box inside the ruined temple and rolled to discover that he would now have the ability to make poisoned attacks. Which would have been magic, if he wasn’t fighting an entirely undead force!

My Half-Dead were set upon and somewhat mauled by the Sphinx (a cracking Reaper Miniature from Oliver’s collection).

And a sneak attack by my Skull Sword Champion ended embarrassingly.

The game eventually ended with a God v God battle inside the ruined temple, exactly as it should. Crom got the better of Anubis and had managed to deplete his followers to the extent that he wasn’t coming back.

All in all, a terrific day’s friendly gaming in a great venue. Tom and I found playing ‘out of period’ (yeah, I know, in a fantasy game) slightly odd, and I left with a hankering for a themed event next time out. OGAM is still a brilliant game though and will need more playing very soon. Many thanks to Kev and the ELMS group for hosting. We’ll be back!