Christmas Sellswords and Spellslingers

Sorry for the silence for the last four years, folks. Life just got very busy. I have barely managed any wargaming though I have been dealing with my lead pile - mostly painting it but also selling off the spares on eBay in preparation for my retirement and downsizing to a smaller home. Hopefully I will now have more time to focus on the hobby.
Any way, enough of the excuses; on with the preamble.

Last Christmas, one of my sons and I played the first scenario in the Sellswords and Spellslingers "Last Stand at Mistham" campaign. It was touch and go with some seriously poor dice throwing again but we just about managed to rescue the village chief's eldest daughter from the goblin's prison. The only problem was that we enjoyed ourselve so much much, we both forgot to take any photos so I didn't stick up a post. 

This Christmas we played the second scenario and we did take some photos though not particularly good ones, sorry!

Having rescued the lady Minai from the prison (at the bottom of the picture below), our two warbands (my son's five on the left and my four on the right) had to either carry her or accompany her to the opposite board  edge.

To start with, all we had to face were two small hordes of goblins, two individual goblins and two orc brutes. We were very lucky with our dice throwing when it came to positioning them so our warriors could pick up a good head of steam before the fight began.

The board.

If she was left on her own, because of her frail state, she would go wandering off in a random direction so we decided the best approach was to throw her over our shoulder. Foolishly, we initially chose my son's short guy to do the carrying. He was a slow mover already (move of 3") so went down to 2". My swordsman soon took over.

Minai accompanied by swordsman, archer and short guy

Our lucky dicing throwing continued. Plenty of 20's and very few <8's. When reinforcements appeared, they arrived to our rear and,  moving no faster than us, very few of them caught up with us.

An ogre and goblin horde desperately trying to catch up with the escaping heroes

A bear appeared (random event) also to our rear, moved onto the board, attacked the nearest figure (a goblin) and then charged straight of it again, never to be seen again. 

Near the end of the game two wolf riders appeared (didn't have any mounted wolf figures so will have to drop an order to Pendraken before the price increase), but even with their speed they couldn't catch up with us.

Not surprsingly, we managed to get Minai back to her village without out too much difficuly. Only my barbarian failed to make it off the board.

My barbarian gets taken out by an Orc Brute

All in all, a very enjoyable game with much laughter over the ridiculous amount of luck we had with our dice-rolling. We're looking forward to Christmas 2024 when we'll take on a scouting expedition in the third scenario. In the meantime, I'll have to play a few solo scenarios. Playing once a year leaves me rather rather rusty with the rules and I'm sure that we got a few things wrong but it was fun and that's the main point.

Meanwhile back at the Ragged Gauntlet...

Eorlith, Lorhan and Dorf are licking their wounds as they sup tankards of Barkeeper Blartur's ale. At the table also sits Multair, Or'eldi's cunning man, sipping his elderflower and nettle cordial.

"We must return to Or'eldi and rescue our people," Multair urges.

"What, and let those Orcs finish us off as well?" Eorlith retorts. "We need to find some more warriors to join us."

"And who is going to join you," the cunning man asks, "when you turned tail and left my people to die like a coward?"

"The man has a point!" acknowledges Lorhan.

[As the encounter is 'complete' I've rolled to see if/how the characters have advanced.

For Eorlith's Rep, I've rolled a 1 so it drops to 3. but I've managed to raise his Hardiness to 2. Because he did a 'runner' his social standing has dropped as well to 2.

Lorhan's Hardiness has also risen to 2 and Multair's Rep has gone to 3. Dorf has not changed.

Recruitment is going to hard. Also as Eaorlith's Rep has dropped, does Larhan's have to as well or can Lorhan take over star-ship? This could be a very short campaign]

The Scouring (Hopefully) Continues

But just as Lorhan slows down, two more Night Orc Spearmen come into view, closing in rapidly on Multair.

Things are not looking too good - four enemy behind them, two in front of them [and the PEFs closing in. Though they have had a bit of luck in that the PEF that moved in close to the rear of Multair turned out to be Number 5 - reinforcements at last! And then the Test of Wills for Multair and the Orcs ends up with the same number of successes. Phew!]

Eorlith and Lorhan run to the aid of Multair and attack the two Orcs. Eorlith beheads his Orc but Lorhan's puts up a sterner fight.

Meanwhile four villagers burst out of their homes right into the midst of the Night Orcs who turn to attack them.

The results of the melees between the villagers and Orcs are mixed. One of the villagers takes out an Orc with his bow as it charges. Another thrusts his spear at the oncoming enemy but has his blow pushed aside by the Orc's shield and so begins a long fight as neither can find the telling blow to dispatch their foe. But a third villager is overwhelmed by the onslaught of the Orcs and wolf.

But now the tide starts to turn in favour of the Orcs. They overcome all of the villagers bar one who bravely continues to fight his foe. Eventually, though, exhausted he collapses and is speared.  

Realising that the odds are becoming too loaded against them, Eorlith and Lorhan take out one last Orc each and then beat a hasty retreat quickly, followed by Dulf and Multair.

They will have to come back another day, hopefully with more and better support.

Conclusion

Well I enjoyed the game even though it didn't turn out how I had hoped. Ironically the tables turned in favour of the Orcs when the villager reinforcements turned up because sunddenly all the PEFs came into line of sight and were activated. Before then the heroes were just about holding their own, killing off one PEF at a time.

Perhaps I had been a bit harsh on the villagers making them Rep 2. Rep 3 may have been more suited as they were protecting their homeland. However, I had reduced the Night Orcs to Rep 3 and not given them the Frenzy attribute as that is not my understanding of Orcs (I think that they were more driven by fear in stories like Lord of the Rings).

Oh well, Eorlith may  have to find an easier foe to fight.

[I seem to have the tune "Brave Sir Robin" from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" running in my head - can't think why!]

The Village of Or'eldi

Here's the set up for the game which I hope I will be able to play tomorrow.

You can see the three heroes at the end of the road on the left and some of the potential enemy and reinforcements on the white paper.


The ten 20mm square bases are the PEFs for the game. I know that the rules say that I should start with three but my thought was that the Night Orcs would be surrounding the village by being in small clusters.
Each one of the 20mm squares has a magnetic square on the underneath with the numbers 1-10 on them so that you don't have to stop the game to discover how many are in the PEF. That has already been sorted out in advance. It's an idea I picked up some time back from Terragenesis, I think.

There are five villagers who are potential reinforcements all with a CV1 so the total CV of the heroes is 11. I decided to make the Night Orc CV a little higher. So then I created the make-up of each of the ten PEFs.

1. False alarm
2. Night Orc Spearman and Wolf 
3. Night Orc Spearman and Wolf
4. Night Orc Spearman with Shield and Night Orc Spearman
5. Villagers pluck up courage and join the fight.
6. Night Orc Spearman with Shield and Wolf
7. Night Orc Archer and Night Ork Spearman with Shield
8. Night Orc Spearman with Shield and Night Orc Spearman
9. An incident happens - roll a story cube (well, I had to get my new toys in somewhere)
10. Night Orc Spearman with Shield and Wolf

I think I am ready.

An Aid to Creativity

When it comes to quests for my heroes, WHAA only really offers three basic ideas:

• Recover an item
• Destroy someone or something
• Rescue a person

I am sure that there should be more than just those three and spotted these on Solo Nexus' blog:

Rory's Story Cubes

The nine dice on the right are from the basic set while the ones on the left are from the Voyages set. I should be able create lots of other types of quests with them as well as flesh out the three that WHAA gives.

And I know that I could simply have used a set of ordinary spotted dice in different colours or perhaps percentage dice but you have to agree that these look more fun. And I managed to get both sets on Amazon for £6.48 plus p&p so they weren't expensive.

Besides, we have a son who is on the autistic spectrum and who likes dice so we are hoping that we might be able to help him develop his imagination with them.