Session 36: Ghost Ships and Girded Loins

5/7/23-5/15/23, rest 5/16/23, active 5/17/23

PC: Blair (Nightblade), Bigtoe (Machinist), Braxton (Explorer)

Hench: Isabel, Jahanaray, Goda, Platt, Ronin, Rocky, Andi

#ACKS 

A few months ago Braxton the Explorer tripped over a rumor about a magical ship that sails the midnight coast of the Bay piloted solely by cats. You may ask yourself, “Wtf?”, but listen, shut up.

For real though, rumors are a great way to seed things into the game. You may be tempted to use them to gently push the adventurers towards your desired in-game hooks. Or you could write 50 of them in a drunken stupor, drop them in a file, and forget about them until one of the PCs starts searching for a lucrative job opportunity.

I believe that players don’t really care about NPCs or DM generated hooks and while they may seem stupid when solving puzzles or not grasping your brilliant plot, they aren’t. They can smell railroad tracks and abhor nothing more than doing what the DM wants them to do. Players are more likely to latch onto something that they have some personal input into. This is why I have ridiculous rumors and the broadest strokes of prepared environments and locations. When the PCs latch onto something, or come up with something themselves, I’m not scrambling to rewrite all muh preps and force a square peg into a round hole. I’m prepared to improv a session that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy.

So, “cat boat, cat boat” was the chant in the downtime Discord. I stole was inspired by a rule from the Dubzaron campaign that allows using multiple “stacked” rumors to apply to a single topic. As more rumors are hit for the topic, I prompt the rumormongering player as to what they believe the next information regarding the hook should be. Naturally as DM I have veto powers directly and the nature of rumors being inconsistent or unverified gives veto powers indirectly so it doesn’t really matter if they say, “There’s an unguarded treasure hoard tended by kittens in cute hats that has a unicorn horn that grants wishes!” or some other cheesy freebie like that. Sure that’s the rumor that they hear, even down to where this treasure hoard is supposed to be. But what’s actually there is up to me and no one rides for free.

         

Braxton continued to investigate this rumor and the player had determined to use a mutual friend of the table’s online moniker to represent the leader of the Merlantians, an aquatic tribe of fishy naga-like people with a sneaker fetish and “girded loins”. Apparently he believed the cat thing to be misdirection or something. The real target was The Mighty Hammercock, Lord of Merlantis. Again you may ask yourself, “Wtf?” Please, refer to the opening paragraph for any further such questions.

With a target set, the party launched from Deinwick towards the capital of Bellport where they intended to find more information about the Merlantians and buy or hire a boat to take them out on the water. I’ve added a Maps section to the site that might clarify where some things are happening. Anyway, off they went with Bigtoe’s fledgling army as escort. They quickly realized that marching a small army all that way was going to take quite a while, so they traded off some of the mercs with their venturer hench in Talston before continuing on with cavalry for speed.

Once the party arrived in Bellport, several of the group tried to dig up more information about the cat boat, learning that just a week past a lone survivor had washed ashore, telling terrible tales of his ship being attacked in a foggy night-time ambush. Bigtoe wanted to interview this fellow but unfortunately the poor chap had succumbed to his wounds. He had to settle for learning a rough area of the coastline that the fiendish Hammercock might operate along.

Next, the group visited the docks looking for a ship to hire. There were many ships but not many for hire so Braxton approached the harbormaster and greased his palms to keep an eye out for them. We joked around a little about his cheap frugal bribery amounts of like 5 and 9 gold pieces. The harbormaster was unimpressed by the modest offerings but liked the explorer well enough to play ball.

Now they were in a big city which they really had visited rarely and spent very little time in. They wanted to check with the local authorities and get paid for doing something that they were going to do anyway. Adventurers be greedy like that. They learned that Sir Lionel Deinwick, brother to the Lord Deinwick of the West, was acting captain of the guard so they made an appointment and were able to be seen.

He had vague reports of some piracy attributed to this fairy tale and was willing to pay a little for information, but quite a bit more for proof. The party took the mission and slept on it, waiting for the harbormaster to find them a boat.

The next day, after no hits, Braxton decided to poke around in dockside inns for captains that they could approach directly. A solid plan that was supported by the dice because miraculously the first place they went to had a captain’s council of some sort going on. They waited for them to finish before approaching, asking if anyone was willing to carry them out to sea looking for the cat boat. The man at the head of the table, Captain Commodore Victor, seemed to take responsibility for the gathering and asked a few questions, deciding that sure he’d charge them to rent one of his ships and on the absolutely miniscule chance that they actually ran into the cat boat, he wanted half of the treasure that might be recovered. He voluntold one of the attendees to escort the party where they thought they needed to be and the rest kind of snickered to each other about chasing ghost ships.

Captain Newman of The Key was happy to cart the party around for a few days and make a little gold, so off they went, sailing the coast southeast towards a large cove just short of Seafort. They found the cove and looked around a little, but did not find any evidence of past battles. It was night and they were in a cozy spot so decided to chill there and continue the search the next day.

Allowing random results to dictate the game is interesting. The wounded sailor died, bad random roll. Sir Deinwick would see them in a timely fashion and the first bar they looked in was filled with captains, good random rolls. The first encounter rolled out of port was mermen, which was what I had determined would indicate an encounter with the dastardly Merlantians! Let go of the wheel, it’s more dynamic.

Night fell as a dense fog began to roll in. The players got excited, sensing something was afoot. During the midnight watch an eerily silent ship pulled alongside, exchanging arrows with some of the party on duty. The group was finally able to set eyes on the mythical Merlantians, large, broad-shouldered naga-like people armed with bows and tridents and looking disdainfully at the party’s shoddy footwear. Or maybe the Merlantians were the giant sized tabby cats staring disinterestedly from the back ranks of the snake people. Either way, the fight was on.

The enemy stormed the rails of the Key and engaged the party and their mercenary archers that they were able to bring aboard. The naga-like men were obviously trained well and strong, but not terribly threatening on the whole. It was the cats that really scared the group. When the huge animals lept to the Key, they morphed into large beastial humanoids with feline faces and claws.

The bad news for the cats was everyone in the fucking friendly party that had spells had some kind of crowd control options like Light for blinding or Choking Grip. Some really bad saving throws from my end and the powerful element of the enemy’s force was neutered, blinded and/or choking and greatly reduced in combat effectiveness. The cats were able to wear through the dismounted horse archers defending the group, but could only do a little damage to some of the actual party members and henchmen due to high ACs and negatives to attacks from being blinded.

Blair the Nightblade was able to land some solid backstabs with one of the party’s only magical weapons against the catmen and the rest were able to tackle and execute the weakened beasts after several rounds of grappling, including Braxton jumping from the center mast about 20 feet up to try and WWE drop kick one to the ground. There was a lot of build up for this move but he rolled poorly on the attempt and just flopped to the ground, hissing in pain.

The group was ecstatic to have defeated these creatures and captured their ship, but on inspection they realized the Merlantian vessel was in awful shape and probably shouldn’t even have been floating. They quickly searched through it, finding tons of treasure, some magic items, and charts to a mysterious island well off of the coast. They also found an altar depicting a truly fearsome naga-man wearing a wide WWE style championship belt. Offerings around this altar included small lizards, birds, and mice along with candles and incense. Each of the naga-men wore a strange medallion with a man’s face carved into it which the PCs naturally collected.

Bigtoe was all bothered by the Key’s crew not helping in the fight, to which Captain Newman shrugged and said they were transport, they weren’t hired to fight. This was apparently a miscommunication during the deal that Braxton made of such an offensive nature that plans were briefly hatched to murder the entire crew and steal all the loot, turn into a vulture and fly away with most of the loot, etc. These plans were eventually tossed and they opted to tow the captured ship back and offer that as the Commodore’s cut of the treasure.

Captain Newman did not want to tow the ghost ship back to port, but they paid him handsomely and threatened him and other adventurer things until he did so, having his crew lash it to the Key and setting off for home. As dawn broke and sunlight began to bathe the ghost ship, it started to disintegrate, eventually leaving nothing but the towing lines flowing behind the Key. This offended the dwarf Bigtoe even more, renewing his tirade of insulting the ship’s crew as cowards and the Commodore as a con artist.

They stormed into port and marched to the Commodore’s bar, where Bigtoe gave him an ear-full. The Commodore was pissed and not having it and there was a tense back and forth before they eventually agreed to have the magic items identified and they’d split the treasure in half. Victor sent a mage associate of his with the group to get the Tower of the Glowing Hand to identify the items and verify everything was on the up and up. 

Back at the bar, they split the loot and Victor told them to get the fuck out, which the party did. They copped some solid magic items and big ticket jewelry and gems, got paid by Sir Deinwick for returning with the heads of the fish guys, and called it a win.

Musings:

I editorialized during the write up most of my thoughts I think. It was a good session and I’ll reiterate that allowing the players to be involved in rumors and hooks is just tops. They got more treasure than I expected since I just used the recommended ship’s haul for a ship of that type but hey, they could have all died if they hadn't been so ready with the spells. The cats were pretty tough, but this appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. They’ve got charts to an island and a reference to the swolest Merlantian. Let’s see if they care to pursue it.

Session 35: [bass line from seinfeld]

4/30/23: Team A, Talston, Session 35
Hench: Amadayo, Mahin, Madrof, Eggie, Jalen, Jerod, Beyza

PC: Gwendolyn, Luther, Cracaryn

#ACKS

Something clicked with the party about the Millon situation that was briefly visited last session. They were convinced that the wives and daughters of Mayor Chester Ricks were abused or imprisoned or… something. They returned to the agricultural town to check in with the Mayor’s butler Jeeves, who advised them again that it would take quite some time to get onto the Mayor’s schedule to be seen. They asked after the women who were unable to meet with anyone at this time and left still convinced that the Mayor had his family chained in the basement.

The reward was still on offer for information about the whereabouts of his daughter Maisie or her return to Millon. She had been kidnapped after being introduced to the court at Lord Valestrian’s Castle. Rumors so far pointed at the nobles growing frustrated with Ricks for not pulling the trigger on any potential matches. Seems they felt the low ranking noble was punching above his weight. 

The party tooled around Millon for a bit, meeting the local baker named Martha who sold goods off of her back porch. They paid handsomely for everything she had in stock and custom orders for the next day due to Eggie the Henchman’s insatiable hunger curse that he picked up from Tampering with Mortality. Jokes about Thinner were made, the youngest player didn’t get them, and we moved on.

They decided to investigate Maisie’s last known whereabouts, somewhere between Valestrian and Talston. On their way back to Talston they passed by a small roc lair that they’d seen before. Cracaryn was trying to make friends by offering various foods, this time a freshly baked meat pie, but the protective male of the mated pair wasn’t havin’ it. The elven ranger left the pie and fled, hoping the dive bombing roc didn’t catch him. Evasion was successful and they carried on.

On their way to Valestrian from Talston, they made a point of being very thorough, checking for potential ambush points and mapping them out for future use. The disappearance happened months ago so they knew they couldn’t track for it, but they could at least try to find likely sites and see what they could put together from there. 

There was one perfect ambush spot that they located where the road ran straight through a thicket of trees. They spent a lot of time there poking about, picking up fresh tracks that led beyond and behind the southern end. They split into two groups to charge around the trees and come at… whatever… was back there, rushing up on a Wolf Nomad (notMongolian) horse archer who had been camping there. He was mounted and prepared to fight, but he was alone, so they chatted and eventually Gwendolyn was able to bring him on as a henchman.

Beyza had some information about the local area where he’d been roaming for a while. There were press gangs out from Blackhold, the seat of Eros Tyring, scooping up anyone not nailed down by other duties. The Lord Valestrian also had recruiters hiring mercenary companies and adventurers en masse. The nomad didn’t think the press gangs would give the party much trouble but he warned them anyway. Tensions were high in the area and rumors were that the Bloodletter had actually marched out of Bellport towards Loch Lucerne Castle with an army.

The group continued towards Valestrian, where they’d never been, arriving later in the day at an idyllic medieval castle with tall spires and well-maintained fortifications. They joined a queue to enter the low walled town supporting the fortress where they witnessed a significantly higher presence of troops at the gate. 

The troops seemed to be efficiently and politely searching wagons and enforcing tariffs and gate guard type things, right until they pulled a wagon driver to the side and beat him to unconsciousness, carrying him and his wagon away into the town after discovering a hidden compartment. The party exchanged uneasy glances, with Luther the paladin shrugging and commenting, “That’s what he gets for smuggling” or something to that effect. Lawful doesn’t mean Good or Nice.

They had a short interview with the corporal on duty where they learned that they could talk to Mike at the Red Lantern if they were looking for work and were otherwise ushered in with a firm warning to not cause any trouble. Once they entered town, Gwendolyn made a point to find a small shop where they could ask some questions. They ducked into a cobbler’s shop and when asked who ran the store it was clear to me that it had to be Mom and Pop from Seinfeld.

Once again I made the mistake of displaying my professional level voice acting skills by adopting a pitch perfect imitation of some old lady. They had a short chat wherein they learned the people of town, usually pretty chipper, were tense and irritable due to the heightened militarization from Valestrian and his vassal Tyring. War was brewing and no one was happy about it. They also learned that the description of Maisie sounded like a northern lower noble girl who had been to town but left a while back. She was apparently popular with Lord Tyring at court.

Gwendolyn also noted to the old woman that she had a hole in her roof, but never fear, the benevolent bard would have it taken care of post haste. She made a point to hunt down the local thatcher Benn, who was an irascible old man who nevertheless knew his business. She paid for roof repairs to the shop and Cracaryn for some unknown reason threatened the old thatcher, who was not intimidated at all and reciprocated by gesturing with his cane and throwing them out of his shop.

I bebopped to the Seinfeld bass line in my head as they made their way to the Red Lantern, where Gwendolyn took the stage to sing for the large crowd of mercs and adventurers while the others talked to Mike who sat at a table recruiting folks for Lord Valestrian. He offered them employment for their henchman wages based on level, which was just insulting apparently, and when pumped for more lucrative opportunities mentioned that he needed recon on well, everyone. He was paying for solid intel on Lucerne, Talston, Deinwick, and/or the Bloodletter, Baron Heinrik.

The group was interested but were still focused on their mission to save the princess, so they scared up the information that Blackhold was west of Valestrian and there was a road out of Blinton, a small town known for their prized horse stock. They were convinced that Tyring had abducted or seduced Maisie and wanted to verify that for the reward from Millon. Off to Blinton.

They arrived with no issues to the small town, which they didn’t really spend a lot of time investigating. They hit up the local recruitment post for Blackhold and noticed a wagon being loaded with young men and escorted along a road to the west. The party approached the platoon’s sergeant and asked if they could go with. The sergeant looked them over and snickered at Luther, the paladin of Heironeous, before shrugging and departing. They took this for consent and traveled with them.

Blackhold was a small keep with a curtain wall and defensive towers, relatively new construction that reminded the group a lot of Riverstride, the seat of Lord Issac de Molay. The people that they passed were pleasant enough, but a few things stood out. First, Cracaryn the elf was getting dirty looks. Not that uncommon, but Gwendolyn noticed these were a little more intense, a little more hate-filled, than usual. Second, the holy symbol of Hextor was prominently displayed, the less cuddly half-brother to Heironeous. They don’t get on.

The troops and conscripts continued on to a barracks, leaving the crew to figure things out for themselves. They visited a local inn called The Arrow, where they confirm the populace is all in on Hextor and that the Lord Tyring has a new wife. They’re convinced that it’s Maisie and decide to make an appointment at the keep. In busier settlements the rulers have quite the waitlist, but smaller areas like Riverstride and Blackhold are more accessible, particularly since both rulers make a point to be available to the locals.

Luther just can’t be around these cats and said he’d camp out at one of the mercenary campsites that all towns in Oberholt have. The party joined him in solidarity, but nothing weird happened overnight. They arrived for their appointment and apparently beat the rush because they’re seen quite promptly.

In a great hall eerily similar to Issac’s, Eros Tyring, a young woman fitting the description of Maisie Ricks, and a dignified man in black and silver robes greeted the petitioners as they’re introduced. Tyring and the robed man displayed the clenched fist of Hextor on their armor, but Tyring did all the talking. He was large and fair-haired, with the confidence that comes from a lifetime of being better than everyone around you. He welcomed them courteously and accepted that they wanted to pay their respects to the Lord. He offered them employment which they declined and having verified that Maisie was here, they dipped. Luther tried to goad Tyring with some slapstick disrespect of property but the young Lord grinned knowingly and let him go.

On the surface, Blackhold was not the den of evil that it was rumored to be. But the undercurrents had them suspicious af. The group traveled back to Valestrian and decided to scout towards Lucerne to the north, but not before forcing me to reprise my role as Mom, the old lady cobbler. Dicks.

The party was stopped on the road by a patrol of cavalry flying Lucerne colors. They were bloodied from recent battle and claimed they were looking for remnants of the Bloodletter’s army who they had just “kicked the shit out of”. They were turned away and decided to report this new info to Mike at the Red Lantern.

They were paid a little for this pretty generic and unverified information, but at least learned that Mike was legit in what he was offering. The group determined from here to head back to Millon and notify Mayor Ricks of his daughter’s whereabouts. The crew had pretty uneventful travel, noting that the rocs were still at their lair. Cracaryn was determined to make these rocs friendly or die trying.

More big orders at Martha’s and a visit to Jeeves had them finally get a meeting with the Mayor, where they informed him of Maisie’s new situation. The Mayor was very unhappy, swearing to lodge a complaint with Lord Valestrian, but this did not affect the party’s pay. They were rewarded what they were promised and couldn’t help but ask about his many wives and daughters. He chuckled and spun a wand between his fingers. The family members were fabricated by magic, a show for the peasants. Only Maisie was his true family. He liked the party and asked them to keep that secret for him. Who knows what they’ll do in the future.

They took their money and bounced, heading back to their favorite town of Talston to end the session, but not before Cracaryn bought 2 or 3 whole cows and strung them out for the rocs. The giant birds were being awfully territorial and chased the party off but seemed to enjoy the meat delivery.

Musings:

This was a departure session for our table. Usually it’s a big discussion about how they can make the most money, but they’re good souls who were genuinely worried about Maisie and the girls. They opened up some of the map that we’ve had zero interaction with to this point which was interesting. It’ll be cool to see if they focus on that interior section to the east rather than some of the frontier work they’ve been more used to. Undoubtedly fewer dungeons, but political tensions and rumors of battles could certainly be taken advantage of by enterprising young adventurers.

Session 34.5: Love is a Battles Field

Time: 4/28/23
PC: Issac, Redcorn, Teutch, Nekane
Hench: Sebastian, Luther, Kyte

#ACKS

I am not a tabletop wargamer. While in principle I appreciate what my figure-painting, terrain-building, ruler-wielding brethren do, in practice I have little experience with doing it on a table and for a long time had little interest in it. In general, I had found video games more entertaining for that type of conflict as the video game takes care of the parts that I find tedious.

That being said, we had come to the biggest battle in Oberholt thus far. Lord Issac had been gathering his forces and recruiting allies, including Teutch the Alchemist, Nekane the Great, and even appealing to the Baron in Bellport for support. This coalition was formed and based out of a forward operating base along the Yellow River. North, near the source of the river, was a location scouted by the PCs during session play. Various other bits of information gathered by various sources had been put together to lead the coalition to the belief that: 1) This site was related to the Dark Hymn which had been affecting the realm for months, 2) It is also a holy site for beastmen as they search for a relic called the Untersgrabben.

When scouted by PCs previously they determined that the many companies of beastmen were above their pay grade and passed that info off to Issac. Today was the day that weeks of preparation were coming to a head. For the enemy’s part, they were led by a Fire Giant named Vulrag who had been watching the humans approach but had such a massively superior force that he simply wasn’t bothered by it. “Let them come,” he allegedly said on the numerous occasions that he was warned about their approach.

If you’re new here, we play ACKS ‘round these parts. Up to this point we’ve been satisfied with the abstracted mass combat rules in Domains at War: Campaigns to resolve the few real battles that we’ve had and to adjudicate the Patrons doing Patron things during downtime. It works well and most importantly for this smooth-brained DM it’s easy and quick. However, for something of great significance to the campaign, we decided to break out the Domains at War: Battles rules and take a run at them.

Unfortunately we decided this only a day or two before D-Day and I had barely ever opened the book. So we all did a little study, as best we could, and I did some arts and crafts to get some unit chits that would fit on my 1 in. hex mat. The system is robust and really interesting. It recommends at the beginning of the book to run some test battles with a preset scenario, also offered in the book, so you can wrap your head around what’s going on. We failed to do so considering the timeline and suffered a bit because of that.

Arts and Crafts with Brigadine (and wife on the scissors)

The Good

Issac (Patron Paladin) has been a benevolent source of missions, healing, and other resources for the PCs. He’s also hanged and flogged an entire party of them. For the purposes of this battle, he and his coalition of forces will be called the Good. His allies were a mixed bag of even more colorful types, including Teutch the Alchemist (Patron Mage), Nekane the Great (Patron Vaultguard), and even Redcorn the Cleric of Ehlonna (PC Cleric) who had been flogged and maimed for his part in the Wounded Ear fiasco. The Dark Hymn has been enough of a problem that these guys put aside all their past issues to come together in common cause. Brings a tear to the eye.

They brought to the battle six divisions of troops with an unusually high ratio of cavalry to infantry. They had solid leadership with high morale and a sprinkling of Lieutenants, but a question mark in the four companies of conscripts that came with Marshal Kyte the Seer (NPC) as part of the reinforcements from Bellport. They also intended to lean heavily on Teutch and his cadre of mages for artillery and disruption.

The Bad

They’re beastmen. They’re the Bad. Led by Vulrag the Fire Giant, they were a mishmash of randomly rolled units off of the unit tables in D@W:C when the PCs first interacted with them. Those random rolls were not kind. Vulrag commanded four divisions of troops, with a staggeringly stout center of ogre heavy infantry supported by bugbears, lizardmen, hobgoblins, and goblins. They were not particularly well led and had very little cavalry, only some hobgoblin horse archers, but the discrepancy between humans and the more formidable beastmen had me questioning whether or not I was about to lose a PC and every active Patron in my game.

The Opening Moves

The Battle

We learned right off the rip that my mat was too big and the hexes were oriented with their points to the lengthwise rather than widthwise as indicated in the documentation, making for a longer narrower battlefield. I made the deployment zones much deeper to cut the approach time down but probably could have gone more extreme there. I’m sure those with more experience can share other tips for gettin’ the battlefield arrayed better but we powered through. We randomly generated terrain and placed our troops. The Good had infantry center with heavy flanks of cavalry, the Bad had Ogres and Bugbears center, with a couple hob horse archers on each flank supported by bugbears and lizardmen left and right respectively.

The Approach

Terrain was not hugely impactful, mostly affecting the Good both positively and negatively. They got a little disordered moving around some broken ground and were able to utilize a cliff with an approach on their side for some high ground shots for some horse archers.

Took us a while to close distance, again because I think the mat was too large but maybe there’s supposed to be a big lead up in positioning. The Good were concentrated a little more than the Bad, who were strung out in one big line. I have a tendency to overthink in tactical situations but I had determined early that the Bad were not particularly bright. With a bunch of irregular foot they weren’t disciplined. They were going to close and get busy ASAP. The only units on the board that I intended to play with any cleverness were the hob horse archers, who coincidentally got the opening blow of our opening game of Battles.

We clashed on the flanks first, with the hobs scoring some disruptive hits against light cavalry that were able to Withdraw to prevent the damage. The Disorder mechanic is to me the second most important thing about Battles, right behind Morale. Granted this is after one contest but I stand by it until I learn differently. It’s so expensive in action economy to overcome dinks to your forces, especially when outnumbered and out-led. 

The Engagement

Once the centers met it became apparent pretty quickly that this fight was not to be won by sluggin’ it out. The Good was just woefully overmatched in that department, with the ogres and bugbears laying lumber nearly at will.

This is why Morale is the most important thing, imo. The questionable conscripts weathered blows, the light infantry weathered blows. Sometimes they recoiled or retreated, but only one unit actually routed. Most of the losses suffered by the Good were through elimination, not from flight. It allowed the center to hold long enough for the flanks to open up, spells to land, and the first break point to be reached for the Bad.

When a break point is reached, morale is checked for the entire side. That’s huge for an army with few real leaders and none of them with significant morale bonuses to write home about. The Good determined that targeting the goblins and hobgoblins was going to be their best bet to reach that break point fastest, and despite some miraculous rolls for the Bad’s shock rolls, they did eventually force that break. A charge from Issac’s personal unit of heavy cavalry as a gamble, outranging the rest of his division, paid off with a destroyed unit and spells from Redcorn, Sebastian, and Teutch’s wizards forced the final shock rolls.

As expected, the Bad did not fare well in the first morale rolls and started a cascade of flight from the battlefield. The Good harried them off the field, claiming additional casualties in pursuit, and the Bad’s forces scattered. The day was won by Morale, but at significant cost.

The End

Musings:

I am not a tabletop wargamer. But I could be. This was fun, albeit a little slow to run due to our lack of familiarity with the rules and getting our legs under us. Looking back we missed some things, but it’s comforting to know what I missed and where and how to correct for it. A big rule is the loose units being able to withdraw to avoid damage, or withdraw after a shot. We remembered sometimes, forgot sometimes, but it’s a neat mechanic. 

The biggest obstacle I think was remembering which units were Disordered and when. My plan was to use little dots as tokens for it, but in practice it was not feasible. I brought dice to place on the units for various things and even had them sitting in front of me, but forgot about them and never utilized them. I think that would have probably made more sense.

Next time, we’ll need a little better organization for actually running the battle. It turned into managing it off of a spreadsheet and due to time constraints got a little rushed, leading to some more missed triggers, if you’ll forgive a MtG reference.

All in all, I recommend the Battles system. It makes sense, allows you to do the things that you think you should be able to do, and explains how to achieve those things mechanically. It was great fun, Good ran the Bad off of the point of interest, and now a light shines on one of the bigger hooks in the campaign’s history, the Butzkrag, the Dark Hymn, and the Untersgrabben.