Over the Bank Holiday weekend, I felt like something a bit lighter game-wise, so I got out some 28mm fantasy figures and started a new
Five Leagues From The Borderlands campaign. As well as playing the game for its own sake - and it needs no further justification - I was looking at what the minimum figure and terrain requirements might be, so in current domestic circumstances I can create a small 'game in the box' which covers most of the necessary options.
I am four campaign turns in so far. I will do a quick summary as I go of each campaign turn. I started off with a 'standard' party of 4 Heroes and 4 Followers. Just for visual identification, the heroes are the Knight with a two-handed sword, the Knight in red surcoat with sword and dagger (the avatar), the blonde archer in green, and the Norse Shieldmaiden with sword and shield.
Turn One:
A good non-combat encounter finds me a new comrade-in-arms: some kind of runaway scholar! Oh well, he can figure out how to use his bill as he goes...
Then an encounter with some Northern raiders...
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The merry band...
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The fight was quite hard - raiders are reasonably tough - but in the end it was a convincing victory, and no serious injuries amongst the party. The loot was okay, but much better, one of the followers ended up becoming a hero.
Turn Two:
The next turn only had a combat encounter; this was against some bewitched local cultists, who ended up acting as dumb fodder for some evil sorcerer...this band was led by a mercenary warrior out of the Far North, however...
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Okay, the action begins with the party spotting the cultists, and the arrows begin flying.
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The archers do their work well - that warrior is still untouched, mind
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The melee becomes general - plus one of the heroes and his follower have got around the back - no escape for any of this lot
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The mercenary warrior is the last to fall, surrounded by the party and hacked down - he was a very tough customer, and a couple of the party are a little worse for it
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Turn Three:
The party track down a band of bandits to their lair - a ruin hidden in a deep vale. On the way however, they encounter another bit of good fortune...another character who wishes to join the party...a soldier...who also turns out to be a hero! He is one of the characters with a Bill, for identification.
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The party has surprised the bandits in their lair.
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The archers have good position
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The enemy leader - some kind of charismaic demagogue, using the bandits for his own nefarious ends
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Some neat archery brings down a couple of the bandits - the bandits are possibly the weakest enemies in the game.
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And another one - the archers are outdoing themselves in this battle!
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The remainder of the bandits are despatched, although a couple do manage to make their escape
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Turn Four:
Game Notes:
Really good fun, and a nice little change of pace for me. Things are actually going very well for my party - having the extra heroes does make the fights noticeably easier!! Still, they will leave soon enough (IIRC the party will reset to normal numbers at the end of a campaign segment...need to check that). I do have the latest edition of Five Leagues...but I haven't got around to properly examining that system yet...and in any case, it isn't like I am not enjoying the first edition! I think it bears repeating that I really wish I had had this game when I was about 10-12 (that and Nuts! or Five Men at Kursk) - I would have played these things so, so much! Great solo-friendly gaming on a small board, with a low figure count. What I have been working on is getting a minimal 'set' together, having all the terrain and models I need to play the game as written, but contained in a very small overall space. I use the same hills as I am using for my 6mm Horse & Musket 'game-in-a-box', but the trees for this game need another box, with a few other bits of terrain, like the ruins and the barrows in some of the pictures above, to give it some flavour. But it is working well so far - a few Dark Age warriors (
Gripping Beast), fantasy Norsemen (
Westwind Nordvolk) and some Cultists (
Frostgrave) are supplying most of the adversaries, the heroes and heroines are mainly
Perry Miniatures Wars of the Roses figures and conversions, and some
Bad Squiddo &
Gripping Beast shieldmaidens.
It does remind me of my early games of D&D (ist edition) when I was a teenager. We never really managed a campaign, but these games you've played are the sort to which we aspired to! One day I might re-visit this sort of game, but currently too into bigger battles, which tick all the boxes for me. Mind you it's nice to have a break from the norm now and then:)!
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly so. It is perfect for the games that I wanted (and to the extent that you can 'need' a game, needed) when I was that age - definitely not the same as now, when I am more interested in big battles, or even realistic skirmishes. But that said, I am not averse to sometimes playing adventure games!
DeleteGreat looking games. An interesting campaign that I guess you can continue for as long as you are interested. Does the opposition get harder as the campaign continues?
ReplyDeleteThanks Ben. Great-looking is far too kind! But I am going for 'nice enough'...
DeleteInteresting question. I don't think it gets harder per se, but there is a (more-or-less) random distribution of difficulty in the way that scenarios are generated, so sooner or later you might generate a combat encounter where you are massively over-matched either by the strength of the opposition OR by terrible starting conditions (caught by surprise with no time to react to repair the damage). That said, I think getting a strong party (in numbers, and proportion of heroes to followers) helps this, so potentially the rest of this campaign might be relatively easy (although that can easily change with a couple of bad rolls!)