24th December 2023 - Christmas Hobby Things

 A few photos to show what my hobby is looking like over Christmas.

First - Heroquest, always fun, and now introducing my youngest to it.

The Trial - possibly one of the most played single scenarios ever?

Painting: a few Perry British Napoleonic foot artillerymen, and a few infantry needed some basing repairs...

And, which is more the focus, painting up some Perry Agincourt-era Foot Knights for my youngest too...

And the set-up for tonight's game...more in a later post I am sure 😊

Some kind of early C19 infantry to the left, with a cannon, and some young girls/women; and some quite fierce looking ratmen to the right, on a board with Christmas trees and presents...

And a very Merry Christmas to everyone!

Five Leagues Campaign Battle 003 - Heroes & Heroines against Goblin Slavers

My jaunty band of adventurers set forth on another expedition to clear the Bree-lands of the forces of darkness.  A little bit of time has passed since the last fight, since the previous expedition encountered no enemies...

In this encounter, the  adventurers have picked up the rumour and later the signs of a group of slavers.  Tracking them back to their encampment in the dell beneath a couple of old barrows, the group use the cover of the relief and the trees to get quite close...before a watching goblin screams the alarm and everyone starts running at once... 

The Set-Up:

The goblin slavers are based in the dell in the centre, surrounded by barrows and other hills.  The adventurers spotted the sentries by the track previously (right) and so had moved around to attack from the opposite direction (top-left), but they hadn't counted on the other goblin watching from near the river (bottom-left)

The slavers are led by an Orc, who was conferring with one of the goblins just before the adventurers were spotted.

The pair of goblins by the track.  They really weren't expecting any pursuit into this secluded, desolate and (some say) haunted area...

The other watching goblin (foreground) spies the adventurers advancing gingerly through the woods by the river (centre-left)

The Battle:

The archers Nuna and Sommeryth (top) were shooting off their arrows, but managing to miss the mark every time...tricky shooting in the dark dell, perhaps?!?  Meanwhile the rest of the adventurers and the nearest goblins have converged at the edge of the dell...

...which you can actually see better in this shot (top-left); the two goblin sentries (foreground) start running back down the track

A fierce melee has erupted by the edge of the dell; this goblin (foreground) got the upper hand against Ruda, but Gillion (centre) has stepped in; the slaver's chief, the big Orc, has been felled by Leothain (centre-right)

Clahanar felled the goblin escorting the Orc that Leothain defeated (centre); the other goblins have now arrived, as the two archers continue to miss everything!

One of the goblins out-fought Gillion (centre) and was pushing him back up the slope towards the barrow (centre) when finally one of Nuna's arrows hit home, and the goblin fell.

With the majority of the goblins down, the last goblin (the other one was killed at the extreme left of the photo) runs away down the tracks.

Nuna and Sommeryth continue shooting...and continue missing!  The goblin escapes.

Peace returns to the gloomy dell...

Game Notes:

Simple and straightforward fun this one with the Five Leagues Over the Borderlands (first edition) rules.  The absolute numerical superiority of the adventurers, and the local numerical superiority at the initial point of contact, and the firepower superiority, and the generally heavier armour of the adventurers, all added up to a relatively easy fight compared to the two previous fights, which could have gone either way.  

The mechanisms are really intuitive, I feel that I am not actually looking at the rulebook that much during the battles - I spend more time looking at rules details when I am doing the 'campaign' bit than re-fighting these tactical battles. All of which is exactly how you want it for games of this type!  The initiative system is finally balanced to allow the player a bit of agency, usually - but not that much.

 

The solitaire system built in to the rules is basically fine.  It is easy to administer which is the most important thing.  It might benefit from being a bit richer in terms of tactics and so on but since keeping the administration overhead down is pretty key, I am fine with it at the moment.

I did mess up on the figures slightly - I have some goblins who would have done much better as the slavers than the ones from Heroquest I actually used! Oh well, maybe next time...

The Band:

As a reminder to myself as much as anything, the party currently consists of:

 

Gillion (a Dunedan fighter, uses a sword and a mace)

Annungilgweld "Nuna" (a Dunedan fighter, uses a bow and a sword)

Clahanar (a Dunedan fighter, uses a two-handed axe)

Herudoina "Ruda" (a Northwoman, uses sword and shield)

Léothain (a former Northman soldier, now a hero, uses sword and shield, wears full armour)

Davron (a Dunedan squire, learning from Clahanar)

Serronsel (a wily rogue Northwoman, but attached to Ruda)

Sommeryth (a hopeful young Northwoman, archer)

 

Clahanar, Hero, Dual Weapon fighting style, Full armour, 1/4/+1/5, +1 Luck, Quality Sword; Helmet; Skills: Organization, Teaching (the Partizan free 'Martin Schwartz' figure)

Gillion, Hero, Two-handed weapon, Full armour, 1/4/+2/4, Helmet; Skills: Dodge, Parry (Perry 1450-1500 Mercenary captain figure)

Ruda, Heroine, Sword & shield fighting style, Light Armour, 1/6/+1/3, Helmet, Shield; Leadership, Medicine (Shieldmaiden figure - Bad Squiddo possibly)

Nuna, Heroine, Archer fighting style, Partial armour, 2/5/0/3; Skills: Tracking, Pathfinding, Foraging (Shieldmaiden figure - Gripping Beast?)

Leothain, Hero, Sword & Shield fighting style, Full armour, 2/4/+1/3; Skills: Tactics, Library (Perry 1450-1500 Mercenary captain figure)

Davron, Follower, Light Armour, 1/4/03; No skills (Perry 1450-1500 WotR Billman figure)

Serronsel, Follower, Light Armour,  1/4/+1/3, Shield; Skills: Barter (Shieldmaiden figure - Gripping Beast?)

Sommeryth, Follower, Light Armour, 2/4/0/3, Crossbow; Skills: Dodge (Oathsworn Amazon figure?)

Five Leagues from the Borderlands: A Camp Raid AAR.

 Five Leagues From the Borderlands:

For the first time, I have managed to get Five Leagues From the Borderlands out for a full dress game.  I have played a few games with these rules before, but they have been counters on paper just to get some familiarity with the basic rules concepts.

I suppose that 5 Leagues is what some gamers call an "RPG-lite" game, a term I have never particularly liked but it will have to do.  It stresses the combat elements of a 'traditional' RPG but simplifies and abstracts them, whilst making the RPG campaigning and social interaction elements much more simplified and much more abstract.  But more of this later!

Anyway, generating a band of 4 Heroes and Heroines and 4 Followers, and following the capamign turn sequence, I generated an encounter in which the party has tracked a bunch of marauding barbarians to their lair.  I was thinking very much of a Lord of the Rings or Warhammer-type game, so the barbarians here are Orcs who are raiding Eriador and the party is trying to surprise and kill them.

The Set-Up:

The old stone circle (longtime readers may recognize this as the Stonehenge-esque structure I helped one of my daughters make for a school project!)

Occupied by Orcs.  The leader and a few followers are warming themselves by a fire.

Another few Orcs are gathered around a small pool at the edge of the circle, gathering some water.

The party has approached the camp, but the Orc sentry (centre, obscured by the trees) has spotted them creeping to the edge of a nearby glade.  Whoops!

The final Orc sentry is on the far side of the Stone circle (top-left, obscured by trees)

A wider shot of the starting positions of the combatants at the start of the fight.

The Battle:

One of the heroes takes out the nearby Orc sentry.

The archer takes out a second Orc (centre through stones, fallen), but two more Orcs rush forward.

The remainder of the party break left to meet the oncoming rush of Orcs coming from around the pool.

The Orc sorceror (top, slightly obscured) tries to cast his dark magic - so fa, without much effect!

One of the heroines takes out another Orc at the edge of the stone circle.

The sorceror's magic starts to take effect, calling a curse down upon the archer.

One of the heroes has taken out the first Orc approaching from the pool, but the second one is charging one of the followers (centre, with bill)

A few bows are exchanged, and the ferocious Orc downs the follower!

A second Orc fells one of the heroes at the edge of the stone circle!  Four Orcs are down now, but two of the party (one hero and one follower) are out of the battle.

Luckily one of the followers is able to dispatch that last Orc before it can do more damage.

This seems to turn the tide of the battle, as some of the Orcs quickly run off, leaving only the Sorceror and a single warrior Orc left.

One of the heroes fells the warrior Orc after a hard fight.

The archer (bottom) moves forward, dodging the sorceror's spells (top)...

One of the archer's arrows gets the Orc Sorceror through the eye!  The fight is over.

Game Results: I think three of the Orcs escaped and six were killed or otherwise incapacitated.  Neither the fallen hero or follower actually died, but both were injured badly enough as to be out of the campaign for a few days.  A decent haul of loot was found by the party - swag recovered from the Orc raiders.

Game Notes: The rules were very intuitive and quick to pick up, including the quasi-AI for controlling the actions of the enemy fighters.  It is quite a balanced fight, my brief descriptions above don't emphasize that the party was quite lucky to get away with that attack once it had been spotted by the sentry, since the average barbarian (here Orc) is about as tough or a little more than the average starting hero and definitely tougher than the average follower.  The movement, initiative and combat mechanics are all quite familiar, but work fine.  The initiative system involves rolling dice equal to the number of party members, with low rolls (usually 1, but sometimes 2 or 3) being best as they can be assigned to characters to move before the opposition, with everyone else moving afterwards.  So the key thing appears to be to get the key heroes to do key stuff before the opposition gets a chance to react, and then have the others react to the opposition moves.  The combat mechanics don't make local numerical superiority that important compared to combat skill and trying to get advantageous match-ups.  Positioning seems to be mainly important as a mechanism to achieve the latter, by forcing the opposition to attack uphill, across walls or concentrate on the party's strongest heroes etc.  I will resist too much comment though at this point until I get a better mastery of the system.

The campaign procedural game (or the pre- and post-battle phases in more wargamer-y speak) seemed to work pretty well too, both in terms of having workable abstract mechanics to deal with the kind of stuff that a party may want to do (buy stuff, meet people, scout out areas, gamble, heal etc.).  It seems calibrated quite well to be challenging at the start but very importantly to remain so - the rewards for success are definite, but not so great as to really unbalance the game.  

 So overall I am impressed, the game was fun and I am looking forward to playing some more.  What I do need to do is make more 28mm suitable terrain, since I don't have that much really.  If I had only know, I would have collected in 15mm probably, but since I already have quite a few 28mm figures accumulated over the years, it feels like more trouble than its worth to change game size now.  

The game was played on a 3'x2' board, which was fine (normal movement is 4-6") although 3'x3' might be a trifle better.  Figures are a mixture of Bad Squiddo, Gripping Beast, Perry Miniatures, a free Partizan figure (I think!) and Heroquest stuff...

In Praise of Heroquest

Over the last few months, I have been re-visiting the old Milton Bradley/Games Workshop game Heroquest.

My two eldest children have had a whale of a time playing this game.  The elder (8) took on the roles of Barbarian and Wizard, the younger (6) the roles of Elf and Dwarf.  The good thing about this dungeon quest type game is that the mechanics are simple enough so that young children can grasp them, with a little help; the quests are challenging enough to be interesting but easy enough to be winnable without me (as the "Evil Wizard") deliberately throwing the game.  I think all of the characters except the Elf were killed at some point during the campaign, which was a useful lesson, as it really taught the value of teamwork and protecting the less tough characters!  And the lesson was well learned, I must admit, since the two did apply the lessons rigorously afterwards and they got through the last six quests or so without losing anyone.

Heroquest Game in Progress

All the mechanics are very simple.  Characters can move and do an action per turn (fight or search or cast a spell etc.), or do an action then move.  Combat is resolved by throwing custom D6, which have 3 skulls, 2 "good" shields and 1 "evil" shield; the attacker is after skulls, the defender wants the appropriate shield, so the heroes are no better than the equivalent monsters when attacking, but twice as effective when defending.  The heroes can take a lot more damage than the monsters, but the wizard and elf in particular are quite 'killable' if you can get a few monsters to attack them simultaneously.  There is a degree of risk and reward: the more rooms and corridors which are searched, the more treasures will be found but the more monsters may be activated and the more traps set-off, which can cumulatively weaken the heroes to make them easier meat for the monsters.

During the adventures, certain special and magical items can be found and some can be kept.  Gold can also be looted, or given as payment for successfully completing missions.  This can be spent on new weapons, armour and equipment and so forth, to make the heroes more effective.  We found that missions take between 40 minutes and 75 minutes to complete (or fail).

Magic is really easy: there are 12 spell cards in four sets of three, representing the different elements.  The wizard picks one set of three, the elf picks one and the wizard then gets the remainder.  The spell effects are all explained on the card so the player and evil wizard don't have to remember what each spell does exactly.

The setting is Games Workshop's Warhammer world (or at least, that setting as it was in the late 80s and early 90s).  The four heroes are basically employed by the Empire to battle a range of goblins, orcs, fimir, undead, chaos warriors and sorcerers to rescue prisoners, find items, kill particularly vicious chaos lords and so on.  All the monsters are controlled by "the evil wizard" i.e. the Dungeon Master.  There can therefore be up to five players in a game (one per hero, plus the evil wizard).  A full range of models for the heroes and monsters is included in the game but they can easily be replaced by other models if desired.  We often use female models for the barbarian and the wizard, especially since the Dice Bag Lady has started up her one-stop shop.  Some of them I had before though, I think they might be from Ral Partha.

A selection of the female figures we use as alternatives/replacements for fighters: a variety of ranges are represented including Westwind, Ral Partha, Bad Squiddo and Perry Wars of the Roses' with head swaps

As these are gaming pieces for children, I have just gone for basic, simple painting (plus I am not really interested in producing art works myself, however much I admire the exquisite skill shown by others!  15 minutes a figure is about my maximum)

In addition, there are 3D models of tables, bookcases, treasure chests and torture racks and so on!  They all help to increase the immersion and the interest for the younger gamers!

My children have asked for more but I am not sure how to proceed.  The expansion sets for Heroquest seem quite expensive, more collectors' prices than gamers' prices perhaps.  I remember that Advanced Heroquest was a distinct step-up in complexity, so I'd be interested in any recommendations for dungeoncrawl games pitched at the same easy, intuitive level.  Anyway, highly recommended as an introductory game for children and novices.