Return to Gothic Horror with Fear and Faith

 I had Kirstie and Ian around on Friday, so I threw together a quick 3-player scenario using Ganesha Games' Fear and Faith rules in my Gothic Horror setting. I realised that i had not put my scarecrows/pumpkin heads on the table since I bought them on Ebay over a year ago, so I thought it high time to get them bloodied.

Three factions, A Vampire, a Warlock and a Witch. Each have a bride/daughter/sister trapped in a demon plane and need to carry out a ritual to release them. Unfortunately, when they reach the site of the portal, they discover the other parties are also there and fisticuffs ensue.

The table layout. The ritual must be carried out at the altar stone in the centre of the table (2 actions and pass a successful Q roll). First one of the three standing stones must be activated (1 action Q test) to generate the magical energy required and direct it to the ritual caster. Once "switched on" the energy could be diverted to another caster in the same way.

The Witch and her artificial animations (ME). Only her magic can harm the vampire and her minions have a high Q score, so will be difficult to command. On the positive side, they are hard to kill.

The Warlock and his followers (IAN). The Warlock has magic, his henchman is a vampire hunter with wooden stakes and holy water vials, plus one of this minions is a huntsman with a crossbow and a supply of wooden bolts, so lots of ways to kill a vampire here. The other minions are average quality thugs for hire, so nothing special.

The Vampire and his enthralled Cossack guards (KIRSTIE). The Vampire is the most powerful character in the game, but his Cossacks are just average sword fodder.

The warlock's followers rush forwards, one of them reaching one of the standing stones.

Another gets to a second stone, just ahead of a cossack.

Another cossack gets to the third standing stone.

I on the other hand roll appalling dice and by the third turn I still have not even got all ny artificial creatures off the starting edge!

Kirstie rolls much better dice and while my forses are dithering, activates a standing stone.

Shooting is not so good however, two attempts to shoot the Warlock minion by the central standing stone miss by miles!

One the other side of the table, having switched on the energy for the Warlock, the musketeer moves up to get a shot at the one creature I have been able to get moving.

The Warlock rushed into the centre of the table, but then, feeling a bit exposed decided to move back and let his minions do the fighting.

The Vampire hunter charges one of the cossacks, joined by the thug with the pitchfork.

The second cossack charges in to help his colleague. A frantic melee ensues, with both cossacks being knocked to the ground, by scambling back on their feet before the coup de grace could be delivered.

The musketeer hits my pumpkin head. It's a kill, but because it wasn't an aimed headshot, the creature is only knocked down.

The Vampire moves forward to survey the carnage.

Finally a turn with reasonable dice rolls and two of my creatures charge the musketeer befor he can reload.

The next turn goes badly for Ian, one of his minions is killed by a cossack....

...while another is killed by my creatures.

Allowing another pumpkin head to move up and redirect the energy to my witch.

I had my Witch in the centre of my forces, where she could influence the most creatures and try to get them going. Unfortunately I hadn't noticed this cossack who had crept forward and took a long range shot at the Witch. It shouldn't have been too much to worry about, there were lots of minuses for the shooter.

But Kirstie rolled a 6 and I rolled a 1!!! The only result that could have killed the Witch, so I was out of the game. The huntsman took a shot at the Vampire with his crossbow, but missed.

While the huntsman was reloading and seeing that the Warlock and Vampire Hunter were busy elsewhere, the Vampire took a chance and rushed up to the altar stone. It was down to who activated first, if Ian gained the initiative there was a chance for the huntsman to reload and shoot, as well as the Warlock moving up and casting a spell. But Kirstie won the initiative and the Vampire easily passed the rolls required to  cast the ritual and open the appropriate portal.

A win for the Vampire and a definite big loss for the Witch! The Warlock lives to try again when the start are next in alignment for the ritual, so he will be back in a few years!

A lot of laughs were had, some beer was drunk and we all had a great evening.

Trying Blucher for The Great Northern War

 First a bit of background:

Around Lockdown I picked up  a bucketload of plastic 10mm-ish 18th century miniatures. I think these were originally were made for a verson of the boardgame Risk. I had intended to incorperate them in my 10mm WSS armies, but the plastics are more 12mm and tower over my metal armies (mainly Pendraken).

So I put then aside for a bit, then I decided to make up some GNW armies. This would take minimal painting as these plastic had already been basically painted as Swedish and Russian forces, I would just need to repaint a few units for Danes and add cuff turnbacks to the rest. I now have nearly half done, to make up basic Swedish and Danish armies for the later part of the war, around 1711/12.

I am already using Black Powder for my WSS armies and wanted to do something different, when I came across a Blucher varient for the WSS, which I thought would be fine for the Great Northern War, as they overlapped in time for most of their duration. I had already played a few games of Blucher (by Sam A Mustafa) and enjoyed them, I found the 18th century variant, Eugene, somewhere online (sorry I am not sure where).

One with the game:

After a couple of false starts I finally got Colin around to give the rules a go. Due to time constraints, and being Colin's first time with the rules, we skipped the pre-game mini campaign (usually one of the best bits IMHO) and straight on with a meeting engagement.

Sorry, I forgot to take any pictures of the initial deployment (and I really need to finish basing some of the units). I deployed my Swedes with cavalry on the left and infantry on the right and centre. Colin mixed his columns up, so unintentionally deploy in mirror image to me! My cavalry advanced as did Colin's centre, our other infantry flank advanced a bit, then both just took a break and watched the action for a while.

The view of the infantry battle. The Danish centre is closing on the Swedes, but taking casualties from muskets and accurate artillery fire. The Danish guns had attempted to soften up the Swedish unit on the right as they advanced, but failed. In fact I think the Danish artillery only caused 1 Morale Point all game.

Away from the infantry the cavalry clash...

....indecisively at first, both sides having units bounce back and forth (as cavalry melees tend to go!).

Now the Danish infantry charge, but are thrown back. A counter charge by one of the Swedish brigades routs the Danes in front of them.

On the far flank the two side exchange musketry at long range.

Some unbelievably good dice for the Swedish cavalry break two units of Danes, making a hole in their line....

...which the Swedes exploit and the Danish cavalry starts to melt away. Colin managed to retire one unit on the point of routing off table (units voluntarily retired off table do not count towards losses for the army morale).

Swedish cavalry now wheel across to threated the flank of the Danish centre.

Too late, the Danish right wing launch an attack.

But the centre crumbles as the Swedish infantry attack and the cavalry charge into their flanks.

The view from the Danish side of the table, "Why are my men facing the wrong way?"

An over view of the final situation, an outstanding victory for the Swedes. A lot of laughs in this game, and we will be doing again soon!

SNAKES!!! Part 2

 Ross and I managed to get our follow-up game of Sellswords and Spellslingers in quite quickly. As we are going to turn this into a campaign, let me quickly introduce the cast. My party consists of Steinarr the Cleric, Dallin the Warrior and Renir the Wizard. Ross has Lars the Warrior, Aoife the Elf and Mephiso the Wizard.

Scenario: The party have to escort the wagon across the table through the forest, to return it to it's rightful owner, hopefully finding Lars (who got separated at the end of the previous game) en route. The journey is complicated by the presence of some irate Lizardmen!

The initial set-up, with the wagon entering on the right hand side. Lars will enter at a randon corner when the Scenario Event card is drawn.

Here are our heroes gathered around the wagon.

Around them lizardmen lurk, led by this lizardman champion.

We start to move forward, Renir leads the oxen whilst Steinarr and Dalin flank him, ready to intercept any attackers. Ross kept  Aoife and Mephiso back to watch our rear (translation: he failed most of his activations and couldn't keep up).

Steinarr keeps a watchful eye on some advancing lizardmen. He fails to see a cunningly placed dart trap, which he triggers, taking a hit from a poisoned dart (if he fails an activation he collapses in a coma!!). Fortunately, Renir has a heal spell and cures the effects of the poison. In the far distance you can see another lizardman champion, bemused by the number of pigeons falling from the trees next to him, slain by the bow skills of the keen eyed elf, and the mighty magic of Mephiso (something about barn doors comes to mind!).

Our two missle experts finally score a couple of hits, but one arrow bounces off the lizardman's scaly hide.

Turn two and fortunes smiles on us as Lars enters from close to the table edge the rest of the party are heading towards. Unfortunately he attracts the attention of the Lizardman champion leading the scaly foes.

Dalin gets stuck into a horde of lizardmen, quickly cutting them down until just one remains.

Lars despatches the enemy champion in a hard fight, taking two wounds himself in the process. He then moves forward to join Renir at the wagon.

Lars takes over control of the oxen and keeps the wagon moving towards a safe escape, allowing Renir to move back and join the rest of the party.

Renir now zaps a couple of lizardmen. A failed activation produced a Hidden Treasure" card, placing three treasure counters on the table, one of which contains riches beyond our wildest dreams, well a few coins at least.

Steinarr takes a gamble and runs up to the nearest token...to discover a small wooden chest!

And promptly get jumped on by a horde of lizardmen, taking another wound.

Dalin runs up to help him, cutting a lizardman in two with a mighty swing of his two-handed sword (rolls a 20 in his attack). Mephiso now gets his eye in with his spells and wipes out a horde of lizardmen before they can close into combat.

Lars gets the wagon off to safety and the rest of the party conduct a fighting retreat to follow him. After the two wizards have escaped, Steinarr and Dalin pause at the table edge to wait for Aoife, who seemed to spend most of his time tripping over his own shoelaces, and was lagging behind. Luckily the elf managed to get himself moving and the all got away before the lizardman champion seen here could catch them.

This was a far more successful adventure for the party, although two PCs were one wound away from death when the succeeded in escaping, so there were a couple of hairy moments!

When we examined our ill-gotten gains, we had some cash, a couple of healing potions and a magical two-handed Sword of Thunder (rolling a natural 19 or 20 in combat delivers a lightning bolt to any foes in contact with the wielder).

The party decided to rest up for a few days and allow their wounds to heal, before moving to to their next adventure.

Using Corey's random adventure generator, we discovered that the next adventure takes the PCs into undead infested ruins. We decided to interpret the ruins as an underground crypt complex, so I can break out one of my Tenfold Dungeon sets!