Sellswords Close Quarter Battles Campaign Completed!

 

Ian came over for a day of gaming on Sunday, which allowed us to play through the last two scenarios of the Close Quarter Battles campaign for Sellswords and Spellslingers. 

Our heroes had successfully stormed the bridge to gain access to the citadel in the previous scenario, now they must free prisoners held by the rioters, whilst the rest of the White Daggers storm the keep.

The table layout. Our party have just entered from the bottom edge, the prisoners are held in the tower at the top left.

A pack of some nasty creepy crawlies has come up from the cellars and attack Heimir, but he swiftly chops them up!

An early set-back, the Scenario Event card comes out and the rioters fire the roof of the building.

Some poor activation rolls see the flames start to spread!

Sarmand and Heimir get closer to the tower and Heimir chargers into a band of rioting street thugs.

But as he valiantly despatches them, the flames just get fiercer!

As Sarmand engages a second horde of thugs, Heimir charges the guard holding the tower's door.

Finally, Lanroth starts to catch up with the others.

Heimir is wounded but cuts the guard down and starts battering on the door.

The wooden gives way and the first of the captives emerges from the smoke. 

As more of the prisoners are helped from the fiery tower, Heimir fortunately has a healing potion, so drinks it before he moves to cover the approach of Merlow, the rioters leader. Unfortunately this exposes him to the bowmen on the walls, arrows thud all around him, but he dodges or blocks them with his shield.

As the final two captives emerge, the tower's fiercely flaming roof collapses! Just out of shot Heimir cuts Merlow down but is now badly wounded himself once again.

The party start to lead the captives across the courtyard to safety, dodging arrows as they go.

More thugs appear, but Lanroth covers the escape of the last captives, dropping two of the thugs with well aimed shots. A group of gladiators, freed by the rioters, also arrive, but they are too far away to stop the party escape with the last captive.

Great fun, a nail biting experience as the fire spread with surprisingly speed, we just got the last prisoner out in time. If he hadn't had the healing potion, Heimir might not have made it to the end of this scenario!

Now a break for lunch and beer, enjoyed in the garden on a unseasonably warm October day!

On to the final scenario, can we save the Governor from the evil cultists?

The Citadel's inner courtyard, the party are entering from the near edge.

The mesmerised Governor and other officials stand around an eerie green bonfire, the chanting cultist high priest looks on. We had a deck of 15 playing cards for this scenario, every time a PC fails an activation roll, we turn a card over. If it is a picture card, one of the court officials walks into the bonfire and the Governor does so if the joker turns up!

Some poor activations sees one of the officials slowly walk into the blaze and be consumed!

We have the help of three White Dagger apprentices, in the top left, who have fought their way to join us. We sent them off to distract the various groups of thugs and rioters, to allow us a chance to get at the high priest. They started off well, they were charged by a horde of thugs and swiftly killed all of them!

But not before another court official walks into the fire!

The apprentices charged another group of thugs and, although one of them fell bravely, then despatched all of them as well. With many more foes approaching, the survivors beat a retreat, drawing the enemy after them....

...and away from us! Heimir, Lanroth and Sarmand now had a clear run at the high priest, "just" three cultists stood in our way.

Heimir charged the first cultist, wounding him.

Then finished him off after a swift exchange of blows.

But another victim walks into the blaze.

Lanroth now has a clear line of sight to the high priest.

But another official goes up in green flames.

Heimir engages the cultist closest to the high priest.

But more thugs turn up and advance to protect their master. Lanroth takes aim at the high priest and releases an arrow, but his bowstring snaps! (I rolled an 1).

Samand engages the other cultist, taking a wound but dealing one in return. Lanroth quickly restrings his bow (past experience means he carries several spares!), shoots and wounds the high priest, but now hthe priest's magic shield comes into play, giving him a bonus against mundane attacks for the next three turns!

Sarmand takes out his opponent, while Heimir and his foe battle on, neither able to gain the upper hand. Lanroth tries for 3 activations and fails one, but it's not a picture card! He shoots twice more...

...and two arrows thud into the high priest's chest! (This time I rolled 18 and 20!).

It's all over, the fire dies down, the mesmerised citizens and guards return to themselves and the last cultists flee. The Governor is saved in the best Hollywood tradition, just two cards remain to be drawn!

We have had a blast playing this campaign. The scenarios offer a variety of challenges, with opportunities to roleplay if it's desired, but no need if that's not your thing. Close Quarter Battles has a depth of detail that we only just touched on in this campaign and I hope Damien will write a sequel. If he does, I will certainly be buying it!

POST-APOCOLYPTIC CAMPAIGN 3

 Having had their arses kicked by the Wasteland Androids, Colin's party decided to make an adjustment to the route of their journey (they ran away so they now had to go the long way around!).

Sorry, I neglected to take any pictures of Game 2, suffice to say it ended with the leader and another fighter down and the rest of the party making a hasty exit as the metallic killers closed in. The leader survived, wandering into camp the next day, but had lost all his kit. On the plus side, they had managed to loot a gun, a stack of energy cells and a plasma grenade as they scarpered!

They now had to cross an area of dense jungle-like vegetation. The party will enter from the North (top edge) and need to exit from the South edge.

A simple task, but there are distractions along the way.

On either side of the table are some interesting containers, is it worth the delay to check these out?

However, something is lurking in the undergrowth....

....not all the plants are rooted to the ground, and regard the interlopers with murderous intent!

The party cautiously move forward.

The plant leader opens fire with an assault rifle.

The party dodge for cover in the undergrowth as two of their guns broke in quick succession (poor maintenance) when they tried to return fire. The party gunsmith will be very busy tonight repairing those!

More plants start advancing into the fray. The tall plant moving down the path had a kinetic energy absorbtion mutation, very disconcerting for Colin's champion when she rushed up to close range and empties the magazine of her smg into the creature, with no effect!

Seeing an opportunity, Colin threw his can of herbicide catching the plant leader and two others in the blast. The effect was disappointing, it only knocked the two plants off their feet and had no effect on the leader at all. But it destroyed the vegetation around them so that they were no longer in cover, allowing Colin's mutant sharpshooter to aid and take the leader down with his assault rifle. In fact the mutant proved to be deadly in this game (after a poor performance against the androids) taking out three more plants with carefully placed shots.

Without the leader's bonus the plants were now only activating on 5s or 6s, allowing Colin to run rings around them. His party were able to loot two of the containers, gaining much needed food, a needler pistol and another grenade.  

Colin almost blew it at this point. With a clear path to escape down in front of him, he momentarily turned to go for the third container. But he realised that it was too far away and there were still quite a few plants, including some undisclosed ambushers, between him and the container, so decided to retreat (as I was bound to get lucky on my activations at some point).

But that delay was enough for me to activate one of the ambushers, who was fast moving (for a vegetable) and leapt on the simian hybrid bringing up the tail of the party!

As they struggled I was also able to get a monster plant (with really big teeth!) to start to close in.

In the nick of time, Colin's mutant moved back and between them killed the ambusher, allowing the party to leg it of the table before my big beastie could get into contact!

A great game, with a lot of fun a laughter. 

The party are back on track, next time they face the storms of The Radioactive Desert!

New VSF Steam Tanks

 I recently expanded my collection of VSF armoured steam contraptions with three new purchases.

Two are from Black Pyramid, a medium landship and a heavy landship from their Tea Wars range https://www.blackpyramid.co.uk/collections/the-tea-wars-vehicles

                                     

The Medium Landship. All these models arrived just two days before I had a planned VSF battle with Colin and Henry, so I rushed to get them assembled and painted with a base coat so that I could get them om the table. the result meant I neglected to take any photos of the assembly or pre-painted stages!

The Heavy Landship. These are big pieces of resin but quite light, I do not know if Black Pyramid have some sort of hollow moulding they use, or else use some kind of lightweight resin. They come in 4 pieces, the main body, two track sections and the main gun.

Each tank comes with a selection of guns, described as eather weapons. Unfortunately, given they are presumably steam-powered machines, they do not have a smoke stack. But Black Pyramid do have a kit that includes two different smoke stacks, so I picked up one of those as well. I then added assorted machineguns from the bits box.

Like I said, these are big beasts. Shown here alongside an Ironclad medium steam tank.

On Ebay I also picked up an old PMC steam tractor. This range used to be sold on Ebay years ago but disappeared and I wish I had been into VSF back then and bought some. The moulds have ended up with Minifigs and the range is listed on the website, but everything is marked Out of Stock or Out of Production. http://www.miniaturefigurines.co.uk/Catalogue.aspx?ScaleID=15&CategoryID=61&SubCategoryID=310

 

Now some pictures of the vehicles with their final paint jobs and weathering.

I really like the Black Pyramid landships, quick to assemble, enough detail but overly fiddly to paint (I am a wargamer, not a precision modeler!). I will pick up a couple more and add a bit more stuff from the bits box. It is a shame that the old PMC range is no longer available, because i would certainly pick up a few more from the range if it were.