More Great Northern War with Blucher

 Colin got over earlier today,so we could have another bash a the Great Northern War using Blucher rules. I had expanded the size of my Swedish and Danish armies, so both sides now had 3 infantry commands and 2 of cavalry.

The pre-game mini campaign finished with a fairly typical deployment. We each had 4 commands starting on the table facing each other and one command entering as reinforcements. The reinforcements could make things interesting, I had a cavalry command following up on my left flank and Colin had an infantry command reinforcing his left flank. Unfortunately they were going to enter to the rear of my right flank!

It was an interesting, hard fought game and a lot of fun. We each started off with half our forcing facing each other across a stream. With neither side wanting to risk a crossing under fire, they spent most of the game looking at each other.

My cavalry reinforcements turned up early and with their support I was able to disperse the Danish right flank and swing around onto the flank of the Danish centre. They had punched a hole through the Swedish centre but were unable to exploit it before being over run. The Danish reinforcements were late in arriving and a Swedish regiment, holed up in a small village, prevented most of the units from rushing forward to catch the Swedes in a pincer manoeuvre.

The Danes belatedly attacked across the stream, but lost the cavalry fight, which took their army morale to breaking point!

Here is a few pictures from the later part of the battle.

The Swedes Left Command starts to flank the Danish Centre.

The Danish Left starts to cross the stream.

But the infantry are held by the Swedish Guard.

The beginning of the end, the Danish Centre starts to collapse, leaving a forlorn-looking infantry regiment rather isolated.

The Swedes start to win their bloody melee in the stream.

The final situation on the Swedish right as the Danish army breaks. You can see the first units of the Danish reinforcements moving up, but too late to take part in the battle.

Great fun to play. It was much closer than it seems from the final pictures. The Danes had lost 8 units routed/destroyed to the Swedes 4, but I had 4 more units who just needed 1 hit to rout them. It could easily have swung the other way.

I have been playing around with the (limited) unit traits in Blucher, as well as the commander's abilities, to give a National flavour to the opposing forces, which seem reasonably balanced to me. In our previous game the Swedes had been given a right royal kicking by the Danes!

A Sellswords and Spellslingers Dungeon

 After several attempts to find a date we could both make, Ross managed to come over a continue our  Sellswords and Spellslingers campaign, following the adventures of our motley band of heroes, Steinarr the Cleric, Dallin the Warrior, Renir the Wizard, Lars the Warrior, Aoife the Elf Ranger and Mephiso the Wizard. 

We are using Corey Burger's Scenario Generator and expanded Event Deck (both put out earlier in the year via Andrea's Patreon site). As we were entering abandoned (or was it?) underground catacombs, we are also using Corey's provision dungeon rules. Well done Corey!

It started off so badly, Ross activated Mephiso first, tried to cast a Light spell onto Lars' shield (this would have counted as a permanent torch) but rolled a 1 on a d20, losing all his magic for the duration of the game! Then, when I activated one of my fails drew a Mana Flux card and I rolled low, so spells were more difficult to cast (for the one magic user who could still cast spells!).

The first room we entered had 6 skeletons, which the party finished off, but only after a couple of us suffering wounds. We also drew a Hidden Treasure card, which put a chest in our current room and 2 other random rooms, one of which contained treasure. Of course, the chest in our room was a dummy!

As the other treasure chests were in nearby rooms, we decided to ignore the right-hand side of the dungeon and concentrate on finding the genuine chest. 

The second room we entered turned out to be the lair of the Necromancer himself! The undead wizard, a horde of skeletons and 2 Skeleton Knights! Somehow we managed to take them all out without any of the party dying and we had found the actual treasure chest, plus Renir snatched a wand he noticed on the Necromancer's body. Mind you everyone was wounded and two of us were just 1 hit away from being out of the fight!

We decided to cut our losses, grab the chest and get out of there, we could return and check out the other rooms another time. At this point Renir redeemed himself. So far he had either failed to cast a spell, or else missed with his magic dart attack. Now he rolled 4 activations and proceeded to successfully cast his Heal spell 4 times! That got the party back on their feet, which was just as well. Not only were there still a lot of undead who had entered as wandering monsters, a bugbear with a big axe had entered the dungeon, between us and the exit.

Here are some photos of the game.

The intial set-up (I love my Tenfold Dungeon kits!), the PCs have entered in the bottom right corner.

Everything is looking quiet.....

....so far, at least!

What a surprise, skeletons!

And more enter a nearby room.

Yet more!!

It's getting crowded in here!

And now they are coming up behind us.

Oh Goody! The Necromancer and his undead minions.

Less minions now.

And the undead lord bites the dust!

How will get past this lot?

Well that's one way of doing it Steinarr, not the way I would have chosen but that's up to you!

Steinarr, duck!

Get him, Dallin!

Lars, stop bleeding on me!

Eventually we all got out in one piece. If Renir hadn't got his Heal spell working when he did, we would have been dragging a couple of the PCs out by their heels, that Bugbear was vicious! Great fun to play and once the party have healed up, we will be back to check out the rest of the dungeon. Of course some other nasty things might have made themselves at home by then.

Renir's wand turned out to be a Wand of Magic Dart, the spell he already can't hit a barn door with!