Wednesday, November 14, 2018

A Paladin Pasting

I have been remiss in playing games over the last few weeks so I wanted to rectify the situation. I decided to take a little inspiration from my LARP activities and play a game featuring paladins. Natually, this means some fantasy gaming. I toyed with running a Four Against Darkness dungeon but then decided to experiment with some mass fantasy combat. In particular, I wanted to see if I could adapt my horse & musket rules to a fantasy genre.

The Battle of Paladin's Promontory
It has been nearly 2 years since the Dark Lord's unsuccessful invasion of Anarendor. Since then there have been some small scale orc incursions, but generally the land has been at peace.

Recently, however, a necromancer has gathered a force of undead and have attacked the scattered border settlements. A force of paladins and rangers have gathered to stop the enemy. They have set up a defensive position at the village of Bredwin.

The red-clad forces of the necromancer advance in 2 columns from the north (right).

A squadron of paladins assaults some skeletons on the hill.

The remaining paladins join the fight and destroy a unit of skeletons. Meanwhile, rangers rout more skeletons on the necromancer's left.

Sir Rudolf, captain of the paladins, is forced to retreat.

He rallies his troops and charges the skeleton archers, who pepper his men with arrows.

But Rudolf is routed, along with another squadron of paladins.

The final paladin squadron is routed. Rudolf manages to retreat back into Bredwin, along with a unit of spearmen.

But sustained skeleton attacks rout the spearmen. Rudolf is cut down defending the village.

Vastly outnumbered, the ranger retreat into the woods.

Rules Notes
I played the game fairly straight, without any special abilities for any of the units. I intended to treat the paladins as heavy cavalry and the skeletons as light infantry. This would have given an extra advantage to the knights. I forgot to do so, however. It will be worth testing it out.

To simulate their mindless and relentless focus on their task, the skeletons had a Quality of 2 vs Quality of 3 for the paladin forces. I would like to consider some additional special characteristics (e.g. skeletons are less vulnerable to archery).

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