Saturday Fortune and Glory

Tonight's game was

I described Fortune and Glory in a previous post. Tonight my brother came over and played with my wife and me.

I had a run of good fortune early in the game and quickly completed 2 quests, giving me 12 fortune. I then completed another and was about to win, but my wife intervened and took the artifact from me.

At this point, my cat Cooper hopped up on the little table we were using to hold the cards.

Use this card. It's a good one.

The fortune. It's mine! All mine!

But then I recovered, completed one more quest, and returned to Moscow (I was playing Dr. Zukhov) for the win!

The Quest

I previously mentioned that I was preparing to run a quest for my local LARP group. I ran the quest last Sunday. Despite the poor weather (we got hit by intermittent thunderstorms - actually pretty typical for summer in South Florida).

I recorded a game report on my LARP lore blog. It's in 3 parts:

• Introduction
• The Brine Slough
• The Mystic Glen

FYI, the Brine Slough is located in the heart of Ember Shoals, my former LARP group's fictitious home. Here is a map that one of our members did.

Map of Ember Shoals
My LARP home

Battle of Fiddler's Bridge

Battle 2 of the Tweenwater War - Western Front

I actually had a few spare moments last weekend so I took the opportunity to play a game using a virtual battlefield.

After Hamfist's defeat at the Battle of Crystal River, the Bluderian forces followed the river downstream as they looked for a crossing. They met a strong Redgravian force holding Fiddler's Bridge. However, scouts found a ford further down. General Cumberbatch decided to make a feint on the bridge and then flank the enemy via the ford.

General Wiley, commander of the Redgravian Frontier Army, was unaware of the ford and thus concentrated his forces around the bridge.

OOB

• Bluderia - 3 brigades of regulars, 2 brigades of light infantry (1st and 3rd Scouts), and a detachment of artillery
• Redgrave - 4 brigades of regulars, 1 brigades of light infantry (the Redgravian Rifles), and a cavalry brigade

Battle Report

Cumberbatch split his Bluderian forces in two, half approaching the bridge while the rest headed for the ford. The flanking force was ordered to seize the hill, making it untenable for Redgrave to hold the bridge. This would allow Cumberbatch to bring across his artillery.

The Bluderians began to fire upon the defenders. Heavy artillery fire devastated one of the regulars. As General Wiley was dealing with the routing infantry, a scout breathlessly rode up to him.

"General, we're being flanked! There's a ford downstream!"

"What!" cried Wiley in frustration. After he recovered from his shock, he sent the cavalry to the hill.

The Bluderians were making slow progress across the ford. Alas, the Redgravians seemed to lapse into lethargy and made no effective defense.

Artillery fire devastated another unit of regulars. Wiley moved his third brigade into town to cover the loss.

Meanwhile, the Rifles moved to aid the cavalry and began to fire upon the Bluderian Scouts in the woods.

The Bluderian regulars made it across the ford. With a yell of defiance, the Redgravian cavalry charged into the flank of one of the regulars. On the left, gunfire continued. Wiley considered sending his last infantry brigade to the ford, but decided to hold it in reserve.

The cavalry routed the enemy infantry.

But in their eagerness, they charged frontally into steady infantry.

 And were themselves routed. On the left, another Redgravian brigade fell to artillery fire.

Fortunately, Wiley had kept a brigade in reserve. It now rushed to the defense of the bridge. On the right, the Rifles opened fire on the flanking infantry brigade. Their accurate fire devastated it.

The Redgravian infantry returned fire and eliminated their Bluderian counterparts. Meanwhile, the Scouts advanced on their objective.

Alas, they failed to move with alacrity. A short silence pervaded the battlefield.

Until finally the Scouts opened fire.

But their efforts were too late. As darkness fell, the Rifles still held the hill.

Once again stymied, General Cumberbatch marched downriver in a frustrating search for a crossing where he could get his artillery and supply wagons over the river.

Battle Notes

• The scenario is # 12 - An Unfortunate Oversight from Neil Thomas's One Hour Wargames.
• Once again, I used the activation rules from Song and Blades and Heroes. This proved decisive, as there were 2 turns where neither side activated and at least 1 more where the Bluderians failed to activate. Considering how close the Bluderians came to victory, those lost turns probably made a difference.
• With this victory, the Redgravians are 2-0 on the western front of the war.

Getting Ready for a Quest

Tomorrow I'm running a quest for my local LARP group. There will be a couple participants who are in town for the weekend and don't have their own equipment so I spent the morning doing a little foam-smithing.

Here are the 3 items I worked on today. The one on the right is a brand-new construction. In February, I found a broken golf club in the trash at the park. I recovered it and saved the shaft. Today I turned it into a sword. The other 2 were repairs. I put a new blade on my short glaive and fixed the handles on my shield.

Here is a view of the glaive with the cover on the blade. I'm using orange and calling it a flaming blade.

Speaking of flames, I had a mace with an orange cover that I called the Flame of Justice. About a month ago, the foam broke down, making it unusable. Here is it disassembled.

Replacing the foam will be my next foam-smithing project.

Random Plots and Thoughts

I noticed that it has been a couple of weeks since my last post on this blog. I've been busy so I haven't had time for any miniature gaming. But I want to prove that I haven't dropped off the face of the earth so I want to share what's been going on hobby-wise.

Amtgard / Dagorhir
I've been pretty active with LARPing lately. My Amtgard freehold, Ember Shoals, has pretty much died off.

Coat of arms of Ember Shoals

But I've found another group, Caligo. They mostly play Dagorhir but have been experimenting with Amtgard. They're good people and I have enjoyed playing with them. What I really like about them is that they are very open to the RP aspect of the hobby instead of being "stick-jocks" who just want to spar, In fact, they are helping me set up a quest for a former member of Ember Shoals who is coming down for a visit. The quest will involve fighting goblins in a marsh, passing through a woods while opposed by walking trees, and then defeating a Green Man all in pursuit of a magical spear that will be needed to free Ember Shoals from the rule of the "Faedwyr" (essentially the Unseelie Court). Planning for the quest has consumed most of my free time over the past few weeks.

Four Against Darkness
Last weekend, my wife and I explored another dungeon using Four Against Darkness (the game report is over on my Tales of the Templars blog). Our sessions have inspired me to start a new project. I've been thinking about miniaturizing our game sessions - that is using miniatures for our games.

I prefer small scales so I am intrigued by the idea of a 6mm dungeon crawl. I found some a post on TMP that offered some guidance. Further research turned up some nice-looking figures by Perfect Six Miniatures.

The major problem with these is that our adventuring party is made up of anthropomorphic cats. I wonder if I could add ears and tails to the above figures to "catify" them.

I found that Splintered Light does a range of "leonines" in 15mm. These could work, although they appear more classical than medieval.

Lioness guards

Nevertheless, I can see figures that would work for our characters:

• Cooper (our warrior) = lion chieftain
• Thomasina (cleric) = lioness guard (perhaps modify the weapon to a mace)
• Onyx (rogue) = panther assassin
• Ollie (halfling) = lynx scout
• Buster (elf) = cougar archer

My biggest issue with them, though, is that they aren't sold individually. I would need to buy multiple packs to get the figures I need.

Decisions. Decisions.

A Close Run Thing

I've been in a little bit of a gaming lull lately; I haven't done much. However, our family game nights continue, and last night's was a nerve wracker.

We decided on something simple so we pulled out Castle Panic. It features simple rules, quick play, nice components, and easy set-up. Perfect for gaming when we're feeling a little lazy.

The only problem is that it is easy to win. In fact, I don't think we ever lost before. Last night, however, the game decided to challenge us.

Early in the game, we faced a swarm of monsters in the green sector.

We lacked troops in that sector (your troops are randomly drawn cards). As a result, some of the monsters broke down the walls and tore apart some of the towers. It was looking bleak at this point.

Cooper decided to supervise. His clever strategery turned the tide of battle. :)

At one point, we came within a whisker of losing. We had one tower left. I commented that if a boulder came from the opposite side it would destroy our last remaining tower. My wife then recommended that we build a wall an the opposite side. I did so. In that very same turn, a boulder came rolling down the hill on the opposite side. If I had not built the wall, we would have lost!

With that crisis past us, we slowly whittled down the enemy. Finally, only one troll remained. He came lumbering toward our castle and was nearly within our walls. If he made it, we probably would have been doomed. Then my wife deployed 3 swordsmen who took out the troll. Victory!

Whew. This was one of the closest games of Castle Panic that we ever played. Even though we rarely lose, nights like this keep us coming back to this game.

Modifying Four Against Darkness

After last week's session of Four Against Darkness (4AD), my wife said that she liked the game and wanted to play again. One aspect of our game that made it enjoyable to her was that our party was made up of our cats. For some reason, she enjoys dungeon-crawling so much more when it involves cuddly, furry creatures (which is why she also likes Mice & Mystics).

This week's session was less successful. Toward the end she was visibly bored and ready for the game to end. As I see it, there were 2 issues:

• Too Long - Admittedly, 4AD is a fast playing game. A single combat can be over in a couple of minutes at most, Still, I haven't totally gotten used to the charts, slowing down play. I have gotten better. By adding an index to the PDF, Ganesha Games made it so much easier to find stuff in the book. They also provided cheat sheets but I haven't been using them. Previously, I made my own cheat sheet in Excel and I find it quicker to use that. Even with these improvements, we spent nearly 2 hours playing (although I probably spent half an hour redoing the character sheet). I have a couple of ideas to speed the game:
• Pre-mapping the dungeon - I could do the mapping and rolling for encounters prior to us playing. But that won't be as much fun for me; the surprise of the randomness certainly makes things interesting. Still, it may be a good idea for my wife's sake.
• Impose a time limit - an idea in the 4AD rulebook. I could say that after an hour of exploring we find the main boss. Alternatively, I could limit the dungeon to a certain number of rooms.
• Too Much Combat - My wife complained that this session had too much fighting. We fought 5 combats vs. 3 in the previous session. However, in this session we fought 3 bosses vs. 0 in the first session. I think it was too many bosses for my wife. Solutions?
• Modify the encounter charts to create more non-combat encounters
• Increase the odds of a boss being the final boss (which should also reduce the time spent playing)

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy this game immensely. I also love that my wife is willing to play. The core rules are fine but I just want to streamline the game a little more. I think I may try a combination of the ideas above.