Sunday, January 15, 2017

Swordplay 2015: Recovering Lost Relics AAR



The Story: For this game I rolled two Rory's Story Cubes and just made up a simple story based off the dice, here's what I rolled:



 A band of robbers intercepted a caravan transporting some royal treasure that belonged to a tribe of Northern Men and are now hiding out amongst a ruined city. Unbeknownst to them, the Barbarian Prince himself would attempt to retrieve said treasure…I know, not a very deep story but still gives me a reason to bust out some new terrain and my minis for a good romp!


Initial Setup: I wanted to play a raid encounter and I deployed the terrain to my liking and then deployed the PEFs. Two in section 1 and another in section 2. I deployed my band in section 8.

More after the page break!


QUICK NOTE: I reduced all movement by 2" and don't use the "fast movement" rule for my games as I play on a smaller table than the suggested 3' x 3' table.

The Forces:

Good Guys: The Barbarian Prince is Rep 5/AC 4+Shield along with a bowman Rep 3/AC 2, a spearman Rep 3/AC 2, and a swordsman Rep 4/AC 2.


Bad Guys: The bad guys would be randomly drawn from the "Feudal" army list provided in the Swordplay 2015 rule book.  Any mounted crossbowmen would be rerolled as I haven't painted any up yet!

Turn 1: The Barbarians moved forward. At this point I was thinking of breaking the Prince off with his archer up the street and sending the other two Northmen up through the ruins.

Turn 2: Double 6's, no one activates.
Turn 3: Further splitting off into two groups the fighting men resolve the first PEF as a case of the nerves. Resolve the next PEF by rolling 3D6 instead of two. Both PEFs move 3" towards the barbarians remaining in cover and thus unresolved.


Turn 4: Double 5's for activation so only the barbarians would activate. Still remaining within 4" of the prince, all four activate. The swordsman and spearman hop the ruined wall and resolve the first PEF! This resulted in "same number as triggering group" so two rolls on the Feudal list, both totaling 7 each, resulted in two Rep 3/AC 2+shields warriors. These men did not have the treasure with them. The insights were taken and the fight was on!


Winning the insight, the Northern Men took the charge into melee test and moved into combat with the bandits!  The spearman engaged the first robber and wounded him grievously, out of the fight!

The second battle was quick and deadly. The Northern Man whirled on his animal skin boots and outright decapitated his assailant with his massive blade, obviously dead!



Meanwhile, the Prince and his trusty archer moved up the street hearing the sounds of battle close by and whipping them into a blood frenzy, they wanted in on the fighting!


Turn 5: The barbarians activated first and the Prince decided to go in first resolving the third and final PEF! This one for sure had the treasure along with the usual complement of troops. This time it resolved as 3 troops, two Rep 3/AC 2+shield soldiers and 1 mounted sergeant with Rep 4/AC 4+shield (which I only had a heavily armored knight without a shield so factored in the extra armor as counting as a shield, improvising a little!). Insights taken with the Northmen winning.


The archer took aim at the middle soldier (randomly determined) and despite his best effort (actually got a pitiful shot in but subsequently missed!) he was unable to penetrate the soldier's armor.

Next up was the prince. He chose to charge the sergeant head on, of course! The two accomplished swordsmen battled it out for a few rounds but the Prince would be victorious, laying out his opponent with a thrust of his sword through a gap in his armor. The two soldiers took their man down tests (as well as the received fire test for the figure that was shot at) and passed handily despite their leader going down.

Still being the barbarians' turn, I proceeded to move through the ruins with my two fighting men. Winning the insight, they charged the first soldier, catching her off guard and easily dispatching her, OOF!


Undaunted by the loss of his comrades, or perhaps great greed, the last man for the bandits fought on making one last valiant (more likely foolish!) charge hoping to slay the prince and route his men…Alas, after some taunting swipes by the Prince and a little bit of toying with the last man, he put him out of the fight, letting him survive to warn the bandits who they messed with. Victory was the Northmen's!



After the battle:  I made three advancement rolls for the melee fighters (archer didn't score a hit) to determine if anyone would progress in their training in hopes I would further this campaign. Only the prince managed to raise his Rep by 1 so is now Rep 6! To me that means he either found some better equipment, gathered a magical item, or just plain gained some battle experience.



Thanks for reading!

No comments:

Post a Comment