Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Battle Report: Rise of the Ever-bray

This Sunday I got to try out my home-made Narrative battle plan "Stuff of Legends" again.  I am starting to see a couple of ways I can improve it, which is good (also the point of 'playtesting' even when playtesting is just playing).

This time, we rolled a 2 for the Objectives, which means Relics.  Each player chooses one of their Hero models to carry a Relic which is the objective.  Relics can be dropped and picked up by Heroes, but if there's not hero to pick them up, they become stationary objectives.

Gorfax the Thrice-blooded was aiming to conquer the Relics (control them), while High King Itzach bar Itzach wished to consecrate them in the blood of his enemies.  The battle took place in the Vale of Efengie, under the shadow of Mount Koula, which turned out to be way more relevant than it sounds.

   


The story we came up with over the course of the battle was that Gorfax, inspired by Archaon, is roaming around trying to collect awesome relics so that he can become ascend to similar levels of super awesomeness.  Itzach and his nurgley allies were really just defending their turf (they're the real victims here!), although they have lately been attempting to consecrate magical relics in blood to see if they can unlock any ancient enchantments.

Mount Koula erupted nearly every turn of the battle, boiling basically all the characters (and a Hellcannon, and a chariot) to death in scalding nectar.  It was not a great day.  The volcano killed both Gorfax and Itzach relatively early in the battle, leaving it to their followers to carry on without them.  After Gorfax's death, Gor'ruk Wildspeaker (the shaman in the lake above) moved in to pick up the dropped relic.


The Minotaurs and Bestigors closed to combat pretty quickly.  Funny enough, the charging Tuskgor Chariot did nothing to the Magma Cannon and then got burned up by magma a turn later.



Gor'ruk managed to summon a Gorghon behind enemy lines.  Mount Koula did 6 wounds to it, so it wasn't too hard to take down, but it did tie up the Plague Drones for a while.


Due to a confluence of survivability and bad rolling, the Nurglings lasted for a humorously long time; but it was not enough to save them.  In the end, nearly all of the Dwarfs and Daemons were slain and the Herd absconded with both relics.  Gorfax only needs a few more before he'll be unstoppable!

Fresh observations on the battleplan, we ended up completely forgetting the Honor and Glory dice.  I think the rules for that need to tighten a little bit because right now they're totally optional.  Maybe at the start of each player's turn, their opponent gives them a fresh objective?  Or maybe each player comes up with three Victory Dice worth of objectives at the start of the battle?  The second seems less flexible, but also less taxing.  And one question about the first would be whether the objectives persist into future turns.  Either way, I have some food for thought here.

No comments:

Post a Comment