A little while ago now my witch hunters took to the table for the third time in this particular campaign. After their initial forays that have seen plenty of rolls on the injury tables and a decent few experience points earned their legend is growing. At this stage in their development, I would consider them to be tenacious, enthusiastic even, but lacking in direction.
Both my leader and second have major injuries, bad enough to play a part in games, but not sufficiently life changing for me to justify retiring them, although they are accruing a decent pension. Whilst my second is establishing himself as a reliable fighter, my leader is still trying to work out which end of his double handed flail he needs to point at the creatures trying to hurt him.
Originally seven creatures strong (a fox, an otter, a weasel, three mice and a sparrowhawk) they have added a mole and an attack grub to their brotherhood. Advances have seen the mouse magic user discover a hidden talent for fate magic, the weasel get faster and the sparrowhawk had an enchanting experience whilst out wandering and was blessed with no less than 5 fate points. On balance life has been good to my beasts.
Their most recent game saw them come up against a shiny new warband, although one that had clearly upset them in some way as they had kidnapped one of their shrews. And so, the scene was set for a dramatic rescue. The first order of the day was balance, initially there was a 15 level difference between the two groups, however my otter (and second in command) has become a little flaky and couldn’t make it onto the table for this game, having rolled the obligatory 1 on a d6 to ensure he’d be putting his feet up. This reduced my head count, and then my opponent hired the lovely Lady De’ath from the freelance chapter of the book, which evened up the warband levels.
I enjoyed seeing mercenaries on the table in the first edition, so I was really happy to see them continue into second edition. I think it’s a very neat way to balance warbands, and the characters bring some interesting combinations with them. Lady De’ath is a poison specialist, so I wasn’t looking forward to taking her on without my otter and his massive hammer.
The game itself started out with a bit of tit for tat as the weasel tried to take out the freelance, only to end up in the “just resting” pile. Fortunately, the attack grub avenged him and the mercenary was gone. My rivals did manage to rescue their companion from my base, but they couldn’t make good their escape, and the hostage was grabbed again.
The secret quests brought predictable chaos. My fox drew Showdown, which requires him to take a successful swing at the opposition’s boss. This worried me, as not only did my fox’s injury make him likely to wound himself, but his track record at making successful swings at anyone has been non-existent. To make matters worse, the hare in question was pretty competent in a fight, with a double handed weapon, the parry skill and light armour, I had very low expectations.
In spite of everything (and at least two other animals pinning the hare in place) the fox not only managed a hit but also took his head off. Things were shaping up nicely at this stage in the game. A turn or so later and we were rounding up the escapee, and it looked as though things were going to be pretty straight forward. However, it was now time for my opponent’s secret quest to play out. His angry squirrel with a shiny new halberd stormed across the battlefield and smashed my sparrow hawk up. There was another flurry of attacks and in what seemed like a very long turn pretty much all of my warband were sporting bandages.
I have to admit to having a pretty lucky set of rolls for injuries and most of the team managed to walk away unscathed. Unfortunately, my Sparrowhawk didn’t make it out of the medical tent. The only difference between him and a dodo being that he was a bird of prey. Despite their loss, or possibly because of it, my critters went off wandering. One group managed to get a few hours of cleaning work at the local inn. Another group took a wrong turn in a dark forest and ended up somewhat lighter in the purse than they had been, and then there was the wandering weasel. Stewie, as he will now forever be known, discovered a rather attractive looking leather belt and a small pouch of pennies. Upon buckling the belt around his waist he felt an urgent need to move, to walk, and then to run. Unbeknownst to him he has found none other than the legendary Belt of Balmorr that not only gives him +3 to nimbleness rolls and adds 3 inches to move actions, but also inflicts d12 wounds if Stewie can’t move more than 3 inches a turn… should be interesting!
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