So on Saturday night Nate and Matt came over for the first of hopefully many campaign nights. Matt decided to raid north into Tiv Ungalli, while Nate raided into Gron Toft. Meanwhile, some undead had raided into Tiv Ungalli as well, from the forest near the Woodmere, further reducing that province’s ability to defend itself.

The first raid was a bit of trial, with the intent of trying to game the system to see if we could break it. So, all the terrain was placed into a line across the table:

Then, Matt diced to determine where the village he was raiding would go… and naturally it was in the worst position possible. To add to the fun, Nate (playing the Rovians), would be entering from his left just before the obstacles. This seemed to be a theme for Matt. His dice rolls were, frankly, terrible. I think this may come back to an RPG session a while ago where he desecrated a shrine to a particular wolf god. In any event, Matt’s horsemen (seen here) advanced at a waddle while most of his forces remained off the table edge, with only his lord sitting at table edge trying to get as many advantageous Fate cards as he could. Matt’s rolling ensured that he had only two turns of free movement. There was much discussion about how much trouble this “Beggar’s Bowl” of loot was worth, and the image came forth of a scary beggar eliciting donations with a bundle of heads from those who were not forthcoming, thereby making this bowl full of coins, jewels, and possibly a few teeth.

Matt’s horse managed to race to unfortunately placed village (your rolls Matt, not mine!) and Nate’s forces begin to appear in force. The elite Rovian warriors and archers rushed to the village, while the warriors moved to push the pesky mercenary lord off the table. At this point, with a little prompting, Matt decided to bring on his whole force. Nate chased off the cavalry in the town, but was left without his best units facing a rapidly advancing mass formation.

A unit of mercenaries charged in with three Fate cards in support and it merely rebounded from the line, which then surged forward and massacred the unfortunates taking no losses. The Rovians attempted to withdraw behind the forest, but based on the simulataneous raid that I had diced for earlier, the Rovian leader abandoned resistence and fled the field. Matt came off a fair bit wealthier and maybe a bit wiser about trusting his rolling.

The second short raid saw Nate’s forces push across a deep stream/river to raid a shrine. Nate only took three units with him and rolled amazingly well.

Before the defenders showed up, Nate had troops across the unpainted bridge (bearing the marks of where the airbrush failed). Matt mustered his Rovians and threw them forth. Nate was now cursed by the dice gods. He could not roll a 6 to save his life. So he abandoned his position, and rather than fight a slightly larger force, he ordered his troops off the nearby neutral edge, and promptly rolled two ‘6s’ for movement. The Rovian warriors and elites were closing fast, and Nate was unable to leave with his own elite troops and threw them into shieldwall, with two “shieldwall braced” cards to back them up. Matt’s forces just couldn’t kill the troops behind the shieldwall, and were forced backwards, giving Nate just enough time to finish looting the shrine before disappearing off the near edge. Nate lost 5 troops to thieves and bandits, but his raid was a success. It also showed how valuable shieldwall is (the Rovian forces cannot enter into that formation).

So, while each raid was short, it was a fun evening and the campaign rules continue to be refined. Hopefully next week we can fight two more encounters as well, seeing that we are getting much faster with the ruleset. I will be putting a post up later this week with some further updates to our game rules and you can look forward to seeing some more fantasy melee action next weekend with more pictures – (taken with a proper camera)!