Christmas Savage Worlds Showdown Game

Bit of a belated Christmas game post here.  This game pits the followers of Krampus, the Christmas beastman/demon that enjoys popularity in Germany, against Santa Claus and his Elves, with some raiding Dwarves that are hoping to loot Santa's workshop.  Krampus is tired of playing second fiddle to the jolly old elf, and it's time to settle the score.  This was also an excellent opportunity to use our newly assembled gingerbread houses for terrain.

The Elves got victory points for keeping Santa out of Beastman hands and protecting their packages.  The Beastmen got points for getting Santa - more alive for public humiliation, dead is okay as well - and for killing both elves and dwarves.  The dwarves got more points for gathering presents, but some smaller amounts for enemy casualties.  I had the dwarves, my oldest boy had the elves, and the younger son the beastmen.

Rules (skip if you don't care about mechanics and just want to see the action):  In my test games with Fistful of Lead:  Galactic Heroes - Game 1 and Game 2 - the action devolved into a bloody mess, and the mostly identical stats for each mini contributed to this dynamic.

For our first Christmas-themed game, I wanted to do something different.  Building off of the existing setting for the Campaign for the Darkened Wood, my fantasy Savage Worlds Showdown setting, I decided to use the stats from Savage Worlds with the activation cards from Fistful of Lead:  Galactic Heroes.  This fixed what I perceived as a weak point for the FFoL rules, the amount of differentiation between minis. Dwarves are stout and good in melee, Elves are good with a bow but weak in melee, and the followers of Krampus (beastmen) are fast and tough to kill. I know there are ways to make the FFoL rules provide some of this crunch, but it’s already been done in Savage Worlds and I didn’t see a need to reinvent the wheel.

Here's the table - Dwarves at top left, Beastmen at bottom right, Santa's village in the middle. 

Tranquil morning in Santa's village.

The dwarves approach from the woods, hoping to get in and out with a minimum of conflict.

Krampus sounds the charge with his horn.  It's on!

The dwarves rush in toward the elves.

The elves have dropped one beastman with a well-placed arrow.  The elven swordmaster rushes forward to confront the beastmen. He leaves one beastman shaken, but there's a lot of mad fur around him.

A scrum breaks out between the dwarves and elves.

The elven swordmaster gets brutally killed by the beastmen.

The beastmen rush forward into the village square.  Santa's at top right, and needs to get moving.

The beastmen look ready to dish out some pain.

The elves fare poorly once in close combat with the dwarves.

The dwarves advance into the village square, rushing to get the presents.

Santa, foreground, takes to flight and depends on his elves to create time for him to escape.

Beastmen continue forward.

The beastmen rush forward over fallen elves.

Aerial view of the battle.

The elven chieftain confronts one of the beastmen, and gets a helping hand from one of the dwarves.

Another dwarf joins in to help take down the beastman.

A beastman, top left, falls to elven arrows.

Santa continues his run for the edge of the field.

The elven chief is shaken, but a Remove Shock card puts him back into the fight.

Lots of corpses littering the ground, chaos in the village.

Dwarves making off with wrapped presents.

The dwarves who were helping the elven chieftain abandoned him, and now Krampus wounds him and knocks him down.

The dwarven wizard blasted the elf above and to the right of him with a magic missile.  In retaliation, the elf at top center of the photo fired an arrow that dropped the dwarf wizard.  A second elf then followed up with another arrow, a coup de grace that ended Stumpy Gandalf's run of good luck.  Dastardly!

Enraged the dwarves seek vengeance for Stumpy Gandalf.  Freya rushes forward to exact revenge against an elf.

Freya lays her dwarf low as other elves are tied up with a beastman.

Erik the Berserker downs another elf.

Krampus ends the elven chieftain's life.

Erik, having finished his business in the village, departs before the beastmen run out of elves to kill and turn on him.

The village falls to Krampus and his warband.

Santa made it to the woodline, escaping to live another day.  The dwarves ran away with the game both on points and in loot from Santa's village.  If you received your Christmas presents, don't thank the dwarves.  They didn't get a chance to take yours before the beastmen ran them off.

Rules feedback:

1.  I may never play Savage Worlds Showdown by the written rules again.  As written, cards are drawn for each unit instead of dealt to a player who gets to choose which mini or unit gets activated by a particular card.  Dealing hands to each player and allowing them to activate minis in turn both allowed the sequencing of actions and let the special card properties play out.  It lets players make choices that make the game exciting, which is what it's all about.

2.  I like the crunch of the Savage Worlds stats.  The troop strengths and weaknesses and exploding dice made for an exciting game.

3.  We had a great time with our Christmas game.  Definitely a new family tradition.

Orcs vs Humans vs Elves & Dwarves, Magic Treasure Hunt

Once again we journey to the Darkened Wood, where our ongoing campaign pits many factions against each other for control of this enchanted region.  All games are played with the Savage Worlds Showdown system, which has proven remarkably adaptable as a universal skirmish mechanic.

In our last game, the human rebels seeking to overthrow the likewise human king of the lands bordering the Darkened Wood ambushed the king's brother, the king's head tax collector, hoping to secure royal blood for a royal ransom.  The gambit failed when the tax collector fell victim to a stray shot (parallel to a modern African mercenary game also played with the Savage Worlds Showdown sytsem, likewise seeking to kidnap a VIP, I played on the same terrain) and the result was a bloody mess.  The leader of the tax collector's bodyguard, Captain Trent, barely escaped with his life.

Now, Captain Trent seeks to redeem himself.  The Darkened Wood seems to attract strange stones that fall from the sky, and a large one just did so, breaking into several pieces as it impacted.  The stones are useful to magicians, tend to glow green, cause hair loss and burns/lesions on the skin, and are highly prized.  The king directed Captain Trent to get as many of the meteor fragments as possible, with hopes of attracting a mage-for-hire to the king's retinue.

But Captain Trent faces opposition.  A group of Orcs, and an opposing coalition warband of Elves and Dwarves, also want the valuable stones.  Looks like we'll have a contest for the precious magic treasure!

Overhead view of the table.  Captain Trent and the humans at bottom left, Orcs at bottom right, and Elves/Dwarves at top right.

The Orc line, a few in the center protecting the shaman, Goblins at far end to serve as a meat shield from Human arrows.

Human forces under Captain Trent.  Archers, swordsmen, and warriors with spears.

The Elf/Dwarf coalition.  The Elven archers on the far end intend to go the hill in the background and command as much of the field as possible with their arrows.

First turn, Humans moving out toward the Goblin line.

The Elven archers move to the hilltop as planned.

The Orc horde pushes forward, as a lucky arrow wounds the Orc chieftain.

The Orc shaman moves to a hilltop for a vantage point from which to cast his dastardly magic.

The Orc shaman's spell is right on target, dropping a blast of energy on the advancing Elf/Dwarf unit and wounding or shaking all of its members, including the Dwarven mage and Elven chieftain.

Arrows rain down on the Orc shaman's group, but his bodyguard serves its purpose and soaks up the damage.

Mid-way through turn 2, view from behind the Human units, which are advancing on all sides.

Sustained arrow fire has depleted the Orc shaman's bodyguard; no one else to soak up the deadly Elven archers' volleys.

Turn 3 starts, and the Orc and Elven chieftains meet in the field in between their respective lines.  The Orc chieftain lays low his Elven counterpart.

Close-up of the Elven leader's fall.

View from the Human left flank.  The humans have yet to engage in any combat save a few arrows fired at the Goblin line.

The Dwarves advance toward the Orc chieftain, hoping to avenge the death of the Elven leader.

Turn 4:  The Orc shaman dishes out another magical blast that wrecks the Dwarven unit, with minis knocked over in the far right of this view.

The Orc and Dwarf mages exchange blasts at each other.  The Orc mage gets lucky and avoids getting blasted here.

A line of Human archers keep the Goblins at bay with a flurry of arrows, inflicting some casualties.

The Orc warriors advance across the field to confront the remaining Elven and Dwarven fighters.

Turn 5:  The Orcs and the remaining Elves and Dwarves collide in a vicious scrum in the middle of the battlefield.

The Orc shaman falls to an arrow fired by the Elven archer in the middle of the field in front of the hilltop where the Orc had been perched for the game up to this point.

As the Orc and Elf/Dwarf warbands clash in the background, the Humans are successfully carrying off the glowing green rocks without any opposition.  The screen of Human archers, front right in the picture, keeps both Goblins and Elves at bay.

Goblins have successfully retrieved a magic rock and are moving out of the woods with it as their Orc brethren clash in the background with the Elves and Dwarves.

The Goblins carrying the magic rock out manage to avenge the Orc shaman's death by cutting down the Elf that shot him down.  The bodies continue to pile up in the big clash in the background.

The Human archers even bested their Elven counterparts, who had rained death on the Orcs all game long!  By this point, the Humans had moved all but one of the meteor fragments to the board's edge.

The game's parting shot:  while the Humans were busy grabbing all of the magical rocks, the Elf/Dwarf coalition and the Orcs inflicted horrible casualties on each other.  The Orc chieftain barely escaped with his life.

This game proved a clear Human victory.  They ran off with four out of five magical rocks and suffered no casualties.  The Orcs grabbed one rock, the Elf/Dwarf coalition none, and both of those factions took heavy casualties.  Perhaps this windfall will allow the Human king to hire a mage and match the other factions in the campaign with some magic of his own.