Treasure Hunt

Three of us played Fjord Serpents last night. We tried the Salvage scenario, and adapted the initiative sequence for three players. Each of us had one big snekkja and one small karvi.

Here's my ships set up. 

Terrain was two islands towards the edges of the board and one shipwreck in the centre. The islands had one loot counter each, whilst the wreck had lots. In the background Ralph's ships head towards the wreck. Caesar and I sent our little karvis to the islands for a quick pickup. Our snekkajs headed for the centre. I could see that Caesar was aiming form my snekkja with the intention to board, so I raised the sails and sped away from him 

I passed alongside Ralph's karvi.

Caesar rammed it and initiated boarding, with his berserkers to the fore, led by a hero. The hero dies in the first round of combat.

Ralph was collecting loot. I ran aboard his snekkja with mine, looking to capture it and take the loot he had collected. 

A couple of long fights ensued. Caesar slowly whittled down the crew of Ralph's karvi with weight of numbers. Meanwhile Ralph and I saw our snekkjas locked in a stalemate of a fight, with neither side inflicting much in teh way of casualties. My hero sang heroic songs and inspired his crew, but couldn't translate all that work into actual hits. Ralph's hero let his crew fight and simply repaired damage. 

Eventually Caesar took Ralph's karvi. And Ralph scored some hits on my crew. But at that moment my karvi came up in support ...

... and we had to end the evening. Caesar and Ralph had both collected a fair bit of loot each, but Caesar looked set to wait for the fight between Ralph and I to end before swopping in and taking stuff off the victor. 

It was all good clean fun, although the lack of frequency with which we play this game meant that we still had to look a lot of stuff up. The rules are a little unclear in places, and the mechanisms for combat, whilst clever, do take a bit of time to get your head around. 

It was nice to have a break torpedo boats for an evening.

Fjord Racing

Last night was our final normal club-meeting of the year, so as is traditional we played a single large game. Because our these of the week was Naval, Ralph came up with the idea of playing Fjord Serpents. But we did something a little different - a race rather than a straight battle.

Each player had one fully-crewed ship, either a small but nimble karvi or a large (but slightly faster) snekkja. Because they are slightly faster the snekkja started further back.

The goal was to race down the fjord, round the buoy (blue marker) and then head back to the finish-line. The winner would get 3 treasure, second-place 2 and third-place 1. But scattered around the terrain pieces and shoreline was more treasure, so a ship could win by going slow and collecting treasure before finishing. Or stealing treasure from another ship.

It all looked pretty straightforward, but the area we were sailing in was, shall we say, somewhat constricted, and it was obvious that there wasn't going to be room for everyone without some conflict.

And they're off!

This snekkja with the green and white checked sails was mine. I got to start close to the shore, so didn't have to worry as much about a possible scrum in the centre.

Daniel (blue stripes) and Ralph (red stripes) moved ahead with their karvis. But Daniel collided with Ralph and we had teh first damage of the game. In Ralph's case it was considerable.

Five ships sailed to avoid a log-jam in the fjord by going through the main channel. Other Daniel (red sail karvi) and I went through the gap. Other Daniel ran inshore to collect some treasure. He had decided to focus on the race, not other ships.

Craig's snekkja headed along the other shoreline and collided with Ralph's ship, sinking it. We were now down to six competitors.

Caesar's ship (white sail) broke through into a lead. Behind him you can see Other Daniels ship against the shore, and mine against the log-jam, both collecting treasure. 

Here I am, stocking up on loot. The idea was that we didn't have to win the race if we could collect lots of stuff first.

And this is why it wasn't worth getting too far ahead in the race - as Caesar rounded the buoy one way, Craig was rounding it the other and there was a collision.

Collisions in Fjord Serpents can do a lot of damage to both ships. And you can see Daniel and Keegan's ships heading towards Caesar's intent on doing as much as possible.

Aerial view. Caesar and Craig were locked in a boarding action, whilst at the bottom of the picture Other Daniel was on the move. His plan was to go past the buoy and come back in through the gap in the two islands, hoping that, by then, all the other ships would have sunk each other.

Another shot of my ship and its heroic crew.

And here it is deliberately colliding with Keegan's ship. Which sank. Mind you, it left my ship pretty beaten up as well.

Yes, my plan was to go round the buoy by just smashing through all of the ships in the way.

Other Daniel can be seen beginning his turn bottom right. Meanwhile I was preparing to bash Caesar's ship out of the way. But wait! Is that Daniel's karvi comin up the middle of the scrum?

It is! I smashed into that and it sank.

Other Daniel joined in, comin in between the islands to smash Caesar's ship to pieces. 

At that point we had to call the game. Other Daniel and I both had two treasure, whilst Craig had nothing. But both Craig and I had ship that were close to sinking, whereas Other Daniel's had taken no damage at all. He'd played a nice safe tactical game and deserved to be considered the winner.

Thanks to everyone involved for a fun evening, and to Ralph for putting together the scenario.

Tracking Things In Atteint!

Sometimes I have shower-thoughts on things that weren't even on my radar when I got into the shower.

Probably too much information, but this post is the result of one. The other day I started thinking about my jousting game Atteint! in the shower, and was reminded that I hadn't really got a way to track the bits of in-game information that I liked. I've tried using a sheet for each player with counters that track various values, and I've tried simply doing it by writing on a piece of paper. The latter works best, but some statuses - the Marshal, Favours of the Ladies' Court and the knight's current Focus - change in a way that's awkward to track.

Anyway, my shower-thought was that I should go all Euro game on the problem, and use a ton of counters. I made a few counters for tracking some of the stuff and then switched to my coloured counters for the rest. A couple of days ago I tried it all out, and this is the setup:

White counters are Aim, blue are Balance and black are Force. Each knight starts a pass with one of each. As they add to the values they add counters to their pile. There are card counters marked 'Aim', 'Balance' and 'Force'. They are used to show the knight's current focus. The counter with the heart on it is the Favour From The Ladies' Court. You can only ever have one of these at a time. I also added a track for the Marshal; that starts at 0 and then slides one way or the other as knights gain points,

The above picture shows a pass at the start. This next picture shows a pass a couple of turns in. The White Knight already has a Force of 4, whilst the Purple Knight has 3, but has Aim and Balance of 2 as well.

This shot shows the first pass of a joust. White has nothing but Force to show for it, whilst Purple has 3 in each of Aim, Balance and Force, as well as a Favour.

That said, both knights missed and no points were scored.

The second pass. Both knights had good scored in their attributes, and Purple still has a Favour. You can also see that White has one point in his favour with the Marshal.

Purple has two yellow tokens. I use those to show points. In the second pass White missed again, but Purple scored a hit and managed to break his lance too.

The third pass. Purple piled on the speed hoping to force the pass as quickly as possible. With two points in hand he could afford to miss so long as White did as well. White didn't really get his act together. Both knights missed, so Purple won the joust 2-0.

On the whole this wasn't an exciting joust, but it did show off how the markers work. Yes, it's a lot of clutter but it was straightforward to use and a lot easier than moving stuff around on a chart or crossing things out on a piece of paper.

I ran a few more jousts afterwards, some using skills, and they did manage to be more exciting. And all ran smoothly thanks to the counters.

Jousting

One of the things we wanted to do when we went to the UK was go to some kind of re-enactment event. Originally we'd decided to go to a Viking day in Wales, but after deciding that we also wanted to visit a stately home as well, we killed two birds with one stone and did a day of jousting at Blenheim Palace instead. I'd not been to Blenheim before, so it was a double treat for me.

The jousting was a lot of fun. It was an exhibition group (who I'm sure we've seen before), so there were lots of horsemanship displays and fun characters to cheer or boo. The actual jousting was pretty good, although not as exciting as the full-on competitive jousting we saw at St Ives a few years ago.

I got a few photos worth sharing; the rest featured even more of the woman who was in front of me. But, fair play, we'd come to see jousting, not for me to take lots of pretty pictures. I did my best.

I got a photo of a shattered lance, but it's not as good as the one the woman in front of me got :)

Blenheim Palace itself is glorious. We did go inside but I didn't get any photos and the lovely battle tapestries were partially obscured by a fashion exhibition.

Anyway, knowing that we were going to see jousting I took my own game, Atteint!, with me. I played a few test games over in the UK, but the other day Catherine and I gave it a go, this time trying out a couple of the skills I wrote up a couple of years ago.

We played two jousts. In the first Catherine's knight had the Unflinching trait, which meant that I couldn't throw off her aim. My knight was Chivalrous, so started with a Marshal point.

I started off well; Catherine missed me but I planted my lance firmly on her shield with maximum force and unhorsed her, putting me 3-0 up. I don't have notes on the second pass, but we went into the third pass with Catherine needing to score at least a shattered lance to tie, and even then also pick up a pile of Marshal points. She missed and I scored a convincing win.

In the second joust Catherine had a knight with Horsemanship, which meant that she could control her approach down the list. My knight was a Master of the Lance, meaning I could choose Aim as an initial focused trait. The first two passes were relatively even, but I got lucky in one, scoring a hit on only a one in six chance. I had a slight lead going into the third pass, and finished the joust by unhorsing Catherine again, to win overall.

To be fair Catherine's rolls in both games were horrible; she often only got to increase one ability and couldn't roll doubles - which give you bonus actions - to save her life. Meanwhile I got a good run of rolls and could pretty much do what I wanted.

I'm not sure I really gave the skills a full outing, but they did prove interesting and did change a couple of decisions, adding some variation to the game.

Lion Rampant At Shirecon

Yesterday was the annual Lion Rampant tournament at Shirecon, and a contingent from Wollongong headed up to the big city to take part. 

Actually we made up half of the ten players.

I took the Dwarf army I'd used a couple of weeks ago - 2 x Crossbows with Pavise and 2 x Elite Foot (including the leader, who had Strongbow and Vulnerable)

There were five tables and each one was set up with a particular scenario. The tournament was four games, so we'd each play four of the five scenarios. Once at a table the players diced for attacker/defender. Each scenario was lifted straight from the book, and the Glory scored counted for the player's total at the end of the day. However this year players could also select boasts, so even if you lost a scenario and scored no Glory there, you could pick up points for successful boasts. And, indeed, this could be worth more than the Glory for the scenario.

Obviously the good players would win a scenario and pick up more Glory through boasts as well, to get the really big points.

My first game was against new player Justin, assisted by his young son Aurelian. We played Meet The Neighbours, in which both sides are marching along a corner-to-corner road towards each other with the aim of getting off the table on the opposite corner to that which we entered. So the inevitable fight in the middle is really incidental; the aim is to get as much of your force past the enemy and exit the board before they do, as the scenario ends once one side has no troops left on the table.

Justin was using Arthur's Briton's, with three units of mounted troops. However a wide sweep with the mounted was tricky because of some cunningly positioned woods. That being the case, Justin still went for it.

My army was a slow one, so I knew I couldn't fight my way through his troops before the mounted went round the sides, so I settled down as a blocking force, accepting that I would just score points for boasts and not seriously attempt to get stuff off the board. All I then had to do was stop Justin getting anything off as well.

I got my crossbows into decent positions to cover as much of the board as possible, and shoot up any cavalry trying to escape. Arthur's elite cavalry came straight down the middle, and I pushed forward some of my elite foot to force him into an impetuous charge before he could choose to charge the crossbowmen.

They lost badly and retreated, but were able to charge the crossbowmen a turn or so later. But by then I'd had a chance to shoot them up, as well as the supporting heavy cavalry.

Arthur was soon on his own ...

... then charged and killed.

The Britons collapsed fairly steadily after that. But one cavalry unit did get around the other flank, and we ended the game in a race for the exit corners, as his cavalry had to pass through woods and I reasoned that I could get something off the board if he failed activations and I didn't. As it was his cavalry was his sole surviving unit and exited, ending the game.

Technically Justin won the scenario. But he lost the Glory for doing so because he failed both of his selected Boasts. Meanwhile I completed all of mine for 8 Glory. So it was an 8-0 win to me; the Britons won the battle but the bards sang of the Dwarves.

My second game was Sausages With Mustard, playing against Victor's Saxons (who had some Pictish chariots as allies). He was trying to burn four huts in the centre of the table. I was trying to stop him. The game would end when all four were burning or if the attacker suffered half casualties.

The defender is allowed to set up a low points unit near the huts at the start. I didn't have one, so would have to march in all of my force as reinforcements. And Victor's troops were a lot faster than mine.

I'd barely sighted the village before two of the huts were burning.

But the two closer to my forces would be harder as I quickly got my crossbows into position.

A horde of screaming Saxons tore through the woods on my right, aiming for the crossbow unit there. My leader brought his elite foot in to stop them, driving them back.

Saxon cavalry charged the crossbows, who held firm.

And my leader popped out of the woods and finished them off.

On the other flank the crossbows did very little; the elite foot did all of the work. They saw off the chariots, and then went after some skirmishers in the woods. The skirmishers failed to evade, lost the combat, retreated and failed their rally roll, running away. that took Victor down to half strength. My elite foot failed the post melee moral-check though, and went battered, which coast me a boast.

The second game was a draw. We both picked up 4 Glory for huts (two burning for Victor and two not burning for me), and very little for boasts as we both managed some but not others. I think the score was 5-4 to me.

So at lunchtime I'd had two wins, but I knew other players had much higher scores than I.

My third game was Defending The Indefensible and I was fighting against Caesar. In this scenario one side must defend a fragile immobile object in the middle of the table. The attacker simply has to contact it with a unit. As with the previous scenario the defender - which turned out to be me - got a unit in the middle of the table defending the objective and then had to march the rest of their force from their deployment area.

Caesar had decided to go big or go home with his army choice this year - he had a force of Vikings consisting of four groups of warrior foot in armour. That was it. It was any army that would simply charge and then fight until it fell apart. 

Here's a very lonely group of Dwarven crossbows wondering if they can take out four enemy units in two turns.

The Vikings approach ...

Some shooting held off the lead units, and fortunately my reinforcements weren't far behind. My defenders had been attacked, though, and had fallen back around the objective.

However Caesar had boasts he wanted to fulfill, so held off on taking the objective. Obviously this mean that I had more time to break his force; I only had to take out two of his units and the scenario would end. My leader got stuck in to a Viking mob.

Most of Caesar's units had taken two or three casualties by now, so could possibly fall back given a morale test. So I challenged his leader to single combat.

I lost.

The cascading morale cause half of my force to retreat or run away instead.

Caesar rushed in to finish off as many of the survivors as he could and fulfill a couple of his boasts.

He then grabbed the objective. He got a lot of Glory - two or three boasts, plus the scenario victory points. I scored -3 Glory, having failed to achieve a single thing I said I would*.

My sole surviving unit - some crossbows who had sat and watched the rest of the warband get wiped out.

So that game crapped on my final total a fair bit. Still, there was one game to go and I could at least look to get double figures by the end of the day.

The fourth scenario was River Crossing, which is one lifted from The Pikeman's Lament. Both sides are trying to get all of their troops across to the enemy's side of a fordable river. The scenario ends when one player has no troops left on their side of the river, so there's some tactical niceties about how and when you might choose to end the game. I was playing Martin, whose force was similar to mine in that he had two elite foot. Instead of the crossbows he had two units of fast shooting veteran archers.

We both rushed towards the river. I decided to get a couple of units across as quickly as possible so that if there was a bloodbath elsewhere I stood a chance of having more troops on Martin's side than he did on mine.

Two units of  elite foot clashed at the ford in the middle, with my leader pushing the enemy back.

He retreated from a counter-attack, but the other group of elite foot got stuck in and took out the enemy unit.

Martin had a run of bad luck at this point, with a couple of failures when it came to activating his archers to shoot.

I kept his troops busy with my elite foot then stopped shooting with the crossbows and got them across the river as well. Or tried. The last unit failed two activations to move and make the final crossing, in which time Martin polished off my leader's unit and the other elite foot, then headed for the crossing himself.

But they got across in the end, putting all of my troops on Martin's side of the river and more points there than he had on mine.

We both picked up a couple of boasts, and I think the final score was something like 8-4.

Interestingly I'd declared in three games that I would score more casualties with shooting than I would in close combat, reasoning that the crossbows would do the heavy lifting and the elite foot the finishing off. As it was in two of those games I ended up in far more melee than I'd expected and failed the boast.

Anyway, I finished 5th in a field of ten, so I was at least in the top half. Stuart and Keegan picked up the top spots with Stuart's Arrows of Death proving the battle-winner we thought they'd be.

The tournament was great fun, with plenty of dramatic moments and excitement. As well as the scoring unpredictability provided by boasts we also played the core rules for activations, with the first failure ending a player's turn. Last year we played the option of allowing all units to try and activate and it made it far to easy for players to move their troops around. This year you really had to plan your priorities and keep your leader where he was needed to provide rerolls.

Thanks to Victor for his hard work in organising the tournament, and to all the players for a fun and friendly day out.

*I was not the only person to score -3 Glory in a game, so I didn't feel too bad. Indeed Caesar managed it in his next game ...