E had a Witch and I had an Illusionist. Both warbands consisted of an apprentice, crossbow, two archers, and three thugs. These were slightly smaller than usual, but I wanted to keep things fairly simple. In hindsight, perhaps we should have changed the wizard and apprentice’s activation ability to two soldiers.
I chose a full complement of spells for each of us, as follows:
|
E |
Me |
|
Witch: Animal Companion (8) |
Illusionist: Teleport (10) |
|
Witch: Familiar (8) |
Illusionist: Glow (10) |
|
Witch: Poison Dart (10) |
Illusionist: Monstrous form (8) |
|
Enchanter: Telekinesis (10) |
Soothsayer: Reveal secret (14) |
|
Necromancer: Raise zombie (10) |
Sigilist: Push (10) |
|
Summoner: Leap (10) |
Thaumaturge: Heal (10) |
|
Thaumaturge: Heal (12) |
Witch: Familiar (12) |
|
Illusionist: Fool’s gold (12) |
Necromancer: Raise zombie (12) |
I deliberately went a bit heavy on Out Of Game spells. To be honest, I like this for those with higher casting numbers anyway, especially as there’s no possibility (in a one-off game) to improve them, as you can in a campaign. In this case though, I was also mindful of keeping things simpler during the actual game.
We didn’t have that much success with our pre-game spells. Both wizards successfully raised a zombie, my apprentice summoned a familiar, and E’s managed an animal companion – we used a giant goose model, counting as a bear.
Set-up
We weren’t playing a scenario, just a standard ‘treasure grab’.
The table was a 2x3 rectangle with deployment along the long edges. Since this meant that we were fairly close to each other from the start, we decided to just move onto the table in the first turn. That also solved any issues regarding who was to deploy first.
Five treasures were placed: one in the centre (on the remains of a ruined tower) and another towards each corner. This normally means two relatively easy ones for each warband, with the central one likely to determine the winner.
I’ll give all descriptions from my point of view, so the treasures are referred to as far-left, near-left, central, far-right, and near right.
Turn 1
E’s wizard enters the table with a thug and two missile troops, on my right-hand side, and heads towards the far-right treasure. My own wizard enters centrally and tries, unsuccessfully, to teleport herself towards the far-left treasure. E’s apprentice and goose enter centrally and stay behind the ruined tower.
My apprentice decides to be bolder and teleports herself into contact with the far-left treasure, leaving her pretty exposed. E’s thug and zombie move to threaten her, while I have a thug run up to the near-right treasure (but can’t pick it up this turn) and my zombie close in on the near-left treasure.
Here’s the state of play at the end of the turn:
Treasures are represented by the gold discs. You can just see the thug and near-right treasure, poking out from under a bridge. You can’t really see the far-left treasure but again it’s under a bridge, just above the archway on the left-hand side of the picture. You might just be able to see my apprentice’s wand sticking out from under the bridge.
Turn 2
I need to protect my apprentice, so she can grab the treasure and get out alive. My archer shoots and kills E’s zombie. That’s first blood to me (though, of course, the zombie was already dead). My wizard then casts push at her thug, successfully pushing the thug, but not very usefully as the thug hit an obstruction and wasn’t really any further away as a result.
E’s thug grabs the far-right treasure, while her archer and crossbow both shoot at my archer, but both miss.
My apprentice picks up the far-left treasure and starts retreating. I temporarily forgot about the halved movement, so initially thought she could get back through the archway, which would have allowed her to retreat off the left-side of the table behind a wall. I had to go back and correct this shortly after!
E’s apprentice climbs the central tower and moves into contact with the central treasure (but can’t pick it up yet).
In the soldier phase, I made another mistake. I had my left-hand archer shoot E’s thug for 7 damage, before realising he’d already activated in the wizard phase (he was the one who killed the zombie), so I had to do another frustrating take-back. However, this was more than compensated for when my crossbowman shot and killed E’s apprentice, who had been left dangerously exposed. My two thugs then climbed onto the tower, one of them into contact with the central treasure.