3 Yarthmont - Dead Enders

 Broneslav returned to the junction he had passed earlier. Turning down it, he soon found himself at a dead end. The map showed a room on the other side of this wall, so maybe there was a hidden door here. He started checking the wall carefully. After carefully going over the walls to either side of the end, and the end itself, he found signs of a hidden door in the end. He had soon found a loose stone that opened the door when pushed, and entered this new room. As he did so, his feet crunched on something.

The entire room was filled with bones. If looked like a dozen or more people had died in here. Other than the bodies, there was a no sign of anything untoward here. The young hero was now faced with a choice. The room had two exits other than the way he had come in. The first would take him back towards the boulder. The other would take him onwards. He chose to backtrack.

Taking a route towards the boulder, he soon found the corridor that ended at the boulder and followed it to another door. He pushed this door open to find a room whose wall paintings showed signs of a man signing documents and organising tax collection. The wooden coffin in this room had been smashed open and six shambling humanoids were standing around. As the door opened, they turned towards it and shambled towards Broneslav, who backed slightly into the corridor. This way, they could only attack him one at a time. As they approached, Broneslav used his superior speed to cut the head from one zombie and smash the brain of another before retreating back into the doorway. Despite the hindrance of all the other zombies trying to get at him simultaneously, one zombie clawed him hard across the body (2 DAM). Broneslav returned the favour by laying it to rest permanently, but the other zombies were unrelenting and it took all his efforts to hold them at bay until he had an opportunity to cut another one down with two quick strokes of his sword. His efforts to defend himself while doing this were not enough and he took another nasty gash (1 DAM) before cleaving the remaining two zombies in two.

With the zombies dead, Broneslav checked the room quickly, but found nothing. It had already been looted and destroyed.

Fantasy Fistful of Lead - The Glorious Deed of Vicumion of the Ostentations

  I received Fantasy Fistful of Lead for Christmas and was much enthused by it. The layout is easy to read. The cover is teeming with nostalgia in the way it reflects the cover of my old Basic D&D rules from 40 years ago. And, I know that it will provide a nicely Hollywood-esque game, if my experience of Fistful of Lead: Starfighters is anything to go by. So, I suggested to Steve, my formerly regular opponent before life intervened and got in the way, that we play FFoL when he announced that he was able to pop by for a game. This would be our first game in a bazillion years and I was excited to play against someone else. Time to design a quick warband and set things up.

Steve said he only had his 15mm figures available, so I dug mine out too and chose a group of 5 Elves, whose figures I liked the look of. I decided to play at 2/3 scale because the move distances make it look like all 15mm figures are The Flash when playing at full scale, so I printed out the templates at 66%. I printed a couple of reduced scale rulers so that we did not have to convert any of the measurements while playing. All set, so time to meet the gang.

The gang

Vicumion of the Ostentations, a veteran of many skirmishes and a legend in his own lunchtime, was the leader of this group. He was born to warfare and moved as easily in harness as out of it. Nothing phased him. He carried his own banner so that all would know where he was and where the great deeds were being done.

Indusium the Fundamental was second-in-command. A journeyman wizard of the wild, his favourite spell was the lightning bolt.

Aelfgar the Younger was a somewhat rash young man and a good defensive fighter.

Qwillim o' the Wilds was the gang's scout, moving quickly through the cover to find the enemy so the others could neutralise them.

Fengal Sharpeye provided the gang with good missile support; an indifferent swordsman but able to split an arrow in two at the butts from 100 paces.

The situation

Human interlopers had been spotted heading into the borders of Brambly Edge Forest, Vicumion's home. Vicumion knew that he must take his Elves and kick them out or the place would soon be full of lumberjacks working all day to remove the trees and keeping everyone awake all night with their singing. Plotting a course towards the interlopers, Vicumion and his gang crested a hill and spotted the humans on the other side of Windy Beck, near the ruined Temple of Whillowisp.

"Follow me," he yelled to his gang and charged forwards at full speed. Inspired by the bravery with which Vicumion ostentatiously waved his banner and drew attention to himself, the gang rushed forward eagerly too. The humans were more circumspect and cautious in their movements. Clearly they were intimidated from the outset! Their archer even hid behind a tree ... as if that would save him!

As the gangs neared each other, arrows flew to no effect, but Indusium blasted the enemy leader with a lightning bolt. The leader fell, stunned, but the enemy mage healed him and he was back on his feet all too quickly. Aelfgarr charged forward to engage an enemy swordsmen but found himself standing in the beck and on the back foot as the swordsman proved to have a keen edge.

Vicumion soon joined him. Overconfidence led to Vicumion being laid flat, but, fortunately, Indusium was able to heal him quickly and Vicumion was soon laying about him with his blade once more to the swordsman's detriment.

As the fight ebbed and flowed, the two leaders soon found themselves in combat. It was a hard fight. Vicumion's experience barely helped him against the human's youth and speed, but it did tell in the end and the human was knocked flat and wounded once more, even when one of the human retinue ganged up on Vicumion with the leader.

Meanwhile, Qwillim had engaged the enemy archer and knocked him out. The enemy mage heated Aelfgar's armour to the heat of the forge and Aelfgar collapsed unconscious as a result. Qwillim retaliated and knocked the mage flat. Unfortunately, the enemy mage got a lucky blow in from the ground and knocked Qwillim out.

In revenge, Fengal pierced the mage and laid him out in turn. With spells flying and blades blurring soon only two of the human warband were conscious, but both were wounded and scuttled away as fast as they could, using the oncoming night to make good their escape. The Elves held the field.

"Well," announced Vicumion, "they fought well, but I fought better! We'll not see them again in a hurry."

Aftermath

Vicumion's gang gained 3 renown.

Steve's gang gained 2 renown.

Aelfgar's and Qwillim's injuries were just flesh wounds. They will be back next scenario at full strength. No other figures in my warband need to roll because they were not wounded or out of the fight.

Steve has not rolled for his warband yet.

Thoughts and musings

Our game was characterised by a number of things. I failed every single armour save that I tried to make. Fortunately, the wound rolls generally only left my boys shaken, but, still, it was a tad frustrating. Steve made most of his armour saves, but suffered from high wound rolls.

Steve's leader had a trait that let him roll two dice and pick the better one. This seemed very useful, even against my veteran leader who rolled a d12 instead of the standard d10. My takeaway from this is that I need better d12s. I rolled low all too often.

My troops kept fumbling and throwing away their weapons! sigh!! Steve's never fumbled. On the other hand, I did manage to catch Steve's archer in melee with his bow in hand instead of a sword. We need a slightly better system for tracking who has which weapon in hand, because it makes a difference. I'm thinking weapon counters on the roster.

Speaking of rosters, several mistakes were made along the way with forgetting to apply traits. We need better rosters for tracking bonuses and penalties, so that we do not forget them. It is far too easy in the heat of the moment to forget these things. I shall work on this for my next game.

We made other mistakes with the rules, and I shall read them again to try to get it right. For our first game, I don't think we did badly. We got things mostly right or muddled through by agreeing a temporary solution until we can look it up. The rules were not hard to learn, and they are well laid out, but there are always details you forget. There were a couple of unclear areas, especially relating to magic. Hopefully, the reread will clear those up. I'm not sure if they were unclear purely because of our expectations. That is also a possibility.

The game was great fun. So much so, in fact, that I nearly completely forgot to take photos. The Fistful of Lead system works well, providing a nicely cinematic game with a lot going on. The card draw mechanism for activating figures is fun and nervewracking in equal measure, leaving you desperately hoping that you get the next activation or that your opponent does not get a special card that negates whatever you have just done. Combat was simple enough to adjudicate, even with multiple figures on one side being involved. With a game under my belt and a reread of the rules, the next game should go a lot better and more quickly. All in all, I look forward to playing FFoL again.

A retrospective on 2021

 It's been a while since I felt it worthwhile writing a retrospective on my gaming year. The last time I wrote one was in 2017 and I . This year has been different though. I've managed to play a fair bit, although all of it was solo. The reason for this is that I moved to Norway to work in the middle of 2020 and have spent a large part of the last 18 months working from home thanks to the pandemic. The pandemic has meant that I have not sought out other gamers, and have focused largely on games that are designed for solo play or that have a solo mode. This has largely meant boardgames, because the pandemic has also meant that moving all my lead and paints to Norway has not been a practical option yet. We'll have to see what happens with my contract at the end of the current project to see if it is worth making the effort, assuming that travel becomes easier again in the future.

2021:

So, on to the games. I've copied and pasted the table below from BoardGameGeek. The numbers are the number of sessions of each game I played.

Game	Qty
Gloomhaven	122
Beneath the Med: Regia Marina at Sea 1940-1943	11
Thunderbolt Apache Leader	11
RAF: The Battle of Britain 1940	9
Field Commander: Rommel	7
Heroes of Telemark: Commando Raids in Norway, 1942-43	6
BattleTech: Beginner Box	3
Vikings: Scourge of the North	3
Rangers of Shadow Deep	2
Fistful of Lead: Starfighters!	1
Five Parsecs From Home: Solo Adventure Wargaming	1
Space Empires: 4X	1
Terraforming Mars	1

As you can see, Gloomhaven has occupied a massive amount of my time with 122 sessions this year and I wrote about it earlier this year. Each session is one scenario or one attempt at a scenario in the cases where I lost miserably. I have loved this game despite carrying it home from the games shop almost killing me. I have plans to use the components from it for other games, and I may well return and try the campaign again following the paths I did not take this time around.

Gloomhaven

Beneath the Med and Thunderbolt/Apache Leader each occupied 11 sessions. In the former case, I played through one campaign to the point where my sub was sunk and my captain died. I pushed my luck too far! I need to try this one again and be a bit more careful. It's an interesting game, fairly repetitive and much of the action happens in your head, but I think that the stories it encourages you to tell yourself are a large part of the fun. Thunderbolt/Apache Leader saw me play two short campaigns. It's a lightweight game with interesting decision making that feels a lot like watching Airwolf. Well, to me it does anyway and the theme tune plays in my head each time I play. I need to write more on each of these games later, so will try to write up each as I play the next campaign.

I finally bought the update of RAF this year. As you would expect, it is a game about the Battle of Britain. You manage fighter command and must allocate resources to the defence of England in 1940 to prevent the Axis forces from bombing the country into submission. I successfully completed this mission. One interesting aspect of the update is that there are options for taking charge of the Luftwaffe and also for playing this as a two-player game. I wrote up my thoughts on RAF earlier in the year.

RAF

Field Commander: Rommel saw me fighting my way to victory as Rommel in France in 1940 and in the Western Desert. For some reason I have never written this game up, but I really should. It's an interesting game, but perhaps not my top choice for pulling off the shelf. I think I need to be in the right mood for it.

I wrote about my experience with Heroes of Telemark earlier in the year so I shall not repeat myself on that.

Heroes of Telemark

I had a sudden urge to play big stompy mechs, for no earthly reason that I can fathom, so I bought the Battletech: Beginner Box and Battletech boxed sets this year. I've played all the scenarios in the beginner box, but not the full fat versions yet. My thinking was that I could use the mechs in the boxed sets and the standees as figures for games of Horizon Wars and 5150 No Quarter - Mecha Combat, as well as actually playing Battletech. I hope to organise myself properly to do that in 2022. We shall see ...

Finally, for the boardgames, I played a session each of Space Empires: 4X and Terraforming Mars. Both are fun, and I want to play them more in 2022.

Miniatures gaming has been much thinner on the ground this year. My miniatures remain in the UK, as I noted before, so I have only played miniatures games while in the UK. With travel being difficult, I only got back last Christmas and in the middle of the summer. And, when in the UK, my time is limited, so games tend not to get played. I played the first two missions from Rangers of Shadow Deep, flew a test space fighter mission in Fistful of Lead: Starfighters, and played one mission of Five Parsecs from Home. These are all games I would like to see on my table more, but I really need to sort my living  and work arrangements out properly so I have my stuff in the right place to take advantage of them.

Five Parsecs from Home

One thing that does not show on BGG because it is not listed there is the Scarlet Heroes RPG. I've returned to my solo campaign after a significant break and have continued from where I left off. Running it and writing it up is a fun way to fill the odd half hour. I also enjoy creating the maps in CC3+, although one of the reasons the campaign foundered previously was precisely because I found the map-making burdensome. I'm not sure what has changed, but it just seems to go together more easily now. I'm scheduling weekly posts for it, so that I can take a short break if I need to without the flow of the game being interrupted. This campaign is a massive hit of nostalgia, being set in the Basic D&D world of Mystara.

Scarlet Heroes

All in all, this has been a good year for gaming. I am very pleased that I have played each of my new games at least once, and have had good use out of several of them. That is a novelty!

2022:

For 2022, I would like to try to fit in more miniatures games but know that will be difficult unless I can arrange to move figures and terrain to Norway. I fear this will be more complicated with the rules that will apply to UK/EU/Norway goods transport from 2022, and I am wary of getting hit for import duties for moving my own stuff across borders. Also, the cost of postage puts me off sending some figures by mail and my luggage for the return is already too heavy, so that is not a realistic option. Yes, I am a cheapskate! What do you expect from someone brought up in Scotland and Yorkshire? This would all be a lot easier if the Newcastle-Stavanger ferry were still running. Despite it being cancelled in 2008, long before my move to Norway was on the horizon, I still feel this as a personal affront! We'll have to see what I can organise.

A simpler miniatures option at this stage is to use the Battletech stuff for a selection of mecha games, so there is a good chance that will happen. Hurlbat's reprint of Micro Ancients offers another option for miniatures style games, possibly using the rules that come with them, or perhaps Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames.

Having received the Fantasy Fistful of Lead hardback for Christmas, I shall aim to use the Gloomhaven miniatures and tiles for some FFoL dungeon bashing. I have a bunch of other skirmish games that they might be useful for too. I'll have to see how I fare with FFoL first.

Fantasy Fistful of Lead Collected Edition

Related to these miniatures games, I am going to have to be less fussy about terrain and table. The Battletech maps will do nicely for mecha games, so it might be worth getting a few more of those, but I am going to have to be less fussy about terrain, table and miniatures. I should try printing out 2D terrain to make a readily portable terrain set that can be stored easily. Printable standees are also an option worth exploring, especially for the disposable baddies in my games. I am also tempted to create battle mats in CC3+ and print those out. I have long thought that it would be fun to create 18th-century style maps to play Seven Years War games on, and that idea could be extended to other periods and genres. 

On the boardgame front, I want to get The Dark Valley and War Without Mercy onto the table. Both deal with the Russian front in WW2. The Dark Valley has a chit draw mechanism that should make solo play easier. War Without Mercy is a fairly standard game so I shall just have to play it two-handed and try to be impartial or use dice rolls to determine how high command prioritises its attacks for each side. I am tempted to draw on Charles Stewart Grant's Programmed Wargames Scenarios for ideas on how to deal with this. Nothing too complicated, but at least it should inject some chaos into the proceedings.

Beyond these, I shall aim to play the various games I have more, rather than looking to buy new games. And I plan to continue the solo RPG. I've bought the D&D Rules Cyclopedia hardback and GAZ 1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos softback from WargameVault to use with the RPG, having previously only had digital versions of both. It's just a shame I cannot get the Karameikos poster map easily.

So, that is the plan for 2022. It is fairly open with just a few specific games I would like to play, and as much of a moratorium as possible on buying new stuff. Hopefully, I shall be enthused enough to write a retrospective next year and see how well I have achieved my aims.

3 Yarthmont - Rolling stones

 Broneslav weighed up his choices. Mentally flipping a coin, it came up ships and so he turned left. The corridor turned right after a short while, and then right again after about eighty feet. It continued for another eighty or ninety feet and ended in a door. Warily, he pushed the door open to reveal a sarcophagus in the centre of the room. Pillars surrounded it, arching inwards towards the centre to form a cover over the top of it. At each end of the sarcophagus, brass jars had been placed. Flames burned in them to light the room.

Broneslav searched the room and found a brass tube containing a parchment map. It appeared to be showing something, but he was not sure what. There was no key to tell what the X marked. However, it did show him the layout of this tier and he could make more informed choices about his direction. Obviously, heading towards the large, ominous X on the map would have to be his goal.

Broneslav headed over to the other door in the room and opened it. Thanks to the map, he knew there would be a corridor on the other side of it. Suddenly the ground began to shake. There was a rumbling noise and crunching of stone on stone. Broneslav looked desperately around, trying to work out what was going on. Suddenly he realised. The massive boulder rolling down the corridor at high speed was a significant clue. He dived back into the room just before the boulder rolled past.

With the help of the map, Broneslav knew that the door over the corridor opened into a room and that the corridor he was now standing near led back to the area he had previously explored. He opened the door to the room over the way and closed it again quickly without going in. The room was full of junk and stunk. There was a big pile of junk in one corner. Rustling and squeaking noises came from the pile. That sounded more like a chance to get hurt than a chance to get rich. He turned around and followed the track the boulder had taken.

This was a long corridor with just one corridor leading off it and its end was blocked by the boulder just past a door on Broneslav's left. He knew from his map that the corridor continued on to the right after the boulder but had no way past, so he decided to check what was behind the door.

Within lay an elaborately jewelled coffin. A worm-like creature nearly ten feet long with may legs and a mouth surrounded by tentacles was curled up around the coffin. It looked up as Broneslav entered. He leapt forward swinging his sword as he did so, and brought its edge down just behind the creature's head. With just one blow he had cleaved the monster in two. Yellowish ichor sprayed from the cut ends.

Pausing, he considered the jewelled coffin and decided to leave it alone. He was already carrying significant treasure and had no idea if the coffin's occupant might take exception to removing the jewels, which might well just be paste for all Broneslav knew. Time to head back to the junction and try a different route.

3 Yarthmont - I have a bone to pick with you!

 Broneslav left the entrance room and turned right this time. The bird people who had flapped around him had gone in this direction. Immediately ahead of him the corridor became a T-junction with a door on the opposite wall. Broneslav opened the door a crack and peered in.

A mummified human in plate armour stood with a halberd against the wall to his left. An honour guard of  nine skeletons surrounded the mummy. Each had a sword in its hand and each stood to attention too. Suddenly they moved. 

Broneslav dived into the fray, smashing one skeleton down with a shield charge. The skeletons responded by attacking him. It was fortunate that only a few could get to him at any one time, and he was able to dodge or block their blows. He took another skeleton down, only for one of the others to take its place. Two more skeletons fell in quick succession but one of the remaining ones got through his defences (1 DAM). The pain galvanised him and four more skeletons were crushed by his shield and smashed by his sword. One remained and it was easy to destroy without its allies.

Throughout all this, the mummy had not moved. Looking more closely at it, Broneslav decided that it would not move either. With nothing else to seize his attention, Broneslav bandaged his wound and left the room, turning right.

He followed the winding corridor until it ended at a door. Broneslav pushed the door open carefully. His light showed that the room was inhabited. Two large white apes were sitting on a large sarcophagus. Rubble and debris surrounded them, as did the bones of their meals. The walls of the room were painted with scenes of warfare. An unnaturally handsome man in armour, clearly a noble, was the central focus of all these paintings.

As he looked in the apes began to beat their chests and howl. Broneslav took the hint and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him. That left just one direction to investigate. he walked back past the room with the skeletons and reached a junction where he could either go straight ahead or to the left. There seemed little to choose between the two so he mentally flipped a coin again.

3 Yarthmont - Ghost Walk

 Being a young man with no real sense of his own mortality, Broneslav decided that he would push on while he could. There would be time to return to the Magi and rest up later. After all, his wounds were not that bad, and he was sure he could deal with anything he found.

He returned to the main corridor and turned left, still heading away from the mad bird people he had encountered before. The corridor turned right and then left and then left again. Walking stealthily and carefully, Broneslav advanced steadily until he saw something glowing ahead of him. Two human-sized shapes. He slowed his steps but continued to move forwards, prepared to fight. The figures did not move.

As he got closer he could see more details. Both figures were translucent and dressed in expensive clothes. One was a man and the other a woman. Each wore a crown.

The male figure spoke in heavily accented and antiquated common, "GO NO FURTHER OR THE CURSE OF KING ALEXANDER WILL OVERTAKE YOU!"

The female figure spoke after him, "I AM QUEEN ZENOBIA. TURN BACK, FOR ONLY DEATH AWAITS YOU!"

As the male figure spoke, fear began to build in Broneslav. As the female figure spoke, the fear built further. Suddenly, Broneslav found himself running away from them and back toward the room he had entered by. Only as he climbed the ramp did he regain his wits and stop running.

After catching his breath, he decided that following the bird-people might not be so bad after all. Even knowing the spell put on him by the two figures he had seen, he could not be certain to overcome the compulsion to run, so he would try a different route.

3 Yarthmont - Requiem for a Jester

 Broneslav walked carefully down the ramp. The walls of the room he entered were painted with scenes of a royal court. The centre of attention in these paintings is a dwarven jester. The paint was peeling and faded, but a lot of effort had been expended in its application, so the jester must have been someone important. A small, brightly painted coffin rested by the wall. In each corner of the room stood a  large brass jar.

There seemed little threatening here, and Broneslav did not wish to tempt fate, so he moved quickly to the door in the north wall and opened it. Beyond lay a long corridor. As he crept pantherlike down the corridor, he heard voices from ahead of him. Their squawk-like voices carried and it was clear they had seen his light as they rushed towards him.

From the dark emerged  four people flapping their arms and squawking. Each wore a bird mask and a feathered cape. None was armed, so he relaxed a little. As they neared Broneslav, they started squawking more urgently in a bird-like version of the language he had heard the Magi use. Not knowing what they were saying, Broneslav stayed quiet and did his best to appear non-threatening. The people flapped around him a bit and then flapped off again in disgust, throwing what must have been insults in Broneslav's direction. He had noticed this about the Cynidiceans. They seemed to inhabit a different world from him, and he had no clue what was up with them, not even those who were close to normal, like the Magi.

With the people gone, Broneslav stalked down the stone corridor of the pyramid. The people had run off to the right down a side corridor, so Broneslav kept going straight on. Soon he was faced with a choice of going straight on or turning left. He opted to turn left. He found himself in a short corridor with a door in one wall.

The door and the end of the corridor were soot-blackened. The image of a human-sized humanoid form on the wall marred the otherwise perfect sootiness of it. The door itself was open a hand's width. It was dark within, as far as Broneslav could see. Figuring that anything within would have been alerted by the light from his torch, Broneslav kicked the door open.

The walls of the room within were covered in murals depicting a priest performing ceremonies. In this room, the priest was clearly the focus of the paintings. The priest was also clearly the focus of three humanoid creaters with grey skin and long claws on their fingers. As Broneslav stepped into the room, they looked up from their grisly repast. His injuries from the day before still bothered him, and Broneslav only nicked one of the ghouls. The three hideous monstrosities immediately leapt towards him. Despite his best efforts, one of the ghouls raked his arm with its claws (1 DAM) and another bit him (1 DAM). A cold like the chill of the grave started spreading through his veins. Mustering every ounce of determination he had, Broneslav willed himself to keep going (Defy death after failing to save versus paralysis, 1 DAM).

This time he was able to behead the ghoul he had wounded before, but it was clear his wounds and burns were bothering him. The eldritch poison that the ghoul's touch injected was really not helping either. Fending the monsters off was proving hard, as one of the ghouls raked his body with its claws once more (2 DAM). Once more the ghoul's poison chilled his body and slowed his movements. Once more Broneslav mustered every ounce of willpower to keep going (Defy death again, 1 DAM).

Drawing on everything he could, Broneslav fought on and skewered a ghoul to leave it twitching on the ground, while knocking the other one back. It renewed its attack, but with just one ghoul left, Broneslav was able to fend it off easily and to ripost with a stroke that cleaved it from shoulder to waist.

Breathing hard, he looked around to see if any new challenges had emerged. Seeing nothing around, he closed the door to the room and bandaged his wounds. Searching the room, he found a valuable necklace and a pair of valuable-looking bracelets. He put them in his back, being all in favour of highly portable wealth.

Where to now? Should he return to the Magi and rest up to heal his wounds, or should he risk carrying on a bit further?