Micro Ancient - A trip down memory lane

My first exposure to ancients gaming was the old Tabletop Games Micro Ancient game. This was part of the Micro Warfare series that covered warfare from the ancients period through to WW1 naval. It came in an A5 sized ziplock bag and contained a simple rules set and two army cards to cut out and use. The base game modelled a battle from the Punic Wars. The two army cards were a Republican Roman army of around 22000 men and a Carthaginian army of around 30000 men. You had to cut out the unit counters and could then play games on any flat surface. Terrain would generally be templates cut from card. The cool thing was that this set was cheap enough to be affordable, and that here was a supplement with Normans, Saxons (Anglo-Danish really) and (most importantly of all) Vikings. Just the ticket for a cash-strapped youth.

Romans (purple) versus Carthaginians (red)

The rules required you to track actual losses in each unit, so the unit counters had unique identifiers for every counter and you needed a roster to track these things. I know I tried the game a couple of times as a teenager around 1980 or so, but I cannot remember what I thought of it. I have vague recollections of being a bit confused about things because I was not an experienced gamer at that time. That confusion probably led to the game being put away. I also have no idea what happened to my copy of the game. I may have traded it away or it may have been destroyed or lost as a result of the various vicissitudes of life. Either way, I no longer have my original copy.

Enter Hurlbat Games. They released the game along with its supplements as a pdf download from WargameVault in 2012. I noticed this at some point recently and was struck by nostalgia, so I bought a copy of the base game and the Normans, Saxons (and of course) Vikings supplement. I printed out the armies onto label paper and stuck that onto matte board to make slightly more robust counters than the original game. I then spent a happy weekend cutting out the counters and edging the coloured ones with Sharpie markers to make them look a bit neater. There is something quite peaceful about this activity, much more so than painting figures to my mind.

Vikings (black) face off against an Anglo-Danish (blue) army

The end result was that I now had five armies for Micro Ancient. I suppose I should read the rules and set up a game soon. First, though, I need to make terrain. Fortunately, I have a large sheet of cardboard in the flat that protected the table I shall be playing on when it was delivered. Time to dig out the scissors and cut out some randomly oval templates. Using the Sharpie markers I can mark crestlines for hills and draw on tree or rough ground symbols for other terrain. I'll maybe need some roads and rivers too, but there is plenty of cardboard for all of those.

The Anglo-Danish (blue) army defends a hill from the Norman (purple) army

One thing that I find particularly interesting is the presence in both the Viking and Saxon/Anglo-Danish armies of mounted contingents. In recent years, I have seen and been involved in some quite heated debates about the presence of cavalry in both Anglo-Danish and Viking armies, so it is particularly interesting to see mounted combat units in these armies in a game from 1976. Personally, I think that half the problem here is 19th-century antiquarianism/historiography and the other half is the terminology. The second you talk about 'cavalry', people get in their heads permanent formations of mounted combat troops and this obscures the probable reality of elite warriors who could fight mounted or dismounted as needed, like the medieval knights of whom they were the forebears both socially and literally. But, that is an argument for another time.

So, what next? Well, I really do need to try the game out again and see what I think of it. It would be awesome if it worked well. As a readily portable game set, it suits my needs beautifully and does not require a huge area to play on. It also has me wondering about using the counters with other miniatures rules sets, or making counters of the right size for those other games. It also has me wondering about Kriegsspiel blocks and whether I would find 18th-century warfare as interesting to play out using counters or blocks. The flexibility of having a red army and a blue army without worrying about uniform details appeals a lot. We'll see. I need to get these bad boys deployed in simulated anger first, and see how the reality matches up to my nostalgia.

RAF: The Battle of Britain 1940 (Decision Games)

 September 6 1940

A hectic day with half a dozen raids, mostly focused on John's gaming shed near Canterbury. The Luftwaffe has been gunning for that shed since the start of their attempt to grind the RAF into the ground and pave the way for Operation Sealion. It was a good day for the RAF. Losses were low and enemy losses were high. And the shed was still standing despite a month of attempts to bomb it.

September 7 1940

My campaign was over. It had been hard fought, especially in the beginning, but the might of the Luftwaffe had been thrown back by the heroic pilots of Fighter Command just a few days after the Luftwaffe terror campaign had begun. In this version of reality, there was no Blitz. London was never even attacked. Kent was the real focus of the Luftwaffe's ire. I've no idea why I drew so many target cards for Kent, unless it really all was about the gaming shed after all.

I used to own the original version of this game many years ago, about the time it first came out. I played it a bit but never finished the whole campaign, and can only assume that I sold it somewhere along the way, although it is possible my mother's dog ate it, like it did to my copy of Hornet Leader. With the new version of the game in hand, and more time for gaming, I sat down a week ago to first learn the rules and then to play the campaign from the perspective of Fighter Command.

The rules were easy to follow, and it was simple to set the game up and learn by following the sequence of play. I then set up again to try the shorter campaign covering the first four raid days of the campaign (days on which raids happened). Things were looking bad after just those few raids but not hopeless, so I decided to continue the full campaign. As I gained experience with the game, things started getting better. I stopped trying to stop every raid, and started focusing on those where I thought I might do most damage. The Luftwaffe started getting worn down and my new approach paid dividends in fewer of my own planes getting shot down. Suddenly, the two factors led to a snowballing of victory points and on September 6th 1940, I reached the critical victory point score. I had won the game. This took me about a week and ten raid days.

The game is quite repetitive in that you draw a target card and roll to see whether this is a real raid, a minor raid or a major raid. Then you dice to see what warning you get of the raid and how accurate that warning is. The point at which you deploy your fighters and find out what the raid consists of depends upon what level of warning you get. Which of your fighters you can deploy depends upon how early the warning is. It is possible to get no warning, where only fighters actually on patrol on the raid's flight path can deploy against it, to very early warning so you can call in the fighters from all the surrounding airfields.

With both fighters deployed and the raiding aircraft identified, you have to fight your way through the fighter screen before you can attack the bombers. There are random raid events along the way and much of the narrative is driven by card draws for events on the approach, at the target and at the end of each day. With the raid outcome determined for good or ill, you start all over again with the same process, only this time some or all of your pilots could be refuelling and rearming their planes and unable to respond. It is also possible to have multiple raids happening at the same time, either as follow-up raids or in different areas. I think my record in this campaign was four follow-up raids on John's gaming shed, or RAF Hornchurch as the cards called it. By the end of all this action in the one place, I had no fighters left able to respond from any of the surrounding areas and the bombs were falling thick and fast around the shed.

I've seen some complain about the sheer repetitiveness of the game but I found that it was not an issue. I played a raid day or two every night and was soon looking forward to returning to the table and seeing what would happen next. The relentness repetitiveness of the raids was what built the tension in the game as I tried to work out where the next attack would be and which fighters I needed to send up on patrol. If I sent the wrong ones up now, they would not be available in an hour's time if there were a raid over their sector then instead. Likewise, do I send supporting fighters from a neighbouring sector, or will I need them for the next raid? It's very much a resource and risk management game, and I enjoyed it a lot.

I also like that the new edition allows you to play as the Luftwaffe and to play it as a two-player game. I don't particularly have any desire to play the Luftwaffe in this, having grown up thrilling to the sound of Spitfires and Hurricanes at air shows and on a diet of movies like The Battle of Britain and Angels One Five, but I do like having the option. The two-player option offers an interesting challenge too, because a human player is unlikely to manage resources in the same way as the game's AI.

Heroes of Telemark (Decision Games)

I remember watching The Heroes of Telemark on the TV many years ago. It wasn't a movie that really stayed with me, just another in a long line of WW2 movies that formed a large part of my diet as a child. Still, I remembered it enough that I was reminded of it in 2020 when I moved to Stavanger. It turned out that my flat would be next to the graveyard where the dead from Operation Freshman were buried. This made me reflect on the movie and on the reality of this period, although I don't have any great insights to offer. It's just a purely personal reflection on the morality of wargaming generally, my relationship to the past, and my reasons for not usually gaming anything more recent than WW2 these days. If you want more depth and discussion of these topics, I recommend the Polemarch blog instead. The discussions about the morality and philosophy of wargaming there are very interesting.

Eiganes cemetery in Stavanger is home to more than just the members of Operation Freshman. Solveig Bergslien, a member of the Norwegian resistance who died in a Gestapo cell, has her grave here, and there are the graves of Soviet soldiers who died in Rogaland, as well as the Norwegian war dead. Visiting the cemetery really does make you think, but that's not the point of this post.

I picked up Decision Games' Heroes of Telemark, Commando Raids in Norway, 1942-43 recently as part of my quest for more solitaire wargames. I felt a bit weird about it because of my proximity to the dead from one of the raids depicted in the game, but pushed past that and tried it out. It's an interesting game with only four pages of core rules and two of game-specific rules. Knowing the core rules makes other games in this series more accessible because you only need to take on board the game specific rules then.

The game itself has a small footprint (about A3 but actually one of those funny American paper sizes). This makes it ideal for the space-challenged. The map depicts Telemark (if I have done it right, this link should show you the map area on Google Maps), where the heavy water plant was.

The game offers four scenarios that can be played in turn: Operations Grouse, Freshman, Gunnerside and Tinnsjo. Played in order, these set up the narrative of the WW2 operations, but they can also be played in a random order if you just want a slightly different campaign. Success in one operation will increase your chance of encountering Germans in later operations, so the difficulty of each game ramps up through the campaign. You can replay operations if you lose them, but if you lose two operations, the campaign is over and you have failed.

Game length is determined by the number of event cards in a deck. This number is set by the scenario but can go up or down as you encounter and defeat or lose to German patrols. You draw one card each turn and the game is over when the last card is drawn.

Each scenario also gives you recruit points to buy troops and gear. These start in Britain and arrive on the map either by glider landing or parachute according to what type of troops they are. Then you have to move to the various objectives and reveal them. Once revealed, you can capture some of them, destroy others, or find that you have been ambushed and must fight. Operation Grouse requires you to scout the objectives. The other operations are about capturing plutonium or destroying heavy water plants and resources.

In my first game, my entire force was wiped out by an encounter with a massive German patrol. I then moved on to the campaign, having worked out the rules. I succeeded easily in Operation Grouse, encountering little resistance and dodging an ambush by scouting an objective from an adjacent space with my Commandos. Unfortunately, I lost most of my troops to an enemy encounter in Operation Freshman but still managed to win the operation. My engineers all died when my gliders crashed in Operation Gunnerside; they did not even make it onto the map, in a repeat of the historical Operation Freshman. My second try at this operation was a success and I moved on to Operation Tinnsjo, which I lost because of massive hostile activity, and thus I lost the campaign.

Despite my being a bit weirded out by being too close to elements of this game's subject matter, this is an interesting game. It is very random in that your encounters with the Germans can be overwhelming if you roll high for the number of Germans present or they can be a walkover if you roll low. The random distribution of your base and the objectives will also affect how easy or difficult your game is.  However, this just means that you need to manage your risks as best you can and the meaningful choices in the game are made around that risk management, while the pressure to push your luck is provided by drawing the event cards and counting down to the end of the game. The combination of these elements and the short playing time for each operation make the game highly replayable, although I would not want to play it exclusively.

For me, it is a good filler game for when I don't want to, or don't have the time to, sit down for a couple of hours with something meatier. The main down side of this game is that I found the rules a little messy. Despite being short, or perhaps because of that, it took me a little while to piece together how to play.

I have two more of Decision Games' solitaire games: Vikings: Scourge of the North and Border War: Angola Raiders. I expect more of the same from each of these, and look forward to trying them out in the future.

Babysitting duty (Five Parsecs from Home)

Location: Zircon/Jewell

Date: 001/1105

I rolled for the planet's attributes twice and got a Fuel Refinery result and a Gloom result. The former means that travel only costs 3Cr and the latter that visibility will be 1d6+6". I interpreted the fuel refinery as meaning there was a scout base in system. For the latter, I decided it either meant a tainted or an exotic atmosphere. I picked the Jewell subsector to check for a suitable planet first, because it is at the border of Zhodani and Imperial space. I have a vague idea that conflict along the border will be part of any future campaign, although that could change according to whatever whim takes my fancy. So, looking through the systems with scout bases, I noted that Zircon has a dense tainted atmosphere and a scout base. Perfect. Whatever taints the atmosphere causes reduced visibility. It's a non-industrial planet so I think the taint must be natural and may be dust because of the planet's low hydrographic index. At this period in the history of the Spinward Marches Zircon is a non-aligned planet.

The team had dropped in at the scout base for a cheap refuel and Eshtovr went off to see the local commander while the others ran errands. Shelby was in the local market playing dice and doing rather well. Weeb was nearby dickering with a trader and arranging delivery of some trade goods to their ship. Just as he was raking in his latest winnings, Shelby's comms rang.

"Gotta mission," announced Eshtovr, "Some kind of drop being made. I need you to escort the VIP to a data terminal downtown where they will need to access it. Hostiles are likely to be limited in number, but don't take any chances. Seems we could be looking at Cyclan involvement. You and Weeb get over there. We'll follow up as quick as we can. Remember that all weapons are illegal here, so be careful. If you must take that cannon of yours with you, don't let the local cops catch you. Sending coordinates for pick-up and drop off to your comm now."

Sector government (one of the team's patrons) assigned a protection mission. It involves getting the target to the centre of the board for a full turn. The enemy is Converted which I am interpreting as Cyclan, based on E. C. Tubb's Dumarest Saga. I only rolled one enemy, but will be using random events, so let's see how it goes.

Weeb and Shelby met up with the VIP quickly and set off at full speed for the data terminal. The area was not too busy at this time of day, so Shelby powered up his jump belt and hopped onto the roof of the Penneys Building. He took cover behind an air processing unit directly above the objective. Weeb moved quickly up the opposite pavement but paused when finding a data stick in the mouth of an alley he passed. The bot grabbed it, thinking it might have something useful on it. The VIP followed as close behind them as she could. There was no sign of any enemy presence yet.

The team got the drop on the enemy and made a full move before the enemy got to move. On top of that, I rolled low enough that both of my crew were able to act in the quick actions phase. Woohoo. That got Shelby into position while Weeb was able to pick up documentation that would give the team a quest rumour. Who knows where that will lead? The enemy figure advanced at full speed, but did not get into line of sight yet.

Weeb advanced to the corner of the Penneys Building. The bot's sensors quickly detected a suspicious figure moving quickly into cover behind a parked car. It's suspicions were confirmed when the figure pulled an assault rifle out from under it's duster coat and fired at Shelby on the roof. Shelby yelled and pitched over, dropping his rifle. Weeb groaned mechanically as it heard Shelby fall, and again when two ROUS crawled out of a nearby vent. It pinged Eshtovr and told her to hurry up as it raced across the street to get a clear shot at the Cyclan infiltrator. Weeb blasted the infiltrator with both barrels. It would not be getting up again. Now to deal with the ROUS that was launching itself at it. The ROUS's claws were sharp but failed to damage Weeb's plasteel shell. Weeb's shotgun, however, crushed the vermin's skull. One down, one to go, as the other ROUS raced as fast as it could towards the bot. The VIP raced past the bot and the ROUS, reaching the data terminal. Hopefully, she could do whatever she needed to do before anything else could go wrong.

The hostile managed to roll the 6 needed to hit Shelby, taking him out of the fight. I only remembered about using story points later on so I let this result stand. Weeb got to act and moved to a spot where the hostile could not count as in cover. It blasted the infiltrator before being attacked in a brawl by one of the ROUS (vent crawlers). The two brawlers tied but Weeb rolled high enough to kill the ROUS while the ROUS rolled a 1 and did not hurt Weeb. I used giant rats as the vent crawlers because that is what I had to hand.

Weeb quickly pumped the action of its shotgun and let the second ROUS have it right in the face. Two solid hits and the ROUS practically disintegrated. Meanwhile, Eshtovr and Garth had finally arrived! Out of breath, they raced towards the ongoing fight. When they arrived, the VIP was done with their task and disappeared into the crowd. The crew quickly recovered Shelby and looted the corpse of the infiltrator before merging into the crowds that were gathering and then disappearing back to the Saucy Sue where they found that Shelby was just winded. His jump belt had taken the full brunt of the shot and been destroyed in the process.

 The crew earned 9 Credits for this mission, including danger pay and bonuses for completing it quickly. They also gained a Military Rifle and a Blade, and a CredCard that they were able to cash in for 3 Credits.

Shelby was not hurt but lost a random item of equipment.

At this point I awarded experience and moved on to other post-battle activities. No character had enough experience to spend the points yet, and I did not have enough credits to invest in advanced training. I did decide to spend 6 Credits to get a roll on the Gear table and a roll on the Gadget table. The crew snagged a set of Combat Armour and a Repair Bot. With law levels in mind, and the thought that I can introduce the police as a programmed problem in some scenarios, I also spent 2 Credits on Hand Guns for those worlds where rifles are illegal and 3 Credits on Blades for those worlds where even Hand Guns are illegal. I foresee issues where the bad guys pay no heed to the law, but I'll deal with that when the time comes. To offset the cost, I sold a spare shotgun.

The help I gave the VIP has led to making friends among the locals (+1 story point). I suspect we are no involved in some attempt to free the planet from its extra-system rulers.

Shelby and Eshtovr had a heart to heart after his near death experience and Eshtovr was able to both guide and encourage him (+1 XP each). Meanwhile Weeb cracked the data stick and the team gained a Quest Rumour.

And so the crew of the Saucy Sue has been blooded. They took down their first bad guy and made some progress on something bigger than themselves. With the events that have happened, they will stay on this planet and see what opportunities occur. I'll let the dice decide it, but it may be that the planet is being targeted by the Converted and we have to do something about it. I like that idea, but I'm sure the dice will have something else in mind for me. Unfortunately, the next game will have to be when I return home at Christmas as I am now back at work and separated from my figures by the North Sea.

One thought I had before setting up this game was that I really should add civilians to the table and a system for moving the cars. I chose not to for simplicity's sake this time around. I justified this decision by assuming it was very early morning and all the cars were parked, but it feels wrong to have games in an urban environment without moving cars and civilians that we have to watch out for. I might borrow the 'flock of seagulls' rule from TwoHourWargames for pedestrians where they will panic and run in random directions and random distances. The cars will probably just move along the roads at a fixed rate, stopping at junctions if other cars are in their way. I might also dice to see if they crash because of shots fired near them or figures running in front of them.

The Saucy Sue in Space (Five Parsecs from Home)

So, I recently picked up Five Parsecs from Home 3rd Edition. I love the digest-sized hardback rulebook. Aesthetically, this is my ideal. This probably stems from getting into sci-fi gaming via Traveller and the Little Black Books in the late seventies and the digest-sized Laserburn rulebook with its supplements in the early eighties.

Better yet, this rulebook really does hark back to the Traveller adventures we had back then. The contents very clearly show a debt to Traveller. I've bought a lot of the Nordic Weasel material along the way and found it interesting, but I always found it hard to read because of the layout. It just did not suit my reading style and made learning the rules harder, which is a shame because the games are just the kinds of things I wanted. This rulebook is a sea change in that. It is easily readable and I love what I have read. I am really looking forward to getting a few games in soon.

The first thing I decided when reading the rules was that they mapped so clearly onto the Traveller background that I would set my adventures in the Spinward Marches in the period covered by the earliest adventures and supplements I owned. This is the first decade of the year 1100 of the Third Imperium. It is a time when things start to unravel culminating in the Fifth Frontier War. This will give me background events to set my own crew's adventures against, and perhaps for them to get involved in. Who knows? They might even change the course of history!

Five Parsecs from Home uses a lot of tables to procedurally generate encounters and worlds. I shall need to fudge things a little so that these results make sense within the Traveller universe. I'll be limiting myself to the Traveller jump technology, so it will probably be a case of checking the details on whichever planet I land on and picking among the various Five Parsecs from Home options for worlds. There will be a fair bit of fudging things and winging it but the tools are all there in the rulebook and it should adapt easily. And, to be honest, that will not be much different from how I GMed my Traveller games all those years ago. It will also be interesting to see if I can deconstruct the original adventures into a series of set pieces with perhaps some procedural dice rolling between episodes. Some of them will probably work better than others for this, so we'll have to see how I go.

The other thing that is fun is to dig out my old Traveller figures. So much nostalgia! And that is despite the fact that some were painted thirty years ago and it shows. I shall have to see about patching up the paintwork a bit here, and it might encourage me to return to some of the others sitting around the house.  I did rebase a lot of them not so long back, so there is that, at least.

The crew of the Saucy Sue

So, on to my team. I mostly diced randomly for them, but did make a couple of executive decisions about their backgrounds to fit the storyline I had in mind, which is based on ideas from the introductory adventure The Imperial Fringe that came with the Deluxe Traveller boxed set. This also meant that I decided to keep my team to just four crew, because the standard Type S Scout/Courier in Traveller has berths for only four crew. I wonder how much trouble they will get in, and how long they will survive. I'll be running them in some test games first to get to know the rules, before starting out in the campaign proper, so there may well be a few games that turned out to be all just a dream.

The concept here is a team that starts with a patron: The Sector Government. This will be an enduring patron who will give the team missions occasionally. I need to figure out how the survey work that the team is meant to do fits in. Not sure how to do that yet, but I'm sure it will become clear as the game progresses. Hopefully, I shall have time to do that before I have to return to work and find myself once more in a different country from my figures.

Nudge Unit 3561

***detached scout team on roving commission***

***assignment: Spinward Marches***

***team assigned to Type S Scout/Courier Saucy Sue***

Commander Eshtovr Vindenes

• Team leader of Nudge Unit 3561
• Homeworld: Jewell/Jewell
• Empath. Psi powers believed inherited from her Zhodani mother. Nothing distinguishes her human father to suggest they come from him.
• Successful career in Contact & Liaison with specialism in intelligence analysis.
• Now mustered out but engaged by Senior Scout Administrator Galadden for the Imperial Fringe Audit. Mission to conduct surveys of planets in the Spinward Marches. Secondary mission to nudge societies towards desired future paths.
• Vindenes is known to be particularly dedicated to the Scout Service and the Third Imperium in that order. Her early upbringing on Jewell was characterised by alienation from both human and Zhodani societies because of her mixed heritage. The Scout Service gave her a home where she belonged and she is fiercely loyal to it.

Supervisor Garth Burnside

• Security chief of Nudge Unit 3561
• Homeworld: Squanine/Trin's Veil
• Standard Imperial human
• Successful career as security specialist in Contact & Liaison.
• Now mustered out but engaged by Senior Scout Administrator Galadden for the Imperial Fringe Audit.
• Burnside grew up in the Feudal Technocracy of Squanine and is known to crave recognition for his successes since leaving there. This has occasionally led to him taking too many chances in the field. Since joining Commander Vindenes' team he has shown more moderation. She appears able to manage him better than many of his previous commanders.

Skilled Worker Shelby Kutts

• Engineer of Nudge Unit 3561
• Homeworld: Rethe/Regina
• Standard Imperial human
• Undistinguished career as engineer with Contact & Liaison.
• Now mustered out but engaged by Senior Scout Administrator Galadden for the Imperial Fringe Audit.
• Kutts grew up in the arcologies of Rethe as part of the underclass in the lower levels Arcology Pinochet XXIII. Although a good engineer, he lacks seriousness and is only interested in the gadgets rather than knuckling down and doing the routine work. His attitude has improved under Commander Vindenes.

W33-b Omnibot 'Weeb'

• Assigned bot to the Scout/Courier Saucy Sue
• Standard programming package
• The Omnibot series is an anthropomorphic general support bot designed for flexibility rather than specialist use.
• W33-b is usually called Weeb by the crew of the Saucy Sue.
• Intelligence suspects that W33-b may have gone AI sometime around 1103. This is unconfirmed. Intelligence continues to monitor the situation.

The Thrappled Lemmings and The Infected Trees (Rangers of Shadow Deep)

 "Barkeep, drinks for my companions! It's been an infernum of a day. Oh, spiders, why did it have to be spiders?" Aethelwyrd demanded and complained in equal measure.

The ranger was bespattered with mud and blood and what looked like some kind of noxious ichor. She had a greenish cast to her face that was not normal either.

"Let me tell you the tale," she said, "of how we went in search of your fellow countryfolk, for our bard is still recovering from an encounter that could have been his end." She motioned in the direction of Ash the Scop, who was bandaged and also rather green about the gills too. His hand with the beer tankard in it shook badly, but such was his fortitude that he spilled not one drop.

"We followed the trail from the village to the forest, where we found the remains of several of the villagers we had been tasked with finding. There were several huge web cocoons among the trees. We surmised that the spiders had saved some of your folk for later so we resolved to investigate. As we did so, we heard a ghastly chittering and rustling noise. Spiders as large as horses were descending from trees ahead of us, intent upon saving their dinner."

"We raced forward, their sickening chittering ever around us. A horripilating dread seized us but we bravely soldiered forth for that is our calling. Diarmuid launched a magic bolt and slew a spider while Aelfwynn loosed a volley of arrows to send another to its damnation. We reached the first cocoon and found a zombie within. More spiders approached, emerging from the very undergrowth around us."

"We pushed ever onwards, investigating each cocoon and finding only corpses and zombies until, at last, we found a survivor from the village. He told us that the spider's had attacked the village, and that those that were slain by the spiders soon arose as grim, undead monstrosities. A spider leapt upon this plucky villager, who slew it with his bare hands. Berserk with rage and horror he charged forth, only to be slain in turn by the next spider. Still we fought on. More spiders emerged from all around and new zombies appeared among the trees."

"Alas, Diarmuid Oakstream, our conjuror fell, overcome by spiders, and Ash was struck to the ground unconscious. None of us was unscathed by this point and I could feel the spider's venom coursing in my own veins, slowing me down. Despite this adversity, we drove onwards and burnt the trees where we surmised that the spiders had their nests. Too late we spotted a fifth nest tree, as ever more spiders sought to ensnare us for a late night repast. We had done more than our job by this point and we retreated to bring this news to you. You townsfolk must rally the militia and burn out the spiders lest you too fall to their venom and walk again as hideous caricatures of your living selves."

Aethelwyrd paused for breath and a long draught of ale.

"A toast to Diarmuid the Conjuror. Let his name never be forgotten in the battle against the Shadow Deep."

The Thrappled Lemmings raised their tankards and drank deep of their ale.

"Umm, excuse me." A young man had approached Aethelwyrd as she spoke. "I am Bergsveinn, an Archer of this town. Would you be looking for a new companion now? I realise it may be a bad time to ask, but I think I could be useful to you."

Aethelwyrd looked the pimply, young man up and down. He was unkempt and unprepossessing, but he did at least claim to be capable of using a bow. There was also about him an indefinable air of needing to be out of town fairly quickly that was very much in keeping with the aesthetic of the Thrappled Lemmings.

"Ok, Bergsveinn the Grubby, pay for these drinks for us and let's go. We have another date with destiny at Tor Varden and it cannot wait."

This was another fun scenario. Only two of the companions were put out of action, but sadly Diarmuid the Conjuror rolled a 2 and died of his wounds. Ash the Scop rolled well and returned uninjured. Even with the two casualties, the scenario went quite well. The spiders were numerous but not individually too challenging. I did roll poorly for the cocoons. Three of them held zombies, one held nothing and one held a survivor. The survivor got unlucky with a spider appearing right next to him as a result of an event card, and it ate him. Aethelwyrd the Ranger was the only figure to be poisoned by the spiders and survive. The loss of an action meant that when a nest tree spawned on our start line, she could not get there in time to burn it, so I lost out on the XPs for burning out all the nest trees. My dice rolling was, on average, better than in the last scenario, which was nice.

After a second game, I am very happy with these rules. I like the structure of the scenarios and the pressure that the event cards put on you to keep moving. Weirdly, the d20 rolls which I found too swingy and frustrating in Frostgrave do not feel that way in Rangers of Shadow Deep. I suspect this has to do with me focusing on the story, instead of being competitive and trying to beat my opponent. Still, it works and I am interested in working up some additions to the Rangers AI that might work for NPC warbands in Frostgrave, allowing me to play the various campaigns solo. We'll see if I ever get around to it, or if I get distracted by something else before then.

In the meantime, I need to finish painting the monsters for the next Rangers mission, so I had better get on with that.

The Thrappled Lemmings visit The Deserted Village (Rangers of Shadow Deep)

 The door to the tavern slammed open.

"Ale, barkeep!" roared the ranger Aethelwyrd, "My companions and I have worked up a powerful thirst investigating that village you called us here to investigate!"

"Oh crap," thought the barkeep, "I've only just fixed the place up again after their last visit. And what idiot invited them to come and see what was going on here. I'm going to have strong words with the town council about this ... assuming there is a town by the end of the night."

Ash strummed a chord on his lute and coughed loudly. His finery was chewed and torn and seemed to be covered in rather more of his blood than was wise. He also had a peaky look to him, pale and not quite right. "Ho, citizens of this blessed town, I shall tell you a tale of derring do, the like of which will leave you astounded. A tale of the Thrappled Lemmings who fear no force of darkness and will stand up to any evil, no matter how small or large it is. Never fear, for the Thrappled Lemmings are here!"

"Yeah, right," thought the barkeep uncharitably, "Half of youse look like you can barely stand up at all right now, let alone stand up to anything."

Ash the Scop's commanding voice took charge of the tavern, and even silenced the barkeep's inner monologue. He launched into his tale, which may have resembled the truth of their encounter in limited and specific details, but certainly proved that he was no purist when it came to retelling the truth of events.

As the group approached the village, Diarmuid muttered, "It's quiet here. Too quiet. I don't like it."

He was right. The group gathered in the village square. Around them were bodies lying in the dirt. The villagers had been massacred. Suddenly, they heard chittering noises nearby and from further away low eerie moaning noises.

"Rats and Zombies! Quick, fan out and search for clues, then we can get out of here," commanded Aethelwyrd.

Aethelwyrd and Kalf ran towards the nearest giant rat. It put up a spirited fight that left Kalf wounded, but they eventually dispatched it. Diarmuid and Aelfwynn ran towards the largest house in the village. Spotting a giant rat, Diarmuid unleased a bolt of magical force at it, practically disintegrating the unusually large rodent. Onund ran towards the second largest building in the village. Meanwhile, Ash announced that he was "just going to look over here" and ran off between two nearby buildings. Zombies shambled towards the heroes from all sides.

As the zombies advanced, Onund, so proud of his muscles, tried and failed to force the door of the house he had chosen to investigate.Aethelwyrd rushed to join Ash, seeing a zombie close by. Ash was trembling and froze in fear as he saw the undead horror turn towards him. Kalf investiged a body near the field and found a Philtre of Fairy Dust. He put it in his pouch for later. The other zombies shambled towards Diarmuid and Aelfwynn. Diarmuid fought valiantly but was badly wounded and Ash was seized by terror in the face of the rotting corpses attacking his friend.

Diarmuid soon fell to the zombie's teeth and talons and Aelfwynn recovered his wits to start using his bow but to little effect. Aethelwyrd dealt a fatal blow to the zombie nearest her and raced to help Aelfwynn. Onund finally broke through the door of the building and found a cowering villager within. The others were racing around checking the village out and trying to hold off the zombies as they did. Ash picked the lock of the head house in the village and found a sack of treasure to take with him. But, as the zombies fell, more zombies started appearing.

It looked like the group were going to be overrun as first Kalf and then Ash fell, shortly followed by Aelfwynn. Fortunately, by this point they had completed their recce of the village. Aethelwyrd sounded the retreat as more giant rats and yet more zombies emerged. Pursued by the monsters, Aethelwyrd, Onund and the one surviving villager supported the rest of the group in getting out of there. All the while, Ash complained that he had lost the great treasure he had found.

So, the game lived up to expectations. I consistently rolled quite low, while the monsters scored half a dozen 20s while my group rolled a similar number of 1s, leading to my group going down fairly quickly. We managed to investigate all six clue markers, but suffered from the random events with two characters being seized by terror on the second turn and half of the group now being diseased for the next scenario. I probably made it slightly harder for myself by playing on a table smaller than the recommended size, but it still worked out. At least I lost no one despite four of the six figures being out of action at the end of the scenario. Aethelwyrd is now just five experience points short of the next level. I look forward to seeing how well the Thrappled Lemmings can do next time around.