More playtesting of my Fantasy Bash (needs a better name) rules occurred the other day. I played out a small tournament between four warbands of roughly 100 points each.
Up first the Undead took on the Orcs, and the Undead came out on top, I suspect largely because the Necromancer poked his head around a rock and simultaneously zapped one Orc and the Orc Shaman killing the Shaman instantly, somehow his less magical friend survived. Somewhat of a freak occurence maybe, the Necromancer did roll rather well, but it’s worth keeping an eye on how his chosen abilities combine to create devastating attacks. The Necromancer comes in at 28pts, has the following stat line Speed:6, Attack:10, Defence:10 and the following abilities: Magic User, Destroyer, Arc and Power Surge. Magic User allows the Necromancer to make magical attacks, these are attacks that only require line of sight to perform the range is effectively infinite, ‘Arc’ means that a straight line is draw between the Necromancer and his target any figures on that line are also attacked. Having Magic User allows the figure to also take ‘Destroyer’ which means two dice are rolled for each magical attack and the results for both dice rolled stand. Higher attack values are a necessity here hence the Necromancer’s attack of 10. Here’s an adjusted combat table from the one shown in my previous post:
Combat is simple and follows the same procedure for ranged, melee or magical. Compare the attack stat of the attacking figure against the defence stat of the defender, roll a D6 and check the result on the table. So you can see that if the Necromancer’s attack was half of his target then rolling a 1 when making the attack would result in the Necromancer being killed. Taking the Destroyer trait just increases that chance, so it can be risky. Currently in the rules when Magic Users attack figures without that trait their power is doubled, making Magic Users pretty dangerous. Originally I had this rule so a Magic User with a lower power could still be effective at range, but once the combat closed and the melee ensued they’d be at a disadvantage, what you’d expect without me having to add a separate stat for magic. I think it’s probably worth dropping that rule now since abilities make it more redundant and make Magic Users possibly too powerful. This is down to the Necromancer’s other trait ‘Power Surge’, roll a die before you attack, on a 1-3 your power for the attack is halved, on a 4-6 it is doubled. So if a Magic User attacks a Non-Magical figure and successfully Power Surges then they get to quadruple their power, combining that with the Arc and Destroyer abilites means they can basically shoot a death laser across the board that could fry anything. So I might need to tone the combination of those abilites down, put some restrictions in as to what combinations of abilities can be taken, or simply create abilities that can defend against such madness.
I played a simple scenario for my games, there are three objectives the two D10s and the D4 in the centre. At the end of six turns if neither side has routed the side with the most figures within 3″ of an objective scores that objective, the side that scores the most objectives wins. The big blue die keeps track of turns. Here the Orcs were doing fairly well despite their Shaman being toasted early on. The Orcs were given high attack stats but low defence stats as I wanted to see if they could get in and cause enough damage before they get slaughtered, turns out that wasn’t on the cards. There currently are no buffs when you charge into an enemy and attack them, I thought simply having the opportunity to attack first would be enough. Plus in reality people don’t fight in turns. You can assume that both fighters would be charging at each other so a charge buff makes little to no sense. Having said that it would be nice to have that sweeping charge feel to certain actions, and it adds more strategic strength to traits involving speed and means you have to be more concerned with where your figures are positioned, so although in my head I can see how a charge buff in a skirmish game is kind of dumb, it does raise the level of strategy required to be successful in the game… so it’s also a smart move… I’m torn!
Game two saw the Dwarves take on the Bugs. The Bugs were a bit of impulse buy from Irregular and genrally because you don’t see insectoid fantasy races that exist in their own right, they’re always steeds of just generic bad guys in dungeons.
The Dwarves are tough but slow, the Bugs quick and vicious, but not vicious enough. I think like the Orcs the Bugs suffered from not having that charge buff. The only reason they wanted to close with the Dwarves quickly was to avoid crossbow fire, but half of the Dwarven force were melee focused, and good at it too. This mean’t the crossbow guys were free to provide some harassing fire and grab the objectives.
The final game saw the Dwarves take on the Undead and straight away the Necromancer was up to his old tricks, and despite the Dwarf Wizard actually being a better Magic User he still got zapped immediately.
The cannon fodder zombies split left and right so they could secure the flank objectives.
A Dwarf Brawler clashed with The Lord of Undeath in the centre, and somehow managed to come out on top. The Lord of Undeath was defence 10 to the Dwarf’s attack of 12, meaning the Dwarf would wound the Lord on a 5 and slay him on a 6. He managed to do both, and the Lord failed his ‘Tough’ save (5+ to ignore each wound) against the slain result, so the Lord was felled.
Here’s where the game ended with the Undead winning on objectives and taking the tournament. While the Necromancer was definitely the MVP for the Undead the zombies shouldn’t be overlooked as they took and held objectives regularly. This is down to the fact that they had no abilites or traits, so all their points went straight into their statline, they were far tougher than expected.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! There’s probably going to be more of this in the future as painting small warbands of 4-6 figures is easy and I’ve already got some whacky ideas for more!
Deathzap 