OK, so there I was, contemplating with dread the Quest Finale in my Five Leagues From The Borderlands solo campaign. It would require a Site battle, and I had never run Our Heroes through one of those before. Would my tile layout be big enough? Would the layout be good for gaming? Also, we had a brand new warband member, Myrrh the Fey-Blood, as a Follower. But that's getting ahead of myself...
It all started innocently enough. I knew from the last Quest Turn that the next one would be the Finale, which meant a site battle. But first I wanted to run Our Heroes through a day at The Crossing, to see how things might go, and then rest up for the rest of that turn. So that was Campaign Turn 25: Morgan healed up, the Town Guard was helped, we tried to recruit a replacement for Brarkisy but found no one, and the locals supplied some rations. There was the offer of a contract, but it was declined.
Which brings us to the current turn 26, which will be the fourteenth tabletop game of the campaign. Local events yielded useful tales, adding a Story Point. We helped the Town Guard to offset the cost of living. And then tried to recruit a new warband member again, and that's how Myrrh the Fey-Blood, a street urchin, joined the party. Following that, another contract was offered, but we declined it in favor of finishing the Quest. We had to travel to the site, and along the way we encountered a Sociable Knight, who gave Profound Life Advice which added another Story Point to the stash.
And then it was game time! First things first, I had to create the Site; I used tiles from the game "Star Wars: Imperial Assault" to map out the underground complex that Our Heroes would be invading. I rolled up Warband Remnants on the Dusklings chart, and selected models as Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, and a Unique Foe, the Enemy Marshall. Once this was done, six Exploration tokens were placed in accordance with the rules. After that, I did a preliminary scouting move with Tundaline, who rolled a 92 which made for quiet entry and the opportunity to move a group of bad guys to the center after placement. Not that I would do so, that center point was where we needed to go to perform the Ritual (one of the possible victory conditions) and I wanted as few enemies there as possible. And then I rolled to place the bad guys in groups of three at the designated exploration tokens. Finally, I deployed Weppi and the rest of the Warband, and we were ready to go!
So rather than the normal turn-by-turn description, suffice to say the enemy groups moving in their patrols caught Our Heroes between the Captain and the Enemy Marshall; this was not the plan, as we were trying to get to the center to perform the Ritual, but the alternate victory condition was to kill these two enemy characters. So, tally ho! The group at Marker 5 went off to guard Marker 4, effectively taking them out of the game. The rest closed in from two different directions. On the right, Tundaline and Morgan made a good show of things and took down the enemy group with the Captain, Morgan taking a Wound in the process. On the left, Weppi and Grushnag made short work of the Enemy Marshall and assorted villains accompanying him, although Myrrh went out of action and Weppi spent a Story Point to make the reroll that killed the Enemy Marshall. With both the Captain and the unique Foe dead, we finished off the stragglers and retreated.
And what did we get for our trouble? Myrrh was Moderately Wounded, and will need to spend a campaign turn recovering. The Old Gods smiled upon us, and Weppi gained a point of Luck. Weppi also earned the ability "Rugged Survivor" which will reduce any healing time she has by one campaign turn. Also, two doses of Ironshield Root, 1 Ferret's Drink potion, and a suit of Fine light armor. Finally, as News Travels, an old ruin has become home to strange creatures.
I have some thoughts on the site battle and the quest chain as a whole. As my campaign victory condition is to reduce all the Threats to 0, the quest chain in and of itself did nothing to advance my progress. It had a few neat rewards, but for the five tabletop games I played out for it, I could have been reducing the Threats and making actual progress (I feel the same way about Contracts.) As far as the site battle itself, this was a bit different than an actual Delve because we were fighting to eliminate certain enemies, who, as it turned out, came to us and mostly the battle was very close to the entrance. I am sure if we were exploring the markers it would have been a different story, but again not necessarily working towards the campaign goals. While Delves and Site Battles happen, I don't think I would voluntarily pursue one again. As a final, unrelated note, I was experimenting with camera settings during the game and so the pictures are of varying quality.
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