A tale of two Tortles: Tequila Edition! That's right, I was drinking tequila before I started playing the 22nd game of my ongoing Five Leagues From The Borderlands solo campaign. A couple of things went wrong: I had meant to choose a tougher entry from the list rather than randomly generating the foe, and I meant to add a monster to the Forces Of Evil. As it turned out, the weenie force I rolled up to oppose Our Heroes was surprisingly difficult to defeat and resulted in the real possibility of lasting damage to the warband.
Of course, it all started, as it always does, with the pre-battle activities. We were at The Crossing, a surviving neighborhood of Armskirk, the Ruined City. There was a Town Crier offering a contract, but we are on a mission to drive out the Gnawling horde so we declined it. WE helped the Town Guard and Quicktoes did some Training. Our Connections revealed a Quest to be undertaken, but it was ignored in the same manner as the Contract that had been offered by the Town Crier. Our enemy target would be Gnawling raiders, known to be counting their pillage nearby. They were in the area trying to gather information, but we were going to find it first! We had to move into contact with a token by the end of Turn 6 and Interact with it to win the scenario; due to random placement, the token was actually in the enemy deployment area. We were up against 8 Gnawling Raiders led by a Sergeant. Three of them had slings. A truly weenie force, low toughness, no armor, poor combat ability, and useless missile weapons. It SHOULD be a walk in the park.
The first turn was the usual surge towards each other. Plog The Elder tried to cast Foresee, but did not get it off. Nothing of merit happened this turn.
On the second turn, Tundaline and Rukacta continued running up the right flank, trying to get back to the middle (poor deployment, I blame the tequila!) Myrrh and Weppi moved up the center. I somehow thought the Gnawlings had the "Hatred Of Magic" rule that applies to Dusklings, so they swarmed Myrrh. He was able to turn the tables on three of them and slay them, including the Sergeant, in their tracks before he succumbed to the attacks of the fourth. He went down as a hero! The three enemy slingers hurled rocks ineffectively. Quicktoes moved up behind Weppi, and Plog the Elder tried to cast Foresee again, but with no luck. The Gnawling slinger on the left flank decided he had enough, and promptly fed the scene.
Turn 3 saw Quicktoes spring into action, leaping into the cart the Raider that had killed Myrrh was fighting from. The sly Halfling took down the enemy before it had a chance to react. Two other Gnawlings attacked Plog The Elder, overwhelming the elderly tortle and taking him down. The remaining slingers hit Rukacta and took him out of action. Tundaline circled back the way she came, trying to engage the Raiders that had attacked Plog the Elder. Weppi, for her own part, moved up behind Quicktoes. A quick recap: Myrrh, Plog The Elder, and Rukacta are all out of action, and there are still four Gnawling Raiders attacking Our Heroes; no one is even close to Objective token yet.
On Turn 4, Tundaline moved to engage the Gnawlings that had taken down Plog the Elder; she wasn't close enough to attack, but certainly close enough to draw them into attacking her. Which is what they did, much to their dismay. Tundaline turned the tables on them and killed them both. The slingers jumped down from heir elevated position and ran towards Our Heroes. Weppi moved to intercept them, and Quicktoes made a made dash towards the courier rat (Objective token) trying to reach it before it scampered off.
The fifth turn had only Tundaline reacting before the Gnawlings moved, and she positioned herself close to Weppi to intercept the evil rat-men. They fell for the bait and attacked her, and both fell before the might of her warhammer. Quicktoes made it to the courier rat, made the interaction with it, and completed the scenario victory conditions. We had won, and Held The Field. But what of our downed brethren?
First, our fallen Heroes: the dice compensated for my drunken plans, and everyone was simply Knocked Out. I was quite worried before the rolls, as I really like these three models. We managed to loot a Repair Kit, and we have a lead to a new Unexplored Location on the map. And the News Travelled that a stranger is visiting; we may select a random settlement, and if we visit there within the next two campaign turns and want to meet them, we may roll a Traveler Encounter. Finally, two Adventure Milestone rolls were made, the first was a wager of 5 Adventure Points to reduce the Gnawling Horde threat level by one with a "2" rolled, and the second was a wager of 5 Adventure Points to promote Rukacta to a Hero with a roll of "1". So both rolls succeeded, the Gnawling Horde threat was reduced by one point, and Rukacta is now a Hero.
I quite enjoyed this game, despite the initial mistakes made in enemy forces and deployment. It looked like the whole battle was going south on Turn 3, but we recovered and managed to pull a win out of it. Next game, I will be picking and choosing enemy forces as well as bringing a monster to support them. I think, in the interest of safety, I will not play after consuming copious amounts of alcohol.
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