Tortles In The Dust: Game Two

 OK, so I played through my second game of Tortles In The Dust. This was after several campaign turns spent resting and recuperating after the massacre Our Heroes suffered during the last game. Having now spent five turns In Camp, we had foraged a lot of herbs while living off the land. Our preparation showed that the enemy was now tracking us, so there would be no Adventure Milestones this turn, but i we fought a Threat battle, we gain a couple of Adventure Points. The plan had originally been to start on the Quest we received back on the first Campaign turn, but the opportunity for more Adventure points was tempting. So we decided to fight the Oldest Kin. They were found to be on the outskirts of Ectanaba, so we travelled there uneventfully. As it turned out, they were hunting us as well, specifically to undermine our progress. Knowing their penchant for poison, we brought along a lot of Gentle Shade Flower to counteract any that they brought along.

The outskirts of Ectanaba would feature a lot of small buildings, some trees, some soft sand, six Unpleasant Flora, and two Glimmers. The dust was whirling, so tabletop visibility was limited to 10" for Our Heroes. We would once again be looking for evidence of enemy plans, whilst fighting six Spawned Brood, two of whom were armed with Poisoned Javelins. Looks like the Gentle Shade Flower was a good bet! The battle lines were 16" from each other. Initiative was not seized. As an aside, the Spawned Brood were one of the weakest varieties of Oldest Kin and this should be a very easy battle.

The first turn saw both lines move towards each other. Plog The Elder picked up a Glimmer and Quicktoes moved towards the Objective building (marked by the Turn Marker die.)

On Turn Two, Plog The Elder went first and put up a wall of fire (Barrier) in front of the advancing snakedudes, forcing them to go around to engage Our Heroes. When the combat finished up, Tundaline was down and three Spawned Brood were dead. Plog The Elder had defended well against an attack as well. Quicktoes made his Interact check, thereby fulfilling the Scenario victory condition.

Turn Three saw more fighting.  Weppi killed another enemy before she fell to a well-placed javelin which found it's mark even with the poison nullified. Plog The Elder managed to deploy his demon-possessed doll (Construct) after beating down the snakedude he was fighting. Plodo and Rukacta moved towards the remaining bad guy. Despite the carnage, none of the Spawned Brood had run (slithered?) away!

On the fourth turn, Plodo advanced and killed the last snakedude. Victory as ours, we gained 4 Adventure points due to the circumstances of the scenario and another 3 from the d6 roll. Weppi was fine, just knocked out, but Tundaline would need to Campaign Turns to recover from her Light Wound. We looted a Quick Fencing Sword and found two Gold Coins. Finally, News Travelled that a Monster has been spotted in the dust, and so a Hidden Monster lair was added to the map.

I rather expected this to be a pushover scenario. The random rolls to deploy the environmental hazards should have been a sign that dice would be high, and even with planning there were setbacks that could not be avoided. Maybe next game we can start that Quest so we can lose the penalties for being Outsiders to he Dust...