OK, so it's been a rough week at work. Which is funny, because we had a short work week due to Labor Day on Monday. But it was still pretty stressful, so I decided that there would be beer tonight. And beer was had. But, as Debbie Deb once sang, weekends are made for fun. So I decided on a game of Five Leagues From The Borderlands tonight. Except the beer made me lazy. So, I had some coffee after the beer to perk me up a little. And hopped up on beer and coffee (the beer will be relevant later in this story,) I proceeded to set up the game. I do this thing where I prepare the paperwork for each game days or weeks ahead of time, so I already had the scenario and opponents worked out and ready to go.
Our Heroes were in the vicinity of the town of Ectanaba, and would be fighting off another incursion of the Oldest Kin. We had to get some more information about them, and this fight might be the opportunity to do that. The scenario would be a Meeting Engagement, with the objective of Scout The Area. We would be facing six Ravager Brood, including two with javelins (represented by bow-armed figures tonight) and then led by an additional sergeant. Both sides deployed 22" away from each other, or 7" in from their respective table edges. One of the Scout tokens to be investigated was close to the enemy deployment line, so this might turn out to be a tough scenario to win.
The first Turn was the usual rushing towards each other. The Oldest Kin's javelins only have a range of 9", and Our Heroes have no ranged weapons whatsoever. Plog The Elder tried to cast "Foresee" to give us an extra turn to contact the Scout markers, but didn't get it off.
Turn Two saw the first combat: a javelin took down Rukacta (I forgot his Harness Of Vengeance should have killed the javelineer as well, thank you beer,) Tundaline engaged a Ravager, Weppi killed a Ravager, and Quicktoes climbed onto the roof to investigate a Scout marker. No Ravagers fled due to the death of one of their number.
On the third Turn, a javelin knocked Plog The Elder out of play, Tundaline survived a javelin attack but still took a wound, she wounded another Ravager in return, both Hamada and Weppi each killed a Ravager, and Quicktoes leapt from the roof to circle behind the skirmish to head towards the next Scout marker. We now had two Heroes down, and the Ravagers had lost three of the Brood. Still, they did not break.
The Fourth turn: Weppi and Hamada both killed a Ravager each, while Tundaline was skewered by a javelin and now out of action. Another javelin found its mark and caused Hamada a wound. Quicktoes was making a dash for that second Scout marker.
Next up was the Fifth turn. or was it the Sixth? Did I turn the Turn Marker die? The beer was starting to hit hard! I decided it must be turn Six and to check the pictures later. As it happened, it was only turn Five. Hmmph! Anyways... Weppi killed one of the two remaining javelin-armed Ravagers, the other took down Hamada, and Quicktoes pounced on that last Scout Marker. The objective had been achieved, but could we Hold The Field? We would certainly try!
So, on what I thought was turn Seven but was really only turn Six, Weppi and Quicktoes dispatched the last Ravager. Game over, we Held The Field. Also, four out of six of Our Heroes were bleeding in the dust and needed their disposition assessed. Would they survive?
It is important to note at this point that I spent FOUR Story Points for re-rolls during the course of this game (and only two of those re-rolls resulted in successes.) It was a tough one, and that's something I have been trying to get for a while. And the javelins, oh the javelins, they seem like such weenie weapons but they took down three of Our Heroes. We did gain six Adventure Points for our trouble. Rukacta was just knocked out. Tundaline was DEAD! But the judicious use of our one Spring Vial revived her without injury. We've been saving that since the first campaign and finally needed it. Plog The Elder was just knocked out. Hamada was Moderately Injured, and would need to spend a campaign turn recovering. We managed to loot some partial armor and a shield, and as an Unusual Find we wound up with a bag of gold. Even though we achieved the Objective, we failed the roll to add an Unexplored Location to the Campaign Map. Despite, or possibly due to, the game being very tough and down to the wire for the Objective (although I had an extra Turn I didn't know about,) I really enjoyed it. Having games that feel like a steamroller all the time gets boring, and it was nice to have reasonably tough opponents who made things hard.
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