Fantastic Scuffles: Relic Hunters v. Undead

And so begins the second chronicle of my adventures in playing Fantastic Scuffles. Last time on this blog we looked at the two new parties that would be partaking in this game. Now it is time put models and dice onto the table and see who triumphs.

Note: this game is being played with a set of the Fantastic Scuffles rules that are still in development. Things will certainly change between the date of this post and the release of the rules. Also, I will forget things. Anything odd you read here is probably me not remembering a rule.

Changes: if you read the previous blog post you will note that the Relic Hunter party has changed slightly. After some ‘mathhammer’ it was decided that Modesh the Fair’s Holy Hammer Minion/spell effect would start the game on board and count as part of the party’s points. Not being a Sage meant that it could potentially take two or three turns for Modesh to summon the Holy Hammer. This was a lot of time to take to summon a 9 point Minion. Summon was removed from the character (as was Heroic) and it was replaced with Heal. It should also be noted that this makes Modesh illegal as Warriors can only have one spell.

Getting started

Initially the Warriors of Ages party was a single point more expensive than the Relic Hunters. After I made some changes to Modesh the Fair this changed and the Relic Hunters were now 153 points.

Objectives

Each party rolled for their objective in the scenario. The Relic Hunters received Treasure Hoard. This required each party to nominate a terrain piece within 8’ of the centre of the table. The Warriors nominated the ruined Tower and the Relic Hunters nominated the tree next to the tree stump. Each party rolled and the Relic Hunters won the roll-off. So the tree was the location of the hoard. The Relic Hunters get +2 VP for finding the hoard and any party can get an additional 2 VP for moving the hoard off the table.

The Warriors rolled Witch Hunt. Normally this requires a Sage to be the target of the objective but since Modesh has two spells it was decided that he was ‘witchy’ enough. The Warriors will get two additional VPs if they remove Modesh.

Deployment

Since they are now the party with the least number of points, the Warriors got to choose a corner to deploy from. The choose the corner closest to the Relic Hunter’s tree objective. This means that they can guard the hoard and that Modesh will have to come to them. The Relic Hunters choose the left-adjacent corner with the wall to deploy from.

The Warriors deploy with the three mindless skeletons next to The Prince to avoid the effects of Mindless. The King deploys next to the large wall to avoid being shot by the Relic Hunter’s musketeer. The Relic Hunters deploy towards the top corner of their deployment area to reduce the distance between them and their objective. Naomi is at the other end of the wall. She will try to find a good location to begin sniping skeletons. Finally Agatha is placed at the back of the pack of Warriors to protect her until the treasure hoard is found. Agatha can pick the lock and make the horde a small object to carry by removing it from its container.

Finally a roll was made for the Environmental Impact and a 7 was rolled resulting in “A fine day to die’ with no weather effects.

At this point if there were still any secret objectives then they would be announced. Seven tokens were put into the bag for the Relic Hunters and six for the Warriors.

Turn one

The bag with the tokens is given a decent shake and the first one drawn is for the Relic Hunters. Since she has no real targets, and she does want to get closer, it is decided to activate Naomi and get her to move to a good firing position. It might seem as if she is dangerously close to the undead but they can only move 3” per action so she is safe from attack for this turn.

The Warriors go next and the skeleton with spear is moved forward. The spear will let him get an Opportunity Attack against anyone charging from his front so he seems like a good speedbump to put out front.

Robert le Blanc moves up next to a tree and checks the range for a possible charge but the skeleton is just slightly outside of his 5” move range. Colin, the possible assassin, is activated next and he dashes up behind Robert.

Another Relic Hunter token is drawn and it is at this point that I begin to have second-thoughts about my deployment. The wall next to the Warriors creates a ridiculous chokepoint. Agatha is activated and she sprints over the wall towards the ruin in the centre of the table. That puts her at the base of the wall and she can try to climb it next turn.

At this point you would think that a Warrior token would be drawn from the bag but you would be wrong. The Holy Hammer is activated and it moves and then charges towards the skeleton with spear. The skeleton gets an Opportunity Attack because of the spear. It rolls a total of 12 and then rolls an 8 to wound. This is modified down by 1 because the Hammer is Bloodless. This results in two wounds. The Hammer finally gets its Charge attack and rolls a 7. Sadly with the -1 modifier for charging this results in a miss. There is a question as to whether the skeleton would then get another Opportunity Attack.

The Warriors go next and activate the skeleton with sword. It advances slowly forward to guard the stairs down from the ruins. The skeleton with axe goes next and it slowly staggers towards the tree that holds the treasure horde.

Finally Mogesh needs to act. He moves forward and then attempts to heal the Holy Hammer. He hops the wall (losing 1” of movement) and then casts the Heal spell. He rolls a 6 which only just succeeds and heals the Hammer for a single Wound.

The Warriors get a token next and choose The Prince. He moves forward and positions himself behind the skeletons making sure that they are all within 6” of him. The King is activated next. He is a tricky model since as a Sage he has pathetic defence values. In his current position he can see all the other members of the party so I decide to leave him there.

The Warrior’s wildcard token is drawn. It is decided to get the skeleton with spear to attack the Holy Hammer. It hits but the roll to wound is too low and it does no damage.

The last token in the bag is the Relic Hunter’s wildcard token. Naomi is chosen to activate and she shoots her musket at the skeleton with sword. She rolls a 2 and misses. She might as well of thrown the reload token at the skeleton. I also think that I have now made Naomi less effective by having her start the next run with a reload marker.

Turn two

One nice feature of a chip/token draw system is that you really don’t know who is going to activate first. Your planning could be thrown for a loop by the luck of the draw. Turn two starts with a Warrior activation token being drawn. The King activates first and attempts to cast Empower on the skeleton with spear. Even with a +3 modifier the spell fails with a roll of 2. He then moves to contact the tree stump so he can see the oncoming Relic Hunters and try a Life Drain next turn.

Another Warrior token comes out of the bag so the skeleton with spear attacks the Holy Hammer. He hits but the rtW is a 1 and does no damage. He attacks again (which is the benefit of being a Warrior) and hits but only does a single wound. The third token is again a Warrior token. The skeleton with the sword advances into the ruins and up the stairs to block that route.

Finally the Relic Hunters get an activation. Naomi reloads and then climbs up the walls of the ruins. This makes her a bit more difficult to attack and also means that next turn she can concentrate and fire. After that, Agatha is activated. She climbs the ruin wall and then ducks behind a piece of terrain to try to make any charge against her more difficult.

Colin the would-be assassin is activated next. He moves to the nearest wall but can’t make it in a single move so he does a second move action to place himself next to the wall right near the edge of the board.

The Warriors activate next and the skeleton with axe is moved to position it directly between Agatha, in the ruins, and the tree she wants to search.

Robert le Blanc then charges the skeleton with spear. This generates an Opportunity Attack which misses. Missed OAs do not generate further attacks of opportunity. Robert gets his attack and rolls a 1 which is the only thing that would miss. He uses his second action to try to attack again and hits. The rtW is a 9 which gets reduced to an 8 (+1 for Robert and -2 for the skeleton’s Medium armour) which results in two wounds. The Holy Hammer decides to get involved as well but it rolls a 1 and misses. The Opportunity attack against it hits and the Roll to Wound is a 9 which gets reduced to 8 due to Bloodless but is still enough to remove the Holy Hammer.

The Prince activates next. The King is close enough to two of the skeletons that they are unaffected by Mindless. This means that The Prince can move forward and help to choke off access to the tree.

Modesh is the last Relic Hunter activation. First he attempts to cast the Inspire spell but a roll of a 3 is not a success. He then charges in to attack The Prince. Modesh needs a 7+ and fails. The Prince does his Opportunity Attack and rolls a 1 and fails. At this point I change dice.

With the Relic Hunter wildcard activation, Colin climbs the wall. He manages a 3” climb which is enough for him to get to the top of the wall. With their wildcard, the Warriors activate The Prince to attack Modesh again and even though I used a new d10 he rolls another 1. Modesh gets an Opportunity Attack which gets an 8. His mace/warhammer ignores The Prince’s Medium armour which matters not because, you guessed it, I rolled a 1 when testing to wound. What a nightmare :-(

Turn three

At the start of turn three a Relic Hunter token is removed from the bag as the Holy Hammer was removed from play last turn.

The Relic Hunters are first out of the bag (or they will be after the game with the luck they have had). Naomi concentrates and then fires at The Prince. Why Colin wasn’t activated to attack The King is a mystery. Perhaps I got excited about shooting a musket? The shot will be at a +5 modifier (+2 for Concentrate, +1 for shooting at the rear, -1 for the model being in btb with another model, +1 for Steady Aim and +1 for her stats and a final +1 for a Rogue targeting the rear). I use my Dreadball dice cup and the shot hits with a net roll of 13. She ignores his Medium armour so the rtW roll is at a -1 and she does 2 wounds to The Prince. A much better start.

The Warriors are next and as much fun as it would be to see Colin jump down the wall and rear charge The King I decide to get The King out of danger. He moves away from Colin and then attempts to cast Empower. His net roll is 11 which gives the skeleton with spear a +3 Att modifier. The next token from the bag is a Warrior token and so the recently empowered skeleton takes a swing at Robert. The roll is at a +7 and generates a net roll of 15 but he fails to wound. He takes another swing which is also empowered but my odd ability to roll 1s pops up again. Robert takes his Opportunity Attack which hits and knocks the skeleton down to four wounds remaining.

Relic Hunters are next and Agatha is chosen to activate. The plan is that she can distract the skeletons or force them to move and potentially put Colin in a position to backstab them. She sprints past the skeleton in the ruins and then runs across the ruins and drops off them in front of the skeleton guarding the tree.

The Prince is activated next and he is hoping to start to put some damage on Modesh seeing as the cleric is a VP target. His first attack roll is a net 14 and the rtW roll is an 8 which results in two wounds. His second attack also hits and also does two wounds. Modesh is now down to three wounds remaining. The skeleton with axe that was recently surprised by Agatha dropping in decides to charge her. His first attack hits but fails to wound but the second hits and does two wounds to Agatha.

Finding himself is slightly dire straits, Modesh attempts to heal himself. He concentrates and then attempts to cast Heal. The casting fails (guess what I rolled?) and Modesh is left in no better a situation than he started. Colin is at the top of the wall and uses an action to scamper down and then runs to put the tree stump between himself and The King.

The skeleton in the ruins that was hoping to block Agatha instead moves back and positions itself between Colin and The King. Robert le Blanc then activates. The skeleton with which he is engaged only has four wounds left so Robert makes an attempt to take him down. The first attack hits and does two wounds and the second attack hits (what no 1?) but doesn’t wound the skeleton. It is left on two wounds.

The Relic Hunter wildcard activation is used to activate Robert again. He takes a mighty swing at the skeleton again and takes it down. This causes a Resolve test for all characters with 6”. The Prince passes his resolve test but The King fails (the Mindless skeletons don’t have to take one) and moves 4” towards the nearest board edge. This takes him closer to Colin and further away from the skeleton who was trying to protect him. Robert has an additional action, because of Heroic, and he uses it to attack The Prince. He hits but the rtW roll is at a -3 modifier which results in no wounds being scored.

The last token out of the bag is the Warriors wildcard token. Originally the intent was to use it to attack with The Prince but it now has to be burned to reposition The King so he isn’t used for stabbing practice by Colin.

Turn four

One Warrior token is removed from the bag for the skeleton with spear who was taken out last turn. The first token drawn is for the Warriors and it is used to get the skeleton with sword to charge Colin. The skeleton hits but only does a single wound. His second attack hits and also does one wound.

The Relic Hunters are next and Robert is activated to try to damage The Prince. He fails on his first attack and The Prince ripostes and causes a wound to Robert. Robert’s second attack hits but the massive -3 rtW modifier means that he once again does no wounds.

The King is getting cantankerous due to all the running around he has been forced to do. He decides that it is time for some spellcasting. First he casts Life Drain on Modesh which drains him of two wounds leaving him with just one. Next he casts Empower on the skeleton fighting Agatha but that spell fails. Modesh responds to this by again trying to heal himself but is only able to heal a single wound.

The Prince sees an opportunity to take Modesh down. He aims his sword at Modesh’s head and connects but only does a single wound. He swings again and poor Modesh is struck through and collapses on the ground. Naomi and Robert are required to take a Resolve test and they both pass.

Outraged at the loss of Modesh, Naomi quickly reloads her musket and takes aim at The Prince. She only just hits but since the shot ignores armour she is able to do two wounds.

The skeleton with axe is next to activate and it starts by taking a swing at Agatha. He lightly connects with the axe which does no damage and his second attack misses. Agatha does an Opportunity Attack which fails to connect. The Warrior wildcard token is drawn and it is used to pull The Prince out of combat. He has successfully taken down Modesh and so there is little point for him to keep himself in combat with his back facing a Gnome with a musket. Robert hits with his Opportunity Attack but this time the -3 modifier doesn’t save The Prince and he takes two wounds as he repositions himself.

The last three tokens in the bag are for the Relic Hunters. Agatha tumbles past her skeleton attacker and begins to search the tree (total of 5 so far). Colin attacks the skeleton and both attacks hit but the Medium armour of the skeleton limits the damage to two wounds. The wildcard token is used to allow Agatha to search again (total of 9).

Turn five

The game is going to depend a lot of which side gets the first action this turn. Agatha can conceivably find the treasure and scamper off the table on the first turn. If she can do that then the rest of the party will ‘get out of dodge’ as well since all they are at that point are potential VPs for the Warriors.

Luckily, for the Warriors, they get the first activation and charge in a skeleton to attempt to take Agatha out. His first attack misses (not a 1) and Agatha gets an Opportunity Attack which only just misses the skeleton. It then does another attack which hits but fails to wound. Agatha lives!

The Relic Hunters are next and Agatha is activated. She searches the tree for the treasure hoard and rolls a 9 to bring the total to 18 which exceeds the 15 required. She has found the treasure! It is an ‘average’ sized chest so it encumbers Agatha but even with the encumbrance she is able to flee off the board with it. Currently the VP totals are 5 to 3 for the Relic Hunters.

The King activates next and the Warriors need to get as many VPs as they can to try to get a win. The King attempts to cast Life Drain on Colin. His view is blocked by the tree stump so there is a negative modifier on the casting attempt. The spell goes off and drains two wounds from Colin. Next, The King attempts to empower the skeleton fighting Colin and manages to give the skeleton a +1 Att modifier.

The Relic Hunters activate next and Colin attempts to disengage and run off the table. The skeleton gets an Opportunity Attack and swings its rusted sword and connects with Colin but is unable to wound him. Colin also runs off the table. There is now a cumulative -2 modifier to any Resolve tests that the Relic Hunters make due to their comrades fleeing from the table.

Another Relic Hunter token is drawn from the bag and Robert decides to join his associates and flee. Naomi is activated next and she drops from the ruined wall and then scampers towards the second nearest table edge. The closest edge will bring her closer to the Warriors and their sharp, sharp swords. The Prince chases after Naomi as does one of the other skeletons.

There are only the two wildcard tokens left to draw.

The first one drawn is for the Relic Hunters and Naomi uses an action to rush off the table. The Warriors now have no other source of victory points and the game ends is a narrow win for the Relic Hunters.

Lessons and comments

Party building

The Warrior undead party seemed to work well. The Prince was an insane beast that was very difficult to take down. The Mindless skeletons were quite good. Perhaps a bit too good. They need to stay within 6” of a non-Mindless character and on a 2’ x 2’ table that was quite easy to do. The King worked well. The miniature that I am using is a bit odd since it is more of an attacking figure than a spellcaster but I think that the system created a good representation of what I wanted.

The Relic Hunters were quite good with the exception of Modesh. I think that a model that is intended to cast healing spells should not be in combat. I think having the minion Holy Hammer with him was enough to represent his clerical nature and a specific spellcaster would have been better. Modesh used three traits to enable him to be a mediocre spellcaster. That wasn’t a good decision. It was also illegal. Modesh should have only been able to have the single spell. So my trying to turn him into a TTRPG cleric archetype was not only a bad idea but against the rules.

Gameplay

There were several points in the game that would have turned into a slog in other rule sets. The Warriors were able to create a traffic jam on the map by putting units in the space between the wall and the ruins. The Relic Hunters could avoid it all though. Agatha climbed into the ruins and then dodged around the skeletons and Colin climbed a wall and started to threaten The King. The Warriors had to react to that and move troops which made it easier for Agatha to get to the tree and start to search. It might be a valid tactic to gum up an opponents access to an area of the map but not at this scale of game and it was heartening to see that there were ways around this.

The Prince was a beast but he was almost taken down. The issue in the case was applying the correct tool (musket shots from the rear) to the task. Having played some games [cough]Warhammer Fantasy[/cough] where you could have untouchable character models that chewed through your army it was nice to see that there were options available during party building to solve this issue. That said, I am going to suggest to Nic that we try out rtW modifiers for exceptionally high to-hit rolls. There were a few rolls that totalled 15-16 that really should have done more damage.

Just before I started this game, Nic made a change to the rules to allow all characters in the game to use Quick and Wild attacks. This might have, if I remembered it, made taking The Prince down a bit easier.

The Encounter scenario rewards ‘playing the scenario’. The Prince was next to impossible to take down but there was no reason to do so. Once Agatha scampered off the table with the treasure there was no reason for any of the Relic Hunters to hang around. All they would be doing would be giving the Warriors possible VPs. So they ‘played the scenario’ and all ran away. You shouldn’t win a scenario because your opponent has no option than to stick around for three more turns and get beat up.

Overall

Aside from Modesh being a bit of a disappointment that was a fun game. The chit draw system created quite a few tense moments. Will Agatha be able to flee? Can Naomi run faster than The Prince? Will Colin be able to jump on The King’s back and shank him? And let’s not forget The King fleeing and almost running back into Colin. As the game changed and evolved I didn’t feel as if there was ever a point where the game was lost or that I didn’t have options available to either party.

Next up with be two new parties. One will focus on the Summon spell and the other will be based on another Warhammer Underworlds warband that will be mostly combat focused. And I will try not to make any illegal characters this time.