Fantastic Scuffles outings - you win some, you lose some...
This week it was great to catch up with Andy T, an old gaming mate I haven't seen in person in years; certainly not since before Covid. We got in two games of Fantastic Scuffles over the evening - one with 200 point parties, and one with 100 points.
The first match up saw my gnomes with a blood feud trying to slay one of Andy's ruffians (the toughest one with all the armour a luck would have it!), while his ne'er-do-wells were trying to get a message across the board. Rolling for environmental conditions, the weather was fine, but it was dark, hampering all our dice rolls.
Andy's own rogue (a right bastard actually with all the nasty traits), scaled the high ground where he was immediately set upon ans quickly dispatched by the Wolf. Meanwhile, the Great Tit didn't think before she acted, and moved forwards, allowing herself to the mobbed by giant rats and one of the ruffs - who all then went on to surround the Vixen as well.
This was my first time running the gnomes (although they have been out before under Jim's command), and it took a couple of turns to work out the best strategy for using the vehicle rules. I was just getting used to the concept indeed when a thug with a great axe split the poor bunny chariot in half, ending the experiment.
Poor Sven the blue wizard. He cleverly assumed owl form, crossed the board to assume the high ground and then failed three times in a row to get his chain lightning spell to work! Eventually one of the thugs scaled the cliff face behind him and took him down with a savage blow to the head. By that stage the gnomes had already lost the bunny-sled, three other gnomes and both foxes, while Andy's messenger was close to crossing the board, so we called it a night and the surviving gnomes scuttled off into the darkness to lick their wounds.
The second game was a much faster affair. We dropped the parties back to 100 points. Andy ran his ruffians again, in reduced format, while I took my Rogues Gallery out for their first run. This time Andy had a blood feud to pursue, trying to route out the Mouse (halfling burglar). Meanwhile, the rogues were out the ambush the ruffians. So the parties started very close together, it was daylight and fine weather, and ran very smoothly as a quick little game.
My poor gnomes were quite unprepared for the amount of hand-to-hand combat they found themselves in. While both sages managed to get their transfiguration spells working (in the picture above, Olaf has decided the fight would go better for him as a badger!), neither were able to carry out any offensive spells.
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The Wolf started on the high ground, while the Vixen and the Great Tit were lower down, hoping to distract and shoot at the thugs as they emerged from the corner.
The Mouse emerged from hiding to duel with another ruffian with crossbow (all hidden from view on the far side of the high ground). The Mouse held his own, but was getting the worse of it, until the Wolf deftly finished off the crossbowman with throwing knives.
All attention now moved the the swirl of biting rats and their thug buddy attacking the Vixen. The encounter was going my way, but not entirely as the Vixen was suffering badly. The Wolf again used his knives, dispatching one rat causing another to flee. He then threw again at the last rat, missed, and hit the Vixen! She went down, causing him to lose heart, trip and fall from the heights, suffering wounds for his troubles.
However, the ruffians were left at this point with one wounded thug and a rat, having earned just two victory points against my six, so for the day that it was, we called it a win for the rogues.