Rangers of Shadow Deep: The Story Begins

Rangers of Shadow Deep: The Story Begins 

Kati and I have finally decided to post some of our fantasy exploits and in our typical way we had to start a whole new project to do it.

Frostgrave has been a game we have dappled in for years.  It is fun and captures that campaign-feel I want, in everything I do.  We started playing the scenarios out of the Rise of the Lich King supplement for I think the third time now a few weeks ago.  I enjoy wizards and magic and Kati is just ok with the idea that she has to be a wizard in the game and kept commenting on how much fun it would be if we were working together. That got me thinking about a post I had seen a about a year ago and I jumped on the internet and did some research.  Enter Rangers of Shadow Deep

It had everything we were looking for.  It is a coop game, it is fantasy, its by the same gent who gave us Frostgrave, and Kati gets to be a ranger which is her favorite fantasy class. We gave it a look-over, ordered some miniatures to flush out our collection, and were on our way.

With our posts we are going to try something different.  Instead of just giving the world an AAR we wanted to do it in a more narrative form. Hopefully from here out this will be a series of exciting and fun interlocking short stories about our rangers.  

So without further ado here are our fearless bands.

Phil's Band

Hoffgar Graniteslicer

 Hoffgar being a Dwarf is not a native of Alladore but this makes him no less a loyal and devout ranger of the realm.  Having arrived in Tallis as a hired hand for a trade convoy from Tollonian he was taken in by an old ranger of Alladore named Ishra who was looking to pass on his knowledge to an edger "blank Slate" with no political leanings to any of the major houses of the realm. Two years later Ishra, Hoffgar and a band rangers were ambushed by a band of Gnolls they had tracked into the wastes of the north.  With his dying breath Ishra handed Hoffgar his silver star pendant and asked him to carry on his work.  Hoffgar vowed to serve the realm and continue to guard Alladore from all foes.

Soon after this Hoffgar was made an official ranger this joyful event was quickly overshadowed by the coming of the shadow deep.  Hoffgar is preparing to go on his first mission as a ranger and leader of men, it seems another veteran ranger has gone missing and Hoffgar has already had his fill of rangers being taken before their time. 

Molly of Raindale

Molly has had a blessed life up til now.  She grew up happy in her little village of Raindale.  As a child she was smart and soft spoken. Raindale is home to a few wizards who have taken it upon themselves to search out anyone that might have a knack for the magic arts.  Molly was an obvious choice and she quickly caught on.  Realizing that in a small town with multiple wizards already well established her skills would not help her make a living she traveled to the capitol and was recruited by the royal army and added to the ranks of conjurers that are on stand-by to aid the ranger corps.  

She is packing for her first mission it seems that she will be assisting a newly promoted ranger on a search and rescue.

Bruce of.....

There is not much to know about Bruce.  He was an orphan that grew up in the streets of Tallis.  Fighting and stealing most of his life he has made him a hard and un-trusting person.  Around what was assumed to be his 20th birthday he picked a fight with an off duty Sargent of the guard.  After the Sargent bested him he presented Bruce with two options: either join in the ranks of the army or hang.  It was an easy choice and Bruce has been among the rank and file every since.  The regular soldiers of the kingdom draw straws to see who will get stuck trudging across half the damn kingdom following a ranger on some errand or another.  Bruce is convinced it was a rigged lottery but either way, here he is packing his meager belongings and reporting to the ranger corps.  His boot has had a hole in it now for a month so hopefully they wont have to go to far. 

Kati's Band

Tem-Sin

When Tem-Sin was born he had no idea he would spend his life in virtual servitude to a country he had no loyalty to. From the edges of the Forest of Nar to the south, the young Tengu was born the third son of a minor chief of the village of Ack-Tar, he was volunteered to Alladore at a young age to be taught the ways of the Ranger, to reinforce the amiable relationship between the peoples of Nar and Alladore. While in service, Tem-Sin became a master of the forest, delving into his studies with vigor in the Ranger corps, hoping to one day return to his people and bring honor to his proud lineage. He has finally been given a mission of his own, a search for a fellow missing Ranger...does it involve the sinister forces that have appeared out of the East? The mysterious Shadow Deep?

Hasson Hart

Hassan Hart has had a pretty mundane life, from a poor family in a city where there weren't many options. After his families bakery burned down, his options became even more narrow. Either become a street thug or join the army. One night while drinking too heavily, he was approached by an army recruiter who promised to pay for his drink. Little did he know he had just been indebted to the King and earned a life in the service of the crown. 

Derrick son of Robin

Derrick takes his bow everywhere he went, he loved his bow, he even named it Nora. Nora could hit the eye of rabbit on a black stormy night at 50 yards...so Derrick claims. In truth he grew up hunting from an early age to provide food for his family, but found his boasting got him in a spot of trouble with the local law. When the sheriff had to nominate men for service, all eyes were on Derrick and Nora, whom he had said could vanquish all foes. Now Derrick keeps his head down and speaks softly to Nora, he tries to keep his boasting to himself. He has been chosen to assist the Ranger Corps. He's not looking forward to it.  

Blood & Valor First Action

Blood & Valor First Action:

Brits vs Germans WW1 late war

It has been almost 2 years since Kati and I got a game in to blog.  Not to say we haven't been playing miniatures we just have been doing a lot of fantasy and not recording our games.  For some reason we just do not have the drive to record our fantasy games.  Which is reality doesn't make a lot of sense because they are just as interesting and can be wrapped into a nice story but I digress....
The good folks over at Firelock Games have been developing a new rule set that is for ww1.  Based on my previous post it should be well known that we enjoy Firelock games rule set blood and plunder a lot and we also love ww1 war gaming so picking up Blood and Valor was a no brainier.

 When I got the email that the rules had shipped I immediately dug out all the WW1 terrain and figures and set to making up a table.  The day the rules arrived I dove right in.

No surprise the book its self is great and well made.  The rules themselves are clean and easy to understand especially if you have played Blood and Plunder.  Now upon reading the rules I have to admit I was a little worried. Like I already mentioned if you had played B&P you would have a good idea of the rules because they look at first glance like a direct port of B&P to another period.  B&P are a solid set of rules that use a d10 system with range bands and stat lines and a fatigue system that represents the morale of your troops.  There are differences and I figured I should play before I pass judgement(I am glad I did).  Run tokens and an interesting bidding systems are a couple of the changes that looked promising.

The last section of the book is of course the army lists which I was excited to read.  I do not like being negative when discussing rules and a company that I adore but I am pretty honest and this is my/our blog.  The army lists were very disappointing, Blood and Plunder's army list are a rich and exciting adventure.  Full of unique stats and lots a flavor that make each nation diverse and very different.  Blood and valor is the opposite the stats are generic and each nation has a unique rule but beyond that a riflemen is a riflemen with the same stat-line for each faction etc. Now one could argue that in this period most armies were trained about the same, while I disagree that a German storm trooper and a Ottoman trench raider are not equal, I will let that slide.   You could do that and use the different squad layouts to make each nation feel different.  In the rules as written your rifle squads all can be up to 12 men and get an LMG and grenades upgrades.   American rifle squads were up to 17 men and french added two LMGs to squads for example.  This could have added a rich and unique feel to each faction and since its a point based system it should in theory be balanced.  Bolt Action of ww2 has a very similar point system but limits and expands squads based on historic unit sizes.  

Anyway enough about the rules before we played lets get into the game.

  The game is meant to be played on a 3x3 or 3x4 which felt weird as I set it up but as we played it honestly felt perfect for the amount of figures.  I set up a table and because it had been awhile I put as much terrain as I could to capture the feel of ww1. 

The game uses a point system that suggests 150pts so Kati and I built using this amount.  She as usual played the Germans and I went with the Brits.  We both went with a Captain which is the 2nd tier of leaders.  you are required to take 2 core units of riflemen as well which we both gave LMGs and grenades too.  We both took HMGs as support  I took trench raiders and a third rifle squad with rifle grenades and Kati took a sniper and a barrage.  Based on the units that you take they grant you initiative points for the bidding system.  I ended up with a starting initiative of 13 and Kati with a 14.  As you can see from the pics this is a small action game representing trench raids and small scale fighting.

We rolled off for scenario and got conquest which is an objective based scenario with a objective in the center and 2 in each deployment zones.  The interesting thing to note about the scenario system is that it is a 6 round game and you get points at the end of the game for holding objectives. one point for objectives in your own zone 2 points for the center and 3 points for the opponents zone. So its all scored at the end of game and scoring off your own means you can score off of a stationary HMG.

Turn one started with us learning the bidding system.  The system is pretty strait forward, you have a pool of initiative points that based off the units you have at the start of each turn.  before each activation you bid up to 6 points and whoever bids the most goes first.  this drains your pool and if you bid 0 points the unit only gets one action compared to the normal 2.
Kati went first and used her officer which can use command points to give units actions out of turn.  She advanced out of her trench with about half of her force.

I responded by cracking a joke about how she was as naive as a captain in 1914 sending her men over the top in front of a HMG.  Of course fate rewarded me with a complete miss on the roll.

My trench raiders would gain the reward of first causalities of the game from the German HMG that was better crewed then my own.  2 men gone out of 4 rendered them pretty useless.

I ran my rifle grenade squad out into the cover of crater.

The end of turn one saw the Germans aggressively advancing through the gap in their wire line and my Brits doing a more caution advance.

I bid 6 points in the first activation to get my HMG firing and it paid off hitting the advancing squad hard.

The rest of the turn was spent with both sides advancing and exchanging fire. The run markers which we used  purple chips grant a unit a small bonus to being hit. It worked well.

End of turn 2 left us both feeling pretty worried that we would be ripped to bits before we could gain any objectives.

Turn 3 sees my men jump the wire after a successful wire check.

I advanced a firing line that scored a pretty good hit one her advanced guard.

End of turn stalemate

Turn 4 sees us both lose a unit of riflemen

Kati loses another rifle unit in turn 5

End of turn 5 we both realize this game would be decided by who controlled the center objective.

Kati used her commander to try to advance her last rifle unit of the wire.  They failed their wire check and got hung.  

We both got our squad to the center.

The game ended with both of us holding the center and the two objectives in our own zone making it a tie. If the game ends in a tie then it comes down to points killed giving the game to Kati and her Germans.


So what did we think?  After the game my worries that it wouldn't feel like ww1 were gone.  The game played fast and intense.  We felt like it played well and after the first turn the bidding system was a fun addition to the game.   We are interested to try it again as we were finally in the swing of the game as it ended.  We felt like the sniper and barrage under performed but we also kinda forgot about the barrage and the sniper missed a lot of easy shots due to bad rolls.
We usually use Chain of Command for our ww1 and we love chain of command but it can feel a little slow at times so we will see if the speed of play out ways the the historical feel of CoC



  

Blood and Plunder First Sea Battle

Spanish Guarda Costa Sloop Isabella vs Pirate Sloop Albatross

Now that Kati and I have become competent in the land rules for Blood and Plunder we decided to give the ship combat a whirl.
As I had mentioned in a previous post the ship combat adds a game on top of a game.  The ships are treated in the rules as giant moving structures for rules purposes but with the addition of wind, movement, cannons, crewing guns, rigging, repairing etc it is a lot of new mechanics.

First up are my Spanish forces. We played with 150 point forces and made our ships look identical with 2 medium cannons, 4 light cannons, and 2 swivel guns each. While this may not be as exciting it was a good way to test the water with this whole ship thing.
 I immediately felt the limitations of my sloop (Nuestra Senora Isabella) when building my force.   Each deck of a ship can hold a maximum of 2 units, and with the sloop only having 2 decks I was limited to 4 units total. I ended up with an experienced captain, 2 units of 6 trained militia, and 2 units of 4 trained marineros.

We joked about how overcrowded the decks of my ship looked once loaded.  I gave the medium guns to a militia unit and the light guns to a marinero unit.

Kati's pirates on The Albatross on the other hand had only 3 units and an experienced captain.  7 flibustiers, 4 marineros, and 4 enfants perdus.

We then jokes at how empty her ship looked.  She gave her flibustiers 2 light guns and the medium guns. The enfants got 2 light guns as well.

We set up the simplest scenario we could find.  Two ships going with the wind starting parallel to each other.  Just deep blue water made the board a snap to make!

I started the game using my captains broadside ability to fire all my guns at once.  While it looked cool for the pictures I missed completely.

The Albatross responded in kind with a single light cannon.  It hit the Isabella doing 1 damage to my hull killing a man and damaging my rigging with a lucky hit.

She tried to repeat her luck with the rest of her cannon but lucky for me they all fell short.

Another broadside saw minimal damage.

The Albatross was definitely sailing more aggressive and quickly closed in on the Isabella.  At this point I had finally repaired my rigging and was back up to speed.

The Isabella takes another hit.

The Isabella responds with a swivel.  The Albatross ignores it and continues to close.

The Albatross details a devastating broadside knocking out a light gun, killing 3 men and slamming my hull for 6 damage.

While much harder to picture we begin exchanging small arms fire in between reloading the cannons.

The Isabella deals a deadly volley!

The small arms fire continues.  Surprisingly my men got the upper hand and Kati's captain and flibustiers ended up ducking for cover.

While a close shot the effects were were minimal.

The ships continue to close.

The Albatross takes another well aimed shot to the hull.

The games ended on turn six. The turn consisted of more small arms fire leaving the decks a lot emptier than they began.  With this being the end we tried to calculate who won.  Amazingly we had equal amounts of strike dice, equal damage on our ships AND had killed an equal amount of men.  It was a perfect draw.

The game started out a bit slow during the long range cannon duels.  While slow we both agreed that it made sense.  Once we got in close though the game picked up fast and felt like a rush that whole time.  Each time a gun went off we both held our breath which is rare in a miniature game as we have played so many. So kudos to Firelock Games for making a miniature that keeps you on the seat of your pants. the stat cards for the ships were another element that we liked. We came anyway REALLY enjoying the game and we can not wait to try again with a different setup.