sho3box

After several months of planning and preparing, I recently got together with The Bazpaz for a socially distanced 24 hours of gaming.

My last few months have been hobby productive. I have prepped a large number of bits and pieces for gaming, some visible here, some others visible here and a few more yet to be shared. Primarily this work was done with an eye for filling the requirements for playing Rangers of Shadow Deep, but almost every element worked on has multiple, very definite hobby/gaming applications.

To some extent the gaming session last weekend – in addition to being a nice way to sensibly and carefully socialise after being isolated for a significant period – was the payoff for several months of hobby work, for both of us.

The schedule was very clearly defined, as you might expect after such a long period of preparation, and it proved to be pretty much perfectly gauged. Go us.

The less than perfect, but hopefully evocative in-game snaps in this post document the day.

Meet and greet was at 1500hrs on Friday, to be followed by playing through the first three Rangers of Shadow Deep scenarios, with food served at an appropriate time. About 80-90% of the items used in the three RoSD games had been prepped specifically for these games, and were hitting the tabletop for the first time. In itself, that was a bit of a kick really.

Neither of us had played Rangers of Shadow Deep before, but both of us had given the rules a read. I had played a bit of Frostgrave in the past (most notably here) and as the core mechanics in both games are essentially the same, that was useful too. Rangers is simple to pick up, with the opposed single dice rolling aspect to combat, integrated mechanics like an event deck that tracks the length of the game and individual activations keeping things rolling along nicely.

After the first game in “The Deserted Village” we had the basic mechanics locked down pretty well, and we comfortably won the scenario. We decided not to be too cocky about the second scenario and entered “The Infected Trees” without using the “Challenge Level” (“hard mode” in video game terms), just in case.

We romped through the second scenario, swashbuckling our way through the spider haunted forest, squishing arachnids with abandon.

By the end of the second scenario, we had eaten, and were suitably buoyed up by a successful Ranging careers to date and associated celebratory booze, so went into “The Bridge Guards” scenario with a cocksure attitude, and a certainty that playing the game on Challenge Level was the way to go.

This scenario turned out to be a lot deadlier for the witch hunting rangers. Deadly accurate missile fire from the skaven slingers (gnoll archers) tore strips off the rangers and their companions, even with the ambush advantage that the stealthier rangers had engineered (throwing rocks to draw attention elsewhere, that sort of thing).

Companions fell and the witch hunters plans had to be reassessed on the move. Heroic sacrifices were made and a couple of big problems were taken out with lucky single shots, leaving the scenario hinging on a few chancy, all-or-nothing combats.

The witch hunters made it through “The Bridge Guards” in the end, but it was a close run thing. A nail biting end to what really was a very successful first outing for a rule set. We followed that up with a boozy chat for a couple of hours, and then got a relatively decent seven hours kip before we set up for some Warcry the following morning.

Last year The Bazpaz painted a Warcry warband and two sets of Warcry terrain, but for various dull real life reasons, we didn’t manage to get together to play a game back then. It was correspondingly extra-satisfying to see these guys strut their stuff on the table after that delay.

I have been working on skaven models recently, specifically with a view to using them in Mordheim, as mooks in Rangers of Shadow Deep as already seen above and, obviously enough, Warcry. Having spent the previous evening trying to take out the horrible little guys, I got to drive the ratmen at The Bazpaz’s reptile enthusiasts the following day.

My Warcry experience has been exclusively good, and this session was a hoot, with loads of fun, imperfect decisions to balance and a sense of agency throughout. December was the last time that I played Warcry, and this session fired up my enthusiasm for the game again.

Both games systems were a treat to play. Warcry left me with enthusiasm to work on some of my own Warcry terrain pieces (which fit in to some future Rangers of Shadow Deep and Frostgrave scenarios) and to add a few more skaven to the pleasingly substantial group that I have finished over the last few months.

Similarly, a lot of the work required for the next RoSD scenarios is already completed, and the success of the days gaming means that enthusiasm for working on the next pieces is high (and who wouldn’t want to work on detailing a tiny dungeon for their toy soldiers to rampage through anyway?). I expect that we will get stuck in to “Tor Varden: The Lower Level” in the not too distant future.

Bottom line is that for a combination of reasons, that was one of the most enjoyable 24 hour gaming sessions that I can remember. You haven’t seen the last of the Paw Clan either…

Filed under: Games in Progress | Tagged: 2020, Fantasy, Paw Clan, Rangers of Shadow Deep, The Bazpaz, Warcry, Witch Hunter |